This review contains spoilers
When the Phantom Theives are celebrating at Universalland, Makoto brings up their previous trip to Destinyland like it's a fond memory. You know, that time Haru watched her father fucking die on live television
update two years later: i ripped into this game for no reason it was a lot of fun and the vibes were immaculate and i still find myself humming the soundtrack to this day
Persona 5 Strikers feels like a dumbed-down retrace of Persona 5 Royal in the body of a musou game. The story here is very formulaic, which may already ring bells for P5 players. The Phantom Thieves go on a road trip changing hearts of shitty adults that control the desires of the masses using an artificial intelligence called EMMA. It sounds different enough, but the premise is essentially the same as the original game. The slight bit of nuance added is that the villains are eventually portrayed as good people who went through traumatic events that made them the evil mind-controlling monarchs we see. Each of the first three villains sees one of the Phantom Thieves resonate with them and lift them back on their feet after they have been defeated, and the desires of the public have been freed. Except for the first one, the villains do not get enough screen time as they should (ringing any bells?). My 22-hour playthrough would have greatly benefited from an extra five hours to flesh out the earlier story arcs. The final third of the game retreads the same themes as the new P5R story, almost to a comical extent. Atlus were heavily involved in the development of this game, so it was impossible for them to be unaware of the similarities. There must have been no communication between the Royal and Strikers teams. The theme of utopianism is what is shared here, and the villains end up feeling too similar. The Phantom Thieves even repeat their same “we should be able to pave our own path” and “suffering can be good too” shtick. I came out of this game feeling like I had just played P5R but it’s a road trip this time.
Despite my gripes about the story, there is still stuff to like here. The previously mentioned road trip across seven Japanese cities is blissful. Each location is small and restricted, but they have their own aesthetics, music and, atmosphere that captures the feeling of a road trip excellently. The new characters are decent, Sophie is an artificial intelligence amnesiac who lives in the protagonist’s phone and becomes a vital member of the Phantom Thieves. Much of her story about learning about humanity is shallow, but enjoyable nonetheless, and her conclusion in the closing acts of the game is rewardingly satisfying. Zenkichi is the other new character, a Public Security officer who strikes a deal with the Phantom Thieves. His chemistry with the group is charming, but his own story arc suffers from show, don’t tell. His story does have a conclusion, but since most of it was behind the scenes, there is no real feeling of gratification to come from it. The music here is outstanding, showcasing what Atlus’ composers can do without Shoji Meguro. The presentation is stellar too, emulating the original P5 experience with flair and style, but maintaining its own personality.
P5S swaps out the traditional turn-based combat from the main series for a musou-style combat system. Although the combat itself will be familiar for Warriors players, the tower defence and management systems are absent. This is a plus for me, as that part of the few Warriors games I’ve played never grabbed me. Instead of that, the combat takes place in “Jails” which are metaverse versions of the various cities you visit, each themed after the villain ruling it. There are eight of these in total, but half of them are much shorter than the other half. The smaller ones lack the scale and formula of the larger ones, making them feel half-baked. The combat itself is enjoyable and surprisingly challenging at times. You'll find it hard to mash your way through, as the strengths and weaknesses from the main series are applied here too meaning you'll be forced to think about how to tackle every encounter. You make use of your Persona's abilities intuitively during battle, so the flow of combat is never broken. All-out attacks and 1 more are present too, as well as a new showtime move that charges up as you use a character. Phantom Dashes are new contextual moves that make use of the environment, like dropping a chandelier or swinging around a lamppost, and they make for a cute addition to your options. Each character feels varied with their own gimmick and playstyle, making all of them viable options and you're able to switch between four of them on the fly with the protagonist being a mainstay in the party. All of this is used in conjunction to make the combat exciting as you string combos together using all the mechanics.
Overall, Persona 5 Strikers is a decent spin-off that takes too much from its original game. There is still a lot to enjoy here, and big P5 fans will undoubtedly love it, so give it a shot if you were on the fence. The music and presentation are fantastic, and the new characters are likeable, but the repeat of the same story I've grown to dislike is frustrating and lazy.
Persona 5 Strikers feels like a dumbed-down retrace of Persona 5 Royal in the body of a musou game. The story here is very formulaic, which may already ring bells for P5 players. The Phantom Thieves go on a road trip changing hearts of shitty adults that control the desires of the masses using an artificial intelligence called EMMA. It sounds different enough, but the premise is essentially the same as the original game. The slight bit of nuance added is that the villains are eventually portrayed as good people who went through traumatic events that made them the evil mind-controlling monarchs we see. Each of the first three villains sees one of the Phantom Thieves resonate with them and lift them back on their feet after they have been defeated, and the desires of the public have been freed. Except for the first one, the villains do not get enough screen time as they should (ringing any bells?). My 22-hour playthrough would have greatly benefited from an extra five hours to flesh out the earlier story arcs. The final third of the game retreads the same themes as the new P5R story, almost to a comical extent. Atlus were heavily involved in the development of this game, so it was impossible for them to be unaware of the similarities. There must have been no communication between the Royal and Strikers teams. The theme of utopianism is what is shared here, and the villains end up feeling too similar. The Phantom Thieves even repeat their same “we should be able to pave our own path” and “suffering can be good too” shtick. I came out of this game feeling like I had just played P5R but it’s a road trip this time.
Despite my gripes about the story, there is still stuff to like here. The previously mentioned road trip across seven Japanese cities is blissful. Each location is small and restricted, but they have their own aesthetics, music and, atmosphere that captures the feeling of a road trip excellently. The new characters are decent, Sophie is an artificial intelligence amnesiac who lives in the protagonist’s phone and becomes a vital member of the Phantom Thieves. Much of her story about learning about humanity is shallow, but enjoyable nonetheless, and her conclusion in the closing acts of the game is rewardingly satisfying. Zenkichi is the other new character, a Public Security officer who strikes a deal with the Phantom Thieves. His chemistry with the group is charming, but his own story arc suffers from show, don’t tell. His story does have a conclusion, but since most of it was behind the scenes, there is no real feeling of gratification to come from it. The music here is outstanding, showcasing what Atlus’ composers can do without Shoji Meguro. The presentation is stellar too, emulating the original P5 experience with flair and style, but maintaining its own personality.
P5S swaps out the traditional turn-based combat from the main series for a musou-style combat system. Although the combat itself will be familiar for Warriors players, the tower defence and management systems are absent. This is a plus for me, as that part of the few Warriors games I’ve played never grabbed me. Instead of that, the combat takes place in “Jails” which are metaverse versions of the various cities you visit, each themed after the villain ruling it. There are eight of these in total, but half of them are much shorter than the other half. The smaller ones lack the scale and formula of the larger ones, making them feel half-baked. The combat itself is enjoyable and surprisingly challenging at times. You'll find it hard to mash your way through, as the strengths and weaknesses from the main series are applied here too meaning you'll be forced to think about how to tackle every encounter. You make use of your Persona's abilities intuitively during battle, so the flow of combat is never broken. All-out attacks and 1 more are present too, as well as a new showtime move that charges up as you use a character. Phantom Dashes are new contextual moves that make use of the environment, like dropping a chandelier or swinging around a lamppost, and they make for a cute addition to your options. Each character feels varied with their own gimmick and playstyle, making all of them viable options and you're able to switch between four of them on the fly with the protagonist being a mainstay in the party. All of this is used in conjunction to make the combat exciting as you string combos together using all the mechanics.
Overall, Persona 5 Strikers is a decent spin-off that takes too much from its original game. There is still a lot to enjoy here, and big P5 fans will undoubtedly love it, so give it a shot if you were on the fence. The music and presentation are fantastic, and the new characters are likeable, but the repeat of the same story I've grown to dislike is frustrating and lazy.
I kneel...Zenkchi Hasegawa
begging persona writers to stop using sexual harassment as shorthand for evil, especially with characters who are survivors of abuse. it's one thing to attempt to have a genuine conversation about it like with the original game's kamoshida arc even if you mess some stuff up but it's another entirely to just have random minibosses do it just because the writers want you to hate an enemy you won't ever again care about 15 seconds later.
that aside, this is mostly a rehash of p5's story but slightly more competent, even if shallower. the conceit of the road trip through japan is fun! and having established the character dynamics (in a laborious separate 100 hour game) the interstitial scenes have some great moments. i laughed out loud sometimes. the new characters, Sophia and Zenkichi, are great especially the latter. it's fun to see a real adult person fuck with some self-righteous kids and it's equally as fun to see the reverse. Sophia is cute, not much more yet (I stopped in the middle of the third jail because my copy of Armored Core 4 arrived) but i expected to despise her and i don't. put simply - when this game attempts to have themes i stop listening but when it's just a bunch of kids and an idiot cop messing around it's enjoyable. as for how it plays...it plays bad. it's a musou game trying to be an action RPG, in return it has none of the mindless zen state playing a real musou game gets you nor the depth and feel of an actually good action rpg like kingdom hearts or even hell, nights of azure. mainly shelving because im leeching off my brother's ps+, moving back to uni in a week so can't finish it in time, definitely vaguely interested enough to finish it though not sure if my rating will go up
that aside, this is mostly a rehash of p5's story but slightly more competent, even if shallower. the conceit of the road trip through japan is fun! and having established the character dynamics (in a laborious separate 100 hour game) the interstitial scenes have some great moments. i laughed out loud sometimes. the new characters, Sophia and Zenkichi, are great especially the latter. it's fun to see a real adult person fuck with some self-righteous kids and it's equally as fun to see the reverse. Sophia is cute, not much more yet (I stopped in the middle of the third jail because my copy of Armored Core 4 arrived) but i expected to despise her and i don't. put simply - when this game attempts to have themes i stop listening but when it's just a bunch of kids and an idiot cop messing around it's enjoyable. as for how it plays...it plays bad. it's a musou game trying to be an action RPG, in return it has none of the mindless zen state playing a real musou game gets you nor the depth and feel of an actually good action rpg like kingdom hearts or even hell, nights of azure. mainly shelving because im leeching off my brother's ps+, moving back to uni in a week so can't finish it in time, definitely vaguely interested enough to finish it though not sure if my rating will go up
I really hate musou games, to such a degree that even some IPs that I'm otherwise attached at the hip to (Gundam and Berserk in particular) are still not enough to get me to invest in countless hours of mind-numbingly dull button mashing. Despite my disdain for the genre I wound up picking up Persona 5 Strikers, but only after a tremendous amount of hounding from my friend Larry Davis, a sale that was too good to pass up, and frankly having nothing better to do. It was either this or drill a hole in my head and watch my brains dribble onto the pavement. While the latter has been a cherished Summer tradition, I think (much to my surprise) Persona 5 Strikers has finally supplanted it as the ultimate Summer treat.
It helps that P5S is a MINO (Musou In Name Only), and better described as an action RPG. While enemies attack in large hordes, so much of Persona's battle mechanics are carried over that simply swinging into a mass of bad guys is counter productive. You have to weigh elemental affinities, trigger All-Out-Attacks, and hot swap between characters and Personae rapidly in order to maintain the flow of combat. There's so much to juggle that it may seem a little daunting at first, but when you start to see how the various combat systems work in conjunction with one another and find a good rhythm, it feels incredibly satisfying.
New Persona are gained as random drops during battle, but the Velvet Room also makes a return. While it may be lacking in some of the more complex fusion methods found in Persona 5, I still found fusion to be robust, certainly more than I was expecting going into the game blind. Sacrificing Persona or acquiring duplicates after battle will provide the player with "Persona Points," which can be used to buff other Persona as a method of quickly leveling them up. Some fusions require a Persona to be leveled up past a certain point, so PP quickly becomes another currency that must be used judiciously, at least until the late game where your on hand yen becomes so plentiful that constantly cycling a Persona out of the compendium and sacrificing them for PP makes the whole system little more than an inconvenience.
One of P5S' greatest strengths is in its interplay between the main cast of characters. It's only natural given the series strong focus on interpersonal bonds, which are so deeply woven into the structure of these games that they're every bit as important mechanically as they are narratively. However, both social links and the calendar system (hallmarks of the series since Persona 3) are both absent from Strikers. As such, the gameloop is radically different from what fans of the series have come to expect. In order to dissect that, I'll need to briefly dive into the story of Persona 5 Strikers, though I'll avoid any spoilers.
Joker (the player character) returns to Tokyo after a long absence and reconnects with the rest of the Phantom Thieves, who quickly make plans to spend their Summer break together. However, the group quickly notices that a new smart phone app, Emma, may be involved in cognitive changes similar to those seen in the first game. The Phantom Thieves get sucked into a conspiracy to control the minds of those who download the app, and in order to maintain their innocence have to work alongside Zenkichi, a police inspector whose seems to be manipulating them to his own ends, and Sophie, a mysterious amnesiac AI Joker discovers in the games first jail (Strikers' stand-in for Persona 5's palaces.) Unlike the first game, this cognitive phenomenon isn't localized to just Tokyo, but rather all of Japan, and so the Phantom Thieves have to pack up and go on a Summer road trip, moving from city to city and dungeon to dungeon.
That's... that's the gist of it, man. Obviously the plot goes places, but Persona 5 Strikers best narrative moments come from the more personal moments between the big overarching beats about corrupt corporations and demigods. The game keeps your group moving from location to location, keeping the overworld map just as fresh as the dungeons you explore, and giving the player a little taste of the local culture along the way. You enter into a loop with each location that begins with the characters settling in, only to bump into their next target. This then opens you up to the investigation phase, where you must run around and talk to NPCs while filling up a meter that proves your target's guilt. This is actually a pretty neat way to let the player acclimate to each new map, while getting some shopping done and hearing your party member's thoughts about whatever location you're visiting.
Once you have everything you need, you're then able to jump into that location's jail and knock out the dungeon. As I mentioned earlier, the calendar system is gone, so you're no longer under a time limit to finish a dungeon, and you aren't under the stress of managing a million other tasks inbetween. If you want to go hang out with a party member, or revisit an old dungeon to challenge a super boss, or just do a little grocery shopping and cook a meal for your team, you can do so whenever you wish and without penalty. This goes a long way towards tying the game into that Summer vibe. You're away from home, ostensibly on vacation, you have nowhere you really need to be, so you can take things at your own pace.
Persona 5 Strikers is also a proper sequel, and builds off the themes of the first game. While it ultimately ends up in a very samey place as the original, I was surprised how engrossed I got in the overall plot, and I really ended up liking newcomers Zenkichi and Sophie. Zenkichi in particular, who is the sole adult of the group and has adult-ass problems, which is refreshing to see in a series that has only really viewed its world through an adult lens once. They also gel well with the rest of the group on a mechanical level, and while I feel every character brings something unique to combat, I really found myself leaning on these two hard as I neared the end game.
Of course, even the best Summer vacation is marred by one hideous raincloud, one melted flip flop, one little patch of skin you didn't get enough sunscreen on and now you have to go in to see your dermatologist because there's something concerning growing there. In the case of Strikers, it's the first dungeon. You don't have a reliable means to craft SP recovery items (you cannot cook until the second dungeon) which makes the boss a total slog, one I had to retry probably more than any other boss in the game, optional super bosses included. It also takes a while to get going, which is true of any Persona game, and some cutscenes can stretch on for quite a while. Just be thankful that modern consoles let you throw the system into rest mode and resume mid-scene.
For me, Persona 5 Strikers is the quintessential Summer game. The plot firmly places you in the shoes of a group of friends who want to make the most of their Summer together, sends you to brightly lit locals with their own attractions and cuisine, backed by a bright and jazzy soundtrack and gameplay that can easily be taken at your own pace... It's also mechanically rich, with gameplay that has almost a hypnotic rhythm to it, and provides a great twist on the typical Persona formula that I hope is revisited in the future.
It helps that P5S is a MINO (Musou In Name Only), and better described as an action RPG. While enemies attack in large hordes, so much of Persona's battle mechanics are carried over that simply swinging into a mass of bad guys is counter productive. You have to weigh elemental affinities, trigger All-Out-Attacks, and hot swap between characters and Personae rapidly in order to maintain the flow of combat. There's so much to juggle that it may seem a little daunting at first, but when you start to see how the various combat systems work in conjunction with one another and find a good rhythm, it feels incredibly satisfying.
New Persona are gained as random drops during battle, but the Velvet Room also makes a return. While it may be lacking in some of the more complex fusion methods found in Persona 5, I still found fusion to be robust, certainly more than I was expecting going into the game blind. Sacrificing Persona or acquiring duplicates after battle will provide the player with "Persona Points," which can be used to buff other Persona as a method of quickly leveling them up. Some fusions require a Persona to be leveled up past a certain point, so PP quickly becomes another currency that must be used judiciously, at least until the late game where your on hand yen becomes so plentiful that constantly cycling a Persona out of the compendium and sacrificing them for PP makes the whole system little more than an inconvenience.
One of P5S' greatest strengths is in its interplay between the main cast of characters. It's only natural given the series strong focus on interpersonal bonds, which are so deeply woven into the structure of these games that they're every bit as important mechanically as they are narratively. However, both social links and the calendar system (hallmarks of the series since Persona 3) are both absent from Strikers. As such, the gameloop is radically different from what fans of the series have come to expect. In order to dissect that, I'll need to briefly dive into the story of Persona 5 Strikers, though I'll avoid any spoilers.
Joker (the player character) returns to Tokyo after a long absence and reconnects with the rest of the Phantom Thieves, who quickly make plans to spend their Summer break together. However, the group quickly notices that a new smart phone app, Emma, may be involved in cognitive changes similar to those seen in the first game. The Phantom Thieves get sucked into a conspiracy to control the minds of those who download the app, and in order to maintain their innocence have to work alongside Zenkichi, a police inspector whose seems to be manipulating them to his own ends, and Sophie, a mysterious amnesiac AI Joker discovers in the games first jail (Strikers' stand-in for Persona 5's palaces.) Unlike the first game, this cognitive phenomenon isn't localized to just Tokyo, but rather all of Japan, and so the Phantom Thieves have to pack up and go on a Summer road trip, moving from city to city and dungeon to dungeon.
That's... that's the gist of it, man. Obviously the plot goes places, but Persona 5 Strikers best narrative moments come from the more personal moments between the big overarching beats about corrupt corporations and demigods. The game keeps your group moving from location to location, keeping the overworld map just as fresh as the dungeons you explore, and giving the player a little taste of the local culture along the way. You enter into a loop with each location that begins with the characters settling in, only to bump into their next target. This then opens you up to the investigation phase, where you must run around and talk to NPCs while filling up a meter that proves your target's guilt. This is actually a pretty neat way to let the player acclimate to each new map, while getting some shopping done and hearing your party member's thoughts about whatever location you're visiting.
Once you have everything you need, you're then able to jump into that location's jail and knock out the dungeon. As I mentioned earlier, the calendar system is gone, so you're no longer under a time limit to finish a dungeon, and you aren't under the stress of managing a million other tasks inbetween. If you want to go hang out with a party member, or revisit an old dungeon to challenge a super boss, or just do a little grocery shopping and cook a meal for your team, you can do so whenever you wish and without penalty. This goes a long way towards tying the game into that Summer vibe. You're away from home, ostensibly on vacation, you have nowhere you really need to be, so you can take things at your own pace.
Persona 5 Strikers is also a proper sequel, and builds off the themes of the first game. While it ultimately ends up in a very samey place as the original, I was surprised how engrossed I got in the overall plot, and I really ended up liking newcomers Zenkichi and Sophie. Zenkichi in particular, who is the sole adult of the group and has adult-ass problems, which is refreshing to see in a series that has only really viewed its world through an adult lens once. They also gel well with the rest of the group on a mechanical level, and while I feel every character brings something unique to combat, I really found myself leaning on these two hard as I neared the end game.
Of course, even the best Summer vacation is marred by one hideous raincloud, one melted flip flop, one little patch of skin you didn't get enough sunscreen on and now you have to go in to see your dermatologist because there's something concerning growing there. In the case of Strikers, it's the first dungeon. You don't have a reliable means to craft SP recovery items (you cannot cook until the second dungeon) which makes the boss a total slog, one I had to retry probably more than any other boss in the game, optional super bosses included. It also takes a while to get going, which is true of any Persona game, and some cutscenes can stretch on for quite a while. Just be thankful that modern consoles let you throw the system into rest mode and resume mid-scene.
For me, Persona 5 Strikers is the quintessential Summer game. The plot firmly places you in the shoes of a group of friends who want to make the most of their Summer together, sends you to brightly lit locals with their own attractions and cuisine, backed by a bright and jazzy soundtrack and gameplay that can easily be taken at your own pace... It's also mechanically rich, with gameplay that has almost a hypnotic rhythm to it, and provides a great twist on the typical Persona formula that I hope is revisited in the future.
Great game, love the cast and story even if the combat isnt always the most fun
O melhor: Perceber que Strikers é bem mais uma sequência do que um mero spin-off
O pior: Nem todas as mecânicas do Persona 5 original são tão bem traduzidas para esse jogo
Maior desafio: Tentar acompanhar os diálogos durante uma Boss Battle
Persona 5 Strikers não é exatamente o jogo que eu esperava inicialmente, principalmente conhecendo os trabalhos que a Omega Force fez com franquias como Zelda e One Piece, por exemplo. Ao invés de fazer mais um "Warriors" utilizando a estética e personagens de Persona 5, o que foi feito aqui é uma verdadeira sequência do jogo original (desconsiderando os eventos do Royal), muito similar em estrutura, só que com o combate em ação por tempo real.
Strikers se passa alguns meses após o final de Persona 5 (a versão "vanilla" em específico). Joker e companhia se reúnem para aproveitar as férias de verão, quando mudanças de comportamento repentinas espalhadas pelo Japão obrigam esses amigos a atuarem mais uma vez como os Phantom Thieves, investigando os novos mistérios no "Metaverse" e punindo os responsáveis. O fato do jogo se passar em várias cidades do Japão, além de ser sobre esse grupo de amigos que querem aproveitar o mês de férias no tempo livre que encontram, dá um clima de "road trip" que ajuda a amenizar a extrema familiaridade com a premissa do jogo original. E também traz uma boa quantidade de momentos "slice of life", que não eram tão frequentes em Persona 5. Se juntam ao grupo Sophia, uma IA prestativa mas sem conhecimento sobre sua origem, e Zenkichi, um policial que está tentando resolver o caso das mudanças de comportamento, sem ter que incriminar os Phantom Thieves, e que trás uma dinâmica interessante, sendo o primeiro adulto entre o cast principal de um Persona desde que o terceiro jogo trouxe o "molde" que a série segue até hoje.
A história leva um tempo para mostrar a que veio, principalmente pelo fato de que já temos todo um cast inicial já bem estabelecido pelo jogo anterior. Os conflitos iniciais soam um tanto inconsequentes, numa estrutura de "monstro da semana" que não gera muito interesse, não fosse justamente pelo fato de ver esses personagens com os quais já estou familiarizado interagindo mais uns com os outros. O jogo tem uns bons momentos de humor (além de muitas, mas muitas mesmo, conversas sobre comidas) e personagens como Haru e Yusuke conseguem momentos de mais destaque aqui do que a narrativa de Persona 5 permitia. Eventualmente o ritmo da história fica mais agradável e ela em si fica mais interessante e, mesmo com um "plot twist" que dá para enxergar de longe, as temáticas seguem funcionando bem para mim, apontando falhas estruturais na sociedade representada por vilões que despertam raiva, mesmo que numa visão mais "inocente" onde tudo é resolvido por poderes mágicos.
Em termos de gameplay, Persona 5 Strikers é um RPG de ação que tenta adaptar praticamente todas as mecânicas existentes em Persona 5 para um tipo diferente de combate. É um esforço bem admirável, que torna o jogo bem interessante e único ao invés de mais um musou. Os Palaces dão lugar para as Jails, dungeons com cenários mais abertos, mas com progresso bem similar. Iniciar um combate é idêntico ao jogo original, com foco em stealth para ficar em vantagem sobre o inimigo, só que agora todo combate se passa em tempo real, controlando um personagem da sua party, e podendo alternar entre eles em qualquer momento, conforme a necessidade. Da mesma forma que os personagens, várias mecânicas utilizadas aqui já foram estabelecidas em Persona 5, o que torna as horas iniciais numa chuva de informações com tutoriais pulando na tela a cada momento. Invocar Persona, fraquezas elementais, One More, All-Out-Attack, Baton Pass, etc. Todos esses conceitos são apresentados um atrás do outro, o que pode sobrecarregar mesmo quem já os conhece. O bom é que, na dificuldade padrão, é um jogo relativamente fácil, sendo mais nas Boss Battles e em side quests específicas que é realmente necessário explorar todas as mecânicas que ele te disponibiliza.
Uma outra característica de destaque da franquia é a parte social que ocorre fora das dungeons, e isso é bem mais limitado nessa versão. Há uma tentativa de adaptar os Confidants de Persona 5 numa única barra de "Bond", que é preenchida conforme o decorrer da história e em algumas sidequests, e oferece pontos para trocar por skills. O problema é que a oferta dessas skills é bem desinteressante, já que a maioria das opções são aumento de atributos que já podem ser melhorados com itens ou equipamentos específicos. O pior é que esses pontos são bem escassos, exigindo um grind considerável para quem quiser obter todas as skills oferecidas. Em alguns aspectos dá para questionar o por que exatamente certa mecânica de Persona 5 foi adaptada para Strikers, como a exigência de ter que sair de uma Jail para recuperar HP e SP (na ausência de itens). Em Persona 5 isso fazia sentido pelo tempo limitado para as suas ações, mas não é o caso aqui (ainda ocorre mudança de dias, mas só quando a história progride), poderiam simplesmente restaurar seus personagens num checkpoint e evitar umas telas de loading. Isso vale pros combates também: explorar fraquezas, usar buffs e debuffs e mudanças de status trazem um elemento de estratégia que faz bastante sentido num combate por turnos, mas em tempo real pode ser difícil entender o que está acontecendo (a câmera por vezes também não ajuda) sendo que em Boss Battles ainda ocorrem vários diálogos entre os personagens durante a batalha, uma decisão um tanto curiosa.
Apesar dos problemas, eu gostei demais de Persona 5 Strikers. Foi muito bom reencontrar esses personagens, Sophia e (principalmente) Zenkichi são boas adições, as novas músicas cantadas pela Lyn são excelentes e mesmo os tropeços não impedem o gameplay de action-RPG ser muito bom em vários momentos (destaque para os objetos do cenário que podem ser utilizados no combate). Do jeito que a Atlus ama fazer spin off de Persona eu não duvido que essa versão um dia tenha uma sequência própria, e quem sabe não façam o mesmo que fizeram com Persona 4 Arena Ultimax e encaixem tudo (incluindo Royal) numa mesma cronologia.
O pior: Nem todas as mecânicas do Persona 5 original são tão bem traduzidas para esse jogo
Maior desafio: Tentar acompanhar os diálogos durante uma Boss Battle
Persona 5 Strikers não é exatamente o jogo que eu esperava inicialmente, principalmente conhecendo os trabalhos que a Omega Force fez com franquias como Zelda e One Piece, por exemplo. Ao invés de fazer mais um "Warriors" utilizando a estética e personagens de Persona 5, o que foi feito aqui é uma verdadeira sequência do jogo original (desconsiderando os eventos do Royal), muito similar em estrutura, só que com o combate em ação por tempo real.
Strikers se passa alguns meses após o final de Persona 5 (a versão "vanilla" em específico). Joker e companhia se reúnem para aproveitar as férias de verão, quando mudanças de comportamento repentinas espalhadas pelo Japão obrigam esses amigos a atuarem mais uma vez como os Phantom Thieves, investigando os novos mistérios no "Metaverse" e punindo os responsáveis. O fato do jogo se passar em várias cidades do Japão, além de ser sobre esse grupo de amigos que querem aproveitar o mês de férias no tempo livre que encontram, dá um clima de "road trip" que ajuda a amenizar a extrema familiaridade com a premissa do jogo original. E também traz uma boa quantidade de momentos "slice of life", que não eram tão frequentes em Persona 5. Se juntam ao grupo Sophia, uma IA prestativa mas sem conhecimento sobre sua origem, e Zenkichi, um policial que está tentando resolver o caso das mudanças de comportamento, sem ter que incriminar os Phantom Thieves, e que trás uma dinâmica interessante, sendo o primeiro adulto entre o cast principal de um Persona desde que o terceiro jogo trouxe o "molde" que a série segue até hoje.
A história leva um tempo para mostrar a que veio, principalmente pelo fato de que já temos todo um cast inicial já bem estabelecido pelo jogo anterior. Os conflitos iniciais soam um tanto inconsequentes, numa estrutura de "monstro da semana" que não gera muito interesse, não fosse justamente pelo fato de ver esses personagens com os quais já estou familiarizado interagindo mais uns com os outros. O jogo tem uns bons momentos de humor (além de muitas, mas muitas mesmo, conversas sobre comidas) e personagens como Haru e Yusuke conseguem momentos de mais destaque aqui do que a narrativa de Persona 5 permitia. Eventualmente o ritmo da história fica mais agradável e ela em si fica mais interessante e, mesmo com um "plot twist" que dá para enxergar de longe, as temáticas seguem funcionando bem para mim, apontando falhas estruturais na sociedade representada por vilões que despertam raiva, mesmo que numa visão mais "inocente" onde tudo é resolvido por poderes mágicos.
Em termos de gameplay, Persona 5 Strikers é um RPG de ação que tenta adaptar praticamente todas as mecânicas existentes em Persona 5 para um tipo diferente de combate. É um esforço bem admirável, que torna o jogo bem interessante e único ao invés de mais um musou. Os Palaces dão lugar para as Jails, dungeons com cenários mais abertos, mas com progresso bem similar. Iniciar um combate é idêntico ao jogo original, com foco em stealth para ficar em vantagem sobre o inimigo, só que agora todo combate se passa em tempo real, controlando um personagem da sua party, e podendo alternar entre eles em qualquer momento, conforme a necessidade. Da mesma forma que os personagens, várias mecânicas utilizadas aqui já foram estabelecidas em Persona 5, o que torna as horas iniciais numa chuva de informações com tutoriais pulando na tela a cada momento. Invocar Persona, fraquezas elementais, One More, All-Out-Attack, Baton Pass, etc. Todos esses conceitos são apresentados um atrás do outro, o que pode sobrecarregar mesmo quem já os conhece. O bom é que, na dificuldade padrão, é um jogo relativamente fácil, sendo mais nas Boss Battles e em side quests específicas que é realmente necessário explorar todas as mecânicas que ele te disponibiliza.
Uma outra característica de destaque da franquia é a parte social que ocorre fora das dungeons, e isso é bem mais limitado nessa versão. Há uma tentativa de adaptar os Confidants de Persona 5 numa única barra de "Bond", que é preenchida conforme o decorrer da história e em algumas sidequests, e oferece pontos para trocar por skills. O problema é que a oferta dessas skills é bem desinteressante, já que a maioria das opções são aumento de atributos que já podem ser melhorados com itens ou equipamentos específicos. O pior é que esses pontos são bem escassos, exigindo um grind considerável para quem quiser obter todas as skills oferecidas. Em alguns aspectos dá para questionar o por que exatamente certa mecânica de Persona 5 foi adaptada para Strikers, como a exigência de ter que sair de uma Jail para recuperar HP e SP (na ausência de itens). Em Persona 5 isso fazia sentido pelo tempo limitado para as suas ações, mas não é o caso aqui (ainda ocorre mudança de dias, mas só quando a história progride), poderiam simplesmente restaurar seus personagens num checkpoint e evitar umas telas de loading. Isso vale pros combates também: explorar fraquezas, usar buffs e debuffs e mudanças de status trazem um elemento de estratégia que faz bastante sentido num combate por turnos, mas em tempo real pode ser difícil entender o que está acontecendo (a câmera por vezes também não ajuda) sendo que em Boss Battles ainda ocorrem vários diálogos entre os personagens durante a batalha, uma decisão um tanto curiosa.
Apesar dos problemas, eu gostei demais de Persona 5 Strikers. Foi muito bom reencontrar esses personagens, Sophia e (principalmente) Zenkichi são boas adições, as novas músicas cantadas pela Lyn são excelentes e mesmo os tropeços não impedem o gameplay de action-RPG ser muito bom em vários momentos (destaque para os objetos do cenário que podem ser utilizados no combate). Do jeito que a Atlus ama fazer spin off de Persona eu não duvido que essa versão um dia tenha uma sequência própria, e quem sabe não façam o mesmo que fizeram com Persona 4 Arena Ultimax e encaixem tudo (incluindo Royal) numa mesma cronologia.
For a "spinoff", this is way better than I expected. I expected a game with fun combat and fun interactions with a story that isn't that interesting. I am happy to report I am wrong, this is a true sequel to Persona 5. Sophie and Zenkichi are amazing characters, some of the best phantom thief writing within the context of P5, especially Sophie because she reminds me of Aigis but more developed. The villains are surprisingly well written too, they are more sympathetic compared to Persona 5, however they are held back by lack of screentime somewhat. Gameplay is hype as shit, best musuo combat I've ever played due to the mix of tactical Persona combat mixed in, it's basically an action RPG. Amazing combat. Jails are pretty fun to explore, they are very linear but feel very big in scale. Some jails feel very small and rushed like Kyoto or the World Tree but in general I like the jails. Music is amazing, it's Persona 5 music, of course it's peak. Content wise it's decently big, almost 60 hours to almost get all the achievements. Side quests are simplistic but fun in nature. Graphics wise it looks great, especially on PC, it runs well too. My only criticisms are sometimes the camera sucks and the ending felt slightly rushed but other than that this game is fantastic. More than a worthy sequel to one of my favourite games ever.
I don't think it's bad per se, but after playing through the first dungeon, I can say that I'm not really into it. Fun interactions with the Phantom Thieves, neat and flashy gameplay that's in line with P5's style, and some cool new characters (mainly the funny guy whose name I forgot). But I just couldn't really be bothered with it. It felt a bit like an updated retread of base 5 and while the gameplay was pretty cool, it's definitely not my cup of tea (I think that kinda goes for Musous in general).
Don't have much against this game, it just doesn't seem for me.
Don't have much against this game, it just doesn't seem for me.
A disgustingly fun continuation of Persona 5 that completely ignores everything Royal introduced. Which thank fuck, haven't played that. P5 was a game that consumed my life for the better part of a month about two years ago, and this game consumed my life for about 4 days. I totally nolifed this bitch and while I'm not proud, I had a lot of fun. The lovely scooby gang of idiots that is the Phantom Thieves is back, though all of their character development already happened in Persona 5, so all of the development is left for the two new characters, Sophia and Zenkichi. They are great additions to the gang, with special mention to Zenkichi. The English dub of P5 was excellent, and this game continues that. Zenkichi's voice actor gives him so much personality it is unreal. The story did feel a bit formulaic and it maybe repeats too many of the beats from P5, but it has a slightly more nuanced approach to the villains and it made the whole "are we truly the good guys" thing the Phantom Thieves like to go on about a bit more interesting. The game happens during the summer and it is a country wide road trip, so there is a lot of variety on locations and a lot of light hearted moments with the protagonists having fun that I honestly really enjoyed. As for the gameplay, the only other Dynasty Warriors-esque game I'd played was Hyrule Warriors, and while I thought that was fun enough, it went on for way too goddamn long and I just kinda dropped it out of sheer boredom. Thankfully, Strikers does not last for several eternities, if anything I was sad it's not as long as Persona 5. The elements of Persona like the weaknesses and the titular personas are very well implemented, it adds a very needed complexity to a kind of game that is usually played with your brain turned off, and it kept me engaged most of the time. Biggest issue is that even in normal difficulty it is very easy to lose health and die, which fair enough, but going to the item menu and finding something to heal, revive, or cure status effects takes way too long and it is kind of a pace killer because its just a big ass list of all the food and shit you have with no rhyme or reason to the order, I would've liked more filters or sections, to make finding what you want take a bit less time, or that your allies were capable of taking an item and healing themselves. They do use healing spells if they have them at least. Music, as is tradition by this point on the Persona series, it is absolutely brilliant, memorable, and just plain catchy. God bless Lyn and her engrish, it gives P5 a very unique identity. The menu is also very fun to just look at, it is packed with style. This game believes it's cool so fucking hard it kinda ends up actually being cool, and I love it. Overall, had a great time spending 4 days only eating, pissing, shitting and playing Persona all day, wouldn't recommend doing that, but would totally recommend this game if you've played Persona 5, it is a lovely continuation and I am sad it is over.
Continuing the events of Persona 5 on a road trip with your old and embosomed friends and a new cast of allies and villains, Persona 5 Strikers adds up to the whole entire Persona 5 experience.
While being a Musō game, it definitely feels like Persona 5 by adding tons of Persona elements into the combat. Exploit weaknesses, execute all-out-attacks and baton passes, shoot with guns, buff yourself and debuff your enemies, use ailments, enforce technical moves and surprise your enemies from the shadows!
Like Persona 5, Strikers is oozing with style and grants you a variety of new tracks and remixes of old songs letting you jam while beating up shadows in the new palaces, called prisons in this game. Counter Strike might be my favorite soundtrack of this game.
If you loved Persona 5 or Persona 5 Royal, there is no way around this game. I absolutely recommend it, since it is so much more than just a Musō game. The characters get fleshed out more, especially those who came up a bit short in the original game. If you’re not into action games, there’s an easy mode as well, so you won’t have problems to get through this game!
While being a Musō game, it definitely feels like Persona 5 by adding tons of Persona elements into the combat. Exploit weaknesses, execute all-out-attacks and baton passes, shoot with guns, buff yourself and debuff your enemies, use ailments, enforce technical moves and surprise your enemies from the shadows!
Like Persona 5, Strikers is oozing with style and grants you a variety of new tracks and remixes of old songs letting you jam while beating up shadows in the new palaces, called prisons in this game. Counter Strike might be my favorite soundtrack of this game.
If you loved Persona 5 or Persona 5 Royal, there is no way around this game. I absolutely recommend it, since it is so much more than just a Musō game. The characters get fleshed out more, especially those who came up a bit short in the original game. If you’re not into action games, there’s an easy mode as well, so you won’t have problems to get through this game!
It’s just so cool that this exists. Feels like a holiday experience for the phantom thieves but also very much a fleshed-out follow-up to the original’s game events where the two new main characters Sophia and Zenkichi have such beautifully realized emotional arcs.
The levels of intensity this got into narratively really felt so earned and just reminded me of how immersive the Persona games can be once the stakes start to amplify because it truly evokes a deep spirit within each member of the thieves that highlights their growth. This is especially portrayed once the members come to terms with the antagonists' traumas that form the root of their detailed, if slightly unevenly laid out, jails.
I do miss the balance of the social links, however, Strikers still retains so much of the characters’ charm (BEST VA CAST EVER FR) in its breather moments including an amazing sequence that shows a maturation for the phantom thieves as they truly interact with the impressionable impact they have on the youth.
Conceptually there’s a super interesting exploration of artificial intelligence in working with the cognitive world as well as both its befriending and manipulative sides. It did take me a while to used to the hack and slash combat (Nier: Automata becoming a huge favorite probably helped a lot with this) that is prevalent with these warrior games, however, once I did I felt super satisfied with how seamlessly the elements from the Persona games were able to work here (even if it drained my SP a lot lol).
And god the sound team does not miss, love all the Strikers versions of the original songs while Daredevil, Singularity and Counter-Strike are absolutely new all-timer tracks.
The levels of intensity this got into narratively really felt so earned and just reminded me of how immersive the Persona games can be once the stakes start to amplify because it truly evokes a deep spirit within each member of the thieves that highlights their growth. This is especially portrayed once the members come to terms with the antagonists' traumas that form the root of their detailed, if slightly unevenly laid out, jails.
I do miss the balance of the social links, however, Strikers still retains so much of the characters’ charm (BEST VA CAST EVER FR) in its breather moments including an amazing sequence that shows a maturation for the phantom thieves as they truly interact with the impressionable impact they have on the youth.
Conceptually there’s a super interesting exploration of artificial intelligence in working with the cognitive world as well as both its befriending and manipulative sides. It did take me a while to used to the hack and slash combat (Nier: Automata becoming a huge favorite probably helped a lot with this) that is prevalent with these warrior games, however, once I did I felt super satisfied with how seamlessly the elements from the Persona games were able to work here (even if it drained my SP a lot lol).
And god the sound team does not miss, love all the Strikers versions of the original songs while Daredevil, Singularity and Counter-Strike are absolutely new all-timer tracks.
Persona 5 Strikers is the rare kind of game that's able to both feel like a pleasant surprise and a tremendous disappointment rolled up into the one package, and it certainly makes for an interesting experience to think about. There isn't even really an element present here that feels wholly great or wholly terrible either, it's a balancing act where every idea is on the cusp of either entirely falling off the deep end or being something truly inspired that gets the game as a whole to stand out from the original Persona 5. I'd even go as far as saying that if this game were about 10 hours shorter that I'd think it was an outright great little time, but as it stands, the longer things went on, the more the initially small flaws would build up until it created something that I barely could bother finishing.
Transforming Persona 5's core combat from the more traditional turn based combat into a musou was definitely a creative decision that I was initially concerned about since there have been so many instances where a lot of the strategy a game could have ends up getting removed in favour of button mashing, but it's honestly the thing I think Strikers ended up doing the best as I went on. Despite being a musou by definition, with the hack n slash combat paired with waves of usually very weak enemies, I was impressed by just how much of the dynamics of Persona were still present. While the basic hacking and slashing will get you through a lot of the smaller encounters, against anything with even a hint of challenge to it, it immediately feels as if it plays a bit closer to a real time Persona rather than a standard game of the genre, with careful team building and full exploitation of enemy weaknesses both playing a huge role in getting you to the stage where you can take things down. To still provide such a strong incentive to be spending like, 20 minutes at a time in the velvet room to minmax your team and make that time feel worth it is very cool to do when the gameplay style takes such a sharp turn and it leads to some situations that really do feel frenetic, yet rewarding.
This is especially true for the boss fights, which were consistently some of the best parts here, often being on the far more tanky side of things, but always feeling as if they properly took advantage of the genre shift and all made for some engaging and intense fights that would more often than not come down to the wire, the final boss especially mixing things up in clever ways that I won't spoil. Adding those additional flashy moves that could be kited around was also a good move in making the choice to move in this direction feel warranted and meaningful while providing another avenue to provide some additional spectacle to things, keeping up with the theme of everything about Persona 5 being so incredibly flashy. That said, things aren't quite perfect either with the shift in style, with certain ideas getting lost in the process. MP conservation might as well not be a thing considering how much more health everything seems to have in this, you're going to either be staying at full MP or blowing it all in a single bigger fight, and it hinders such a core strategic element that could've been fixed just by giving the party way more or it instead of making it a resource that was even more finite than it was in the original game.
The dungeon design was also really bad for the most part, starting off with a couple that were really fun in one way or another, albeit pretty bland from a layout standpoint, but as things went on, rather than building upon concepts that were established and knowing when to add a little twist to them to elevate the experience to the next level, it just was more of the same, but more of it, and far more formulaic. This reached a peak with the 6th dungeon, which was a genuinely agonising experience because of how much unadulterated tedium was thrown towards the player. This sense of repetition carries over to the narrative as well, as while I love the vibes of the phantom thieves going on a road trip and saving the world in the process, after a certain point it becomes increasingly obvious just how many story beats have just been taken from the original and veeeerrry slightly retooled, just with character writing that feels far heavier on the tropes.
In general there's a certain impersonal feel to how a lot of the narrative is executed, villains that are barely connected with the protagonists in any way beyond vague similarities in their strife, everyone just doing their own thing and happening to cross paths along the way, and basically any other interaction outside of the main cast. While this definitely works in some instances to make the world feel more alive and not something that entirely revolves around the protagonists, it quickly leads to wishing that the game would've at least used this in a more creative way at the very least. These 2nd hand stories of hardship and trauma you hear throughout are obviously still pretty dark and all, but without basically any contextualisation to these beyond the bare minimum, it ends up leaving a very minimal impact in comparison and makes it hard to truly get invested in the antagonists throughout, often feeling explicitly introduced to cause conflict without any other purpose.
The lack of this personal element extends out to the rest of the game too, gone is the sense of proper time progression and planning, instead replaced with the game's date exclusively moving forward when the plot demands it rather than leaving any leniency for one of the best aspects of the original game. Things just have nowhere near as much of a comfy charm when you're not spending a lot of your time just, living life and chatting with characters, and not only are all the side characters from the original not present at all, but the social links or any equivalent are also missing. All of this is replaced with this one bar called the "bond bar" which is just an artificial way of trying to evoke the same feelings without putting in any of the elements that elevated this, and like so many other elements just feels like it was included to keep up the surface level similarities. Funnily enough though, despite all my complaints, a lot of this only started becoming truly detrimental near the end once things began to outstay their welcome, and even amongst this painful end portion, the final boss was still a really great time and there were a few other isolated elements of greatness mixed in, not to mention that the game was almost as stylish as the original, albeit less polished.
I genuinely feel like if you're more used to games on the longer side of things that you'll get more out of this than I did, as I'll admit that I do begin running out of patience after a certain point and it probably makes some of the issues present here feel even worse than they are in reality. Still won't affect my own opinion, but I could definitely see others enjoying this more than me as a result. If you're a big fan of Persona 5 and are fine with a bit of repetitiveness, I could definitely recommend this, it still maintains a very high amount of P5's identity while taking things in a different direction. It's not perfect, but you get to see more Phantom Thieves in action and Haru finally is able to get a reasonable amount of screentime too, and that stuff combined with the surprisingly fun combat ends up making this an alright time even if I personally ended up feeling pretty disappointed and bored towards the end.
Transforming Persona 5's core combat from the more traditional turn based combat into a musou was definitely a creative decision that I was initially concerned about since there have been so many instances where a lot of the strategy a game could have ends up getting removed in favour of button mashing, but it's honestly the thing I think Strikers ended up doing the best as I went on. Despite being a musou by definition, with the hack n slash combat paired with waves of usually very weak enemies, I was impressed by just how much of the dynamics of Persona were still present. While the basic hacking and slashing will get you through a lot of the smaller encounters, against anything with even a hint of challenge to it, it immediately feels as if it plays a bit closer to a real time Persona rather than a standard game of the genre, with careful team building and full exploitation of enemy weaknesses both playing a huge role in getting you to the stage where you can take things down. To still provide such a strong incentive to be spending like, 20 minutes at a time in the velvet room to minmax your team and make that time feel worth it is very cool to do when the gameplay style takes such a sharp turn and it leads to some situations that really do feel frenetic, yet rewarding.
This is especially true for the boss fights, which were consistently some of the best parts here, often being on the far more tanky side of things, but always feeling as if they properly took advantage of the genre shift and all made for some engaging and intense fights that would more often than not come down to the wire, the final boss especially mixing things up in clever ways that I won't spoil. Adding those additional flashy moves that could be kited around was also a good move in making the choice to move in this direction feel warranted and meaningful while providing another avenue to provide some additional spectacle to things, keeping up with the theme of everything about Persona 5 being so incredibly flashy. That said, things aren't quite perfect either with the shift in style, with certain ideas getting lost in the process. MP conservation might as well not be a thing considering how much more health everything seems to have in this, you're going to either be staying at full MP or blowing it all in a single bigger fight, and it hinders such a core strategic element that could've been fixed just by giving the party way more or it instead of making it a resource that was even more finite than it was in the original game.
The dungeon design was also really bad for the most part, starting off with a couple that were really fun in one way or another, albeit pretty bland from a layout standpoint, but as things went on, rather than building upon concepts that were established and knowing when to add a little twist to them to elevate the experience to the next level, it just was more of the same, but more of it, and far more formulaic. This reached a peak with the 6th dungeon, which was a genuinely agonising experience because of how much unadulterated tedium was thrown towards the player. This sense of repetition carries over to the narrative as well, as while I love the vibes of the phantom thieves going on a road trip and saving the world in the process, after a certain point it becomes increasingly obvious just how many story beats have just been taken from the original and veeeerrry slightly retooled, just with character writing that feels far heavier on the tropes.
In general there's a certain impersonal feel to how a lot of the narrative is executed, villains that are barely connected with the protagonists in any way beyond vague similarities in their strife, everyone just doing their own thing and happening to cross paths along the way, and basically any other interaction outside of the main cast. While this definitely works in some instances to make the world feel more alive and not something that entirely revolves around the protagonists, it quickly leads to wishing that the game would've at least used this in a more creative way at the very least. These 2nd hand stories of hardship and trauma you hear throughout are obviously still pretty dark and all, but without basically any contextualisation to these beyond the bare minimum, it ends up leaving a very minimal impact in comparison and makes it hard to truly get invested in the antagonists throughout, often feeling explicitly introduced to cause conflict without any other purpose.
The lack of this personal element extends out to the rest of the game too, gone is the sense of proper time progression and planning, instead replaced with the game's date exclusively moving forward when the plot demands it rather than leaving any leniency for one of the best aspects of the original game. Things just have nowhere near as much of a comfy charm when you're not spending a lot of your time just, living life and chatting with characters, and not only are all the side characters from the original not present at all, but the social links or any equivalent are also missing. All of this is replaced with this one bar called the "bond bar" which is just an artificial way of trying to evoke the same feelings without putting in any of the elements that elevated this, and like so many other elements just feels like it was included to keep up the surface level similarities. Funnily enough though, despite all my complaints, a lot of this only started becoming truly detrimental near the end once things began to outstay their welcome, and even amongst this painful end portion, the final boss was still a really great time and there were a few other isolated elements of greatness mixed in, not to mention that the game was almost as stylish as the original, albeit less polished.
I genuinely feel like if you're more used to games on the longer side of things that you'll get more out of this than I did, as I'll admit that I do begin running out of patience after a certain point and it probably makes some of the issues present here feel even worse than they are in reality. Still won't affect my own opinion, but I could definitely see others enjoying this more than me as a result. If you're a big fan of Persona 5 and are fine with a bit of repetitiveness, I could definitely recommend this, it still maintains a very high amount of P5's identity while taking things in a different direction. It's not perfect, but you get to see more Phantom Thieves in action and Haru finally is able to get a reasonable amount of screentime too, and that stuff combined with the surprisingly fun combat ends up making this an alright time even if I personally ended up feeling pretty disappointed and bored towards the end.
This review contains spoilers
I can only really speak as a Persona 5 fan, and not judge the game as a musou game as I never played any musou games before.
After completing both Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal, these characters, the aesthetics, the music etc are all so ingrained in my head now. Playing this was almost like spending time with old friends. I wasn't a fan of how this game completely ignored the extra content in Royal, however. It makes that game feel like a complete waste of time. And I say that because even though this game is a spin-off, it pretty much acts as a complete sequel. I was surprised at how much effort went into making the story when they probably could have just thrown something small together to play a backseat as the main gimmick "Persona mixed with Dynasty Warriors".
There's 2 brand new characters who get storylines and character development on par with, if not surpassing, anything characters from the first game got. And the villains are all well-written, each with a backstory that explains their motivation.
Granted while the game does try hard to act as a true sequel, there's a definite familiarity here. The "jails" are basically palaces under a new name. This is especially obvious by the end when the characters themselves are commenting on how the final boss of this game is almost entirely like the final boss of the last game.
Speaking of jails, aesthetically I found them to be much more plain than palaces. Instead of carefully designed locations under a theme, instead the current city you're staying in is transformed into a theme instead. This meant that each jail was basically just running through streets under a certain aesthetic. Which is a shame because there was definitely a lot of fantastic elements in here that could have been brought to a whole new level if they had areas specifically designed for them instead of just being thrown into bland alleyways and corridors.
And for the cities themselves - another new thing this game does is having you move to a brand new location after each jail is complete. While I loved the idea of this, especially when P5(R) had you roam the same 4 or 5 areas the entire game, the cities offer almost nothing unique except appearance. They all have shops (which all sell the same basic items under new names) and that's it. While your time outside of palaces in the original game was just as expansive and deep as the palaces themselves, with various relationships to build or stats to raise, there's nothing to do outside of jails here but move the story along. I guess that was the trade off, but I can't help but be disappointed by it.
The only real additional content outside of just going through the main story is the requests, this is where you'll find things like extra bosses, challenges such as getting through a jail without raising the alarm etc. It adds that tiny bit of side-tracking to let you take a break from the story-heavy game.
I haven't even touched on the biggest difference of course, which is the battle system. Simply put I didn't like this one as much as the turn-based RPG of the original games. This battle system was fine, but due to the sheer amount of enemies on screen at once, along with your own teammates doing various actions, I could rarely even follow my own character. It took me a long time to really get a characters combo list down because when in battle, I found it hard to follow what action they were doing amidst all the chaos. While I loved how each character feels unique and has their own combos (all with the same inputs though so you don't need to worry about learning like 10 different button inputs), it ultimately never felt like it mattered to me what moves I used. For mobs just mashing away with square and throwing the occasional triangle at random points was more than enough and only VERY few characters had moves I specifically wanted to get off (like Haru's SST move which causes a psychic tornado-like thing). It never felt like it mattered if I used Ryuji's square-triangle combo, or square-square-triangle, both of which just lead to a charged up physical attack.
And for bosses you'll generally just end up spamming your persona elements because breaking through their multiple shields to get in the all-out-attacks is near impossible via the usual combos.
Also the chaos of battles works against the main battle gimmick of the new character Sophia. Her thing is that by timing her attacks right (when her yo-yo's glow) she powers up. The problem is you'll almost never be able to see the glow due to all the other flashy animations happening on screen.
The last comment on the battle system is that I enjoyed the inclusion of environmental hazards that you can use as attacks. Like dropping a chandelier on top of enemies to break their shields and cause an all out attack. This is especially well-designed when the hazards provide an elemental bonus, like when a certain boss loses his robotic suit, you can blow up the pieces of the suit which cause electrical damage to said boss.
So I don't think the battle system is bad exactly, and do appreciate the little differences to make each character feel unique, but it generally just doesn't feel satisfying either. Attacks don't have any weight to them. I just mashed my way through it most of the time and choices of where I ended my combo rarely felt like they mattered.
The last comment I have is that I felt the game started with the idea that each monarch was directly related to a main character - the first one clearly affected Ann, the second one was set up for Yusuke etc. But after the third jail that just kinda stops... Ann, Yusuke and Haru all got their own personal villain, but the rest of the cast didn't, and it felt like a dropped element from the game.
Honestly the game is just more Persona 5. If you like the characters, story and general world, it'll be a good time to see more of them. If you liked the gameplay and depth of the RPG's social life system, this game can feel very shallow in comparison. I liked it a lot due to the former stuff, but Persona 5 (/Royal) is one of my favourite games, and this is just a game I really like, so the drop in quality is still evident and if you weren't that huge on the original game in the first place, this might not hold up so well for you. Unless you just really love musou games I guess lol, but as I said at the start, I have no frame of reference to say how good or bad it is in that regard.
After completing both Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal, these characters, the aesthetics, the music etc are all so ingrained in my head now. Playing this was almost like spending time with old friends. I wasn't a fan of how this game completely ignored the extra content in Royal, however. It makes that game feel like a complete waste of time. And I say that because even though this game is a spin-off, it pretty much acts as a complete sequel. I was surprised at how much effort went into making the story when they probably could have just thrown something small together to play a backseat as the main gimmick "Persona mixed with Dynasty Warriors".
There's 2 brand new characters who get storylines and character development on par with, if not surpassing, anything characters from the first game got. And the villains are all well-written, each with a backstory that explains their motivation.
Granted while the game does try hard to act as a true sequel, there's a definite familiarity here. The "jails" are basically palaces under a new name. This is especially obvious by the end when the characters themselves are commenting on how the final boss of this game is almost entirely like the final boss of the last game.
Speaking of jails, aesthetically I found them to be much more plain than palaces. Instead of carefully designed locations under a theme, instead the current city you're staying in is transformed into a theme instead. This meant that each jail was basically just running through streets under a certain aesthetic. Which is a shame because there was definitely a lot of fantastic elements in here that could have been brought to a whole new level if they had areas specifically designed for them instead of just being thrown into bland alleyways and corridors.
And for the cities themselves - another new thing this game does is having you move to a brand new location after each jail is complete. While I loved the idea of this, especially when P5(R) had you roam the same 4 or 5 areas the entire game, the cities offer almost nothing unique except appearance. They all have shops (which all sell the same basic items under new names) and that's it. While your time outside of palaces in the original game was just as expansive and deep as the palaces themselves, with various relationships to build or stats to raise, there's nothing to do outside of jails here but move the story along. I guess that was the trade off, but I can't help but be disappointed by it.
The only real additional content outside of just going through the main story is the requests, this is where you'll find things like extra bosses, challenges such as getting through a jail without raising the alarm etc. It adds that tiny bit of side-tracking to let you take a break from the story-heavy game.
I haven't even touched on the biggest difference of course, which is the battle system. Simply put I didn't like this one as much as the turn-based RPG of the original games. This battle system was fine, but due to the sheer amount of enemies on screen at once, along with your own teammates doing various actions, I could rarely even follow my own character. It took me a long time to really get a characters combo list down because when in battle, I found it hard to follow what action they were doing amidst all the chaos. While I loved how each character feels unique and has their own combos (all with the same inputs though so you don't need to worry about learning like 10 different button inputs), it ultimately never felt like it mattered to me what moves I used. For mobs just mashing away with square and throwing the occasional triangle at random points was more than enough and only VERY few characters had moves I specifically wanted to get off (like Haru's SST move which causes a psychic tornado-like thing). It never felt like it mattered if I used Ryuji's square-triangle combo, or square-square-triangle, both of which just lead to a charged up physical attack.
And for bosses you'll generally just end up spamming your persona elements because breaking through their multiple shields to get in the all-out-attacks is near impossible via the usual combos.
Also the chaos of battles works against the main battle gimmick of the new character Sophia. Her thing is that by timing her attacks right (when her yo-yo's glow) she powers up. The problem is you'll almost never be able to see the glow due to all the other flashy animations happening on screen.
The last comment on the battle system is that I enjoyed the inclusion of environmental hazards that you can use as attacks. Like dropping a chandelier on top of enemies to break their shields and cause an all out attack. This is especially well-designed when the hazards provide an elemental bonus, like when a certain boss loses his robotic suit, you can blow up the pieces of the suit which cause electrical damage to said boss.
So I don't think the battle system is bad exactly, and do appreciate the little differences to make each character feel unique, but it generally just doesn't feel satisfying either. Attacks don't have any weight to them. I just mashed my way through it most of the time and choices of where I ended my combo rarely felt like they mattered.
The last comment I have is that I felt the game started with the idea that each monarch was directly related to a main character - the first one clearly affected Ann, the second one was set up for Yusuke etc. But after the third jail that just kinda stops... Ann, Yusuke and Haru all got their own personal villain, but the rest of the cast didn't, and it felt like a dropped element from the game.
Honestly the game is just more Persona 5. If you like the characters, story and general world, it'll be a good time to see more of them. If you liked the gameplay and depth of the RPG's social life system, this game can feel very shallow in comparison. I liked it a lot due to the former stuff, but Persona 5 (/Royal) is one of my favourite games, and this is just a game I really like, so the drop in quality is still evident and if you weren't that huge on the original game in the first place, this might not hold up so well for you. Unless you just really love musou games I guess lol, but as I said at the start, I have no frame of reference to say how good or bad it is in that regard.
This review contains spoilers
disappointed by this one tbh... the gameplay was fun, but the story went downhill quickly for me. the dungeons after the 2nd one were a mess imo, except for the awesome terrifying lab one WHICH WAS TOO SHORT.
also what happened to konoe is SO fucked up and the way the PT still made him out to be the bad guy made my stomach turn tbh
also what happened to konoe is SO fucked up and the way the PT still made him out to be the bad guy made my stomach turn tbh
This game is a KOF reference right like in 99-01 you can summon strikers and this game says strikers in the title so they must be related I think
A 40 hour long Black Mirror episode with less british people and better combat
zenkichi based
me falaram pra começar persona por qualquer um e eu comecei por esse sem entender porra nenhuma
KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK dps eu volto e jogo
KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK dps eu volto e jogo
For a decent bit of this game around the second and third jails I wasn't really feeling it. Around then as fun as the combat is the story does start to stagnate a little and I eventually had to take a break from it for a while. But recently I decided to give it a second try and now having finished it, I can say i really appreciate this game. The combat is not really my thing but its still very fun to slash through dozens of enemies at once. The story for a spinoff is really good (although like I said the first half has some really damning pacing issues that made it harder for me to enjoy when things started picking up at first) and the new characters are amazing, Sophia is probably top 3 characters of the whole series. The music is as epic as you'd expect a persona game to be, its very hilarious at times and I think the game ends on a touching note (note as touching as the mainline games but one that made me smile). A great reunion for the phantom thieves, this is how you do a spinoff.
Nancyfly GOTY Contender 2021
Nancyfly GOTY Contender 2021
It's not very good in the gameplay department, the combat is spammy (even by Warriors standards) and unrewarding. For completionists this game is also a nightmare as you'll have to farm an endgame boss for ages to get the necessary Bond EXP for the achievement.
In the end it's good enough for a casual playthrough. The new characters are great and the soundtrack is amazing.
In the end it's good enough for a casual playthrough. The new characters are great and the soundtrack is amazing.
The final form of the musou based on existing franchises, in which their always escalating efforts in translating mechanics from other series to the this genre straight up reached the point of simulating an entire game.
This genuine sequel to Persona 5 does not exactly retain all of the systemic level interactions from the RPG, but always tries to reproduce its intent, mostly in a more scripted way, while the presentation does the rest of heavy lifting. The most palpable differences are in the fights, where they hid all the musou bits, but even in this less graceful aproach to combat the game cleverly captures the feel and distinct motions of Persona battles.
All of that to serve the bigger purpose of giving you more time with these lovely, lovely characters. To have many group meals, cheerfully play on the beach, travel across the country in a cozy van and confront how in the interconnected age our fear of living unfulfilled lives can lead to outsourcing our happiness to apparently successful figures that are just as broken as any of us and wield that validation as an unhealthy shield against their own traumas. Just as freinds do.
This genuine sequel to Persona 5 does not exactly retain all of the systemic level interactions from the RPG, but always tries to reproduce its intent, mostly in a more scripted way, while the presentation does the rest of heavy lifting. The most palpable differences are in the fights, where they hid all the musou bits, but even in this less graceful aproach to combat the game cleverly captures the feel and distinct motions of Persona battles.
All of that to serve the bigger purpose of giving you more time with these lovely, lovely characters. To have many group meals, cheerfully play on the beach, travel across the country in a cozy van and confront how in the interconnected age our fear of living unfulfilled lives can lead to outsourcing our happiness to apparently successful figures that are just as broken as any of us and wield that validation as an unhealthy shield against their own traumas. Just as freinds do.
It's definitely a musou game, but at the same time, it still captures the essence and feel of Persona 5 thanks to fantastic integration of the Persona 5 mechanics, graphics, and storyline. You might not enjoy this game as much if you're not into the Persona series (and you do need to have played the original Persona 5 to understand the background), but it held my attention throughout the entire game and I'm really happy that I got to go back to this universe again.
If I had a nickel for every time a final boss in a Persona 5 game was also the main priceless artifact in an Indiana Jones movie, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.
Seriously though, this game was phenomenally fun! It's an amazing sequel to Persona 5, with amazing new characters to vibe with, and if you've been hesitant to play it, I CAN'T RECOMMEND IT ENOUGH!
Seriously though, this game was phenomenally fun! It's an amazing sequel to Persona 5, with amazing new characters to vibe with, and if you've been hesitant to play it, I CAN'T RECOMMEND IT ENOUGH!
This review contains spoilers
This game surprised the hell outta me. Persona 5 Royal is my favorite game of all time and all I really wanted from this game was a memorable adventure with the Phantom Thieves and it delivered and then some.
The story isn't as good as it's predecessors but I really like it for what it is. The beginning three Jails in this game will remind P5 fans of similar situations in the main game. A lot of people didn't like this because it felt too similar but I personally I love it. I think it was a really intelligent move because we've seen these characters have grown and get to see more of that side in this game. With Alice's Jail we get to see that she's not gonna back down and let people be manipulated and hurt after her experiences with Kamoshida. With Natsume's Jail you get to see Yusuke being reminded of his troubled time with Madarame but he eventually overcomes that and gives Natsume a harsh lesson. Not telling him to give up on writing but try again and make something you can truly be proud of. I really liked this part of the game because Yusuke's character shines so brightly here. I wasn't the biggest Yusuke guy in Royal, I didn't hate him or anything but I didn't have a strong feeling about him. Then to top it all off it has a banger boss fight.
In Mariko's Jail, Haru finally gets the spotlight she has deserved for so long and only made me love her even more. I love that Mariko has a history with Haru and you get to learn more about her past. Another thing I like is that the game isn't afraid to talk about Okumura, Haru's dad. In general the game does that very well which I appreciate since some spin-offs don't like referencing the source material very weirdly.
After that it's the obligatory Beach episode which was pretty fun. After that there's a cool scene where all the residents of Okinawa are out with pitchforks looking for the gang which was really eerie but also really funny in retrospect. The atmosphere was just great. Anyways the Jail is quite short but you start learning more about the games mysteries so it was nice to get some answers. The final boss of this area was pretty underwhelming but we did get that now iconic moment with Ryuji finally saying Fuck out loud, so that was pretty hype.
After this is one of the most memorable passages of the game. Akane, Zenkichi's daughter's Jail. This was just executed so damn well. From Zenkichi and Akane having a real heart to heart moment trying to figure out where it all went wrong to the final boss where we fight shadow versions of ourselves. It was just amazing. I love when Futaba and Zenkichi have to storm the Jail by themselves since the rest of the Phantom Thieves were caught it was just really cool. Zenkichi's awakening was also badass.
After this is another high point in the game. Akira Konoe's Jail. This was just a blast through and through. The theme and setting of the Jail is really great and iconic. In my opinion Konoe's is one of p5's best villains, he was just so memorable and a great character. Now I do like Shido but I feel like this is what Shido should've been. Shido is ultimately a mustache twirling villain which isn't necessarily a bad thing but a little bit disappointing as a final boss. The mech fight with Konoe is awesome but that's not even the best part. The next part of the battle opens with Konoe's mech blowing up but he manages to get out and walks away from the explosion Power Rangers Style and it fits so well thematically and is just badass, especially with Counterstrike starting up at the same time with Lyn killing it. It's just such an incredibly hype moment. Overall this was my favorite part of the game by far.
The last two dungeons were really short and just meant to wrap up the story. From a gameplay point of view they're extremely disappointing with them being very short but just filled to the brim with enemies, no puzzle to solve just a straight shot to your destination. From a story point of view it's quite good. You find out Ichinose is the creator of Sophia (who didn't predict that) and fight God Emma which was actually really cool. The final boss for this game is just awesome with every single party member playing some sort of role to bring down the big bad. I also really like the final blow cutscene as opposed to P5 Vanilla or P5R. In those two it's just Joker dealing the final blow but here everyone comes together to do a combo attack and was just hype.
The characters new and old are all pretty good in this game. Everybody has their moment some are big some are small but they do get it. Ann has the Alice arc, Yusuke has the Natsume arc, Haru has the Mariko arc, Futaba has her moment when she and Zenkichi raid the Kyoto Jail, Zenkichi has his own with the Akane arc, Sophia has hers with the penultimate Jail, Makoto has hers with Zenkichi as she frequently explained how Akane might be feeling having been in a similar position, Morgana and Ryuji both have theirs in the Okinawa Jail where they defend Sophia and pop off on the warden.
Zenkichi is a big favorite of mine and Sophia was another wonderful addition. Ichinose and Konoe are both top tier villains.
The music bangs in classic Persona 5 fashion with Lyn especially popping off. The opening theme "You are Stronger" was stuck in my head during the long months we were waiting for this game and rightly so. The Voice Acting is really good with special mention for Zenkichi and Sophia's VA. Zenkichi's personality popped off the screen and Sophia progressively sounds less and less robotic which was a nice touch and this is especially apparent during her confrontation with Ichinose. The only issue with the audio is some of the mixing. I realize that recording had to be done during the Pandemic with everyone having different home studios but it can be a little jarring. Sometimes Ryuji is going at full blast but I can barely hear Morgana. Nothing major given the circumstances but a little off putting.
This was my first experience with a Musou game and I loved it. It was a wonderful collaboration with the traditional Musou formula mixed with the turn based combat of Persona. The level design was very fun and open. Lot of very nice combos and movement options. Overall I had a good time with it and I'm interested in getting into some other games of this genre.
This was an extremely memorable Summer with the Phantom Thieves and I'm glad I played this game. Made me love some of my favorite characters even more while introducing me to new ones. It had very satisfying gameplay and made me appreciate a new genre.
9/10
The story isn't as good as it's predecessors but I really like it for what it is. The beginning three Jails in this game will remind P5 fans of similar situations in the main game. A lot of people didn't like this because it felt too similar but I personally I love it. I think it was a really intelligent move because we've seen these characters have grown and get to see more of that side in this game. With Alice's Jail we get to see that she's not gonna back down and let people be manipulated and hurt after her experiences with Kamoshida. With Natsume's Jail you get to see Yusuke being reminded of his troubled time with Madarame but he eventually overcomes that and gives Natsume a harsh lesson. Not telling him to give up on writing but try again and make something you can truly be proud of. I really liked this part of the game because Yusuke's character shines so brightly here. I wasn't the biggest Yusuke guy in Royal, I didn't hate him or anything but I didn't have a strong feeling about him. Then to top it all off it has a banger boss fight.
In Mariko's Jail, Haru finally gets the spotlight she has deserved for so long and only made me love her even more. I love that Mariko has a history with Haru and you get to learn more about her past. Another thing I like is that the game isn't afraid to talk about Okumura, Haru's dad. In general the game does that very well which I appreciate since some spin-offs don't like referencing the source material very weirdly.
After that it's the obligatory Beach episode which was pretty fun. After that there's a cool scene where all the residents of Okinawa are out with pitchforks looking for the gang which was really eerie but also really funny in retrospect. The atmosphere was just great. Anyways the Jail is quite short but you start learning more about the games mysteries so it was nice to get some answers. The final boss of this area was pretty underwhelming but we did get that now iconic moment with Ryuji finally saying Fuck out loud, so that was pretty hype.
After this is one of the most memorable passages of the game. Akane, Zenkichi's daughter's Jail. This was just executed so damn well. From Zenkichi and Akane having a real heart to heart moment trying to figure out where it all went wrong to the final boss where we fight shadow versions of ourselves. It was just amazing. I love when Futaba and Zenkichi have to storm the Jail by themselves since the rest of the Phantom Thieves were caught it was just really cool. Zenkichi's awakening was also badass.
After this is another high point in the game. Akira Konoe's Jail. This was just a blast through and through. The theme and setting of the Jail is really great and iconic. In my opinion Konoe's is one of p5's best villains, he was just so memorable and a great character. Now I do like Shido but I feel like this is what Shido should've been. Shido is ultimately a mustache twirling villain which isn't necessarily a bad thing but a little bit disappointing as a final boss. The mech fight with Konoe is awesome but that's not even the best part. The next part of the battle opens with Konoe's mech blowing up but he manages to get out and walks away from the explosion Power Rangers Style and it fits so well thematically and is just badass, especially with Counterstrike starting up at the same time with Lyn killing it. It's just such an incredibly hype moment. Overall this was my favorite part of the game by far.
The last two dungeons were really short and just meant to wrap up the story. From a gameplay point of view they're extremely disappointing with them being very short but just filled to the brim with enemies, no puzzle to solve just a straight shot to your destination. From a story point of view it's quite good. You find out Ichinose is the creator of Sophia (who didn't predict that) and fight God Emma which was actually really cool. The final boss for this game is just awesome with every single party member playing some sort of role to bring down the big bad. I also really like the final blow cutscene as opposed to P5 Vanilla or P5R. In those two it's just Joker dealing the final blow but here everyone comes together to do a combo attack and was just hype.
The characters new and old are all pretty good in this game. Everybody has their moment some are big some are small but they do get it. Ann has the Alice arc, Yusuke has the Natsume arc, Haru has the Mariko arc, Futaba has her moment when she and Zenkichi raid the Kyoto Jail, Zenkichi has his own with the Akane arc, Sophia has hers with the penultimate Jail, Makoto has hers with Zenkichi as she frequently explained how Akane might be feeling having been in a similar position, Morgana and Ryuji both have theirs in the Okinawa Jail where they defend Sophia and pop off on the warden.
Zenkichi is a big favorite of mine and Sophia was another wonderful addition. Ichinose and Konoe are both top tier villains.
The music bangs in classic Persona 5 fashion with Lyn especially popping off. The opening theme "You are Stronger" was stuck in my head during the long months we were waiting for this game and rightly so. The Voice Acting is really good with special mention for Zenkichi and Sophia's VA. Zenkichi's personality popped off the screen and Sophia progressively sounds less and less robotic which was a nice touch and this is especially apparent during her confrontation with Ichinose. The only issue with the audio is some of the mixing. I realize that recording had to be done during the Pandemic with everyone having different home studios but it can be a little jarring. Sometimes Ryuji is going at full blast but I can barely hear Morgana. Nothing major given the circumstances but a little off putting.
This was my first experience with a Musou game and I loved it. It was a wonderful collaboration with the traditional Musou formula mixed with the turn based combat of Persona. The level design was very fun and open. Lot of very nice combos and movement options. Overall I had a good time with it and I'm interested in getting into some other games of this genre.
This was an extremely memorable Summer with the Phantom Thieves and I'm glad I played this game. Made me love some of my favorite characters even more while introducing me to new ones. It had very satisfying gameplay and made me appreciate a new genre.
9/10
The return of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts!
I really enjoyed Strikers, the main reason is just seeing all the characters again and finding out what they have been up to. This is very much a game in which you need to play the original Persona 5 as this is a direct sequel and many references will be completely lost. (It doesn't acknowledge Persona 5 Royale).
The story is surprisingly good actually, leading the Phantom Thieves on a road trip across Japan seeing loads of different locations. The localization and writing is spot on and the voice actors all return for their respective roles if you choose the English voice over option. The new characters introduced here are also really great and fit in perfectly.
I think that's what makes the game so good that despite the change in the action combat system, the lack of social links and made by a different developer (Omega Force, Tecmo Koei's team know for Dynasty Warriors titles) they absolutely nailed the feel of Persona 5 from the characters, writing, bosses and even just small things like camera angles and visual design. This game oozes all the style and charm that it's predecessor was known for and then some including the soundtrack. It's fantastic with a mix of new tracks, old tracks and some remixes. (Life will Change kicking in will never not give me goosebumps)
All that said I never truly warmed up to the combat system. It's just fine. Much like Persona 5 you hit enemies on the map to engage in battle and then it becomes a free for all. The elements are all there, baton passing, using Persona spells, guns, elemental weaknesses etc. They certainly did their best to incorporate every aspect into it but it just comes across as a bit of a mess with too much going on and too many trash mob type enemies. Bosses are still pretty fun to fight using a bit more strategy but overall, and I say this as a Dynasty Warrior and spin off fan of Omega Force the combat here just didn't quite work.
All said and done though getting the platinum took me about 90 hours with all Persona, side quests, skills etc. Beating the game gives you extra bosses, and access to NG+ with a way harder difficulty for those that want it. It's good value for money, nails the experience of a Persona title and still provides those great character moments.
It's more than just a Dynasty Warriors skin. Recommended.
+ Great to see the cast again.
+ Absolutely nails the Persona 5 atmosphere.
+ Story, locations and new cast are great.
+ Excellent soundtrack.
- Combat is functional if not brilliant.
I really enjoyed Strikers, the main reason is just seeing all the characters again and finding out what they have been up to. This is very much a game in which you need to play the original Persona 5 as this is a direct sequel and many references will be completely lost. (It doesn't acknowledge Persona 5 Royale).
The story is surprisingly good actually, leading the Phantom Thieves on a road trip across Japan seeing loads of different locations. The localization and writing is spot on and the voice actors all return for their respective roles if you choose the English voice over option. The new characters introduced here are also really great and fit in perfectly.
I think that's what makes the game so good that despite the change in the action combat system, the lack of social links and made by a different developer (Omega Force, Tecmo Koei's team know for Dynasty Warriors titles) they absolutely nailed the feel of Persona 5 from the characters, writing, bosses and even just small things like camera angles and visual design. This game oozes all the style and charm that it's predecessor was known for and then some including the soundtrack. It's fantastic with a mix of new tracks, old tracks and some remixes. (Life will Change kicking in will never not give me goosebumps)
All that said I never truly warmed up to the combat system. It's just fine. Much like Persona 5 you hit enemies on the map to engage in battle and then it becomes a free for all. The elements are all there, baton passing, using Persona spells, guns, elemental weaknesses etc. They certainly did their best to incorporate every aspect into it but it just comes across as a bit of a mess with too much going on and too many trash mob type enemies. Bosses are still pretty fun to fight using a bit more strategy but overall, and I say this as a Dynasty Warrior and spin off fan of Omega Force the combat here just didn't quite work.
All said and done though getting the platinum took me about 90 hours with all Persona, side quests, skills etc. Beating the game gives you extra bosses, and access to NG+ with a way harder difficulty for those that want it. It's good value for money, nails the experience of a Persona title and still provides those great character moments.
It's more than just a Dynasty Warriors skin. Recommended.
+ Great to see the cast again.
+ Absolutely nails the Persona 5 atmosphere.
+ Story, locations and new cast are great.
+ Excellent soundtrack.
- Combat is functional if not brilliant.
Chamar esse jogo de spin-off (por mais que ele seja um) e o ignorar por isso é um desserviço a qualidade dele. As músicas são fenomenais, a gameplay é divertidissima e eu amei a história. Foi super divertido revisitar o cast do Persona 5.
Recomendo.
Recomendo.
Persona 5 Strikers is the sequel to Persona 5,The Phantom Thieves are back but the game is vastly different from Persona 5, instead of turn based combat the game has dynasty warriors style combat but with the persona twist, overall a very stylish game,the new character editions are great and the game is a bit difficult in the beginning with managing sp but the difficulty is a welcome change after how easy p5 was. Overall great game,very fun and if you loved Persona 5 you’ll love strikers.
Now THIS is what I want to see more of from Persona. Not being P5R's biggest fan I was happy to see an action focused spinoff, and man I loved this game the whole way through.
Streamlining the bullshit and getting you into the action straight away was a nice surprise, and while the story isn't as strong here, the gameplay more than makes up for it. 100% pick this up if you played P5 or P5R
Streamlining the bullshit and getting you into the action straight away was a nice surprise, and while the story isn't as strong here, the gameplay more than makes up for it. 100% pick this up if you played P5 or P5R
Unfortunately, the combat of this game is subpar for me. While I love the Persona 5 storyline, and the characters are great, this game just doesn’t work for me. Maybe I will continue playing it down the line, but probably not.