This game is currently in the Humble Choice for October 2024, and this is part of my coverage of the bundle. If you are interested in the game and it's before November 5th, 2024, consider picking up the game as part of the current monthly bundle.

It’s Persona Warriors.

This game was made by the Persona team, as well as Omega Force, which is better known as Koei Tecmo’s team that does the Dynasty Warriors titles and pretty much all the Musou games, so what is this one? Well, it’s either a Persona game that has combat very similar to Musou titles with large battlefields and tons of enemies, or a Musou game with a lot of RPG elements and non Musou gameplay.

Truthfully, I think the former is correct. This is a Persona game telling more Persona tier stories. You don’t choose a level, instead there’s an obscenely long opening, like every Persona game, and there’s a lot of time spent outside the dungeon. The dating system isn’t here, but this title is still heavily based on Persona 5.

Which is also potentially a downside. You totally can start here if you want to skip the first game, but there’s a hundred hour game that comes before this that’s a typical JRPG. If you’ve played that and want to see more of those characters, then this exists. But there are, of course, spoilers, even just who is in the cast is likely a spoiler for Persona 5.

Pick this up if you want another Persona 5 story, or you just want every Warrior game. I like Persona, but I have this because it’s Omega Force, and I’m very happy with that. It’s not a Dynasty Warriors game, in the same way Hyrule Warriors wasn’t a Dynasty Warriors game, it’s a merging of the two franchises, and that makes it something unique.

Also, this is like a 40 hour title, so be prepared. This will take a long time, especially if you go through all the dialogue.


If you enjoyed this review or want to know what I think of other games in the bundle, check out the full review on or subscribe to my Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/m9hzsr75eQQ

Pros: It continues the story of Persona 5 in a meaningful way.
Cons: Fun and unique side characters get introduced that we are never going to see again.
Bonus Tip: Don't expect all Persona spin-offs to maintain the same level of quality.

Pretty decent sequel to an already amazing game. It's certainly not perfect like Royal, and unfortunately with some issues in this game I can't help but see it as the inferior version. But if you are able to ignore them, it's still a good game. If you loved the story and characters of this game, I definitely recommend it. But if you enjoyed only the turn based combat, then it won't be for you. It's completely different, but a change is refreshing.

The combat is... interesting. I actually didn't like it at first. It felt complicated and overwhelming. I originally thought the battling had little to no strategy but the more I played the more I realized that's wrong and it's not just button smashing. Right after the first Jail is when I started to enjoy the game a lot. Though, embarrassingly, I only really started to learn the combos by the last Jail. I didn't realize there was so much move variety depending on how many times you press Attack before you press Special. I also really enjoy how each Phantom Thief has their own moveset, and speaking of, I love that you can play everyone!

All the new characters, both Phantom Thieves and bosses, are really well written. My favorite part of P5R was the social aspect, so I was kind of bummed that social links weren't present in this title, but I enjoyed how they implemented the social aspect in this game too. The most unfortunate part about this is the new Royal characters are missing.

Speaking of great characters, the story is really good, as per usual in the Persona series. Some spoilers ahead: I was curious how the Metaverse was going to return, and I enjoy how it was implemented here. Also, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph, the characters and their developments are just so good and I really hope we get to see more of them in future P5 titles. ( Specifically Zenkichi and Akane!!!! )

The new environments are really refreshing, and speaking of(again), I really love the investigation phases before going into the jails. Being able to explore the new areas and talk to all the phantom thieves while they just hang out in the area is awesome.

Speaking of the jails (again again), It's cool how they take over a whole city, but that makes them less memorable/detailed. My favorite parts was the last couple minutes of the jail, and the boss of each area. Though with some negatives also comes positives... There's a ton to explore and it's kind of just fun to have a sandbox to just mess around in. It's also a GREAT QoL change that you can go in and out of Jails without time passing (the calendar system is basically not important at all) and jails NEVER go away. And you can re-fight the bosses! So awesome. (and forgot to mention, all bosses are really fun.)

The new request and bond systems are really nice. The requests feel a lot more unique to the system in Royal. Instead of every single request being tracking and then defeating the enemy in mementos, there's something different to do each time. Whether that is killing an enemy with in a specific way, or getting items for people, it's refreshing. The bond system is also pretty nice. It's almost like the social-link/stat upgrades but you have a little bit more freedom with it. (but I gotta say... the achievement maxing the bond's is quite a grind lol)

I've already mentioned a couple negatives in my previous paragraphs, but I just want to go over them all now.
-The new engine doesn't feel great when moving around in the overworld. Metaverse feels fine though.
-Voice acting is pretty quiet. Turning down the SFX & music helped. Still disappointing though.
-Anti-Aliasing is basically non-existent and most characters and models look horrendous from far away.
-Lack of Royal characters, story arcs, and QoL changes is disappointing. (Both Royal and Strikers was in development at the same time sadly)
-The game didn't even run on Steam Deck without Proton, and then the cutscenes had no voice acting in it. (Which you can fix by putting GST_PLUGIN_FEATURE_RANK=protonaudioconverterbin:NONE %command% into the launch options.)
-Controls being completely swapped is a minor annoyance, but still,
-And worst of all, barely any patches for this game. I feel most of the stuff I mentioned above is fixable... But only 2 patches since 2021. Really disappointing

Regardless, even though I just mentioned a TON of negatives compared to my Persona 5 Royal review, I still think this game is good. But I'm unsure if I'd recommend it to everyone like how I recommend Royal. If you enjoy the characters/story then most definitely. It's just such a different game. I know the dev teams that made Royal and Strikers are completely different, but I kind of wish ATLUS gave the Strikers team a bit more time to cook before releasing.

This will likely be the first and only time I get 100% of the achievements in a game, spend 73 hours doing it, and still can’t recommend it in the end.

In case it wasn’t obvious, I review games based on my preferences and sensibilities for them. One of my universal rules for a video game is that I have to enjoy playing it at least most of the time. Things that get in the way of my enjoyment of a game will, naturally, make it so I dislike the game more than I would otherwise. Now, I don’t expect a perfect video game. In fact, I don’t even want a perfect video game. Some of the fun of enjoying art is experiencing the very human imperfections that make art more meaningful, as long as they’re within reason, anyway.

Persona 5 Strikers got in its own way too often for me to truly recommend it, and what sucks the most about that is that it was nothing on the creative or artsy side of things. It was all on the technical side. The game constantly crashed on loading screens for me and I could never figure out what caused the crashes. I tried adjusting my graphical settings, my resolution, and which monitor I was playing on. Basically, if there was a setting to change, I changed it, and I was still on a ticking timer for a crash, which is ultimately why I can’t recommend the game despite my overall enjoyment of it.

Since there’s no autosave feature in P5S I was only able to pray that it wouldn’t crash on the loading screen after a boss fight. Sometimes I could make it through nearly 50 loading screens before I crashed. Other times I would crash, boot the game back up, and then crash on the very first loading screen right after the main menu. There was no consistency to it, which was arguably more frustrating than having to repeat an entire major boss fight. If nothing else, going through the dialogue and cutscenes can be done quickly.

I know this crashing issue is not something most people would experience, but I still can’t tell anyone I think they should play it after the issues I had getting through the game. When I’m stopping to save the game not because I’ve made a good amount of progress or found a good spot to stop, but because any loading screen can set my progress back, it took so much of the enjoyment I got from the game and smashed it with a baseball bat into little pieces.

When the game worked, it was a blast. The effortless cool of P5 is still present, the soundtrack is phenomenal, the gameplay works well, and the characters are still as charming and fun as they were before, though with their arcs largely done since this is a sequel. While there are still longish character interactions, P5S isn’t on nearly as much of a slow burn to get going as P5 was, making the whole thing appreciatively expedited.

And yet, even when pushing aside the technical issues I dealt with, there are still a few hang-ups I have about the concept. Since the game is a direct sequel, almost all of it hinges on the player having previously gone through the 100-hour original game to have context for the characters, their personalities, their interactions, and their motivations. I don't think that's entirely unreasonable given that it's a game in a larger series. I find it a little hard to see someone starting with P5S instead of P5 or at least starting the game without some knowledge of P5, but I can see it happening and being confusing for someone hoping to use this as a less meaty entry point to the series.

The second issue is the gameplay. If you played P5, then you know it’s a turn-based JRPG that doesn’t require a lot of real-time reactions, especially not in its combat. In P5S, the gameplay is similar to Kingdom Hearts with tight combat areas against small enemies of varying difficulty, the odd miniboss thrown in here and there. Gone is the turn-based gameplay and it's replaced with something entirely different from what the last game gave us, though the developers did an admirable job bringing Persona combat mechanics to real-time action.

It’s clearly a game that’s made for fans of the original, yet it almost feels like it was made to be more accessible to a broader audience. The story is shorter, isn’t quite as deep or as developed (even hitting essentially the same beats at the end), and the gameplay is such a jarring shift from the slower turn-based combat of the original. While I don’t think any of those are bad things in a vacuum, they feel a little at odds with each other from the two games’ design philosophies. For what it’s worth, I think it’s substantially easier to get a turn-based JRPG fan to play an action game than it is the other way around, so it probably wasn’t a bad decision at the end of the day. It’s just one I find a little strange when I look at the two games next to each other.

But there’s still a lot of fun in the game, and as one of those fans I mentioned in the last paragraph, it was just the continuation of P5 I was looking for. I thought the gameplay was fun and the overall faster pace was nice to get 100% of the achievements in a fairly reasonable amount of time. In the presentation, masterful soundtrack, characters, and attention to detail, the game has just about as much polish and care as the original P5 which is extremely impressive for a spinoff title. Then again, Persona is its own high-quality spinoff, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised there.

The game stays true to the original by having Jails in place of Palaces, offering shorter unique areas to traverse and beat. While I do like these Jails, I could feel the creativity in them wasn’t quite as strong as it was in the Palaces in P5. I know it makes sense in the narrative of the story, but nearly all of the Jails were just a normal city with some slight theming to them. Those themes did create some visually impressive areas, yes, but none of the Jails come close to how cool the Palaces in P5 felt. As a spinoff that simplifies P5, I suppose it’s not fair to hold that too much against the developers.

While the areas in the game weren’t always impressive, the fourth and fifth Jails in particular feeling like they were the laziest of them all, I enjoyed the villains in the game a lot more than I did P5. The villains in this game tend to have a little more depth and moral ambiguity compared to the villains in P5[/i}]P5’s story a little easier and less complicated to digest, so it was a nice change to see the villains in this game “grow up” so to speak, along with the cast of playable characters we’re familiar with.

I know this review looks mostly negative, and the fat thumbs down attached to it doesn’t help make it look better, but I really did enjoy my time with P5S when I look back at the 70+ hours I put in. When it worked properly, it was a great extension of a game, cast, and story I liked with welcome surprises. The style, flair, music, and seemingly effortless coolness that makes P5 one of my favorite games of all time is still here, even if the overall creativity of the game’s cooler aspects can’t hold up as well to the original’s.

If you are a fan of P5, despite the completely different gameplay, I’d pick this game up if you haven’t already. If you haven’t played P5 but are looking for a more accessible entry point, this game can be that in certain ways, though I’d highly encourage a playthrough of P5 first. Or watch a playthrough of it online so you can have some better context for the characters. It’s a fun game with plenty of charm and heart. I just hope the game doesn’t get in its own way for you like it did for me.

story is boring, characters are one note versions of their mainline selves, and most importantly the gameplay sucks ass, i hope you like 10 second dynasty warriors battles followed by 5 minutes of pointless dialogue looping over and over because that's all this game seems to be

YOU'LL NEVER SEE IT COMING

50 hours in
i beat the end boss
this was the best fame I ever played that Igot for free

cool

This IS Persona 5 - Part 2.

Gameplay is fine , story mid , terrible performance and graphics. Recommended , i would give 4/10. Praise Atlus