I want to believe Persona 5 is well-known commercially.
As JRPG as they come, from a franchise as controversial, Persona 5 has this air of COOL appeal. The art style and music sent it rippling across gaming communities, as more and more people picked it up.
This is why it’s now Atlus’s most successful Persona title.
It’s also why it already has the amended version, Persona 5 Royal, the rhythm title Persona 5: Dancing In Starlight, the animated series, a dungeon crawler and now Persona 5 Strikers.
If Strikers reminds you of Dynasty Warriors, that’s for good reason. Both Persona and Dynasty Warriors are owned by Koei Tecmo. So this just came about as a nice “why not” thing. And for such a thing, it is very nice indeed. It changes up the style of Persona 5 to be this thing you’ve played before, but now you’re playing it other ways.
The other ways is a lot of mash, mash, mash and I love it.
I’m sure there’s a certain depth and skill to the game, but for the most part I’ve been playing it just like Dynasty Warriors; By hitting all the buttons to make things happen. Square is attack, while triangle does a combination of heavy and projectile depending on character and combo. Circle is phantom dash/interact (because evade/dash is on R2) and X is jump cause Arsène has wings baby! R1 can summon your Persona, cause they’re back, and L1 allows you to aim.
Complex? Not really. Especially if you’ve already played Persona 5.
If anything, it feels slightly more freeing. While the turn-based nature of the original game fits the JRPG genre, it suitably fits directly into this sort of Action-Adventure brawler-platformer (yes, all of those I think). Building directly off the end of Persona 5, and reuniting the Phantom Thieves after the events of it; We meet new characters, collect and level personas once again and explore Tokyo in slightly limited ways. While it lacks the scope of interaction compared to the original, it brings it back in enough ways to have the game float between being something new, yet recognizable as Persona 5.
If you love Persona 5, and want more, then Strikers will hit the spot.
Much like it’s predecessor, every time I boot up the game, I get a pang of excitement to be back in the world. Thanks to the PS5, loading times are brief, allowing me to slide between scenes far quicker than my time on the PS4. The graphics are still as stunning as ever, and yes, while playing the Dubbed version of the game, it’s still performed just as well (I LIKE THEM!). Conversation and social links aren’t as heavy as the former, but are there for the moments you want to go “Hey, I want to play Persona 5 and not Strikers“. This means that character builds do play a part, stores do have daily bargains, and dialog can have a tree of options to choose from. It somehow covers off what you want, and what you’ll expect from Persona.
