➤Review Persona 5 Strikers: A dull and repetitive journey 🕹

Persona 5 has become one of the longest-running titles on the video game market in recent years, for the simple fact that Atlus, the title's developer, refuses to leave it forgotten in the past.

Released in 2016, still in the seventh generation of consoles, Persona 5 was well received by critics and by its fans - which are many, I must say -, since then the game began to appear under different names, delivering more content and expanding the story of Joker and his Phantom Thieves.

We had Persona 5 Royal, which added over 30 hours of content to the title, in addition to the release of Persona 5 Scramble. As if that wasn't enough - for fans it really wasn't - this year Atlus offered players the title Persona 5 Strikers. The newest game in the franchise ignores the events of Royal and can be considered a direct sequel to the original, as there is enough content that the game could have its own name or number.

Developed by Omega Force and published by Atlus, Persona 5 Strikers completely escapes the standard that players are used to, featuring real-time combat in the good old Musou style. However, Strikers manages to have its own characteristics in its gameplay, which makes something of an action JRPG very sharp, while maintaining elements of the franchise.

A DULL JOURNEY

Review Persona 5 Strikers: A dull and repetitive journey — Almost everything about the villains is superficial, as well as absurd motivations are presented.

Set six months after Persona 5, Strikers sees Joker, the main character, and the Phantom Thieves head for their summer vacation. If the player does not have any knowledge about Persona, the beginning of the title knows how to establish that there is a strong friendship between the young people, thus facilitating the understanding of the plot.

The big problem is that the summer vacation is interrupted when the group has to enter the metaverse to deal with new villains. From there the game starts to follow its pattern. The story works almost always in the same way, showing the group realizing that someone is stealing people's desires and controlling people's minds to achieve any kind of ambition of their own, which causes the group of heroes to have to enter the metaverse to get there. the prison created by the villainous character in question. In each prison there are several objectives that must be accomplished in order to reach the final boss.

Now that the dynamics have been explained I must say that the plot of Persona 5 Strikers is its biggest problem. For big fans of the franchise, a good part of Strikers will be welcome and will serve to better develop the relationship between the characters, but for those who don't like to waste time with futile conversations, the title should disappoint - and a lot -. The game wastes too much time with unnecessary conversations and moments that lead nowhere, moments that could easily be removed from the game to make the title gain a better and more dynamic pace.

But the unnecessary chatter and some embarrassing dialogue aren't the worst the Strikers plot can deliver. During my journey through the title, I had a strong feeling that the game was trying to go on as long as possible, clinging to replays and slurred moments, making me leave and return from prison in situations that were clearly unnecessary for the game's script. There are many "problems" and solutions that are clearly created just to increase the game time, making the plot even more repetitive, since its dynamics also deliver an avalanche of repetitions.

The title ties into virtually equal twists to stay alive. The feeling is that Persona 5 Strikers desperately refuses to end, always presenting a new challenge in a wave of events that look exactly the same, only with the villain's image getting a new look and a new name... but the essence is the same.

Strikers insists on showing their characters seeking the good within each citizen and hits the same key when explaining the motivations of their villains, the big problem is that this results in a horror show with the plot delivering shallow explanations for evil committed or presenting big clichés that don't work in general. Also, the fact that characters change drastically after some dialogue, which is usually not well executed, is annoying and seems absurdly superficial.

Persona 5 Strikers' plot could be far superior if the right choices were made. Much could be cut and new script elements could be added, however, unfortunately, what was delivered makes the title a dull and tiring journey.

GAMEPLAY WORKS

Persona 5 Strikers' biggest hit is in its gameplay. At first, the change may seem a bit strange to older fans of the franchise, as turn-based RPG combat has been replaced by Hack and Slash style. It is worth saying that real-time combat can be the right incentive for new players to get to know the franchise, as turn-based combat often ends up alienating some part of the public.

With the announcement of the title, many fans imagined that Strikers would be a Musou in the greatest style of the Warriors series, which is also delivered by Koei, but the result was much higher than expected. Yes, Persona 5 Strikers has many elements of Musou and puts several enemies in the player's path, but the title was very efficient in adding its own characteristics to the style, delivering a combat system that maintains elements of the franchise and even allows for more tactical approaches. , moving away from the idea that it would only be necessary to press buttons to advance the plot.

With 7 characters available from the start of the game, plus a CPU-controlled support character, the player can form a team of 4 to accomplish their goals in the metaverse. While Joker, the protagonist, is a permanent member, the other members of the team are chosen by the player, which makes it possible to choose the best options according to your game preference.

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Increasing the strategy, each character has advantages and weaknesses according to the Persona element, as well as the enemies also present these characteristics. This makes the player need to assess the opponent's weaknesses to perform attacks with characters that have a Persona with the right element, as this makes all the difference in battle. Not worrying about this detail will certainly result in many deaths that could have been avoided and will certainly make the title much more complicated than it is. With the right characters and using the opponents' weaknesses, the player can unleash the attacks called "All Attack" and "Showtime", which in addition to being beautiful give a feeling of satisfaction for taking a lot of life from opponents.

Once mastered, the combat system doesn't present much of a mystery. It is necessary to observe the weaknesses, use the characters and accurate attacks, make combos with the team and be patient to end the life bar of the bosses. As a Musou, Persona 5 Strikers has its own characteristics that fit the franchise and make the battle even more interesting, with fluid gameplay and satisfying confrontations to a certain extent. The problem is that, combined with the disappointing and dragging plot, the game sometimes becomes tiring also in its combats, since there is the repetition factor and not even the story serves as a motivation to move on.

Interesting Changes, But It's Still Persona

There are many changes in relation to known characteristics of the franchise, changes that in my opinion were made in an attempt to make the game more dynamic and fit the new style of gameplay in general. In Persona 5 Strikers infiltrations are much smoother, without requiring a great deal of health management as it is really easy and practical to go out and into the dungeons to recover SP and HP. In Strikers there is also no clock pressing the player constantly, which automatically makes it a smoother game.

Another of the elements to receive a considerable modification was the Velvet Room's invocation interface, becoming more simplified and much easier to learn for those who have never had contact with the franchise.

However, despite many welcome changes in my opinion, Strikers is still Persona. The title manages to keep its essence in each element and feature delivered to the player, so this is also what makes Persona 5 Strikers even more uninteresting for a good part of the public. If the combat system is not enough to hold you, the story will possibly become even worse than it is, since the characters of Persona, as well as the game itself, has many peculiarities that can cause strangeness in those who don't. are used to the series of games.

Verdict

Persona 5 Strikers could be a much better title if it didn't intend to go on without worrying about the quality of its plot. Some characters could be better used, such as Zenkichi - the best character in the title in my opinion -, as well as other plot elements could be explored more, which would take away the feeling of repetition a little.

When trying to show moments of relaxation and lighter between the characters, the game completely lost its hand by delivering several dialogues that are, at the very least, unnecessary and poorly written.

With its strong point being swallowed up and overshadowed by the strong feeling that the journey is extremely tiring, Persona 5 Strikers even gets some changes right, but it is not able to become interesting in general.