The Persona series is surprisingly unlucky with spin-offs – probably the karmic punishment for divorcing Shin Megami Tensei . Among them there are good ones, like Persona 4 Arena , but the vast majority are confusing and painful. Apparently, the Atlus management is fulfilling the public’s desire to get more “Persons” by the monkey’s foot method: otherwise we would not have received three or three! – dance rhythm game and several “dungeon crawlers” for the elderly 3DS .
Now, with unexpected dedication, Koei Tecmo , known for her love of taking good games and making Dynasty Warriors out of them, has entered the race . But unlike the studio’s past work, Persona 5 Strikers is clearly trying to be more than a motivated product. A worthy attempt – the only pity is that the task still turned out to be beyond the power of the developers.
Never saw it coming
Several months have passed since the events of Persona 5 (whether original or Royal ). Masayoshi Sido is behind bars, the god Jaldabaoth no longer threatens humanity, and in general life more or less goes on as usual. The Joker was released and together with Morgana returned to his parents, while the rest of the retired thieves are engaged in a typical young adult routine. Ann and Ryuuji are getting ready to graduate from high school, Makoto and Haru have successfully entered college, Futaba has ended her reclusive lifestyle, Yusuke … still Yusuke. Soujiro Sakura is still bearded and irresistible, and Sae Niijima left her career as a prosecutor and went to law. In a word, an idyll.
At the end of the school year, the Joker decides to descend upon his friends in Tokyo in order to have a good rest with the whole company during the summer holidays, but soon after the solemn party it turns out that this time it is not destiny to enjoy the life of ordinary teenagers. As soon as the team reunited, the police again gathered to sew on other people’s crimes. Say, in recent months, there have been too many incidents suspiciously similar to theft of hearts – and the theft is massive, and not only in Tokyo. Someone is again exploiting the Metavers to their advantage, and the Phantom Thieves need to find out who exactly if they don’t want to be arrested as the prime suspects. And to do this, you will have to go around almost all of Japan, and even on your own – in a van that Sojiro borrowed from a friend. Well, on the way, if possible,
Strikers has surprisingly many Production IG animations – noticeably more than the original. A trifle, but nice
Unlike most projects of a similar kind, Persona 5 Strikers takes on a task that third-party developers (albeit with the feasible help of the original authors) undertake extremely rarely: it tries to be a “full-fledged” continuation of the original game. Not just a spin-off or a game based on motives, but a sequel, where there is everything (or almost everything) that Persona 5 is so fond of. Catchy visual design, many elements of which are taken directly from the original. Great soundtrack from the series’ permanent composer, Meguro Shoji. The actors who played the characters in the English localization have returned to their roles and sound like family. In the end, the structure of the “two-layer” gameplay remained roughly the same: in the real world, you communicate with friends and prepare for sorties, and in the cognitive world, you fight Shadows and steal the hearts of villains.
This attention to detail is a bit shocking at first. As a rule, Koei Tecmo borrows ideas from the original source rather superficially in his spin-offs, but this time he was treated with surprising care. Persona 5 Strikers never looks like a craft, where familiar characters were forcibly shoved in order to sell an insolent fan service. Naturally, it was not done without fan service, but in this case it is more of a compliment: at the best moments the game feels like one big “beach episode” or an extended epilogue to Persona 5. The universal threat has passed, the heroes have resolved their internal conflicts, neatly hung on the walls by Chekhov the guns had fired several times. The stakes and the tension are not so high, but it doesn’t make it more boring: after everything they have been through, Phantom Thieves deserve a change of scenery like no one else.
Soujiro’s van serves as a mobile headquarters and the main place to discuss further actions. Plus, you can cook food there: the Joker menu will contain not only curries and coffee, but also recipes found along the way
Although all the events of the game can be safely called a filler, the script is full of small, but humanly warm moments. Walking along unfamiliar streets, chatting on the road, dinners in the open air, summer nights, gatherings in cafes and hikes for souvenirs – everything is perceived vividly and unexpectedly sincerely. Much the same as in the original game. In addition, the new characters successfully fit into the already out of place ensemble: the mysterious AI Sophia, who settled in the Joker’s mobile phone, plays the role of a rather cute Strikers mascot, but Inspector Zenkichi Hasegawa, assigned to the thieves by the curator, pulls the whole plot on herself. It recognizes the features of Ryotaro Dojima and Tooru Adachi from Persona 4 , as well as Katsui Suo from Persona 2: Eternal Punishment.… He is fatherly strict and responsible, but at the same time childish and slightly sloppy: skirmishes between Zenkichi and other thieves always bring a smile.
The only problem is that apart from these points, Persona 5 Strikers has absolutely nothing to offer in terms of storytelling. Maybe she wanted to continue, but the content, alas, turned out to be maximum fanfic – secondary, predictable and full of strange retcons. The developers decided not to bother and almost literally, right down to the main antagonist and his motivation, repeated the plot of Persona 5, changing a couple of terms in places: now we have not “palaces”, but “prisons”, and the thieves are not stealing “treasures”, but “desires “. The villains and locations are different, but the amount has not changed from the rearrangement of the terms. The result is a story that can hardly be called independent, because people who are not familiar with the series are not really explained here, and they have no connection with the characters. And fans, on the contrary, will probably find the plot too faded: there is no intrigue to be found here,
Even the heroes themselves understand how the current troubles of the Phantom Thieves are similar to the epic with the Sido conspiracy, but it is impossible to turn self-repetition into a meta-joke.
Of course, it is foolish to expect from a relatively small spin-off the same quality of the script that was in the 100-hour JRPG (which, however, also did not claim the laurels of Dostoevsky’s novels), but the point here is not at all in dialogues or distortion of characters – everything is fine with them. It’s just that as part of the offshoot, the authors lost an excellent chance to tell a story that would have been impossible in the main series: take at least the same Persona Q dilogy on 3DS. Yes, there the writers did not rack their brains too much and just brought the characters of the three numbered parts together, but this already created many funny situations.
The lack of fresh ideas is also striking because the authors are too zealous to follow the Persona 5 formula – even where it is clearly not worth it. It seems to be commendable, but it is precisely because of this that Strikers begs for a deliberately losing comparison with the original: the mechanics that worked well there, in the new format, look either strongly cut off or completely unnecessary. Everything connected with the “peaceful” life of the Joker and the company is implemented extremely poorly. If earlier in the real world the player had a million ways to usefully spend his free time, now outside of the Metavers it is impossible to even communicate with anyone. Naturally, there is no development of social branches either. And there is really nothing to explore: every city on the path of the Phantom Thieves is represented by only a couple of locations with shops, where you will regularly replenish the supply of healers.
The only reminder of the confidential system is the BOND mechanics. During battles and scripted scenes, you get points that can be spent on useful perks. Already at least something
Moreover, the developers not only ineptly adapted the key elements of the original source – the things that they added to the game themselves also often feel controversial. During the passage, I more than once caught myself thinking that I clearly see where Atlus’s work ends and Koei Tecmo’s own developments begin: they corny do not combine with each other. Some parts of the interface clearly belong to the hand of the artist of the series Shigenori Soejima, and the second, as if hastily completed by trainees in Paint. It’s the same with models, backdrops and visual design in general: Persona 5 Strikers looks much worse than its progenitor. The environment seems to be not as “voluminous” as before: here, perhaps, it is a matter of lighting or paints. And I don’t even want to say anything about music. The soundtrack, of course, was replenished with a couple of wonderful compositions, and the old ones still sound great, but the rest (and there are enough of them) just hit the ears with electric guitars. As if I turned the wrong way and instead of a jazz club left somewhere inGuilty Gear .
The game also has abnormal anti-aliasing problems: I could not get rid of the “ladders” even through the Nvidia system settings. Gradually you get used to them, but they hurt your eyes badly
Gentlemen of failure
Oddly enough, the gameplay in Persona 5 Strikers is not nearly as sad as the narrative or presentation, although a lot depends on how you feel about Dynasty Warriors and its derivatives. In general terms, the gameplay in Metavers has remained unchanged: the Joker and his comrades penetrate the cognitive worlds of rotten adults and fight the Shadows to get to the treasure (sorry, “desire”) and steal it, defeating the owner of the palace (sorry, “prison”). Collecting people, pumping skills, rudimentary stealth, rock-paper-scissors vulnerability mechanics – all this is present in one form or another, and all this has already been told before me.
Ambushing the Shadows is much safer than directly attacking. True, most often the game does not give a choice and simply materializes another pack of enemies in the cutscene
The key difference between Persona 5 Strikers and the original is the combat system. Leisurely turn-based tactics have given way to a dynamic slasher, where the party fights dozens, if not hundreds of opponents at once – and they do not wait for their turn to attack. Moreover, a sharp change in genre is taken absolutely calmly: Phantom thieves seem to have always been created for action games, and the unique features of each of them fit well into the gameplay. The Joker still owns an arsenal of people, but he is even better at handling pistols – after each shot he can dash towards the enemy and carry out a combo in the air. Yusuke wields a katana just like Virgil in Devil May Cry.and catches monsters on counterattacks, while Ryuuji rushes forward and crushes with brute force, and Makoto cuts across the battlefield on his motorcycle persona. I also never liked Haru (sue me), but in Strikers she did not leave my party until the very end, because it is priceless to smash the hordes of Shadows with bursts of grenade launcher.
At the same time, tactics from the battles did not disappear. If, even for a moment, gape and give the Shadows a break, they will immediately take advantage of this – the fights, even on “normal” difficulty, are often tense. All attacks hit the area, so there is no time to stand still: you need to think while running. How to dodge, where to move, in order to hook more enemies with one blow, who need to be removed first. Every now and then you have to switch between characters in order to take care of opponents with different vulnerabilities, and shoot down flying monsters with aimed shots. In battles with mini-bosses, the pace accelerates wildly: they attack from all sides, hit painfully, call for help. It’s good that you don’t have to cram key combinations for a long time – they are the same for all characters, so as not to be distracted once again.
The game compassionately freezes time as you target an ability. Otherwise, you can’t understand the chaos of special effects, your head is spinning
In everything that concerns the battles, the game designers coped with their task: it is played exactly as you expect from an action based on Persona 5. Simple, without much enthusiasm, but with taste – again, attention to detail is immediately noticeable. You can only find fault with trifles. For example, the selection of persons for the Joker now plays a lesser role: there is no need to cover up your weak points if you can dodge most of the attacks in time. Painstaking resource management has also lost its meaning, because at any moment you can return to reality and get medical treatment: now there is nowhere to rush, deadlines are not running out. It’s also a little annoying that the developers took away (or I didn’t find it) the ability to change the party lineup during the battle – in Persona 5 this was a perk of one of the confidential, and here it would come in handy. You feel stupid when only after the start of the battle with the boss you realize that you did not take a character capable of hitting his vulnerabilities – who knew. And the roster of playable characters itself, due to the connection to the plot, turned out to be quite modest, although, say, the twins-jailers (or the same Goro Aketi) would fit perfectly into it.
Battles have only one serious problem, and it, unfortunately, has plagued the franchise since the days of the third number part – monotony. In Strikers, all attacks to the Metaverse follow exactly the same scenario, the Shadows have the same appearance everywhere, and even the mini-bosses that always block the path to the final battle, in fact, do not change. Persona 5 diversified at least the scenery: phantom thieves broke into bank defenses, robbed an art gallery, unraveled the secrets of an ancient Egyptian tomb … But Strikers does not have this luxury either, and those rare surprises that she still throws hardly make you change your approach to tactics. Still, mass carnages are inconvenient to arrange in tight spaces, so two-thirds of the battles take place on empty city streets, tinted in some kind of threatening gradient with a simple color filter. And although the design of the bosses (and visual, and gameplay), as always, not bad, for some reason their dwellings are similar to each other like two drops of water. They saw one thing – it means they saw everything.
I don’t know who I can sincerely recommend Persona 5 Strikers to. Not because it is bad or not worth its money: even though the game has enough flaws, the efforts of Koei Tecmo are visible to the naked eye. The question is, for whom exactly the developer tried so hard. For fans of the franchise it is easier for the tenth time to re-run the original, and for those interested in newcomers to fork out for the Persona 4 Golden port , which better reflects the essence of the series.
It is a pity, of course, that a full-fledged continuation did not work out, but at least there was no dancing. And thanks for that.
