Persona 5 Strikers (2020)

The perfect sequel, the story was a bit less interesting overall, and the gameplay was a bit better overall, but in the end it felt on the same level as "Persona 5" I love the new characters I love that Haru got more screen time I love that it mixes the base persona's RPG mechanics with Musou gameplay, so newcomers like me can get settled in more easily I loved the Musou gameplay, by the way, (I will definitely play more Warriors games after this)

tl;dr: I loved it

I have mixed feelings about this game. The story starts off pretty lukewarm and uninteresting, but once the game delves deeper into Zenkinichi’s backstory, it takes off and doesn’t stop, with some touching scenes. So I’d say the story is good, and it’s worth playing for that. However, the gameplay is where the game loses me. I’ve played Warriors games before and enjoyed them, but this one is way more chaotic than any of those. There are so many effects, attacks, and information filling your screen that I can barely tell what's happening most of the time, making it hard to react to enemy attacks. So my experience with the combat was mid, I’d have preferred the original turn-based battles.

Exploring the new "Palaces" isn’t as fun as it was in the original P5 either, and I also didn’t like some of the changes they made to the fusion system, as getting the stronger Personas I wanted in the endgame felt harder and more grindy.

I’d say it’s a good game, and I’d recommend it to anyone who misses the Phantom Thieves, but it doesn’t quite reach the level of being an amazing game like the original.

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.

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.

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.

After I finished my 42 hours run in Persona 5 strikers, I found it to be a strong sequel to an otherwise one of the best modern JRPGs but it unfortunately had some flaws that prevented it from reaching the same heights as the main game. However, hopefully these flaws should be easy to be solved if Atlus wanted to try this action experience again in any future spinoff, and I hope they do.

Story is quite decent, but for anyone who played Persona 4 or 5, it'll be predictable. I guessed the main villain and where the story is going into from the get go. Reason for that is because it's exactly the same Persona formula in story writing, nothing new. However, unlike 4 and 5, I found the last 3rd in Strikers to be surprisingly weak and rushed. Last 4 or 5 hours of the game felt really, really rushed in terms of story progression and character development which seemed to happen over the night, and the last couple of dungeons were way too short. The final boss was very underwhelming, even though it had a cool mechanic in terms of gameplay, but I found it underwhelmingly easy. Won't be able to talk more to avoid spoilers but in my opinion, the game falls flat during its last 4 hours, in comparison to the well paced journey before it.

As for the new characters, Sophia is quite decent addition to the crew but Zenkichi is really the one who shines here, and without spoiling anything, his character arc is the best and most well written one in the game.

Gameplay wise, the game borrows a lot from Musou games, in terms of the crazy number of enemies on the screen and being able to defeat most of them in 1 or 2 hits, but at the same time, it's still Persona in its core. Managing your SP in tough fights and boss battles is crucial to win, and utilizing the elemental weakness system and your Persona moves, buffs and debuffs is essential to make your life easier. It tries to mix the real time action with Persona turn based combat in similar Musou games encounters and I think it succeeds for most part. While I can't say the combat is the deepest or most strategic down there, it's very fun and addictive, and will leave you wanting to keep fighting enemies and try the mechanics more and more.

Dungeons were quite decent, but jails are a step down from palaces due to lack of interesting puzzles or mechanics for each one. First 3 jails play exactly the same, to the point that I was afraid the game will get repetitive later on, but the next dungeons managed to shake the formula quite a bit for the game to stay fresh enough in a good way. However, some interesting puzzles or themes to each dungeon would have helped them be more unique like the palaces from the main game, and as I said earlier, the last couple of dungeons were underwhelming for a finale.

The game has several side requests to be done, but I found them to be very lazy in design, which is always, always a big problem in most JRPGS I have played. They all range from defeating certain number of certain type of enemies, collect certain number of items or defeating old bosses again. A little bit more creativity would have helped. Their rewards are good, but doing them was tedious considering that you also can't confirm completing them till you leave the jail, so I had to jump into a jail, go and grind these items or mindlessly defeat this enemy for some time, jump out of the jail to complete the requests, then return again to another jail for another request and so on, felt really tedious at several points.

Graphically it's just more Persona 5, looks exactly the same, which is quite good, because the main game was great. The game uses the character portraits from the original P5 instead of Royal (since it was developed nearly at the same time as Royal), which is a little bit of a shame because Royal was a significant upgrade in this regard, but it's not a big deal. Voice acting is top notch as usual, and it's really fun to see these characters talk and interact with each other again. Though, I thought the audio went somewhat down in volume in some scenes before going back up again on its own. The remixing could have used some polishing I assume. Music and soundtracks are also more Persona, which is always great, stylish and epic.

Overall, this was a very fun and entertaining journey with characters that anyone who played and loved 5 will just want to see more of them and their dynamics and chemistry together as a group. The combat was quite good even if it wasn't the deepest thing around, the dungeons were quite decent but unfortunately not that unique or memorable like the palaces, and the story while being mostly entertaining enough, had a very rushed and weak last act, but these flaws don't prevent it from being an overall very good game worth getting for any Persona 5 fans, and I hope Atlus learn from its flaws and improve on it even more in any upcoming installment.

Story : 7/10.

Gameplay : 7.5/10.

Graphics : 8/10.

Voice acting : 8/10.

Overall : 8/10.

P5S is coming out tomorrow to the world (except for deluxe edition preorderers). I'm far into ths game. Out of the 7 jails, I just beat the 5th jail. I'll be giving some tips before release.

Tip #1: Look at the enemies' down gauge (the yellow shield looking icon) - Using only one skill doesn't always instantly down enemies like in the mainline nuPersona games. You have to deplete their entire down gauge which is done by exploiting weaknesses. Once that gauge is gone you can do this game's version of all-out attacks where you deal a good amount of damage to an area of enemies.

Tip #2: Use technical moves - Technical moves in the original games just dealt more damage if you used the right element against an opponent with a certain ailment. For example, using wind or nuclear attacks against a burnt enemy are technical moves, using physical or gun attacks against frozen enemies counts as technical move. But in this game, like exploiting weakness, they deal more damage AND deplete their down gauge.

Tip #3: If you run out of SP, do some combos - This game, especially on Hard difficulty which is what I am playing it on, loves to eat up your SP that I struggled with the first jail. Ever since I learned these combo moves, I've been worrying less about my SP and am more focused on when is the right timing to perform it. There are elemental combos to perform WITHOUT using SP. For instance, Joker's combo is (□-□-□-triangle/normal attack 3x - special attack 1x). Haru's elemental combo is (□ x 2 + triangle) which casts psychic damage. Doing so will cast the elemental move without SP consumption so that if have you run out of SP, you can still exploit weaknesses. You just have to be more careful with your attacks. This tip in particular really made this game easier for me to play through.

Tip #4: Go to the supermarket - Or just go to every store. Buy every item in the supermarket to cook food. Buy every single ingredient. Later in the game, Sophie will be selling ingredients in the healing items section so don't miss out.

Tip #5: Cook every recipe/ talk to every friend - Not only do you get useful healing items, but cooking recipes for the first time can increase your bond level which is useful for unlocking/leveling up Bond skills like increasing money gained, regaining health after a successful ambush, or increasing junk items gained. Talking to friends can also give you healing items or accessories. Not every time, but be sure to do so just in case.

Tip #6: If you're too far away to ambush an enemy, shoot them - The way ambushing works is very clunky. If you're not hiding, the window to ambush between you and the enemy is very small so if they're far, do this instead. Shoot them. You regain your ammo at the end of the battle and shooting them won't raise the alarm meter. It's better than running up to them, being spotted, and having you and your party members downed.

Tip #7: If you think that a party member is related to the Monarch, aka this game's version of Palace rulers, then play as them - I'll use the first jail as an example so mild spoiler warning. In the first jail, Ann is the character who connects with the Monarch, Alice Hiiragi, the most. So play as her since a lot of the enemies, including the boss, will be weak to fire. So far, it may be speculation, but I think that the pattern seems to follow up until the 5th Jail, which is where I am at right now.

Tip# 8: Have fun - Yeah, this one is straight forward. Just have fun.

9 hours in. I beat the first Jail.

Let me be personal and go off topic for a moment. Almost 11 years ago, I moved into the house that I currently live in. Moving was a hard pill to swallow for me. I didn't choose to move. I didn't want to leave the friends, but it was something I had to face at a young age of 8. 7 years later, I became closer to someone more than any other friend and she also fell to the same fate. Sucks since our platonic relationship only lasted 2 years when apart, but that's another can of worms to open when I feel like it.

It's no mystery that Persona 5 is my favorite game of all time. I just happened to play it at that perfect time where I was about the same age as the PT. I haven't played it since my third playthrough ending on October 2019. It felt like I was moving away from my friends again. Although it may sound weird and probably unhealthy, I've missed this game like the companions that I have lost due to parting ways. What I wanted to come across with these 2 paragraphs is that moving can fucking suck sometimes.

When talking about Strikers, I wasn't expecting to get those same emotions as I did with P5. I thought it would be a really good side plate that is just more ambitious than the other spin-offs. I mean we don't have Katsura Hashino to direct the series after 5, for as problematic some scenes were with his work, but it'll be good. But seeing the Phantom Thieves, hearing them make call backs to the original game like the very start of the game, changing hearts like we used to do, overreacting to absurd shit, made me feel stuff. I haven't seen my old friends in person ever since I/they have moved, but playing Persona 5 Strikers made me feel what it is like to see some old friends again after a long while. Although I can see the game's flaws, I haven't felt such strong, personal emotions towards a game since Persona 5 and I can't think enough of how surprised I am for lightning to strike twice. Playing Persona 5 Strikers gave me that same feeling of playing Persona 5 for the first time.

Already another reason for me to get the Switch already. The worlds look more massive than the palaces. They have more verticality. The game is in 60FPS and it looks smooth as hell. There is going to be free roaming. There is going to be more interactions with the main cast similar to the mainline games. The gameplay looks more action RPG than a musuo game. This is basically Persona 5: 2 but with different combat and maybe a toned down story. I hope there is more fanservice as per usual with Persona spin-offs aside from the Dancing games but right now, I don't know if I should call this a sequel or a spinoff.