Persona 5, Persona 5 Royal, Persona 5 Dancing in Starlight, and now Persona 5 Strikers. The Persona 5 legacy lives on in this new, action-oriented chapter in the story of Joker & Friends as they seek to save the innocent people of Shibuya, once again.
I have not yet finished Persona 5 Strikers, so this is more of a quick look than a full review.
Since near the start of the franchise, the Shin Megami Tensei spinoff game series, Persona, has mostly followed the familiar JRPG template — a group faces enemies in a turn-based, tactical battle. The early Final Fantasy games are prime examples, but as time went on, the FF games became more action oriented, starting with Final Fantasy 12, which added the Gambit system, and continuing on to the frenetic, button-mashing gameplay of Final Fantasy 15.
The Persona series has stayed true to its tactical battle roots — until now. Persona 5 Strikers completely rewrites the battle system while still incorporating many of the features that made Persona 5 so — interesting.
Protagonist Ren Amamiya, AKA Joker, has returned from his distant home to spend summer vacation with the rest of the Phantom Thieves. This being “the present”, everyone has drifted apart, even though they could be in instant contact via their phones. Joker’s return brings the band back together, and just in time — a new threat is making the people of Shibuya crazy about a new fashion idol, Alice Hiiragi. Everyone is suspiciously crazy about her.
This leads the crew into a new alternate reality and a series of new adventures and a few new friends, including an AI Phantom Thief named Sophia, a counterpart to the Alexa-like AI that has become coincidentally popular wherever suspiciously supernatural things are happening.
Combat
Where, in the past, the crew would face no more than a handful of creatures at one time, in PS5S, the crew routinely faces dozens or hundreds of creatures at once — minions who do little more than annoy, mixed with stronger demons that can easily kill. You can use combinations of physical attacks, ranged attacks and Persona attacks to debuff, control and kill them, only for more to pop in. Each special attack uses Stamina, which does not regenerate on its own — only by using a consumable or ducking back to the real world at a save point will this regenerate.
Every fight has symbols hovering around letting you know when you can take an extra attack, or where passing the baton to another character would be a good idea, or when everyone can come together to really wallop the horde. There’s a lot of stuff happening on the screen at the same time, and sometimes there are different things happening at once — as when Futaba shows up to hack a conveniently placed terminal and needs defending during the process.
The combat is actually kind of similar to that Breath of the Wild spinoff, Hyrule Warriors.
No more school! No more jobs! No more social stuff! Well, not much of it.
Persona 5 Strikers continues its streamlining by removing a lot of the RPG stuff. There is no school — it’s summer, after all — and there’s no jobs. There are bonds to improve among the crew, but it’s far less of the game than it was before.
Even the stores have been largely subsumed into Sophia’s functions — she has the transportation system in such a lock that items ordered through her are delivered instantly. And she can get anything. ANYTHING. For a price.
Time no longer passes until you pass certain plot points. You can duck out of the metaverse as much as you like for heals and resupplies without a night going by.
Stealth! Sometimes!
The part where the Thieves would enter someone’s Palace and dart through it in stealth still remains, but it’s been expanded. Darting into cover still works, and it’s always best to start an encounter by ambushing a shadow and ripping its face off (cue hundreds of minions spawning, who start off with a disadvantage if you succeeded in the sneak attack). There’s also a lot more places to zip off to — tops of trucks, zip lines, beds suspended from balloons for some reasons — enough teleporting around to make Prince Noctis envious. This can be used during battle to get out of a tough spot and have a moment to perhaps use items or wait out a cooldown. The other party members will continue to fight.
They usually fight better than I do, actually.
Graphics, Music and Voice Acting
The graphics are as good as the original game. The music is amazing. The English voice cast has returned and are incredible. I’m a bit of a snob and usually prefer the Japanese voice acting in games, but the English cast is just too good.
Campaign
I am nearly done the first arc, with Alice. This is just a small fraction of the entire game. There’s already hints of the larger story involving the police, who haven’t let Joker’s return to Shibuya go unnoticed.
The Velvet Room
Igor, being strangely absent from the Velvet Room, has left the reconstituted Lavenza in charge. Unfortunately, Igor absconded with all the records of your time in Persona 5, and so you have to start with the catching and merging of Personas from the start. It’s still much the same. Certain fights will let you summon a new Persona, and you can combine them to form more powerful Personas. You can also save Personas so that they can be summoned again, just as you left them, for cash.
How do I feel about the game at the moment?
I really love the characters and the story and would like to spend more time with them all. Unfortunately, the combat is just too twitchy. I really liked the tactical flow of the main Persona games. This button mashing — I said earlier that this reminded me of the Hyrule Warriors game. After playing the demo to that game, I opted not to buy it, for the same reason I’m not really loving Strikers at the moment — it’s just too fast.
But I’ll see how I like it when I get a little deeper in.
