Person 5 Strikers opens with a thief on the run, just like person 5.
Joker, the protagonist of the game, nimbly jumps over a building Persona 5 strikers‘first cutscene. He is in the Metaverse, a mirror dimension in the world of Persona, in which people’s true desires are manifested. When Joker encounters a shadow, he dives off the roof and rips off his face mask to reveal his true self. Joker and his enemy fall in a lot of shadows down on the metaverse version of the crowded streets of Shibuya. Shadows surround and outweigh Joker again, evoking Joker’s capture at the beginning of Person 5. But instead of being taken for interrogation, get set up Person 5Joker asserts itself in his framework story Strikersdraws his knife and summons his persona.
Suddenly I’m in control. The UI crackles with Persona’s usual flair, but the shadows don’t patiently wait for my turn like I’ve been used to in over 300 hours Person 5 and Person 5 Royal. No, those shadows book it for me – loads of bicorns, pixies, and jack-o’-lanterns. With a single press of the square button, I cut my knife through the crowd and they all break into nothing.
This was when I first thought I understood Persona 5 strikerswhen I played through the first chapter of the game as part of a preview. This is a Musou game by Omega Force, developer of the Dynasty Warriors franchise – hack and slash action games in which players kill legions of enemies in massive real-time battles. Strikers
But I shouldn’t have judged Persona 5 strikers so fast. Despite the opening moments, Persona 5 strikers retains far more of its source DNA than expected.
A Person 5 Follow up in the heart
After stepping out of the metaverse into the real world, I found a persona game waiting for me. Set six months after the end of Person 5 (royal doesn’t seem to exist in this timeline), Joker and Morgana the cat are back in Shibuya to visit the Phantom Thieves. Things have changed in the last few months – with older girls Haru and Makoto now in college, and the socially fearful Futaba actually going to school – but the phantom thieves are meeting again as if time had passed . And as Person 5 Veteran, playing Strikers feels similarly familiar.
After my Dynasty Warriors-like fight in the intro, I sit long conversations with my friends. I make dialogue decisions and my allies respond. Then I roll through town with Morgana in tow. The map is a smaller version of what it was Person 5and the perspective is identical. It looks and sounds just like the beloved JRPG – so much so that my wife thought I was going to do it again Person 5.
I spent much of my 6+ hours in Persona 5 strikers doing what I’ve been doing most of the time Person 5 and Person 5 Royal: chat with people and select dialogue options. It is Person 5 first and Strikers second.
A faster type of phantom Thief
Persona 5 strikers is a leaner game than Person 5. Because it’s summer vacation, I don’t have to go to school. And I don’t have any free time after school or in the evening to improve my relationships with my friends or improve my intelligence. These systems are not in Persona 5 strikers.
The persona roots remain, however. I still have a bond level with my friends that I can use to buy various perks that improve the whole team. It’s not individual as in Person 5;; I can’t choose to boost Ryuji’s level by hanging out with him in the arcade, for example. If instead all phantom thieves fight together, we get Bond experience, and when we hang out and chat in the real world, that gives Bond too.
In combat, things really change, but so do the fast-paced musou styles of Persona 5 strikers Stay grounded in the persona formula. Outside of some massive battles – like the first one or areas where I have to defend Futaba, a support character, during a hack – battles usually take place in a small arena.
As I explore the dungeon, I can play as one of my four party members, each of whom plays drastically different from Joker, while keeping the same fighting personalities they were in Person 5. And while I’m not in combat, I can swap my party members for other phantom thieves – including Sophia, a brand new character for Strikers. Our crew can sneak up on an enemy and surprise them by removing their mask. Alternatively, enemies can strike first when they spot us and stun our infiltration unit at the start of the fight. But instead of turning sneak attacks into a turn-based battle with three shadows, I’ll end up fighting thirty in a dejected brawl. The fast pace of the game is a big change from the turn-based Persona games, but it’s drastically less than other Musou games.
These fights take place in jails, a slightly more open version of Person 5‘s Palace Dungeons. These prisons are located in the Metaverse, and the Phantom Thieves must infiltrate them, sneak around, disable traps and solve puzzles to reach the inner sanctuary of each prison. On the way, I can exchange my group members and charge enemies with XP in arena-like battles. But after each fight, the makeshift arena disappears and it’s back to roaming through the dungeon.
The fights are as complex or as simple as I like to make them, even though I had several levels of difficulty during my playing time – tips that I have mitigated by being more methodical and buying more healing items, although I could have easily worked out more levels, when i wanted an easier experience. In combat, I can slap my hands on the controller to make some long-range attacks and maybe a special move to help survive most battles. But I can also weave fine combinations or use the skills of my persona to fight hostile weaknesses. Calling up my persona drastically slows everything around me and lets me make some tactical assessments or take a short break.
Six hours in, Persona 5 strikers feels like a clever twist on one of my favorite games of the last decade. The stuff I love is still here and while there are aspects of the persona gameplay that I miss StrikersI’m still enjoying the fight so much that removing individual social links, stats, and time management systems has not yet started to sting.
According to people who are done Strikers – since the start in Japan last year – there is still a lot of play, with numerous prisons, which I have to fight through after my time in Shibuya’s metaverse. I could be heading for a massive change and the aspects that I loved Person 5 could melt away in favor of familiar Musou elements. But if what I’ve played for the first prison from Person 5 Strikers follows until the end, it will be a worthy sequel to Atlus’ star franchise.