While Strikers looks to be following up on Persona 5's story, rather than the additions Persona 5 Royal introduced to the world, it's still an adventure I'm eager to see continue. And the returning voice cast, coupled with both returning and new music tracks that certainly fit the Persona 5 vibe, and Strikers looks to be building toward an unexpected but welcome return for the Phantom Thieves. But where I came into the story, it felt as if the group knew her well enough to comfortably bring her along on a Phantom Thieves mission, so she’s obviously worth some level of trust that makes me intrigued to find out more. Outside of that, I didn’t get too much for a feel of the overarching story in P5S, and certainly didn’t learn much about the new character, Sophia. Strikers introduces checkpoints that appear to replace save rooms, and the inclusion of more frequent 2D sections (at least in this palace) led to a little bit more platforming and treasure-chest hunting. In addition to the standard returning mini-map and other UI touches like character art and the real-world day counter outside of palaces, environmental puzzles like shutting off security cameras and treasure hunting to gain new equippable gear still seem essential to the process.
The dungeon-crawling aspect returns and feels like a much more direct parallel to Persona 5’s dungeons.
I’m eager to get my hands-on the system itself to see how what it shares with Persona 5 translates to real-time battles. I don’t of course no for myself whether the new action system actually lets players have the time and space to confidently use all these various skills in action, but everything seemed easy to access mid-fight. Elemental skills, mid-battle analysis, and more return. Thankfully, P5S lets you temporarily pause the action to plan out your attacks and employ skills like characters had in P5 to fully take advantage of their skillset. But with battles being real-time, you may be wondering whether it’s worth it to mix things up in battle like that. Going into battle with a party of four, players can “Baton Pass” control to each character to employ their different skills, much as you took turns as each character in the original. Aside from the fact you’re battling Persona 5 enemies returning from the original game, you can ambush enemies like in P5 to get a leg up in battle, and you can even enact an All-Out Attack to really lay the smackdown on the battlefield.
Yes, there’s no end-of-match breakdown of your XP and coin earned, but various touches to the combat system and the UI around it all add that Persona flair I’d expect. And while the action played out (mostly) in real-time, with a bit of button-mashing attacks sending Joker whipping up a frenzy as he demolished enemies, I came away impressed by how much it appears to retain the spirit of Persona 5. Action played out of the streets surrounding this palace - taking place in Shibuya, though P5S will see the group travel to other cities around Japan. Action as seen in my hands-off demo of an early infiltration mission for the Phantom Thieves found Joker and others of his merry band seamlessly jumping from exploration to combat, never being pulled out of the environment to a new battlefield. For anyone who hasn’t looked into its Japanese release under the name Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers, P5S is more a Musou-style action game a la Dynasty Warriors or Hyrule Warriors, than a turn-based JRPG.
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