Persona 5 Strikers (2020)

This feels like Persona 5, which is good and as it should be, and it made me realise how I liked (or at least missed) the cast and their dynamics. I like the premise of the story, even more so than Persona 5 Royal's. It is less convoluted, and that works for me.

Gameplay-wise, although I did find Persona 5 Royal to have too much going on, I find that that this has too little. I just finished the first Jail so perhaps there are more coming, but so far, dates here are meaningless, somehow the Velvet room feels empty, and the battles are either super easy or extremely difficult and never in between.

I've only completed one Musuo game before - Fire Emblem: Three Hopes, and I loved that game. I was hoping it would share some aspects with this game, but that isn't the case. I find that the genre worked better on Fire Emblem. I guess it's more appropriate for that setting? I especially loved how I can give the characters orders so even though I am not controlling them, they are doing something I want them to do. I really was a tactics commander in the game. I can't do this in Strikers. I also liked how all the enemies are already in the map in Three Hopes, unlike here where I need to ambush a unit before a swarm of combatants show up.

Both games gave each of the characters unique skills but they're so much more accessible in Three Hopes despite the cast being triple in number there. It is great that there are different skill combos per character in Strikers but I find it not easy to get or even to remember what each button combination does. It is very similar to the controls in a fighting game, and I am not really a fan of when combos involve five-button sequences or more.

I thought I was ready for another Persona 5 story so I started this last night. Two hours in, although I am interested in the story and I wanted to get a better grasp at the gameplay, it did not feel right. I guess I'm not there yet, and I ought to let more time to pass. Going to shelve this game for the time being, and maybe I'll pick it up next summer or something.

I feel like I'm in the mood for some JRPG though. Tempted to get Tactics Ogre: Reborn.

I waited a bit on this to see what the reception was like, as I have not enjoyed the writing of "spinoff" games in the past (I want to take this opportunity to callout how bad Persona Q is). Persona 5 Strikers actually feels like a mainline title in that respect though, with similar care taken towards it as was given towards its predecessor. With some great new character additions (mostly looking at you Zenkichi) and well crafted environments, it really feels like the gang is back together!

I don't have much experience with "musou" games, however this title gave me a lot of solid Nier: Automata vibes. The game starts off easy enough but it took me a while to figure out how to approach the first boss. Once you get that down though you should be in good shape for the rest of the game. I understand some people will find the gameplay a bit repetitive, but after finishing the main story I did not feel this way, and in fact still felt like I was perfecting my combos up to the last boss. If you played Devil Summoner Raidou you'll appreciate how far we've come. ​It does feel like the difficulty of some of the optional bosses are largely a result of how much HP they have, but I didn't spend enough time pursuing them to really have a strong opinion. I'm just glad there is more (optional) content they left for you to do once you beat the main game.

While the overall experience is very positive, there are a few nuisances that prevent me from giving this game a higher rating. As mentioned by others, to recover the party while in dungeons, you need to leave and come back. There are other things you can fit in as part of this process (eg. shopping), but it often boils down to just having to watch a few unnecessary loading screens. The battle AI is overall pretty solid, but occasionally they still act out of character, either spamming heal moves you don't want them to waste SP on (items are a big thing in this game), or getting nearly one shotted by random enemy attacks. I just wish there was some behaviour setting like in Devil Summoner Raidou, even if it doesn't go into as much detail as the gambit system in FF12. Having said all that, it's infinitely better than the AI behaviour in Ni No Kuni, so if you persevered through that, you'll probably have nothing to complain about.

My biggest frustration with this game comes down to one of its core systems, demon fusioning. This is pretty straightforward in most SMT games, however here we need to level certain demons in order to be eligible for fusing other demons which I found pretty annoying. The game provides ways to boost demon levels, but it often requires a sizeable chunk of your "persona points" to do so (or a lot of time grinding), especially later in the game where you need to bump them ~20 levels. Fortunately you can pick up masks pretty easily fighting enemies, but it does put a bit of a damper on an otherwise core area of most SMT games. As a result I found myself barely fusing demons at all and just relying on the random mask drops.

Storywise, it feels well executed, however maybe a bit too similar to the original in some respects. I personally didn't mind this, and I enjoyed the format, but I could see some people being less impressed. Getting to take a tour of Japan with the Phantom Thieves was the covid vacation I didn't realize I needed.

I didn't have any problems with the graphics playing on the PS4, but that isn't really a priority for me. You definitely can see some aliasing but I didn't really care. Also I never encountering any crashing or freezing despite just putting my PS4 to sleep throughout almost the entire playthrough (i.e. no shutdowns or restarts).

While the story is very good, it's not quite up to par with the original, and a few (mostly minor) gameplay annoyances prevent this from being 5/5 but it leans in that direction. If you like Persona 5 and are eager for something new, definitely check this game out. The combats a bit different but I think you'll learn to enjoy it, and who knows, maybe even prefer it in the end!

Reached credits and finished post-game on Normal

• Cleared all postgame painful memories sidequests
• Defeated secret boss and unlocked New Game+

Final Thoughts:

Wow to me, I actually find this game to be incredible! I remember when people were first skeptical of this game during reveal thinking the game would be just a fanservice musou spinoff crossover akin to Hyrule Warriors and Fire Emblem Warriors, but what we got instead is a Persona 5 sequel with a full-length story that actually DOES follow up on P5 (unlike Persona Dance and Arena games). I feel it's better viewed as a substantial follow-up to the main story like the Final Fantasy X-2 and XIII-2/3 games than a traditional Musou game. This also means I feel playing P5 (or at minimal watching the anime) is a prerequisite, or you will feel very lost!!!

What the game does well... it does REALLY well to me. I really wished the Phantom Thieves had more time to just goof off and feel like a group of actual normal friends in contrast to Persona 4 Golden, and that's exactly what I got here considering everyone returns. This also means Haru / Yusuke has much more screentime and are both more fleshed out this time! The new characters Zenkichi and Sophia are both brilliant additions with their own satisfying character development throughout the whole game. The game's UI and new music are just as good as the originals, with new bangers such as Daredevil which is just as hype as Life Will Change. I even find the final boss to feel much more satisfying considering that every party member got involved and had to be used (Despite that at this point the game is a complete retread to Persona 5's ending though the story idea of AI sentience is cool.)

The game still has a few issues. While overall the game's Jails are all much better than that infamous Spaceport Palace in P5, the first three tends to drag and may feel a bit repetitive as you're going through the same actions: clear 3 Prison Keeps, defeat the Warden miniboss, defeat the main jail Monarch boss, and then celebrate with some kind of local food. The story does change-up from the 4th jail and it just gets better from this point to the end of the game. I really enjoyed the combat and found it to be more engaging than base P5's turn-based combat, until then I realized in the last 1/3rd of the game all you really need to do is spam the boss-weakness skill and SP recovery items while you essentially infinitely pause time, which is incredibly broken.

Also still a random nitpick but I find it weird how the game is released on the Switch (which I totally support) when the base P5 or P5 Royal isn't. Considering that this game is a direct sequel, it would be really strange for Switch-only owners to dive into this game. This is also true for PC, if we're only talking about legitimate play methods.

Still, the high points are what really stand out to me, and it absolutely helps push the P5 franchise to feel just as equally good as the P4 franchise to me. If this happens to be the last P5 game, at least I can say the Phantom Thieves went out with a bang.

Note: I've only played Persona 5, and not Royal.

I really want to say something good about this game but... I can't. I also can't really say anything bad about the game either so it kind of just sits in the middle of it being an unimpressive but inoffensive game. It's supposed to be a musou game but I'd put it more along the lines of it being a Tales of game with musou elements instead. The idea behind musou games is (and I'm being extremely general here I know there's a bit more to musou games) generally non-stop hack and slash combat whilst capturing map objectives with a boss here and there. Strikers is nothing like that for one huge glaring reason and that's because the game will constantly interrupt the game almost every 2 minutes for very mundane dialogue that amounts to "We have to do this, we have to get that, the way is blocked we should find another way". Its actually mind boggling to me this happens the ENTIRE game and wasn't just seamlessly included in the middle of gameplay. As a result of, every encounter feels like a standard rpg encounter rather than what musou feels like which I can only assume is because of the Switch's limitations(but Hyrule Warriors exist so I don't know). This isn't really a bad thing because musou I think scratches a very specific type of itch that most people probably don't have. Playing through this I've also realized that I don't really care much for the rpg aspects of Persona so much as the sim aspects and the presentation, both of which are very much watered down in Strikers. Which again, isn't bad and makes sense since this focuses more on gameplay but it's also straight up a sequel so.. I'm not sure how I feel about that. The story is usual persona-fare stuff but significantly fast forwarded and honestly mostly just a slice of life.

It's action rpg Persona that's heavily carried by the fact that it's Persona and it's fine. Some will certainly love it for sure considering it's Persona and it's a fun time killer. Oh yeah, the bosses for every Jail were fun.

I've finished the game at 40 hours, and I'll be making a review once I get every achievement so here are some brief thoughts.

• The first calling card of the game is where playing P5S really felt like home. That callback to Shido's calling card just put a smile on my face. Best calling card in the game.

• Zenkichi is the funniest character in the game and is one of my favorite characters in P5 despite being somewhat of a retread from a previous game. Sophia was also a really good tie-in to the themes of the game and I loved her addition to the game.

• I really liked how the systems in Persona 5 have been transferred into Warriors. To me, it felt more action RPG-like than a Warriors game. That learning curve felt steep and I loved it.

• I've played the PC version with a beefy setup and there were multiple crashes. Ironically, I gotta thank them fore making me fall into a habit of constantly saving. Hopefully, there will be a patch in the future to fix them.

• One of my favorite moments in Persona is a fanservicey moment, but it's still earned. RYUJI SAYS FUCK! Unlike where he says it in 5 and it isn't voiced, it's voiced.

• Before the final Jail, I went and did some minibosses before hand because I thought I wouldn't return to the Jails again. Turns out, there is post gane content so my recommendation, beat the game and then play the postgame content, which is what I'm going to do.

• For an achievement, you really want me to level up ALL of my characters to level 70? If only you could level up everyone at once.

• Not gonna lie, for a game in the Persona series, the music didn't click with me. The battle themes, menu theme, and Sophia's shop, however, slapped.

• There is a disconnect between P5 and P5S's stories. The characters don't have their second awakenings which I feel would've fit better into the narrative to see how they have really grown.

• Thematically, the final boss feels like a retread of Yaldabaoth. I mean the Demiurge is another name for Yaldabaoth. Both "gods" have similar ideologies that ignorance is bliss (though thinking about it, does apply to 3 and 4).

P5S is a GOTY contender in my book. Expected as a sequel to my favorite game. Although I don't know many interesting upcoming games for this year. I had a really good tine with it. Top 3 games that I have played so far this year.