3.5/5 ★ – Nicolai10's review of Persona 5 Strikers.

Persona 5 strikers is a great game it is not great as the main game, it sure has its flaws. First I want to mention the technical aspects of the game, cuz I think is worth to mention it. The menu UI more stylish, vivid and brilliant than the original game, the transitions are also great, and overall it keeps the stylish essence that the persona 5 games has. Also the performance and the graphics holds up extremely well considered what type of game it is. Lets talk about the gameplay which in my opinion is the most significant issue that the game have, personally I don’t dislike Musou games, these type of games can be pretty fun sometimes and can get really repetitive. In Persona 5 strikers they adapt the Musou style with the mechanics of the personas of the original Persona 5 with weakness, resistances and SP adding these yellow shields that broke when you hit the enemies weakness or with critical hits. In paper the idea of combining regular hits with magical and physical skills sound great, until you start to play the game and realize that you only spam the square button in regular fight to conserve SP for a boss, it gets really repetitive and some parts(especially in grinding) it gets boring, and in the boss fights you only do magical skills until you can perform and all out attack is the best way to deal with bosses and with these the SP runs out fast cuz the character and the skills has the same amount of SP as the Original Persona 5, I believe they could increase the amount of SP OR that the skill moves uses less of it, instead of relaying on the SP refills items, considering that the best way to deal with a boss is exploit the weaknesses. In addition to these every character feels the same with just some minor changes, there is no variety and this bothers me consider the others musou games I played. So I ended using just joker, the 90% percent of the time, and only using the party member to hit a weakness or to heal. I not saying that the gameplay is bad, its just repetitive. Before I talked about the story, I have to say that the music is so freaking awesome, I like that they used a style like rock as a base, something that fits very well for the game, almost all the new songs are fabulous, big shouts to the composers. So now its time to discuss the story, but first I wanna to do a quick review without any spoilers. The story overall is great, with very interesting plot lines but it has its flaws, sometimes it feels formulaic and it with certain plots and characters its like Persona 5 all over again. And for the characters without giving to much context Sophia, Zenkichi and Akane are really good characters and I genuinely don’t care about any other new characters. SPOILERS[Including Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal] So to emphasize my previous points, I will discuss with spoilers. First let me talk about the first hours of the game it only focus on the phantom thieves reunion, and how they interact across the hold game and with the cities, which in the majority feel pleasant and that they get along well as a group of friends, they aren’t remarkable and don’t bring anything important to the characters but are ok considering that these interactions replace the confidant system. So speaking so the Phantom thieves, lets talk about the new members, so first up Zenkichi good lord this character is awesome, i liked a lot his story, starting as a policeman who only used the group for his benefit, obeying everything he was ordered to, and the more he was with the Phamton thieves, he began forging a bond with the group and slowly remembered what justice is and what is he fighting for, and the climax to this is his persona awakening in the Jail of his daughter, and also he started to be a good dad to Akane. Since the dead of his wife, Zenkichi was kind of a jerk to his daughter, avoiding talking to her about what happen and even knowing who the culprit, he decide to ignore her, and just followed what he was ordered to, and adding the fact the he is merely at his home, the don’t had a good relationship, you know why Akane acted distant with her father, but this changed with Zenkichi’s revelation. Also he had his reasons to go with the phantom thieves cuz the culprit behind the murder of his wife is involved with Konoe the guy behind the creations of cells. And now it is time for Sophia, I like her also I found compelling her search for her memories and why she was created, she struggled with being capable, and with not remembering her past, these problems doesn’t feel annoying unlike a certain stupid cat with the same problems, she often talked with the protagonist in order to be a better AI and fulfilled her main objective. And in other things many of her interactions are quite funny, this also includes Gramps. To keep talking about Sophia, I have to brief talk about Ichinose. I don’t like this character at all, right from the start you can tell that she is pretending her personality and that she is the twist villain that the game pretends to be a surprise like Akechi, so when she revealed her traumas I feel bad for her obviously, but I find it pretty generic and also the part of not having a heart and she believed it, I think it is weird, the game could say that Ichinose felt sad and lonely and she does not understand exactly why the people kept seeing her as a different person, so she studied the human heart and the story continues, IDK this is really a vague opinion of mine but somehow its relevant for my vision of Ichinose. So Sophia found why she was created and at that point she understood what a human heart is, fulfilling Ichinose’s objetive and awakening her persona. Concluding with Sophia, I think that her decision of accompany Ichinose at the end is a good end to her character arc, know that she understands a human heart, she wants to help Ichinose to beat her struggles being a good companion. I’m just wanna talk briefly about the main antagonist EMMA, this AI is only a mere excuse to fight a god or should I say false god at the end of the game , its like yaldabaoth, they obtain their powers throughout the masses and became gods that no one cares about as villains. So lastly lets discuss about the Jail monarchs excluding Akane. They functioned like palace rulers but instead of being bad people doing bad things, this time around is traumatized people doing bad things and don’t get me wrong I prefer a villain with a background story but the monarchs are pretty unremarkable even if you empathize with them. Also I think the only monarch that doesn’t feel like a copy of a palace ruler is Alice cuz Natsune feels like a copy of Madarame they both are artists who were carried away by fame and money, stealing or plagiarizing jobs. Hyodo feels like a copy of Okumura, two adults that are parenteral figures to Haru were corrupted in order to keep or obtain a political position. And Konoe feels like a cheap copy of Maruki, they both had a traumatic event that lead then to do something about and promise that no one will go through that pain, they have really good intentions but they are taking away people's free will. This last case bothers me cuz Konoe until you enter the Osaka Jail is showed as a typical bad person doing bad things, but it results that he had good intentions at the end, comparing this to a character like Maruki, you know why this Japanese Tony Stark is a bad written character, you barely know about him and the game expect that it should be treated like a guy with good intentions, even if you gave him a more tragic story that the one he already has, and still think that this character is garbage. And thats about it i don’t have anything more to say, thank you so much for reading up to here.