I beat Persona 5 a while ago and I really liked it. I liked the music and nearly all the characters and the whole aesthetic of that game - in contrast to P4 which I just bounced off for some reason.

So I've been eyeing Strikers on sale over at Steam because it's that entire world with brand new animated cutscenes and all the Persona goodness - except in an ostensibly mousou game? I watched the Quick Look a while back and looked over some gameplay footage but it seems so dense, at looks from the outside looking in, that I'm struggling to get a grip on how the game plays.

So if you played it? How is it? Does the gameplay hold up throughout? How long is it?

Not sure if it's any use to you - but it's going to be on PS+ this month so you might save some money if you can play it there.

@jesus_phish: I saw! But I've packed up my PS4 a while ago. I guess bringing it back out and buying a month of PS+ is still cheaper than buying it on Steam.

I loved it as a continuation of Persona 5. It's quite a long game, and the side quests can be grindy but I recommend it.

I've written a meaty blog review about it some time ago. Long story short, fun gameplay with more depth than you would expect and a high effort story continuing on from Persona 5. Recommended.

@jeremyf: I looked up your blog and not only did I apparently read it but we even talked about it - I have zero recollection of this. What is time.

Had no idea it was coming to PS+. That's great news.

I've always wanted to try the Persona Spin-off games (Persona Q and the fighting one) but never found time for them. Hoping that strikers will change that.

The gameplay is surprisingly good. At worst it doesn't get in the way of the character interactions, and at best it can be much more engaging than other varieties of musou. Obviously the musou elements are apparent but they've blended the DNA of Persona into the combat to a surprising degree to the point where you really could play it quite unlike a musou game with the exception of some overly draggy boss fights.

Ultimately, the real draw is just spending more time with the P5 cast, which it does a great job at. The writing and character interactions are solid and a great continuation from P5.

As someone that loves Persona and has absolutely zero interest musou games, I had a great time with Strikers. It's Persona 5-2 in most respects. It's definitely an accelerated version of a Persona game in that it is just concentrated on the story without the daily life aspects, but the story and presentation feels just like Persona 5.

The dungeons are a little different structurally than the palaces in Persona 5, but still very similar. As for the musou aspect, it's really as simple as where in Persona 5 you'd enter turn based battle against 3-5 shadows, in Strikers you enter hack and slash combat against 30-50 shadows. Battles are still structured around encounters initiated by attacking roaming shadows in dungeons and each battle takes about the same amount of time as they did in Persona 5. If you were worried that you'd be running around a giant battlefield fighting 1000 Jack Frosts at once, it's definitely not a musou in that sense.

The game really is a true Persona game, but with just a different combat style.

My thoughts about it are a bit weird and likely to be different if I play it again. I got it expecting a musou crossover like those usually are but its so not one of those games that I was just kind of oddly disappointed in it.

So I would say if anyone is worried about the fact that it's sort of a musou game... it really isn't At least probably not in the manner you think of those games.

I'm still ignoring it because I haven't finished Persona 5 yet; which I wish that I didn't have to do because of spoilers and could just jump in like I did with Fire Emblem Warriors.

Someone smarter than me should make a handheld PS4, since I apparently only play JRPGs on handheld systems these days.

I got it and I just didn’t feel it. It was hot on the heels of a Person 5 Royale replay, so maybe my brain was too focused on traditional persona gameplay, but man I just could not bring myself to give a shit once the actual fighting started.

They do a really good job of making a Dynasty Warriors game fell like a Persona game with that thing. I was not super into all of the writing in Persona 5, so I probably I have a lower bar than most for a Persona 5 spin-off game, be I felt that it was a totally adequate piece of side content if you want to spend another 60 hours with the cast of characters.

Seems like a solid “on-sale” purchase thanks everyone!

Enjoyed it at first but fell off it pretty quick. I just found it quite boring in the end.

It was my number 2 game of last year according to my hot, hot, GOTY 2021 list that the site refuses to list properly on the forum post!

Long post short: it's an absolutely fantastic continuation of the Persona 5 narrative, it picks up into the next year and you really feel the growth the characters have undergone in that time. It's not even really a musou game, the system marries RPG and Persona mechanics with crowd-control mechanics, but it's not "swing massive weapons against wave after wave of minions."

The only thing I have against it is the interactions all feel canned. It's nice that you don't have redo the S.Links since everyone's still close, but a little customization of the between-battle interactions would've gone a long way.

I have many complaints with this game.

If I remember correctly, one of them was... I didn't like the fact that the 4x-button-press special combo attack (at the end of the string of attacks - I think the combo was "X, X, X, Y" when you unlock it) didn't work as well as I thought it would. It wasn't smooth at all, and I wanted it to work because SP runs out super quickly if you keep using it so why not use an "SP-like" attack that doesn't require SP. Also increasing the difficulty doesn't give you more EXP points.

I also feel like the Ps4 controller wasn't built for this game in a way, or the configuration (when making the game) for those SP-like attacks I talked about above weren't made with the right key combos IMO (if that makes sense).

I did give up on the game soon after. With that being said though I will update this post to reflect my newer thoughts if I decide to go back to playing the game.