I just finished Persona 5 Strikers on the Nintendo Switch, a wonderful little (30 hour) game that is a worthy follow up to the original. But it suffers from a bit of same-old-sequelitis in the shadow of its predecessor. Let's briefly chat about the good, bad, and ugly.
The Good
Well, I get to see Makoto again, so that's always good. Let's be very clear. First off - I did enjoy this game. I think it was a very good one. Was it better than the original - no way are you kidding me. But does it at least deliver what I expected it to - yes and quite well in fact. So many things are still here in the spirit of the original.
All of your friends from vanilla are here (sorry Kasumi), though this time around your time with them is slightly less meaningful. Gone are the confidant levels, so you simply shoot the shit with Ryuji because you want to, not because he's gonna give you something. Gone are working shit jobs for shit pay, now you work no jobs for no pay. Gone is the ability to explicitly romance a partner throughout the game, and gone are the player-character stat-points controlling things like intelligence and guts. There is much less life-sim between dungeons and much less RPG style growth. There is a new cooking mechanic, though that ultimately just serves as a way for you to acquire better healing items now that Strikers removes the ability to visit the doctor in your free time. There are no jail deadlines anymore - as now jails take place over the course of a single in-universe day, regardless of how many times you enter and exit. Think of Strikers as a lighter P5, that doesn't make it bad - but it does make it different. Adjust your expectations accordingly when you go into this game - its a 30 hour not a 150 hour like P5.
Let's touch on the battle system too, as this is the most significant difference from the original P5. The entire elements, strengths, weakness, technicals system is here from P5, along with the showtimes from Royal, and all-out attacks. And Gun, which works as it does it Royal and refills after a fight instead of after a run. These are, in my opinion, very faithful to the original but have now be reformed to fit a real-time action oriented battle system.
Instead of the P5 turn-based system, now you move, dodge, and attack in real time against an enemy who moves and attacks in response. This dramatically shifts how battles are approached. Before, some battles would literally not be possible by the sheer fact that, if you were level 1 fighting a level 10, the enemy would absolutely win because there was nothing you could do to avoid an attack directed at you. In this new system, you now have player agency, and could in theory take on and defeat a boss 100 levels higher than you, just by dodging and whittling down it's health. Interestingly enough, this actually makes random battles less fun, and you are slightly less motivated to fight because you know that any boss no matter how big can be out-dodged. It does however, make battles more exciting, as you now are the single most important variable in deciding whether your party wins or loses the fight. With this new system comes your new greatest enemy though. The Reaper don't got shit on the Camera. The camera spinning around violently or clipping into a wall during a fight will get you hit more than anything any shadow can put out. If you can survive the camera though, the new system is a lot more engaging and involved. Gone are the days of press start to watch the game play itself. Gone are the days of Morgana moves faster than I do and he always goes first and the shadows are weak to wind. Gone are the days of Rivers in the Desert playing to start off the epic "last" boss, before shifting to buff guy Shido just standing there while you pick whether to smack him with a knife or eat a parfait. Now when Rivers starts playing, you know the fight is about to go down. And you'd better - because Rivers is used and re-used in the end game for maybe 3 or 4 or 5 different fights, so I hope you like it.
The Bad
Re-use. So many things are re-used. While character re-use is generally a positive, almost all music is the same, or remixed from P5, which is both cool, and not cool. Even though Last Surprise is super dank - it's also the song for Persona 5, just with some instrumentation changes. Same with Rivers in the Desert, same with Life Will Change or Beneath the Mask. It's cool to hear these songs again, but we've lost out on being able to fall in love with another banging Persona soundtrack because they've instead opted to re-use hit music. Such wasted potential it seems like.
Another big re-use though, is story structure. Strikers follows an almost identical story progression, so much so that the character in game remark about how similar places and events are. While this generally helps tie the story of this game back to the first game, it also brings the focus front and center on just how similar everything is again.
Game starts. Ryuji, Morgana, and HaremFucker69 are thrown into the Metaverse unexpectedly, and then thrown into a prison. First dungeon is Ann's story, second is Yusuke's. A person of "the law" is trying to take you down on the side. You meet someone early on who is in a respectable position in society and you generally like them, and they help you. You go to the beach and have a party. Ryuji makes a boob joke. You and Makoto fall in love. Police person converts to your side. You beat the final boss, politics guy who thinks he is a hero, and then the game says "wha-oh guess what that wasn't the final boss" and then it drops you back into a Mementos dungeon for the real final boss. Nice person betrays you. Guess what, still not the real final boss. Metaverse and real world combine except only your party and the villain are aware. You climb a skyscraper and then get to the real real final final boss boss, and it's second form the superduper final forreal endboss boss. You win. Everyone else forgets, and things go back to normal. Boss makes coffee and curry. Credits roll, but the music is not Hoshi to Bokura to, so you throw your controller at the wall.
Let me be very clear, Strikers is not the masterclass of a game that vanilla was, but its also not trying to be. Strikers' story is passable, and let's be honest you don't really care. If you are in to Strikers, then you are here for more game with the P5 characters you've come to enjoy, but with a new action-orientated battle system. You know just as well as I do that if Strikers was just the Persona 5 characters sitting and talking in Leblanc doing generally nothing for 10 real time days, you'd play it too. You're in too deep with the cult and you can't leave now.
Strikers is a solid follow up to the game you've come to love, but I do not think that on it's own it stands as a strong title. I would certainly not have picked this game up if I had not played 5 first, and the game seems to agree since it explains almost nothing at the start because, well, you already know right. You played Persona 5 right.
But, at just below 2 dollars per hour of your time, I would say that Strikers is highly worth it. It's a very solid game - though admittedly just more of the same working formula - but I could see myself replaying this in the future, though, only as a follow up after replaying the original one first.
The Ugly
Morgana is extra simpy in this one.
Code stuff soon, stay tuned!
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