I never saw it coming.
Spin-off’s often tend to serve multiple audiences; those who want to see the property flourish as something entirely new, and/or those who hope it leans more towards something they couldn’t get from the source material. Often, spin-off’s tend to go in entirely new directions, usually starring characters that didn’t get their due, but Persona 5 Strikers takes the beloved main cast of Persona 5, but not that of the additions found in Royal, and places them within the genre confines of a Musou experience. Now, that said, Persona 5 Strikers is very light on the Musou trappings, opting instead to keep the action more confined, more personal, dressed up in the plot of a sequel to Persona 5 proper.
When it was announced that a Persona 5 project was coming to Switch, many were curious just exactly what that meant. When it was finally revealed that it was Persona 5 Scramble, re-titled to Strikers in this neck of the woods, fans of the series were curious just what exactly this game would offer. While it’s a bit odd that Persona 5 Strikers has hit the Switch without allowing its user base to first experience Persona 5 on the platform, the game is a direct sequel regardless, taking place only months after the events of the main game. While my own experience with Persona 5 is minimal (6-8 hours in before I got too busy to go back to it), I still found myself captivated by the characters, the cultural touchstones, and the heart and soul of the story. In fact, Persona 5 Strikers is so incredibly memorable that I immediately purchased Persona 5 Royal after wrapping credits, finally ready to dive back in and see just how this all started and ended as well.
Persona 5 Strikers does a decent enough job at getting you up to speed on the lives of its characters and dancing lightly around the events taking place just months prior. My only issue is that learning the names and codenames of these characters can be a bit overwhelming for newcomers, especially since none of the menus aid in identifying who is Noir, Queen, Panther, or whoever. In Persona 5, you met these characters largely piecemeal, but in Strikers, it’s designed in such a way where you’re already meant to know who everyone in the group is. You’ll learn them fast enough as characters interact with one another, but I wish the game did a better job at conveying this a bit more clearly to its new players.
Now, I touched upon it lightly at the start, but Pesona 5 Strikers is not the same type of Musou experience we’ve seen before. This isn’t Hyrule Warriors or Fire Emblem Warriors in a Persona skin, this is a full-on action RPG that blends the Persona 5 charm and style into a real-time combat experience that does away with the hundreds of enemies on screen in favor of more personal instanced battles that contain maybe twenty enemies at a time. In fact, swap out the battle systems between the two games and you pretty much have the only significant difference between Strikers and Persona 5 proper from a gameplay perspective. If this game was simply shown off as being a sequel to Persona 5 without knowing it was an Omega Force developed Musou game, you likely wouldn’t even be able to tell it wasn’t directly made by the Persona team themselves, even though they did greatly assist in development here. Omega Force has often shown to be far more creative when they are working on a licensed property, and it shows in spades here.
After recently coming off from some 80+ hours of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, I’m glad to see this game is something else entirely. You don’t have levels that have you sprinting back and forth from various encampments, and you are not shown blinking crucial objectives in each corner of the map. In fact, there is not really much here that I would identify as a Musou game, which is rather surprising and yet incredibly welcomed. Sure, you’ll still run around the map, but backtracking isn’t something that defines this experience like the games before it. If anything, this game feels like Persona 5 in all the ways you’d want it to feel and yet incredibly different at the same time.
Back when Persona 5 was in early development, it originally was going to be a globe-trotting adventure with Joker and the Phantom Thieves. But, due to the earthquakes that hit Japan a decade ago, the game was then structured to pay respect to the country itself instead. Strikers runs with this original idea, placing the group in an RV as they travel around to various cities around Japan. While it’s not long before the Thieves are mysteriously back in action, sporting their codenames and stylish garb, they soon discover that not everything is what it was, with numerous changes to how the metaverse is acting this time around. This change allows the characters to learn about what is going on alongside the player as they continue to point out these differences as well. In Persona 5, the metaverse was accessed by using an app called the Metaverse Navigator, and while an app is used to a similar effect here, its appearance is something that sparks a great deal of the game’s mystery.
The biggest difference in how the metaverse is acting up is that instead of Palaces, we have Jails, which are locations in the metaverse that are slightly twisted versions of the cities they take place in and are run by a Monarch. While the Jails maintain some design and gameplay ideas from Palaces, they are explored and completed with slightly different twists. Here, instead of treasures, we have desires, concentrated jewels that represent someone’s true desire. These Monarchs take the desires of the people within those cities, causing the brainwashed populace to then worship them. You’ll still interact in a world that is largely warped by them, learning about each and every Monarch and eventually understanding the trauma that has made them so easily manipulated.
The game opens with a damn near-perfect Monarch to set the stage; Alice. Since Alice in Wonderland is a story about diving into a deeply disturbing world, it sets the tone and fundamental understanding of what the player is going to expect going forward. As the group starts to understand what causes Alice to become a Monarch, Ann herself starts to see a kinship with what she has gone through. This sense of understanding their trauma is constant through many of the Monarchs, with a member of the group being that focal point of identifying what trauma has affected that particular Monarch. It’s a great way to develop their villains as you learn even more about the main cast in the process, person by person. It’s also how the group discovers just exactly what the jails are, and what the role of the Monarch serves.
Now, what kickstarts off much of the story as well as why the Phantom Thieves are back and tasked with stopping these Monarch’s is simple yet wildly complex. To allow this story to work as is, the game introduces two important characters that will be alongside your journey in a few different ways. As you explore the game’s first location. Shibuya’s Jail, you’ll meet Sophia, an AI that joins the Phantom Thieves in their quest to shut down the jails. Sophia is mysterious and even she is unaware of just who she is and what her connection is to what is going on. Sophia acts as a navigational AI and item shop to the team, as well as joining them in battle while in the metaverse. Sophia is charming, intentionally clueless to the world of humans, but has this childlike excitement to discovery. Her arc is incredibly heartfelt, and even some 40 hours in, you’re still being surprised at just how instrumental she is to the story and the layers of depth she continues to work through.
The second character is Zenkichi, a pub-sec agent who tracks down the Phantom Thieves, blackmailing them to assist in solving this case of people’s hearts being changed, something he knows that they had a hand in via their previous adventure. While he doesn’t quite understand how they went about it, he still looks to rely on them to investigate how these Monarchs are causing all these changes of hearts across Japan. Zenkichi begins his relationship with the group as a means to an end, but once certain secrets are revealed to him, he becomes even more convinced that there is something much bigger and larger at play here. At first, he is a character that the team isn’t sure they can trust, but the way they develop his relationship with them, and his arc involving himself and his daughter, is it here where he becomes a vastly important character, assisting the team even further in the case in a way that he never knew was possible.
One of the biggest aspects of the plot is EMMA, an AI that has seemingly taken over Japan. This app is also the connection to the Monarchs as well as the focal point of entering the metaverse. Each Monarch exists in the real world and uses EMMA to attract loyal fans by stealing their desires and turning them into fanatical worshipers, as they will do anything they can to gain the attention of them. From becoming a fashion sensation, or best-selling author, these characters use EMMA to their own needs, fueling their Jails with even more desires. What is EMMA? what is its true purpose? Well, that is essentially the spine of the story, a mystery that while can become a bit predictable at times is still a captivating take on exploring new avenues of the metaverse.
As you stop in each city, sampling the local foods and culture, you’ll explore jails with various new enemies, all ready to succumb to your flashy moves and Persona attacks. Unlike Persona 5’s turn-based combat, Strikers is a fast-paced real-time affair, with lightning-quick attacks, but also the ability to stop time to pick that perfect Persona skill as you methodically survey the battlefield. As you configure your group of four out of the 9 playable characters; as Futaba is only here as your eyes and ears, you can freely swap to them by passing the baton, a high five in the heat of battle. You’ll want to constantly do this, as you can customize certain move sets with each Persona, tailoring them to your needs. Now, for the unaware, Persona’s are physical manifestations of a person's psyche and subconscious used for combat. They are beings of immense power that each character can call upon during battle to unleash hell. Now, as was the case in Persona 5, Joker can summon multiple Persona’s. Since he also the main character, he is the only one of the group that must remain in the party. You’ll also want to swap your group out at various times to level them up, making sure they don’t fall behind.
Each Persona has a type-set of moves that can be used to effectively damage enemies to the point of breaking them. You’ll want to almost savor their use; however; as each attack will pull from your stamina points (SP), or from your health (HP). These skills can either attack enemies, heal your party, or enhance your squad with a series of well-timed buffs. You’ll have various items and food-stuffs to aid in refilling those meters, but your ability to hack and slash on the battlefield is boosted with various quick attacks, special attacks, and countless critical strikes. As you brutalize enemies, you’ll be able to get in a rapid series of attacks when a prompt to do is up, causing every character to band up for a huge special attack, prefaced by a quick beating in the process. Each character also ends this attack in a clever little goof, from snapping their finger, tipping their hat, or dabbing.
As you use a character enough, you’ll unlock more abilities and stat bonuses for each of the cast. giving you a huge incentive to get the most of them. You’ll also unlock Bonding Points, which are used to unlock a series of upgrades like stat increases, new skills, better item drops, and more. It’s a far cry from the confidant system found in Persona 5 but does a well enough job here to convey some very cool upgrades, especially since earning Bonding Points is remarkably easy. Joker can also visit the Velvet Room, a prison of sorts where he can tinker with earning more Persona’s as well as upgrading the lot he has. It’s a very detailed system that allows for a lot of freedom of what Joker can bring with him. While a minor gripe, I will say that I wished this system was a bit more fleshed out from a design point of view, as several facets of it; registering, for example, are not well enough explained to newcomers.
Each character, as well as Joker, will also have a series of personal quests to tackle, usually resulting in having better items at the shop, or a shiny new weapon. These range from simple kill quests, or long-distance stealth missions where you cannot get spotted on your way to your goal. Now, while the point of those quests is to not be spotted, this only means if the enemy has detected your presence before you’ve initiated an attack. While you can stealth around enemies anywhere in the game, getting in a cheeky hit here allows these missions to be completed far easier. However; some of these stealth missions end via areas that have searchlights, which can pretty much die in a fire as far as I am concerned, that and the needlessly long trek back to exit that Jail.
Unlike Persona 5, the day won’t end unless you push the story forward. This means you can grind away all you like, completing side quests at your own pace, exploring the city, earning money, buying food, or talking with your teammates. There isn’t an endless supply of events to tackle, but you can use that time to grind away currency and Persona’s to head into the Velvet Room and increase your team’s power and effectiveness. One of the biggest issues I had with my time with Persona 5 was the restrictive activities you had access to in a single day, so I am glad that Strikers has done away with that to a huge extent. Considering this is meant to be a most faster-paced action title, it makes sense that you don’t have the same gameplay restrictions.
From cutscenes to even the most basic conversation, much of the game is voiced by the original cast, even if it’s clear some of this dialogue has been recorded from their homes. While that isn’t terribly noticeable, the audio leveling between some voices and the music can see a few moments in the game where dialogue is hard to make out over the positively stunning soundtrack. The voice acting across all characters is top-notch, apart from some of the villains who feel sort of phoned in later on. One of the new characters, Zenkichi Hasegawa, however; is a standout role here, and while I initially thought he was voiced by Nolan North, it’s actually Tom Taylorson, who voiced Scott Ryder in Mass Effect: Andromeda. His performance here is so similar to Nolan North, that he even gets some of Nolan’s quirks the same. In fact, upon researching the actor, I found that several review outlets actually credits North in the role.
Now, since I had my choice of buying Persona 5 Strikers on the platform of my choosing, as no I did not play this via a review copy, I still chose to play it on the Switch due to its portability. Nearly 80% of my time with the game was handheld, and while the game often looks fantastic on the Switch, while draining the battery extremely quickly, it does have a few caveats to that “fantastic”. Based on the ol’ reliable internet, Strikers looks incredible on the PS4, opting for much higher resolution and framerate than what we get on the Switch. If you’re content with playing this solely on the tv, I’d certainly recommend getting that version as the Switch struggles with the game in a few key areas. When docked, the game runs at 1080p but doesn’t always remain there. Portable, Strikers hits around 720p, but the visuals lose a lot of their crispness, causing a great deal of aliasing to really stand out, especially during scenes with the group altogether. The draw distance and shadows take a huge hit on the Switch as well, but these are only extremely noticeable if you’re seeing the two versions side by side. While I never suffered large bouts of slow-down, I did have a handful of times where you can notice the game struggling on the hybrid console.
Hacking and slashing to the fantastic soundtrack, featuring a few new songs playing alongside Persona 5’s best, Strikers is an absolutely amazing time that honors Persona 5 both visually, audibly, and incorporating so many gameplay ideas while striving to be its own thing. It was hard to imagine that Strikers was going to live up to the enormously positive reception Persona 5 achieved, especially being as it is a sequel to the game, but Omega Force and Atlus have possibly created one of the best spin-offs that gaming has ever seen. Persona 5 was loud, colorful, charming, and full of heart, and Strikers nails everything that game looked to offer, one hack and slash battle at a time. Persona 5 Strikers is absolutely incredible and while it does suffer a bit on the Switch, due to its hardware limitations, I still had an absolute blast visiting with Joker and the rest of the Phantom Thieves.
Developer - Omega Force/P-Studio. Publisher - Atlus. Released - February 23rd, 2021. Available On - Nintendo Switch, PS4/Pro/5, PC. Rated - (M) Blood, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Violence.
Platform Reviewed - Nintendo Switch. Review Access - Persona 5 Strikers was purchased by the reviewer.