Without the passing of days to worry about, they’re also much more forgiving for when you need to make a quick escape to the real world for a breather.Īnd you’ll need to do just that if you’ve any hope of succeeding in Strikers’ first big battles.
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It’s actually a fair bit more involved than I was expecting from an Omega Force game, trading their typically-simple, planar maps for winding paths, a heap of verticality and tons of secrets to uncover. Of course, with new gameplay rules comes new level design and, at least in the Shibuya Jail, that boils down to wider spaces with more freedom of movement and interaction. Like Persona 5’s Palaces, Jails form the game’s dungeon-like gameplay component, tasking the Phantom Thieves with exploring and completing a set of objectives before taking down the “Shadow” version of the Jail’s owner. Most importantly, as far as I can clean from the first five-ish hours, Strikers rides that same 50/50 split between dialogue heavy narrative in the real would and action-packed exploration and combat in the Metaverse’s dungeons, or Jails as they’re called here. The Dynasty Warriors comparisons pretty much begin and end with combat, which is predominantly real-time, third person hack and slash fare against huge groups of enemies.Įven then, a deft transplant of key Persona 5 combat mechanics like Persona skills, follow-up attacks, baton passes and All-Out Attacks adds a deep layer of strategy to proceedings. Going in fairly blind I was shocked at how much it doesn’t feel like an Omega Force musou-style game. From the stylish and dynamic menus and UI elements, to the calendar-day structure of its narrative and Persona-fusing RPG elements it’d be hard not to mistake it for the same game at a glance. If you are jumping into Strikers as a Persona 5 fan, you’ll no doubt appreciate how much this spin-off feels just like the main game in a multitude of ways. A passing knowledge of the events of that game feels almost necessary to enjoy Strikers’ narrative and character interactions, never mind that it’s one of the last generation’s best JRPGs. If you’ve not played Persona 5 in any form and this is all sounding like nonsense, I implore you to start there first. Why this otherwise normal-seeming app is able to access the Metaverse in the same fashion as the far-shadier and more exclusive Navigator app from the first game forms Strikers’ core narrative mystery, as well as who or what is targeting the people whose Jails are being created. The Shibuya portion of the game that I can talk about follows the Thieves as they investigate an ultra-famous idol and fashion designer named Alice, whose surge in popularity reveals itself to be the result of kidnapping Shibuya denizens’ Shadows in the Metaverse through the use of the EMMA app. Add to that a popular new virtual assistant app named EMMA that can seemingly access the Metaverse and it’s like things never changed. Set six months after the end of (the original version of) Persona 5, Strikers sees the Phantom Thieves get back together for a much-needed holiday reunion over the summer break, only to almost immediately find themselves back in action when they’re framed for a mysterious new spate of citizens suffering cognitive breaks.
![persona 5 strikers playable characters persona 5 strikers playable characters](https://theclick.gg/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Persona-5-Strikers-Skull.jpg)
![persona 5 strikers playable characters persona 5 strikers playable characters](https://atlus.com/p5s/img/characters/joker.png)
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This roughly five hour dose of the game afforded me the chance to check out a healthy chunk of the story and a full dungeon, spending plenty of time tinkering with its RPG elements and trying out all of its playable characters. Thanks to Atlus and Five Star Games I’ve been lucky enough to get an early look at the English release of Persona 5 Strikers (Known in Japan as Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers) to preview the first major chapter of the game, set in the familiar district of Shibuya. If there’s one thing about Strikers that’s clear from the get-go, it’s that this collaboration between Persona developer P-Studio and Omega Force ( Dynasty Warriors) has resulted in something that feels distinctly like Persona 5, despite occupying a different genre. As someone who’s sunk north of 300 hours into both the vanilla Persona 5 as well as Persona 5 Royal, there’s a lot of value in once again joining the Phantom Thieves on another Metaverse-hopping quest. Playing Persona 5 Strikers feels a little bit like coming home.