Persona 5 Strikers – Review

The Persona series isn’t a stranger to strange out-of-genre spin-offs, after all this is the series that brought us a solid fighting game with Persona 4 Arena, and ridiculously fun rhythm dancing game Persona Dancing All Night/Dancing in Moonlight/Dancing in Starlight. Persona 5 Strikers may just be their most ambitious crossover yet, by giving the property to Omega Force – who specialize in the 1 vs 1000 action brawler in games like Dynasty Warriors and its countless spin-offs, trading the Phantom Thieves sneaking to an interesting mix of RPG and Brawling.

Persona 5 Strikers (or P5S for short) is considered a direct sequel to the original Persona 5, unfortunately, this means you’ll have to ignore the additional storylines and characters from the upgraded Persona 5 Royal. Taking place during Summer Vacation when Joker drops by to visit his friends and fellow Phantom Thieves, it doesn’t take long before the group is thrown into another ‘change of heart’ mystery which Joker is blamed for and a new Metaverse world opens up to them.

This time, instead of Palaces ruled by evil heartless people causing problems, the Phantoms’ are introduced to a much more dangerous Jail – in which people’s desires are stolen in dedication to the prison’s Monarch who is using it to twist their point of view into loving them or follow every word they say.

Joker and the rest of the gang go on a cross-country trip through multiple locations in Japan to find these Jails and put a stop to those using the Metaverse as a means to control people. They’re assisted by two new members, Sophia, a sophisticated AI who wants to learn about people’s hearts in order to become Humanity’s Companion, and Zenkichi, a public security officer who is investigating the new change of heart incidents.

On top of the vast change of gameplay from traditional turn-based RPG to Omega Force’s action brawler style, there is a change in how the series is presented. Levels are much larger, sometimes sprawling entire city areas, and players don’t need to worry about completing studying, building relationships with your confidants, or how much time to complete a Jail as the calendar only changes when the story suits it.

Playing any of Omega Force’s 1 vs 1000 series (Dynasty Warriors, Hyrule Warriors) will give you a good idea of what to expect here. However, the Persona twist in this is more than just throwing the well-known characters into large scale battles, it’s more that the game still plays like an RPG – with players able to stop time to summon their Persona and aim their special attacks, boost skills or heal their team members. It’s a system that works extremely well and almost becomes second nature after a few rounds of enemy encounters and especially once you start picking up more Persona’s to use.

But not everything that Persona 5 does translates well to this, as the game’s stealth, ambush, and All-Out Attacks feel broken. Like in the original, you’ll be able to sneak up and ambush Shadows for a better chance to take them down, which early on when shadows only have a single wave of enemies, can usually be beaten by using the All-Out Attack option which combines the 4 party members powers and attacks in a large area – clearing the wave almost immediately. As you progress, these types of attacks tend to be weakened thanks to stronger enemies but it’s not unusual to clear huge waves of shadows in under a few minutes.

It’s surprising how despite the repetitive gameplay, Persona 5 Strikers doesn’t fall into what I like to call “Warriors fatigue,” a condition exclusively to the Warriors style games where players possibly do one to two missions and turn the game off for a month. I thank the game’s jails, while being rather large levels, hold unique challenges and paths that allow for backtracking and plenty of secrets.

One of Persona 5’s strongest qualities is its characters and Strikers keeps that up. Most Jails tend to have a member of the Phantom Thieves as a focus, which helps drive the story and evolve the characters a little more, this is especially true with the levels focusing on Haru and Yusuke (Noir and Fox) and the Monarchs they face.

Persona 5 Strikers is definitely a game for the fans and it’s hard to recommend it to people who haven’t played the original RPG, relying heavily on the stories, concepts, and characters, while delivering a story that’s worthy of being a sequel. It may not be as smooth of a ride, but it’s a fun action brawler that’s still hard to put down.