2 important premises:

• Persona 5 is in my top 3 games of all time
• I didn't complete the whole game, after 22 hours of suffering I fell into utter despair and deleted my save file.

Let's start with the pros, since the very first thing you see in the game is among them. When you turn on the game, the opening sequence plays and it is gorgeous: awesome music and style, P5S really starts out great. Overall, the whole OST is beautiful and I'd even say better than the P5R one (can't beat Beneath the Mask tho, sorry).The writing isn't half bad, some scenes made me laught just like the predecessor, and Sophia and Zenkichi are really interesting characters, I've read there's a whole arc dedicated to him (as is to be imagined) but I haven't reached it sadly. And the pros pretty much end there. Now, everything else:

• Terrible HUD that TRIES to imitate its predecessor but fails miserably (I could write a whole review just on that, if I ever do I'll link it here)

• Horrifying aliasing in every scene, we went from the pure smoothness of Royal to outlines murdered by dozen of squares (mind you, this is with the "graphic" setting)

• If that's not enough on the technical side, the game completely froze multiple times and I was forced to close it (playing on PS4)

• Gameplaywise, the bossfights are boring and repetitive (Ango Natsume, playing in hard difficulty, not only was easy but ridicolous, never even managed to land a single attack) as it is the whole combat system to be honest: every shadow encounter feels the same and plays out the same, Attack weakness -> All-Out-Attack -> Mash square until everything dies.

• The deadline mechanic being removed, with the thieves just going through an endless day to explore the whole jail, is a huge misstep: not only it removes a huge RPG mechanic (not a huge deal, it's a different genre, I can get behind that) but it means that there's absolutely NO DRAWBACK in leaving the jail, and the game even tells you so! It makes everything drammatically easy, as if it wasn't already, 'cause you can just so a couple fights, go back to the checkpoint to refill both HP and SP and proceed (Checkpoints that are even placed really bad if you ask me, with some even visible from one another like some DS3 bonfires). This, together with the fact that the game often tells you "BE CAREFUL, WE CAN'T GET SPOTTED BY THE LIGHTS!" and when you actually do the alert level just increases a bit and can't even reach 100%, makes me think Omega Force is making fun of me.

• Why is the audio so badly equalized? Most of the time Zenkichi and Ryuji are basically inaudiblecompared to all the other cast, and Morgana always eats his own words at the end of the sentence, obligating you to read to understand. Or, you can pump the TV volume to max and be annihilated when the music starts since "Music", "Sfx" and "Dialogues" aren't separated in the options, so you get the whole crappy package.

• Lastly, I'll just say that there are way more issues than the ones described here (Inexistent choices, tons of invisible walls, being able to use personas even when inflicted with the "Forget" status, Ryuji only has one animation while in the camper...) but it would be pointless to list them all, I think I made my point clear.

Which is, this game does not deserve the praise it gets, does not deserve to be the sequel of one of the best RPGs of the modern era, and if the plot really gets going in the second half of the game I really couldn't care less, since I don't want to torture myself in order to get there, not with Strikers, not with any other game.

Thank you for reading this far.

As a story, Persona 5 Strikers is an excellent sequel to the first game. It broadens the geographic scope, deepens the player's grasp of the Phantom Thieves' motivations, and introduces a handful of endearing new characters. These additions encourage the player to question the impact of the first game in some surprising ways while forging new memories with this iconic cast.

As a game, I'm slightly cooler on the whole experience. I'm not a fan of Musou games: I don't find hacking and slashing wave after wave of weightless enemies consistently engaging. To developer Omega Force's credit, Strikers manages to feel more and more like a true Persona game as elements of the original are layered on... I was genuinely enjoying battles by the third or fourth dungeon. But the Musou elements never added as much as they took away: Dungeons are smaller, confidants are gone, and the game's visuals exhibit jagged edges and less overall polish.

If you enjoyed Persona 5's story, you should give this game a chance. It feels far more essential than Persona Q2, it covers more new ground than Royal, and its difficulty options should make it approachable to players of varying skill levels. Just know that it plays less like "Persona 5: Part 2" or a typical Musou game, and more like a visual novel with hack and slash segments.

Man haven't posted any reviews in a while. Just didn't have much time to play. But after three months I finally finished this.

Narrative

Our favourite phantom thieves are back for a summer reunion. They plan on a fun vacation together, full with sun and beach fun. However, it was not meant to be. Someone is out to control the metaverse once again, and our phantom thieves have to spring into action and save japan!

Gameplay

Of course, as I knew in advance, this is nothing like Persona 5 (Royal) gameplay. No turn based, but action combat. Making combo's, getting persona skills off, building up energy for your ultimate attack, that kinda thing.

Not really my cup of tea it turned out. I though I was bad at turn based combat, but this was even worse. I sucked so much, that I just gave in and set the difficulty to easy. Because I am easily frustrated and salty, and honestly don't have so much time anymore to spend hours grinding in games.

When set on easy, it was pretty fun though. It's very flashy, and satisfying when your attack connects.It was also pretty fun getting to play as all of the phantom thieves and explore their different styles of combat.

Most disappointing however, no slice of life gameplay. No wandering around, hanging out with friends. My absolute favourite part of persona. Of course I knew it was not going to be there, but still sad.

Setting

Instead of just in Tokyo, this game is set all over Japan in form of a roadtrip. You visit most of Japan's iconic cities and most of those have a palace/dungeon/jail whatever you wanna call it. The Kyoto jail especially was really cool. The music, as expected, was again excellent. New songs, known songs, they were all there. I love the music in Persona and this one was no exception. Visually it's a really attractive game as well, the same excellent designs as Persona 5, everywhere from the stores , to the main menu. It's just a stunning game to look it.

Other

I did not encounter any bugs in the game at all, which is good. There is also nothing else of note.

Conclusion

It was a really fun game to play. Took me some months to finish it because of lack of time, but enjoyed all the stolen hours with it. It of course, is no Persona 5 (Royal). Which is still prefer over it. The gameplay was good, but not really my thing and the lack of socialising gameplay was sad. The music, art en general design of the game was great again of course. The story was quite interesting actually. Maybe even better than the Persona 5 (Royal) one. For all Persona fans, definitely worth a play. If you haven't played Persona 5 (Royal), I would first play that.

Persona 5 Strikers surprised me from the start.

I had a completely different P5S in mind before I actually played the game. To me, it was going to function like most other musou-style crossover games do, but it went beyond that. In the end, Strikers felt like a very good Persona game, but not a great musou game.

P5S made me feel at home from the get-go.

The game oozes style right from the starting menu until the credits roll, just like its predecessor. The soundtrack mostly reuses songs from the previous game and that would've been fine on its own, since that OST is perfect, but they made new songs that are just as amazing. Graphics are also nice. Although the Persona series isn't a looker when it comes to graphics, it impressed me how smooth the game runs. It impressed me even more to imagine it running on the Switch. Mix that with how stylish the game is and you got yourself an unique aesthetic experience.

The cities you visit also contribute to, not only the look of the game, but to the pacing. Cities like Osaka and Okinaway actually feel real and compelling. Although they are mostly for show, the change of scenery is welcome. I wish I could say the same for the Jails, though. They're cool, especially the challenging bosses, but they can take quite a while to complete. And that makes it sort of repetitive, to an extente.

Another aspect from P5S that surprised me was the story and how long it is. I was definitely not expecting a story-heavy musou game. Especially one that took me 50 hours to complete. The writing and pacing sure wasn't as good as P5, but it was interesting, packing good moments and an emotional ending. It aslo blended naturally with the events of the "first" game. Zenkichi and Sophia were great additions to the team, and the villains were also pretty cool, adding weight to the tale.

Now, for the meat of the game: the combat! This is a musou-style crossover, after all. I have to say that, at first, I was overwhelmed with the amount of things happening on the screen and the amount of things you had to pay attention to and quickly manage mid-battle. Honestly, it didn't feel like a proper musou game to me. It plays more like an action-RPG. A good one, but not exactly what I signed up for.

When you actually GET what the game demands of you and pull off crazy combos while exploiting weaknesses, it does become much better, but it just feels like something's missing. Everything is thrown at you, the screen gets crowded quickly, SP shouldn't be an issue but it is, the tutorial is jarring as hell, buffs and debuffs feel a little useless at times and the camera can go insane.

Don't get me wrong, it's not bad at all! It's just too intricate for this type of game. I also feel like the game outstays its welcome a little bit. I blame that on the amount of useless shops around its beautiful towns and the completely dull and tiresome requests that you can take. Oh, and if you're playing on hard, prepare to grind. Not a boring grind, but grind nonetheless...

Strikers is a good game!

A good Persona game, with a rather confounded musou-style approach that succeeds at times, but fails a lot too. If you miss the Phantom Thieves, you'll be surprised when you pick this up. But if you're here for another Samurai Warriors experience, I'd maybe look elsewhere.

I went into Persona 5 Strikers thinking it'd probably be a solid enough experience, but I've walked away wondering why on earth other people actually enjoyed this game. Persona 5 Strikers is one of the most blatant cash grabs of a AAA title I've seen in a while and I don't recommend playing it through.

The combat of this game is fundamentally the most key flaw to everything that stands on top of it. The game has you alternate between mowing down uselessly weak enemies that encourage you to button mash through them, and then occasionally contains enemies that have more health or can't trivially be hit-stun. The problem is that the game's combat mechanics are nowhere near tight enough to actually make these satisfying, you're just whacking a giant health bar that feels incredibly unsatisfying. It's so awful that I legitimately struggle to understand how anyone enjoys it. Combat includes stuns that force you to mash your buttons for 4-7 seconds, because that's a great feature!

It's neat that you can use any of your party members after the tutorial, but what you're effectively encouraged to do is pick three and never touch the rest. The devs decided not to give experience to the entire party evenly, and everyone has their own armor and weapons, which means rebuying a ton of equipment, so the answer is really just to ignore most of your possible cast.

The story... alright, the story isn't bad, but it's not very interesting. What's really annoying is that the story has been hilariously padded out in a manner that's grating. The "Jails" (equivalent of P5's Palaces) have tons of silly MacGuffins that pad everything out. The investigation phases of the villains serve as quick introductions, but ultimately don't mean much. Each villain has some trait that one of your party members relate to in a mostly predictable way.

A lot of the dialogue in this game comes across awkwardly. The biggest problem is you're in lots of scenarios where all of the Phantom Thieves are together, and the writers decided it'd make sense for every single member to chime in and say at least one line. It's all feels artificial once you notice it happening. There's also optional hangouts with the others, but unlike the prior game, there's no real social links, and there aren't any romance options or anything; just a singular bond level with your friends. The new character is yet another trope of "the robot is trying to become more human but needs to learn how through friendship!" but she's fine, I suppose.

I really want to emphasize, this game contains no interesting story or character development that's a must-hear if you liked Persona 5. If this game wasn't branded as a Persona 5 spinoff, it'd be utterly forgettable.

Persona 5 Strikers also contains a stunning lack of polish around a lot of game mechanics. For instance, in Jails, you have limited health and SP, unless you leave the jail to rest. To which there's zero penalty to do so. So why not just make it so the checkpoints heal you instead? Instead, you waste time going back and forth between useless loading screens.

The game also has so many pointless cutscenes and dialogues that just waste your time. Every single new area the game loads in, you'll walk two steps, and immediately, dialogue scene. Over and over. At the end of chapters it feels like you're playing Metal Gear Solid 4; dialogue after dialogue after dialogue. The game is horribly paced but it hopes the Persona 5 cast will somehow make you forget it's wasting your time.

In terms of graphics and performance, the game looks no better than its predecessor, and yet has come out four years later. In many ways, it even looks worse, as the aliasing is remarkably awful. The controls are also rather mediocre, with the running feeling incredibly awkward and many important interactions being mapped to the middle mouse button.

The ONE thing this game gets right are that the voice actors do wonderfully, reprising their roles, and that the new music is surprisingly great. It includes a lot of remixes and they all feel appropriate for the new game's action tone.

All in all, this game is below average and pretty bad. It's not enough of a clusterfuck to deserve a 1, but it's an absolute skip IMO.