VideoGame An amazing if short first Persona experience
Like many others, my first introduction to the Persona series was Joker's addition to Smash. I watched a let's play out of curiosity and the rest was history. This game was the first one in the series that I have played and I was not disappointed.
The characters are full of personality like they were in the last game, but the lighter tone makes their interactions stick out all the more. Special mention goes to Zenkichi. Tom Taylorson did a great job making this seemingly-shady guy one of my favorites.
The combat took me a while to get used to, but about halfway through the second dungeon I had the hang of it. It takes some situational awareness to keep an eye on the mobs of enemies around you as well as to dodge attacks.
The two main currencies, Bond points and money, are both simple enough to earn. Grinding allows the player to earn both and experience too.
The only other negative thing I have to say about it is that is was shorter than I hoped. After seeing 100+ hour playthroughs of the base game beating this in about 50 felt like I was being a little shortchanged.
Overall, I would definitely recommend this to any new fan. 9/10
(edited to be more thorough)
VideoGame One of the better Persona spinoffs
Persona spinoffs often branch off into radically different genres of gameplay while having very similar stories to their parent games. Persona 5 Strikers is no exception, but it does a surprisingly good job of expanding on the plot of Persona 5 while offering gameplay that's different while being recognizable to the original.
The plot takes place in the summer after P5, with the Phantom Thieves' vacation together interrupted by them having to investigate the rise of "Jails" across Japan, lest they be blamed for the incidents and arrested.
The plot has many similar story beats to P5, and it can be easy to predict what's going to happen next. However, while many characters are similar to others from P5 or other installments, they often contrast with their counterparts in many ways. For example, the Jail Monarchs are more sympathetic than most of the Palace Rulers in P5, and the Phantom Thieves often want the former to earn redemption.
Zenkichi, a new ally to the Phantom Thieves, seems similar to Dojima in some ways (e.g. a detective who has strained relationship with his daughter), but he makes an effective addition to the group as a Token Adult. He has a good chemistry with the others(who treat him with a lot less respect than the Investigation Team showed Dojima) and a number of comedic and serious aspects to his character. Sophia was also fairly interesting, even if she was Out of Focus for much of the game apart from the endgame.
The returning Phantom Thieves are used fairly well, having undergone Character Development from the end of their Confidants, and each of them plays a significant role in the story. Unfortunately, fans of "Sumi" from Royal may be disappointed, as she is not even mentioned in Strikers. The same goes for Akechi, but he has good reasons for not being here.
The gameplay is a Warriors-style hack and slash, in which you fight hordes of Shadows, but also has some Persona/SMT RPG elements. For example, hitting an enemy's weakness not only does more damage, but knocks them down and grants you a chance for a "1 More"- a hard-hitting attack in this case- and you can use All-Out Attacks to devastate downed enemies. While I'm not terribly good at Warriors-style games, and mainly defaulted to button mashing when I wasn't hitting enemy weaknesses, Strikers effectively uses Persona elements to stay true to its roots and establish its own identity among Warriors-style games.
The level design is somewhat lackluster, and can be a bit repetitive. For many of the Palaces, you're required to hunt down three towers to open the way to where the Monarch is, but unlike many games with multiple objectives, you have to do the three towers in order, resulting in the levels being unnecessarily linear.
All in all, Strikers is one of my favorite Persona spinoffs apart from the Q duology, and probably the one that does the best job of following up on the parent game's story.