This further emphasizes the streamlined approach taken with Strikers, as you don’t have to worry nearly as much about levelling up and micromanaging each person individually. With each level, you gain points to level up benefits for the entire team, such as increased rewards or stronger Persona magic attacks. Persona 5 Strikers takes that process and streamlines it into a basic formula by having all major events build up the bond for the entire group. Once I started manipulating the field, that’s when this simple action spinoff turned into a Persona game.īonds have always been a part of Persona 5 and in Persona 5 Strikers they come in the form of specific points earned by spending time with each member of your team individually. Tutorials described a lot of these as I went, but apart from forced segments, I never needed to do more than mash Square and dodge with R2. My Allies’ AI wasn’t enough to do all the work for me like in previous fights, so I started to explore my options and button prompts. The first challenge that made me consider what I was doing with my characters came in the second boss battle. This acts as a means of accessing your Persona abilities as well as a way to pause the action and determine what you want to do next. Here, you can push left or right to swap equipped personas on the fly to maximize combat potential and you can even use items and “Baton Pass” between playable characters. Holding R1 pauses combat and brings up the skills that your Persona has available.

This is where the Musou-clone feeling hits, and it hits early.Įven with the flashy All-Star Attacks returning, swapping between Personas mid-combat is the coolest part about Strikers. Combat sees you jumping across the field, mashing Square and Triangle, as you clear through waves of borderline mindless enemies. However, combat itself is vastly different. All the same, the ending comes out as to be expected: engaging and enjoyable, but not overly surprising.Īpart from the moment-to-moment action, Strikers works essentially like its Persona 5 counterparts: defeat enemies using Persona abilities and physical attacks to exploit weaknesses and further explore dungeons. The rhythm of the Jails shows its pace early, and that doesn’t change too much the entire time. There’s a lot of build-up that takes place beforehand, so these encounters are more revealing rather than being filled with information that blindsides you. The main antagonists get a certain level of backstory, but they end up being more of a reveal-all at or near the final encounter in each Jail. She still gets the same kind of character treatment that all Persona characters get, though, so don’t expect her to be just a plot device. She becomes a big part of the story progression, often remembering something in the nick of time or doing the equivalent of a Google search to help find answers. Sophia can’t remember who she is or what her purpose is, but she slowly learns more about herself after joining The Phantom Thieves. The newest character to join the group is Sophia, an AI entity that Joker meets while in the Metaverse.

Persona 5 strikers final boss