4.5/5 ★ – daneh's review of Persona 5 Strikers.

(There will be no major spoilers in this review, HOWEVER I will mention stuff you may already know from watching game trailers or from knowing a tiny bit about Persona 5 and P5 Royal, AKA Minor spoilers here. If you want to completely go blind, do not read this review) I feel I should preface this by saying that Persona 5 Royal is my favorite game of all time, and that I will be criticizing it mostly on how it works as a true, direct sequel to P5. If you just want to know if you'd like this game, you should first play P5R to decide if you would enjoy this, as one of the best parts of the whole experience is just returning back to this world and cast of characters you've experienced beforehand. Similar to my Persona 5 Royal review, I'll be dividing this into a few sections just to make organizing much easier, and if you want a TL;DR, the conclusion section at the end will probably be enough. Anyways, to start off: --------------------------- // --------------------------- GAMEPLAY: In case you don't know yet, this is a massive departure from the mainline Persona games as, instead of turn-based, it features the pre-established Koei Tecmo 1vs100+ Hyrule Warriors-esque gameplay. Despite this, the game is NOT a spinoff, it's a full-on sequel to the original P5. The game immediately ditches the level design from the original game, where instead of more condensed dungeons with extreme level of detail and level design plastered all over, it relies on more open and somewhat emptier areas. While this sounds a bit lame initially, it fits the gameplay style of this game so much better as there is more space to maneuver around and fight, plus it's not like unique segments of exploration are missing from the game completely. As for the actual main feature of the warriors gameplays style, being the combat of course, they pulled off a really great middle ground between something like Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and Persona 5. Multitasking multiple fighters across the whole map is gone, and the general move/combo system has been streamlined a lot more and characters only have a few given moves that have simple inputs. However, by pressing the shoulder buttons you are able to either access your Gun ability, or summon a character's Persona, which alongside the iconic weakness and "1 More" mechanics from the mainline games, creates a really unique real time combat experience which mixes skill and movement and combos with strategy and resource management (although I found early game somewhat annoying because managing the low amount of SP and Money you have at first can be cumbersome). Unfortunately, I still feel I would've liked a few more possibilities with certain characters as some playstyles can be extremely limiting and can essentially funnel the player into using the same strategies over and over again, and this is especially true in some bosses. Speaking of which, bosses in this game can range from genuine tests of skill that test all your abilities or just a shitty damage sponge that forces the player to input the same few moves for half an hour until they die. Also this is pretty rare, but for some of the exploration parts in dungeons outside of combat, movement can get VERY annoying. And I know this is not a 2D platformer, so I don't know why the game sometimes pretends it is and forces these 2D sections in the map, they are so slow and unnecessary, jumping halts all your momentum and it's really annoying. Thankfully it's a very tiny part of the game. Apart from the main quest in the dungeons (named "Jails"), you will eventually unlock Requests, basically side missions which are pretty much essential if you want to get stronger. And while a lot of these requests can be a lot of fun, it really shines a light on one of the game's prevalent issues (which is mostly an issue with the genre the game belongs to): Repetitiveness. You will be doing similar activities over and over again, even if you don't do too many Requests, it's somewhat of a grind-heavy game, especially if you're struggling and you want to level up a bit more. It doesn't exactly help that, unlike P5R, party members that aren't being used do not gain any EXP at all, which means you have to grind with essentially every single character to guarantee no one is left behind, and I think that gets somewhat annoying.  The main dungeons also follow similar formats: Advance, find a lot of enemies, repeat this for a while, find a mid-boss at times, prison keep, do that 3 times until Jail boss. There's still some stuff that varies but I really wish there was different stuff to do in Jails. Thankfully I'd still say the main gameplay loop has enough depth for me to enjoy it quite a bit even with how repetitive it can be sometimes, and there's also some time you spend in the real world outside Jails. Admittedly it's not as significant as the mainline Persona games where a massive portion of the game is spent interacting with different social links/confidants, as that system is not present in the game, but sometimes exploring towns and finding all the shops and fulfilling real-world Requests can be fun and a nice change of pace. --------------------------- // --------------------------- STORY AND CHARACTERS: Ok I'm just gonna start saying this to get it out of my system because it was personally really sad and I wish this would've been different, just bear with me. I never actually played the original Persona 5, I played P5 Royal around half a year ago. Naturally the improvements and added characters brought with that expansion really resonated with me and were my favorite things from the entire game, so my disappointment when I found out characters like Kasumi or Akechi were not included was crushing. I understand both games were being developed at the same time so the tweaked story from Royal could not be included, but I wholeheartedly believe the game would've really benefited from a later release date to accomodate for these changes, it was really disappointing seeing my two favorite characters ever just being cut from this sequel. ANYWAYS I'm actually gonna start talking about what was in the game rather than what wasn't. I will avoid major spoilers but there will still be some minor spoilers referring to characters and stuff you might know before playing the game but if you want to be completely blind then you might want to avoid this section. Starting off with characters: the entire (vanilla) Persona 5 phantom thief cast is here, although that does not include any of the other confidants (except for Sojiro and Sae briefly). It's genuinely really nice seeing them all again, as going through their arcs in P5R and getting to actually know them was my favorite part of that game. It's worth noting they obviously don't get as much development in Strikers but that's mostly because their arcs by this point are over and the gameplay style of P5S can't really fit confidant-style sections. Either way I think that's alright, the game doesn't try to be what it isn't and it focuses on what the characters already are. That's not to say each party member doesn't get their moment to shine, there are some specific arcs where some characters can have really emotional moments and grab the spotlight really well, and I love whenever this happens as it showcases the whole growth they have gone through ever since they joined the phantom thieves. And of course there's the interactions the whole group has between themselves and it just brings a big smile on my face every time they're discussing anything, from something mundane and meaningless, to any joke conversation, to something important, their dialogue is just great and it really feels like they're all a group of friends and I really enjoy that kind of thing. I also can't keep writing the review without mentioning the two new main characters: Sophia and Zenkichi. Both phenomenal characters in my opinion, I loved every single second they were on screen. Sophia at first sort of felt like the mandatory Persona "weird character who doesn't know where they came from so their arc is sort of based around them figuring it out" but it felt a lot more genuine this time around. It's nice seeing her grow and learn about humans and the heart, and slowly understand what role she is meant to fulfill, and by the end I realized I had grown very emotionally attached to her. Zenkichi was no exception, he was also one of my favorite characters in the whole game and he definitely feels like the most fleshed out. His whole backstory and relationship with his daughter and eventual arc Zenkichi goes through is really sad but also very engaging to go through, I really ended up rooting for him by the end and I have absolutely no complaints on how his arc was handled. Both newcomers really elevated the experience for me and I'm very happy they turned out the way they did (although it also makes me very sad they never meet with Akechi or Kasumi i want all the phantom thieves to meet up i will not shut up about this 🥲) Ok now for the story: I will admit generally speaking I found this to be one of the weakest aspects of the game. It's not really a massive issue for me because quite frankly I wasn't really expecting anything but if you're entering this dialogue-heavy game with the hopes of going through some intense ups and downs with the plot, then you might be disappointed. I feel like the villains can support the main character's stories quite well sometimes, but the story never advances via them and what little plot there is in here only feels like a retread of the themes already previously explored in P5 and especially P5R in the final hours of the game (As mentioned before I am aware that both P5 Strikers and P5 Royal were being developed at the same time, therefore the plot of the other game was not taken into account. But P5R handled its themes so well, P5 Strikers ends up being extremely underwhelming in comparison). I have a few more issues with the story, such as the awfully handled twist villain of the game (because it's Persona 5 of course there's a twist villain) and the final villain. But I will avoid discussing those further for the sake of spoilers. Overall I think it's probably one of the weakest parts of the game as I mentioned beforehand but I wasn't really expecting much so I wasn't severely disappointed. --------------------------- // --------------------------- VISUAL AND AUDIO: I don't really have much to say here so I'll keep it brief. This has undoubtedly Persona 5's essence through and through, no corners cut. The game's art style is overwhelmingly loud and stylish, especially with the UI. The menus are all reminiscent of the original game and nothing really feels out of place. The only big issue I have with the visual style is how anti-aliasing is simply a thing that does not exist in the developer's vocabulary. I played the PS4 version of the game and yet everything feels like its 144p, there's jagged lines everywhere and you can barely see a 3D model without having it melt into a clutter of pixels, I really hate how this game can look at times graphically, especially considering I feel it could've had an easy solution. As for the music and audio design… it's Persona 5, what do you expect? It is phenomenal. Not only are there a lot of remixed tracks from the original game to fit the more intense pace of Strikers (Rivers In The Desert remixed was euphoric I have never been happier to listen to a track), but there are also a ton of newer tracks that stand its own ground against some of the most iconic tracks of the original game, like seriously Daredevil is now one of my all-time favorite VGM songs and that is saying a lot. No complaints in the audio department. --------------------------- // --------------------------- CONCLUSION: This is a worthy sequel to the original Persona 5. While I am extremely salty that this game was not able to adapt Persona 5 Royal elements such as some characters, I still am really happy with the cast that made it into this game, and the two new main characters are some of my highlights in this game, they were both wonderful. The gameplay is also handled in such a way where they integrated the strategy and resource managing aspects of the turn-based combat system, but while also integrating reflexes and combos (albeit with not as much depth as other games from this same genre). It does get quite repetitive at times, especially if you do the side quests, but I feel that the gameplay holds out enough for the game not to become extremely annoying, I had fun even towards the end. Despite the lack of anti-aliasing and some parts of the game looking horrible graphically speaking, the visual style of the game was very stylish and beautiful, and the music is also a treat. Both the art style and soundtrack mirror the original game in a really cool way, they both borrow enough but manage to create their own identity as well. The only thing that does not really work out is the story in my opinion, it's not outright awful and it's not unbearable but you don't really want to expect much of a plot in the game (Not to confuse character moments with plot, as the cast was able to shine in really cool ways and I actually really liked that part of the game). Overall with my connection with Persona 5 Royal being my favorite game of all time and me just loving the characters, there was really no way I could dislike this game. I absolutely enjoyed every second of it and I think I would give the game a 9.5/10. However that's just looking at it with my rose-tinted glasses of my bias with P5R, objectively speaking I'd say this game is deserving of an 8/10. Highly recommended if you enjoyed P5 or P5R, you can't go wrong with a new journey with the phantom thieves. I'm honestly just happy this game exists! And if you made it this far then either thank you for scrolling down here, or maybe if for some reason you actually read this whole thing, thank you for that too!