I remember when Nintendo showed Persona 5 Strikers gameplay during one of its Directs. I was absolutely mesmerized by the flashiness of the colors and how cool everyone looked and how slick everything felt. I immediately thought to myself “I need to play this.”, the only thing was, I had never played Persona 5 let alone any game from the Persona series at that point. Thanks to PlayStation Plus, however, I was able to play vanilla Persona 5. I put nearly 20 hours into it and loved it so much, I decided to purchase the Royal edition and I wrapped my roughly 150 hour run on February 22, 2021—the day before Strikers released here in the West on February 23 on my birthday.
If I’m being completely honest, I wasn’t sure a Dynasty Warriors-like spinoff was going to work, not as a sequel anyway. I mean, Persona 5 is very JRPG and I was so used to the turn based battle system that anything but that seemed like it wouldn’t work, but man was I wrong! The care and attention that went into this game reminds me of the care and attention that went into Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. You can tell in both titles developer Omega Force respected the source material and they really went out of their way to ensure both delivered authentic feeling experiences fans deserved. Nothing against it, but the Dynasty Warriors series never grabbed me. Sure, it’s flashy and the battles look grand, but they never seemed to have the story element I craved. The narrative substance. That changed, of course, with Age of Calamity and it’s even doubly so here with Persona 5 Strikers.
Strikers literally takes place directly after the ending of Persona 5 with the gang coming together for the summer itching for a road trip adventure together. I have to be honest here and state that a long ass road trip with my best friends is something I wish I would have done in real life now, but I’m getting old, so that’s probably out the window. Instead, I live my adventures vicariously through Joker and the gang similar to how I did with Noctis and his bro squad. Anyway, back to Strikers.
Coming fresh off of nearly 150 hours in Persona 5 Royal the night before, Strikers felt like a breath of fresh air in a few respects. First off, Strikers has a much more condensed story at around one third of the running time of its big brother. Thankfully the story is well told and well paced without feeling rushed or drawn out. There’s far less padding since Strikers lacks the Metaverse from Persona 5 and that’s a good thing. I’m thankful that I can sink my teeth into a RPG that tells a solid story with beloved characters without it taking months to see to the end. Another major characteristic of the sequel that jumped out to me was how well the real-time action RPG mechanics felt and how they freshened up the gameplay. If I had to pick the traditional JRPG turn-based style or the more modernized Action RPG battle mechanics, I couldn’t because I love and appreciate them both. In keeping up with the original, Strikers has an elemental system between enemies and the persona you collect or fuse. Speaking of fusing persona, the method for this is greatly simplified this time around which isn’t a bad thing and keeps on trend with streamlining the game’s systems.
Another area Atlus has slimmed down significantly is the passing of time. If you don’t know, in Persona 5 time passed one day at a time with morning, afternoon, evening, and night each day. Every day you had to thoughtfully plan out to build up relationships with your Confidants (party members) by hanging out with them. Doing this unlocked new abilities that helped with future enemies and dungeons. There’s a similar sort of system in Strikers but it’s much dumbed down. The passing of time is now much more linear without the need to forge bonds and worry about whose abilities you want to unlock over the other. Instead, you have a unified bond meter shared among your entire party that grows as you win battles and progress through the story.
What hasn’t changed is the colorful pop of the art style, the killer soundtrack, and the characters themselves. I’ve grown to love Joker and the gang and the addition of newcomers Sophie and Zenkichi feel natural and now I don’t want to have a Persona 5 game without them. As for the combat it feels good. It’s fast, responsive, satisfying, and manages to feel very Persona 5 despite being something completely different. You still can’t button mash your way through. It’s an alternative way to play that feels more Persona 5 than it does Dynasty Warriors. Everything comes together in what is not only one of the most solid sequels I’ve ever played, but what is also one of my favorite games of 2021 ever. Hell, it may be up there with top ten of all time for me. Oh, and it really really pops on Switch OLED.
