Though you do have to dodge attacks and look for openings like any action game, the added layer of strategy Personas bring to the table will make any Persona player feel at home.īattles are accompanied by a phenomenal pop-jazz soundtrack. In addition to each party members’ specific strengths, master arts, unique skills that are unlockable the more each character is utilized, motivates the player to experiment with every Phantom Thief. Need to heal the party? Morgana’s your guy (I mean cat.) Joker, being the wild card (pun intended), can store up to 10 personas and swap freely between them. Want to tack on some serious physical damage? Bring in Ryuji or Yusuke. Every Thief has different strengths and fighting styles, so different characters will be needed in varying scenarios. The key to success is saving Personas for critical junctures so as not to deplete the Thieves’ SP, the currency for Personas’ abilities. The Thieves use their knives, swords, and guns for their genre standard weak and strong attacks, but what makes Strikers stand out are Personas.īy holding down R, each character can stop time and access their Persona, all of which are equipped with moves that can strike an opponent’s weak point, heal, buff stats, or a plethora of other abilities. Unlike Persona 5’ s turn-based combat, Strikers hurls the player into action-based horde battles. ![]() Combat is triggered when a Thief gets caught by, or ambushes a roaming shadow. Within the cognitive jails, the player has the option of controlling any one of the Thieves to openly roam large areas littered with enemies and items. Strikers sees the Phantom Thieves exploring various Japanese cities – eating copious amounts of food by day, and stealthily exploring the metaverse and mowing down hordes of enemies by night. And while I love all the Phantom Thieves, Haru still feels like an afterthought. Iwai, Mishima, and Igor, a series staple, are disappointingly unaccounted for. While Sophia and Zenkichi are fantastic additions, familiar supporting characters from Persona 5 are absent. Zenkichi is also a welcome fresh face – a cop tasked with cracking the case of the stolen desires that leads him to striking a deal with the Phantom Thieves. And while she is frigid and robotic at first, her discoveries and growth make her equally hilarious and lovable. Sophia, a computer AI turned Phantom Thief, is constantly grappling with what it means to be human. While Morgana, Ryuji, and all the other favorite Thieves return from Persona 5, new inclusions to the cast fit right in. Against the backdrop of high schoolers goofing around on summer vacation, the Phantom Thieves fight against fleshed out and sympathetic villains that have them questioning their sense of justice and what is right and wrong. Though Strikers’s plot may feel juvenile preliminarily, it quickly morphs into something profound and deep. ![]() ![]() The thieves are tasked with taking back humanity’s stolen desires from a series of monarchs residing in cognitive jails (for example, a teen idol stealing her fans’ cognition so they blindly worship her). It is fitting Persona 5 Strikers takes the original concept of its predecessor and sends Joker and the gang on a cross-country tour of Japan six months after Persona 5’s conclusion. But following the 2011 earthquakes that devastated Japan, developer Atlus shifted the game’s focus to the country and its culture. Persona 5 was originally intended to be a worldwide road trip for Joker and Phantom Thieves. Persona 5 Strikers takes the stellar mechanics of Persona 5 and seamlessly weaves them into a title that is unique, enthralling, and a worthy successor to one of the greatest RPG’s of a generation. But about an hour into Strikers, I realized the game wasn’t the typical Koei Tecmo musou experience – it was an action RPG and a brilliant one at that. Having recently loved Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, my expectations for Persona 5 Strikers, the direct sequel to Persona 5, were through the roof. But they also take multiple long running franchises of other genres, such as Fire Emblem and The Legend of Zelda, and transplant them into their musou play style. Koei Tecmo is known for the creation of the Dynasty Warriors series, and chaotic one versus one hundred hack and slash battles.
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