persona 5 strikers is probably my favourite piece of persona 5 media, it takes that original games cast and formula and manages to make an adventure that i just vibed a lot more with and that didn't share many of the issues i may have had with the original (like the pace and some of the more icky scenes like many of the romances) and ends up making me like the original even more in retrospect, it ends up being easily one of my fav games in both of its genres (musou and jrpg) and it's an experiance i really don't think i'll ever forget, before going in i'd already begun to feel some P5 fatigue between the basegame, royal and dancing, but this game really invigorated my love for this cast and made me excited for any future games they appear in. this article will have spoilers for certain bits, but ill warn before i do, you should go into this one a little blind i think because this game is really special, just be sure to at least beat the original P5, if not royal as well.

non-spoilery stuff first, the gameplay is so fun, it's much closer to a mix of a musou and something like raidou kuzunoha than it is a full musou, you won't capture bases or anything here because structurally it really is more like an rpg that uses musou combat, just dungeon crawling, town visiting and boss fighting, but with the usual musou horeds of enemies, it works super well and each character plays radically different, you even have a very wide personas many of which have their own movesets and some even have unique moves! it has enough variety to stick the runtime i think, though it would have been nice for an extra party member or two (royale dlc maybe? at least include those characters in a sequel!) and sadly we didn't get any real ranged characters, a gun based character would have been super cool. you got 9 here though, which is much less than almost any musou game barring the low-effort berzerk musou which had 8, though having more stuff than that game isn't really a high bar. anyway each has a unique playstyle with different abilities, some are more pure damage dealers like ryuji, some are closer to healers like ann and some are a little inbetween like sophia, its much closer to a real RPG party like that. joker uses his dagger for quick strikes, mixes a gun into his combos which is really fun and he has access to all the persona abilities, the game forces him into the party at all times so you'll use him a ton, he's one of the more fun characters to use though and the variety in persona abilities always keeps him fun to play even lategame. ryuji has his pipe and it's a much slower playstyle, mainly based on charge attacks with kidd and buffs to his attacks, his unique ability reduces flinch which you'll really need for those charge attacks, he's fun and if you get good with those charge attacks he can destroy even bosses with ease. ann has the whip which gives her more ranged attacks than many of the characters and her unique move gives her whip fire damage, she's always one of my favs to use, really fun moveset and her healing moves are some of the best in the game. morganna is also a healer and is the one that feels the most focused on that task, but he does have a fun moveset with his sword, he has a very agile cartoony moveset and he can even turn into a car for extra movement during combat, one of the more unique movesets and fun to play characters. yusuke is basically just virgil with ice attacks, he's a more agile physical damage dealer with a counter move as his special and may very well be the most broken character in the game, he's who you should go to if you want to make the game much easier. makoto is similar to ann in that she also has a healing focused moveset, but with much more direct damage options, she is your fist user with the option to use nuclear infused punches as her special and she can even use her bike in combat around the arena, probably the second hardest character to use but shes really good if you know how. haru though is a straight damage character, one of the two harder hitting tanky characters with a focus on her granade launcher as her special and heavy axe attacks, really powerful and a mainstay for me but very hard to use. lastly you have the two new characters (futaba naturally is not playable, but she can give you help during combat with healing, guarding and status buffs, she also pops up during missions as a defence mechanic as she hacks, and these are really fun) sophia will be the first you'll unlock during the first dungeon and she was my main throughout the whole game, being a jack of all trades with healing and damage both, but her unique weapon, yoyos with rhythm like mechanics for damage and range buffs made her so unique and fun to play that any time i could use her, i did, her light attacks are also a real lifesaver, massive range on those it felt like. lastly you have zenkichi, he's another of the games two tanks but he has a unique ability to him in the form of a, well, form change, during his base form any attack he does heals him and this is in contrast to his alt form where he deals more damage and gets ranged strikes, but at the cost of constantly losing health, very hard to use but when hes good, he can be a monster, sadly you don't get him until midway through, but on a second run you can choose to use him earlier. they all kind of play like musou characters though and have huge crowd clearing abilities and strikes and if you like this kind of combat, this is one of the most fun and varied around, it even has a lot of depth with things like dodge counters and the weakness system tying into all out attacks, screenclearing showtime attacks mand followups after a weakness has broken an enemies guard, even environmental attacks are here and they're super fun to use and it, even just gameplay wise, is one of the most fun musou around.

it is still an rpg though and that's what i think makes it extra special, omega force arent strangers to the concept, crimson sea and trinity: souls of z'ill o'll show us that but this one is probably their best yet, the additions from persona make the combat so much fun and the rpg length gives the story, and especially the structure of the gameplay time to shine in a way you don't see too often with musous. instead of normal musou levels you get full on dungeons, theres a good few and they're all pretty varied in themes with great music and you visit a bunch of cool places in them, from a harajuku fashion inspired neon city, a frozen castle, a dystopic cityscape with its own airport and you even have a really cozy shrine dungeon and they have a ton of little platformy stuff and verticality just like in the original, even complete with the 2D platformy segments, they're all pretty long too, the first dungeon is easily a good 6 hours and even some of the shorter ones can still clock in 2 or so hours and you can even revisit them for side quests and optional bosses. one thing i do love about the dungeons is how many of them just build off of the settings you go to, see the game has a road trip theme to it and each city has a new dungeon with that dungeons layout and theme being based on the city and you'll even see areas from the outside segments in the dungeons, i love when games do this, death end re;quest 2 does something similar with the towns being the dungeon and i think it actually enhances the road trip vibes to it, when even the dungeons can feel like part of the trip. the towns all steal the show here and it was always the most exciting part of the game was getting to a new place and hearing the music and just exploring and each one of the major towns even has multiple little areas you can sightsee in, where the basegame was stuck mostly in tokyo, you get a whole roadtrip across japan and it has the perfect vibes, you really feel like you're just on a road trip with some friends and everything that happens on the way feels so natural, similar to FF15 but done even better here than it was there, each town gets its own theme and every song is amazing and each one has unique food, recepies for the new cooking system (one of my fav things to be added) and sights to see, sadly you don't have any real side activities here though outside of a few quests that take place inside the towns, though you can pick up and get gifted souvineers that will decorate the van you use as a homebase for the trip, the rv is great too, it feels to me like a resi save room, complete with a good theme to it, you can even access the velvet room and a shop ran by sophia, one of the new party members, which has the best UI of anything in either game. it really is just as much an RPG and a sequel as it is a spinoff.

the music is amazing too, i dare even say it may be better than 5's ost, every new battle theme is killer, the new remix of last surprise is amazing any time it pops up and you even get some new mixes for rivers in the desert and behind the mask, but the new music is where it shines, you get multiple new battle themes with axe to grind and what you wish for, both of which are just as good as any battle theme from 5 and some of the boss themes like counter strike (which may outright be my favourite persona boss theme now) and the final boss theme are all fantastic, sophia's shop theme is an all time great shop theme, every town theme is a classic, daredevil is so good it made up for life will change not being here during the final infiltrations, the happy and :) sounds of the sendai theme, the saporro theme sounds straight out of ridge racer type 4, the okinawa theme feels like, if friendship had a vibe, it'd be that song and it even has a night variation thats just as good and the osaka theme fits the towns vibes perfectly, like a victory lap. none of the dungeon themes quite live up to the towns though, but the tokyo dungeon does give me some serious sonic 1 sounds to it, and the rest can vary from really catchy with the okinawa theme to just kind of forgettable with the sendai theme, though special mention does go to the kyoto theme which is a fantastic remix of life will change and the osaka dungeon theme is also super catchy. even some of the cutscene themes like ai heart and the piano remix of towards a dream are fantastic, two of the best persona songs period. the games ost had a BUNCH of people working on it, from Gota Masuoka (of 2022 GOTY candidates stranger of paradise and touken ranbu warriors as well as older koei titles like arslan, musou stars and blue reflection), Ayana Hira ( who has worked on games like wo long, touken warriors, fairy tail and even dragon quest builders 2), Hiromu Akaba (of fire emblem three hopes, musou stars and dynasty warriors 9) and you even had some work here by persona regular Atsushi Kitajoh (of the persona q games, persona psp, both devil survivors, persona 2 psp, p3p, catherine and a ton of other classics at atlus, including the original P5 and royal) it's a top tier ost, a real classic with some of the best music in a game in it. its about as pretty as you'd expect too, really it doesn't look that much different than the maingame but just more animated with the combat, the UI's are just as good as p5 too, though i love the touch of each menu option being a different thief, that was cute! one weird thing though is its super aliesed, even on ps5 BC, its great! it has a ps3 shimmer to it and i love it! all the new designs are cool too, sophia and alice came out as standouts for me, alice's kyary pamyu pamyu influences with her world and designs were the coolest part of the game looks-wise for me, oh and zenkichi had a super cool costume in his thief form, it's so mid 2Ks edgy :)

*spoiler segment* despite how good the rest of it is the story is the real star here, for as good as even the 5 royal sections were, this is probably my favouite persona 5 has ever been and as a sequel to persona 5 its about as perfect as we could have hoped for, this really is more of a true sequel than it is a followup. the story here hits the hardest, the themes are shockingly president and the characters feel at their most genuine, they all feel like real friends on a real road trip, like they all care deeply for each other and that makes you care better for them, even characters i didnt care for in the original like futaba and yusuke i ended up liking a lot here, which speaks to how much better the writing overall feels, it resonanted with me far more and i liked a lot how it felt much more to focus on empathy and how even bad people can be victims, it felt like a much more human story and i preffered the more human villains here as opposed to royals cartoonishly awful people, but both do have their merits but it feels more in line with how i think this kind of story should have went considering the trauma of the main cast. the story feels ahead of its time too considering it came out in 2021 before we had any of our current issues with things like AI and peoples dependancy on it and the disasterous effects its having on the world and on art and i found myself agreeing with the game wholesale because for a lot of it, its right, techbros are evil and AI if left unregulated or, id even argue allowed to exist, will fuck us up, people will gladly trade in their data, privacy and even rights for the sake of conveniance, look at the pro-digital game crowd, and this will lead us to destruction and seeing the game say what it said made me feel heard in a way very few media does, its a game i think i really needed right now, it even tackles phone dependancy, something i see more and more of irl and its a serious issue that i think we'll all be dealing with for decades down the road, sure some will brush it off as luddite scaremongering or cringe, but its right and sometimes luddism is too.

i do miss much of the side cast here though, for the most part it is just the thieves on their trip and the people they meet, but it still works great, like i said before the road trip vibes here are fantastic and the cast has a lot of their best writing here, each character has a dungeon where they get to shine with how the villain paralells their story and the new characters are fantastic too, while sophia's story has been done before, i think here is where that "machine grows a heart" is at its strongest, at least i liked it more than i did aegis and labris's stories (i do love both though) and the way it ends had me crying :), zenkichis feels similar, sure his story has been done before in the series, it has big paralells to dojimas, but i think the fact that he is a party member this time rather than an outsider makes it different enough that it works in its own way and still feels fresh and his relationship with his daughter is one of the best bits of development in the game. the villains are also a lot more interesting, the big bads end up, while maybe not being as good as the villain in royal, end up being better than anyone from basegame p5 and *spoilers* akira and ichinose both end up being fantastic, ichinose feels like a genuinely great representation for autistic women, despite being evil and that kinda means a lot to me and i just thought the framing of even nice techbros as being evil was something i just liked to see :). Even the more minor villains like alice and akane feel much more real and developed than any villain in 5 basegame, akanes take on a fan of the theives gone too far feels like such a cool story beat. i hope we see some of this cast again, sophia and zenkichi need to be in tactics in some form, even if as dlc, they deserve it.

it was of course a co-production between omega force and koei and both since sadly haven't teamed up again, which is a shame, we did get tactica which should be out a few days from when i release this and there's got to be more on the horizon, personally i'd want a followup to this more than anything, maybe with the cast of royal thrown in, it was too fun to play and too interesting a take on the cast to just be left as a one off i think. omega force after this has continued to release fantastic games, from 2022 GOTY contender touken ranbu warriors (alongside ruby party), fire emblem three hopes and one of my favourite games of this year, wild hearts. the games three directors have all done some very cool things, Mumon Usuda, though he hasn't done much since this he did work on a ton of prior persona projects like P3P, 5 royal, raidou, nocturne and digital devil saga, which is a hell of a resume. Daisuke Kanada worked on many of the same games in addition to directing persona Q, etrian odyssey 4 and the trauma centre series. lastly Kazuya Ichikawa has worked on many other persona games including directing 3 and 5 dancing but also this years trinity trigger and breath of fire 5 dragon quarter! i hope i've managed to at least sell a few people on this, its a real classic and probably the best sequel we could have asked for for persona 5, its a must play if you have the ability to do so.