I was a little bit worried going into Persona 5 Strikers. While I love the world and story of Persona 5, I also never really got attached to Musou style games. Now to be clear, my only two experiences with MusouS are Hyrule Warriors and Fire Emblem Warriors, I’ve never played an actual Dynasty Warriors game, so I don’t entirely know if I’m just missing something. It just never hooked me like other action heavy games did. While I had this apprehension going into the game, I came out of it pleasantly surprised by it, and actually had a lot of fun with it! Though that being said, I do think there are things holding it back, which is rather unfortunate.
I think the big reason Strikers was able to keep me engaged more than the games I listed prior is the general structure to combat. While it has Musou-style combat, it makes the combat short little bursts while exploring an area, instead of making the entire area one huge arena. That way there are a lot of points of rest, not constantly doing combat all of the time. You can take time to explore each jail, or do some platforming, or even just general stealth. Those moments of rest, where you’re not in combat, just kept me from being burnt out by the combat. It also incorporates so many of Persona 5’s base mechanics really well. 1-Mores, All Out Attacks, even ambushes all appear and make the game feel more involved, which I think is what kept me so engaged. With how much Strikers deviates, if it wasn’t for the fact that the start of the game shows the Koei Tecmo Logo, I likely wouldn’t have realized this was a Musou.
That being said I do think there are some slight negatives to the actual gameplay, though they don’t really amount to much. The bigger of the two is that I think characters outside of the main party gain too little XP. I definitely understand and agree with them getting less; however, they receive noticeably less, that they can already be a noticeable way underleveled immediately at the end of a single jail. By the end of the game, while my main party was about level 60, the characters I neglected were all the way down at 40. I also just think the game is really easy around the end of the game. Exploiting enemy weaknesses, especially with more powerful spells, staggers them so easily that they have little time to actually attack you. There are certain encounters that are definitely difficult, but after the 5th jail, the game was an absolute cakewalk.
Though, I think the story of Strikers is where it’s most interesting. It’s really interesting as the game was being made around the same time as Royal’s release but is also primarily a sequel to base Persona 5. The fact that there is a sort of sequel to Persona 5 at all is really interesting, especially seeing that it’s a spin-off title. I really like how the story is done, this sort of road trip across all of Japan, finding Jails and beating their monarchs, while unraveling this whole mystery along the way. It’s just a sort of fun vibe overall, especially seeing that it’s also a Summer Break storyline. The vibes are very lighthearted, and it’s just really fun to see the Phantom Thieves interact and have fun as a friend group, while also doing Phantom Thief work as well.
One of the major aspects of Strikers is the two new major characters, Sophia and Zenkichi, and they’re both really good characters. I got attached to them almost immediately once I met them, and the actual character arcs they have through the game are spectacular to boot. Though we’ll likely never see them again, they really meshed well with the original Phantom Thieves cast. That being said, aside from those two characters, a majority of the remaining new characters are really weak. To begin, it’s very obvious who is a villain in the story, and it never really tries to hide the fact. While that would be fine, the characters also have very little time to go through their entire backstory, and motivation for why they’re Monarchs in the first place. I’d wager that most characters have only about an hour of spotlight on those specific aspects. That leads to the villains not sticking as well, which is unfortunate because I think they could be really engaging if they were given the proper time to shine. I also really like the whole system of Jails and Monarchs. Instead of Palaces and Rulers where the Ruler is someone who is typically just an evil person, Monarchs are more tragic figures, who resorted to making the choices they did, instead of willingly doing so. That’s why I think most of the monarchs could’ve been really interesting if they had more time to actually develop as characters, as the system of Jails and Monarchs are really interesting in how similar but divergent they are from Palaces and Rulers.
But saying that, I think there is this sort of… paradoxical issue that Strikers has. It’s a game that repeats a lot of elements and themes from Persona 5, and while it can be really repetitive at times, it’s also purposefully so. There are very clear parallels with each Monarch to a specific Ruler or story element to Persona 5, and it can often lead to this feeling of retreading old ground. Especially when getting to the final few Jails of Strikers, it begins to feel very much like it’s repeating beat-for-beat the elements of Persona 5’s storyline. But that’s where the sort of paradox comes into play. While I still think it can be a bit too repetitive at times, it also acknowledges when its repeating things from Persona 5, and I do think the repetition is connected to the themes of Strikers in a way. It’s far from the worst game to have this sort of repetition, but I do wish that some of the monarchs especially were able to stand on their own two feet, instead of being a parallel to a ruler from Persona 5. I think the conclusion is worth it, but at the same time, it still does feel too repetitive at times. I think specifically back to jail 2.
Even then, I ended up enjoying Persona 5 Strikers a lot more than I was expecting to. It was great to see the Phantom Thieves again months after I finished Persona 5, and the road trip story was really fun. Combat was super fun, and exploring each jail was really fun. The story definitely had its highs and lows, but the two major characters were really refreshing, and the actual dynamics with the Phantom Thieves are a sight to see. As someone who loves the main cast of Persona 5, I’m really happy with having played this game in full, though I don’t know how many would share my feelings.
