SPEED READER PERSONA 5 PS4
SPEED READER PERSONA 5 PC

You can also still create new persona and level them up in the Velvet Room, though there are fewer persona than before, and you're expected to level them up and keep them around for longer. Just as before, you lay into an enemy until it's dizzy, then unleash a devastating all-out attack. The protagonist can collect new persona whenever they drop as masks after battle, and you do a lot more physical fighting, thanks to some severe limitation of your stamina - persona and other spells are really just meant to be used as special attacks. The enemies are still mostly persona, which means that as before, you fight them by exploiting their elemental weakness using a different persona. While Persona 5 was a round-based RPG, you now fight large waves of enemies in hack and slash battles. The new combat system is both entirely different and reassuringly familiar. While you learn interesting tidbits about each location, Strikers doesn't really give you anything to do there other than to follow the main plot - you can't meet your friends individually to hang out anymore, and locations are often limited to a parking lot and a shopping mall to buy items at. It's an obsession of the groups that, at a time when both restaurant visits and travel are impossible, left me seriously wistful.

Moving away from Tokyo is a bold and brilliant move, and exemplifies something all Japanese media love - travel for the sake of food, rather than sightseeing. This becomes known as a 'change of heart epidemic', and in order to stop it, the Phantom Thieves have to travel across Japan, making Strikers one epic road trip. Without spoiling too much, there's one important difference: the rulers, now called monarchs, have the power to brainwash large amounts of people in the real world. Persona 5 Strikers introduces a lot of new terms and concepts, but the idea at the heart is the same - certain individuals become distorted enough to rule over their own, slightly creepy pocket dimension. She offers to become friends on EMMA, a new Siri-style AI companion, but once the protagonist enters Alice's friendship keyword into the app, it transports him into an alternate dimension that looks like the cognitive world from Persona 5. On the way to get equipment, Ryuji and the protagonist come across a promotional event by popular model and fashion designer Alice Hiiragi. It's the summer and the Phantom Thieves want to get together for a nice camping holiday. Strikers begins immediately after the events of Persona 5.

SPEED READER PERSONA 5 PC

It's also a direct sequel, so despite it releasing on PC and, slightly ironically, on Switch, you'll be lost if you haven't played the PlayStation-exclusive Persona 5 or Persona 5 Royal first.

SPEED READER PERSONA 5 PS4

Availability: Out February 23rd on Switch, PC and PS4.

Here's the good news: Persona 5 Strikers retains most of the elements you know and love from Persona 5, but with a combat system lifted from another series. It felt like an odd fit - these are games that, to put it mildly, aren't known for their storytelling. Back when the spin-off was announced, with many fans holding out hope for a Switch port of P-Studio's excellent 2016 JRPG, the news that this would be another of Omega Force's seemingly endless musou reskins was met with a slightly disappointed shrug.

Persona 5 Strikers was born in a fit of consternation. Persona 5 Strikers is a full-on sequel that tells an engrossing new story, even if its combat doesn't quite have the same wow factor.

Speed reader persona 5