Although I’m not a fan of Musou “Dynasty warriors-style” games that I’ve had a blast playing individual 5 when I played it and was interested in the direct sequel Persona 5 Striker. I wanted to see what comes next for the characters I know and how they return to the metaverse that was meant to be non-existent by the end of the original RPG. Honestly, the way Omega Force translated turn-based combat into hack-and-slash works perfectly, as does the enemy “shadows”.
The history of Persona 5 Striker sees the gang on a road trip across Japan to find out how people let celebrities change their hearts and how surrogate Alexa “EMMA” fits in. Stranger is new addition to the team Sophie, a digital being who has a body in the metaverse but lives in the real world in the main character Joker’s phone. Where is she from and how does she relate to the “prisons” of the metaverse that she keeps finding?
In the original game, the Phantom Thieves had to put a stop to the Metaverse Palaces, which were ruled by good-for-nothings in Tokyo. They were largely ruled by those in positions of power whose corrupted desires distorted their inner “shadow” selves and created the palace to house them. Once the Phantom Thieves stole a desire in the form of treasure, the ruler’s personality changed and he asked for forgiveness and took responsibility for his crimes. A change of heart, courtesy of Phantom Thieves of Hearts.
prisons clean Persona 5 Striker, on the other hand, are used by their rulers to change the hearts of others. While palaces could only be visited thanks to a mysterious phone app called Metaverse Navigator, prisons are found through the EMMA app used by many people across Japan.
As I mentioned before, the game is one of those “run around in third-person perspective fighting dozens of enemies” types that I’m generally not a fan of. However, I did find the gameplay looping satisfying here as the battles are self-contained. You don’t engage in constant combat from one end of the map to the next, you can sneak around and ambush enemies to gain an advantage. Of course, if you are spotted before falling on them, this increases the vigilance of the prison, and when that reaches 100% vigilance it is game over, just like in the palaces of individual 5. You can use items to lower the alert level or simply defeat enemies without being detected again.
Outside of the metaverse, you can control Jokers and check out real-world locations to learn more about them. Or rather, learn about the types of foods that are famous in the region, because these kids talk about food almost as much as they eat it! Still, the characters are great to interact with as they just relax between visits to the Metaverse. You can even cook for them, which has the added benefit of giving you useful healing items.
Something I didn’t realize until fairly late in the game was that each shop has a limited amount of each item for sale. However, if you go in and out of the local jail, the stores will replenish. Persona 5 Striker suggests you leave jail to rest, restore health, etc., but you don’t have to, and for the most part I didn’t. I would burn items to restore health, or just swap party members and strive to complete each prison in as few visits as possible.
There are requests that you can receive and accept, e.g. B. Defeating a specific enemy type with a specific character or move. These can get you unique items, but to be honest I mostly ignored them. I had completed the prison, I didn’t want to go back to a place I had already completed just to find 10 specific shadow types… To be fair I put a lot of effort into making a few of these because some give dialogue options Give you social points that you can use to get upgrades. Status increases, passive abilities, stuff like that. Well, some of these require you to submit requests before you can level up, and while I’ve now forgotten which ones I wanted, I really had to.
The only thing that didn’t make it individual 5 is the time management aspect of the game. I think that might be why I felt like I had to lock prisons without leaving them because I kept the metaverse in individual 5 meant the next day would come sooner and I would have less time to do things like try to romance Makoto. She’s the best girl, I’m not taking any questions at this time.
Although I can’t honestly say I was surprised by the twists Persona 5 Striker‘ Story, I enjoyed it very much. The gameplay was also decent and not too difficult, with higher difficulties for those who are better at it than me. Being able to “pause” the action while choosing a spell and swapping out characters at will were welcome changes to the kind of Musou I’m familiar with. The newly introduced characters are fun in their own way, and there are even cameos from well-known characters. Honestly, I would love to see another direct sequel, either as a turn-based RPG, as a Musou, or even in another completely different genre!