Persona 5 Strikers Review - Spin-Off The Phantom Strikers

Persona 5 Strikers Review - Spin-Off The Phantom Strikers

Being a surprise when Atlus announced Spin-Off Persona 5 entitled Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers carries a Warrior game. Collaborates directly with the Pioneer Musou - Omega Force and Koei Tecmo, fans are certainly made curious about how the persona game that has been focused on turn-based games (and jogging games) was taken to the realm of action hack and slash.

Persona 5 Strikers Review

The game itself has been released first in Japan in 2020. And recently the English version titled Persona 5 Strikers has also been released internationally, along with the purse to the PC via Steam.

I have played Persona 5 strikers for approximately 40 hours. And during That's all, I was successfully realized in amazement for a game that turned out to be more than just a Musou game in general. You could say that this game doesn't feel like a spin-off that tends to have only half the content of the original game, even its quality feels like a AAA game.

Therefore, here is a review of Persona 5 strikers which can certainly be your consideration whether this game is suitable for you or not. And as a note, I only play Museu games like Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors, so I will make a little comparison based on these games.

Return to Metaverse

Persona 5 strikers will take you to a few months after the End of Persona 5 original version. Yourself (Joker) plans to return to Tokyo to spend a summer vacation with his Phantom Thieves gang. But unfortunately, the plan must be delayed because they found the metaverse world they have conquered before now live again.

However, the return of the metaverse occurred along with the skyrocketing of the popularity of an application called Emma - AI in the form of a virtual assistant of sophisticated technology which also concurrently as a social media container.

This began when Joker, Skull, and Mona met with Alice Hiiragi - a fashionista artist who was on the rise and became a hot conversation in Shibuya, Tokyo. Alice who is holding a fan meet distributes a name card containing a special keyword for fans who want to make friends with him in Emma. When Joker got Alice's name card, he tried to enter the keyword through Emma, but he with Skull and Mona were thrown into Metaverse.

Investigating what happened, they found that Shadow Alice took the pieces of "Desire" or the desire of fans who were friends with him in Emma, which changed many of them to be very crazy about him. This could be said to be similar to the method of "Change of Heart" conducted by the Phantom Thieves gang to make the criminals aware that they were facing before.

Had caught and thrown into the culverts, Joker with Skull and Mona suddenly found a mysterious box which then turned into a figure of a girl (cute) named Sophia. It is not clear or who is the original identity of the mysterious girl, except for its main goal to become a "humanity companion" or a human companion.

Not just an ordinary girl, of course, because Sophia turned out to be able to imitate what Phantom Thieves did; Remove his person, look like ... thieves, and fight to help Joker and friends in every Shadow that blocked their way. But what was no less important, he also became a road guide like Futaba.

After leaving Metaverse, the red-haired girl was still on the smartphone to belong to the Joker, and they realized that Sophie was a figure of AI. Joker then collected his Phantom Thieves gang to tell me directly.

Joker with the Phantom Thieves gang then decided to stop Alice to restore it to the right path and free the people who were picked up as simple. Instead of being able to continue on vacation after defeating Alice, Joker and his gang found that the phenomenon also occurred in various other places, even the police made Phantom Thieves the main suspect.

Persona 5 Strikers - Fresh Musou game experience

This is your adventure in Persona 5 strikers starting. You are with Phantom Thieves will explore Japan for (vacation in the guise) looking for perpetrators who change the hearts of other people see for personal gain, as well as the source of which initiates the phenomenon of mass liver changes. And maybe, you will know what or who Sophie is actually.

Fresh Musou game experience

As explained at the beginning, carrying the action genre is certainly a truly new thing in the Persona serial and Shin Megami Tensei. Especially in the Musou who incidentally has a game tempo that is faster and tends to make the players more barbaric. Given the barred fight certainly somewhat contrary to Phantom Thieves who attacked impromptu and clandestine.

But in his execution, ATLUS collaboration with Omega Force was able to highlight various elements of each game. In general, you can still carry out an ambush attack in the original Persona 5 game, it is continued by attacking barbarians using cool attacks of Epic ala Museu game. Not to forget, issued various persona forces for a variety of other attacks.

Like other Musou games, the mechanism of fighting in Persona 5 strikers uses a triangle + triangle combo attack that is quite simple. But each character in this game has variations of different combos and playstyle.

As an example; Fox Has Moveset Tubi Attack Quickly and the Only Character That Can Counter, Noir Has a variety of attacks that focus on beating many enemies at once, Skull can thoroughly thorough upon the enemy attack, Makoto can apply the attributes of Nuclear for attacks The basic attack and use the motorbike person to hit the enemy or move quickly.

You can bring four people at once when browsing Metaverse, and you are also free to change the character you want to control. Three other characters will still help you fight your enemies and periodically give you support capabilities such as Heal and Buff.

Of course, there is also a special attack Musou Attack named Showtime which can finish up many enemies at once in a large area. And as in other Musou games, the special attack must have a special gauge that must be fulfilled first.

The little disappointing is each character only has one type of showtime attack. In contrast to Dynasty Warriors 5 and above for example who have a normal Museu attack, while in the air, when using Rage, even True Musou when dying. It might be made special showtime for Physical and Magic.

One thing I did not expect was Atlus also still pinned more deadly advanced attacks; Attack Weakness Your enemy to trigger one more attack, Baton Pass, to All-Out Attack. This certainly makes Persona 5 flavor still feel and give the experience of playing a pretty fresh Musou game.

Not as easy as Musou games in general

When playing the Musou game, many of us certainly tend to play barbarically without the need to think about any strategy. Well, except when dealing with Lu Bu di Dynasty Warriors who might force you to pull unfortunately like playing kites.

Playing barbarians certainly doesn't matter to fight small enemies. But when facing BOSS or mini-boss, the barbaric tactic is likely to make you lose quickly. Yes, there is a new Archetype in the form of BOSS and mini-bosses that can be said to provide different challenges that are not in Museu games such as Dynasty Warriors for example.

Persona 5 Strikers - Spin-Off The Phantom Strikers

For the first time, I felt overwhelmed with an enemy in the Musou game. The small enemies in Persona 5 strikers themselves give quite sick damage, and the BOSS can be said to be more dangerous, and have a much more cellphone. Not only that, the BOSS has a kind of shield or a gauge of resilience from the weaknesses, so you must solve the gauge first if you want to do an all-out attack.

It's not just there, every enemy you are opposed to, especially the BOSS has a different Moveset and attacks. This then forced me to attack little by a little while dodging and waiting for the right moment to attack barbarically. Indirectly, against Boss-Boss in Persona 5 strikers felt like playing Hack and Slash Ala Devil May Cry.

This is certainly complicated by persona characteristics as a wasteful JRPG game will use SP. In Persona 5 strikers you are encouraged to be able to save SP while browsing so they don't sprain when meeting with a mini-boss somewhere for example. Fortunately, in this game, you can bump the food and drink you bought while outside Metaverse to complete your cellphone and SP character quickly.

To help you defeat your enemies, scattered a kind of facility that you can use to give additional damage or even debuff. For example, you can blow up the car to give damage and burn effects, destroy ice crystals to freeze the enemy around you, use street lights for spinning attacks, and many more depending on the location of the metaverse you explore.

For me, this is a positive value, because I feel finally finding a challenging Musou game. Beating a difficult enemy in Persona 5 strikers Gives more real satisfaction, rather than dynasty warriors for example, which is just serving artificial challenges - the number of HP and damage belonging to enlarged enemies depends on the level of difficulty.

Simpler social segmentation

When announced as a Musou game, I expected that Persona 5 strikers would be a spin-off which was at least the same as Dynasty Warriors, where most of the game was focused on fighting. It turned out that I was wrong because the social segmentation remained present as part of the game.

For those of you who are strange about this, Persona games tend to have two segmentation; Social and combat. As the name implies, social segmentation is used to interact with other characters and NPCs, or even with the contents of their world. In Persona 5 strikers, social segmentation was made simpler and more straight to the point, where the social link system was replaced with a bond system.

When you complete a quest, continue the story, or regularly when interacting with other characters, you will get Exp that increases the bond level. Each level up, you will get points that can be distributed to increase your various abilities when browsing or fighting in Metaverse.

In addition to buying items such as food and drinks in the real world, occasionally you will encounter food where you will get inspiration or recipes to make it yourself. You need food ingredients that you can certainly buy in the same place, restaurants, or online. Cooking food from the recipe for the first time will provide Exp for the Bond level.

The food of your cooking tends to give better benefits, especially when you maximize the effect through the bond. I tend to look for more frequent food recipes and buy all the ingredients to cook themselves as provisions in Metaverse later.

Furthermore, even though now social segmentation and the story feels more linear, you will still find some special moments where dialogue with other characters will give you special items. One of them even allows you to choose who you want to invite to spend time together.

Music that is no less Epic

One of the characteristics or identities is typical of Game Persona is a variety of music that is so unique and quality. Music is full of enthusiasm that can be synchronized with the battle flow, as well as on the social side that becomes relaxed and cool.

Persona 5 Presents mixing the flow of jazz, rock, pop, and funk as its main dish. When collaborating with Omega Force for Persona 5 strikers, of course, there is a hard rock flow with the characteristics of Dynasty Warriors in the form of aggressive guitar flavored with a little distortion effect. Here's one of the soundtracks that managed to steal my heart.

Not only a series of new music, of course, some Original Persona 5 songs also get a new arrangement of Hard Rock typical of the Musou game made by Omega Force. Some of them are like Rivers in the Desert, Blooming Villain, and of course, last surprise.

UI who remains edgy and more vibrant

In particular, Persona 5 is also quite famous for the art direction and a series of User Interface (UI) which can be said to be edgy but still looks cool and / a e s h e t h i /. In persona 5 strikers also, but this time it could be said to be more vibrant or more colorful.

Persona 5 Strikers - UI who remains edgy and more vibrant

An interesting fact; Director of the Serial Game Super Smash Bros - Masahiro Sakurai itself greatly admired art direction from Persona 5. Maybe that's the main reason why he invited Joker to take action in the Super Smash Bros Ultimate.

Unfriendly

I am pretty sure you who often play Musou games or hack and slash with a fast tempo like Devil May Cry might be easily adapted in this game. While players who have just plunged may be a little overwhelmed, even though they need a long time to adapt because Persona 5 strikers themselves in my opinion include the game that is easy to play, hard to master.

Not only from the side of the gameplay but players who have never played Persona 5 may also be confused about Persona 5 strikers. The game itself also does not provide flashbacks and the introduction of each character. Now and then you will also find dialogues and cutscene that might be confusing, especially if they are talking about events in the past.

You can certainly watch the Persona 5 Animation Anime as an alternative to understanding the story. But I recommend more to play Persona 5 first (if you have a PS4 or PS5), because the anime itself in my opinion doesn't represent the game well, especially in terms of the quality of the animation.

Unfortunately, it's almost perfect

Unfortunately, Persona 5 strikers almost gave an experience of a perfect spin-off, at least for me. Some things can be ignored, but for me, it should be done better.

The first is too much information in one screen when fighting in the metaverse. I admit that the UI presented remains the taste of Game Persona 5 deserves a thumbs up, but I am also made dizzy going so many choices of buttons that can be pressed, even the circuit can change in the middle of the combo.

This can certainly be tricked by learning directly Moveset each character in the tutorial menu. Too much information in this one screen it seems that will push the players (who are lazy to read) to play barbarically rather than smart. However, until when this article was written I was only memorized the Joker Combo, Skull, Noir, and Queen aka Makoto the Best Girl.

Still, in a fairly the same problem, the prompt of follow-up attacks at a glance looks very similar to the prompt to use a facility. For example, often I think it will take a follow-up the attack at the end of the combo, but it turns out that I pressed the prompt to go up on the post without the enemy being attacked using spin.

One of the characteristics of Musou's game is to encourage you to maintain momentum, and Persona 5 strikers have a mechanism to keep the momentum still road. But one trivial thing can stop momentum and for a moment to make a combo that we have visualized in the brain becomes broken.

The second is a lack of sort of punishment. In this case, when your cellphone or SP is dying when exploring Metaverse, instead of using items for recovery, you can return to the real world and at that moment also returned Metaverse. Yes, you can go back and forth Metaverse on the same day, which is different from Persona 5 Original which will make your character unable to love activities again and force you to advance one day.

Of course, the original Persona 5 mechanism is not suitable if it is implemented in the Museu game where the players want to progress quickly. But I feel that the presentation of the game that has been made is quite difficult for the level of normal difficulty even though it feels futile because there is no kind of motivation to play better than to beat the enemy many times to win.

One other thing that can be said to be trivial and trivial but for me, it is very dear to be missed is the absence of KILL Count or K.o count information that is commonly present on the right side of the screen. Knowing the number of enemies that we slaughter has reached thousands of certainly gives a sense of satisfaction.

Persona 5 Strikers - Unfortunately, it's almost perfect

Conclusion

In the end, Persona 5 strikers successfully presented a new experience in the realm of the Musou game or the new packaging of the Persona game serial. Atlus with Omega Force successfully developed a new potential of Musou's game which had been said to be stagnant in Dynasty Warriors, and at the same time, the developer was also able to maintain the taste and peculiarity peculiarities of Persona 5.

Surprisingly of course when Persona 5 strikers still present a solid storyline like a JRPG game, which is certainly rarely found in Musou games that often focus on the combat element. Considering this game is a spin-off, of course, appreciation should be filed for Atlus and Omega Force because they continue to develop this game like developing AAA games.

Not to forget, trying to save Japan by visiting other cities certainly gave a new view that was quite fresh than being in Shibuya kept-canal. Displaced with a holiday cutscene tasting local food and relaxing jokingly with a horde of Phantom Thieves also occasionally gave a sense of freshness and warmth in this game.

In closing, of course, I expect that this collaboration can also provide new experiences for Omega Force to further innovate in presenting warriors games that can be said to be so monotonous.

So many this article hopefully can provide valuable information for readers. Happy reading!!