Persona 5 Royal is my favorite video game of all time. From it's beautifully realized world, to its deep and interesting gameplay systems, to my favorite thing about it, the greatest narrative I have ever experienced. Persona 5 Strikers - is my favorite sequel of all time. A special game, truly worthy of being the sequel to such a legendary title. Let me tell you why.

The game’s core gameplay revolves around a shockingly accurate replication of the Persona 5 gameplay loop that I wouldn’t expect a game with a spin-off budget to be able to pull off. It bounces you back between 2 halves:

In the real world, you can explore different cities. The framing device of a road trip allowed for a lot of different distinct locations around Japan to be visited, which affords the game a lot of variety and supplies some excellent world-building. These locations have places to explore, shops to visit, and events to encounter. The game has the Phantom Thieves engage in plenty of fun friendly activities, showing you their bond growing even better than the original game did. While the game’s quest system offers various quests with mini storylines revolving around your various friends, managing to somewhat replicate Persona’s social link system, which is downright impressive.

And within the metaverse, the new jails are as fun and interesting as the palaces ever were, not losing a hint of the scale and feel. Each of these places have large areas to explore, puzzles to solve, actiony setpieces, platforming sections, entertaining story moments, important build-up to their ruler and their past, and of course - the combat system. I was personally a very big fan of the combat, as I found the action m mechanics fused with Personas to mesh delightfully well, making for a fast, challenging, and engaging system. In fact, I found it often surpassed the original turn-based system, as combat was one of P5R’s most flawed components, while it never stopped being fun here.

Every other aspect of the game is full of quality - the graphics and presentation are absolutely full of the Persona 5 style, character-building and management is quite deep and every character’s playstyle is distinct, side quests, cooking mechanics, and other side activities keep the game fresh - and the OST deserves a big mention, as I downright found it to be BETTER than Royal’s - similarly amazing new battle themes and great remixes of old ones, city themes that had me waiting at every new city just to hear them, and multiple of my absolute top songs from the saga, with Counterstrike in particular standing as my absolute favorite.

But all of this was just build-up. As what makes Persona 5 Strikers truly special - is the narrative. A sequel that feels not just warranted, but necessary. My all time favorite sequel story. And the rest of this review will be a full dissection of it.

I will begin by dissecting the core of the story, the primary theme that drives it, and sits at the center of what makes it work so well.

One complaint I’ve seen held against Strikers’ narrative is that it feels like the same thing again - a point I greatly disagree with. The reasoning for that fact is rooted in a major contrasting element between the 2 games: their villains. As good of a story as Persona 5 is, its story can be seen as rather idealistic. Its characters struggle through hardships in life but manage to find each other and bond over their struggles, and on top of that, overcome them with the use of other-worldly powers that do not exist in the real world, in a way that involves a lot of perfect circumstances. In reality, a person experiencing struggles similar to the Phantom Thieves may simply wish they could perfectly find such friends, and of course, have such powers to be able to fight back. I am well aware of the large number of people who still managed to find Persona 5 to be greatly inspiring, who were driven by it to fight back against their oppressors or rise up against their struggles, and I do not mean to take that away from the game - but rather, to point out how it’s sequel managed to use this point to tell a new story that enriches and improves the one that succeeded it immensely.

Now, as I’ve previously stated, the villains, jail monarchs in this case, lie at the center of my point. And that is because, to me, they are twisted and un-idealistic versions of the Phantom Thieves - versions of these characters that went through similar struggles to the Phantom Thieves but lacked the special powers, or even the supportive group, that they had to climb their way out - instead, spiraling downwards more and more, until, when they were given their own powers, they were too far gone, as the harsh reality we live in pushed them down a dark path of seeking power, fame, and control, to make up for what they lacked in the past. And it is these villains that show the PTs that not all people who do bad things are pure evil - and that leads them on a path to help them. In P5R, the PTs faced their oppressors and made them pay. In P5S, they face other oppressed, and help them recover.

This links to another point I wanted to make. the PTs’ arcs in the original game were already complete - they learned valuable lessons, fought against hardships, and came out of the adventure as more complete people. Creating a sequel with such complete characters is difficult, but Strikers found the perfect solution - because in this game, they’re passing the torch forward. The Jail Monarchs are people who had the potential to be Phantom Thieves themselves but not the circumstances the group was in to actually do so, which leads to the group passing on those very lessons they previously learned in the hope that they can inspire more people to fight back as they did. And I believe a major reason why this works is the way they change the monarchs’ hearts - with words. These people are not pure evil, they’re real people with depth, and this game shows that you don’t need magical powers to fix a broken person. With each jail, we see a different PT sympathize with its ruler and inspire it to fight back the same way they did. Just as Ann told off Kamoshida and set herself on her own path, she sees in Alice someone who wanted to bring happiness to people as she does and shows to her that she still can. And so follow Yusuke, and Haru. They’re passing the torch, making the whole world better, even those that weren’t as lucky as they were, as it is their obligation to share their luck with others.

But following those jails, the rest bring this point even more depth. Akane’s arc brings an interesting subversion when it shows Akane’s own idealization of the PTs as perfect heroes only to disprove this fact by showing her the very flaws that make even them human too - both when they meet her in reality and in the metaverse. It is an excellent new perspective to show in a story all about the impact of the PTs on other people and their connection to people less lucky than them. Ichinose too is a case of a person broken by the coldness of her surroundings who simply needed someone to confide in but blamed her loneliness on the whole world, but the PTs just needed to reach out and offer her a helping hand. But my favorite villain in the game has to be Konoe. A character that perfectly embodies the other villains in one: an Anti Phantom Thief. Konoe, just like the PTs, was wronged by society and sought to take matters into his own hands and fix the world himself. But he went too far and got mad with power, was twisted by his own past, and lacked companions to set him right, veering further and further from reason - and as similar he is to the PTs, everything they learned thus far is put to the ultimate test as they prove to him what makes them different - the way they make people better by letting them be themselves.

And they later prove this point by sending their final calling card in the entire duology - a calling card… to everyone. All residents of Japan. But I believe there’s more to this one. This calling card is addressed not only to the fictional residents of digital Japan, but to you as well, the player. As they say, they’re gonna change YOUR heart. They teach you that everything they went through wasn’t because they were lucky or because they stumbled upon a perfect group unrealistically or because they had superpowers - it’s because they had the courage to stand up to their oppressors and to the world itself, and you can too. They wanted to encompass everything that’s happened in the rest of the game - every word they’ve said to Alice, to Natsume, to Mariko, to Akane, to Konoe, to Ichinose- just as they inspired them to be better and rise to the challenge even without magic, they hope those words reach you too. And that’s how the people of Japan no longer let EMMA make their choices for them, and how you shouldn’t let anyone make choices for you, either. This is the true POINT of Persona 5 Strikers.

But it’s far from the only important quality of this excellent narrative. As I’ve established, the PTs, despite being such complete characters previously, are expanded in great ways here. An important way in which this is done is by giving multiple of them another arc focused on them where they get to shine - and likely the most necessary of these is Haru, as a common complaint for the original game is a lack of screentime for her, which I believe the Sapporo arc perfectly addresses, allowing her to shine and show the strongest aspects of her character. And on top of that, the group bonds in this game more than ever before. Another common complaint with the first game is that the PTs didn’t feel quite like a friend group and often more like colleagues, and I found Strikers gave me all the moments I needed to change this, bonding the group together in a beautifully charming summer vacation that got me to connect with them more than ever before. I’ll add that this is also helped by the game’s larger focus on humor, which worked well for me as I laughed at a lot of the jokes.

But there is one last aspect I have to bring attention to. This story manages to succeed its predecessor so excellently not just thanks to what it does with its old characters, but thanks to the new ones it introduces as well. Not just the new villains, but the new heroes too. Strikers introduces 2 new Phantom Thieves - and they’re both in my own top 3 best members of the whole group, a fact that I believe came from their high prominence in the story - the inclusion of only 2 new members in the whole game allowed for a far greater amount of focus to be put on the stories of each one, and it shows.

Zenkichi Hasegawa was an incredibly deep character who provided a unique take on what a Phantom Thief could be and bonded with the group very well. The use of an adult as a member was a pretty big spin and I believe it really paid off. Zenkichi remained a highlight of the game for its entire run - his arc, bonding with the PTs throughout the game and learning to become one of them was beautiful, the tension surrounding his true alignment was suspenseful, his energy and personality were very entertaining, and I always enjoyed seeing him on screen. But the chapter he got to shine in the most was Akane’s jail - I had intentionally held off on discussing this arc as Zenkichi was its star. A Jail ruled by a daughter in which the father awakens to his own Persona. It highlighted his struggle to be a good father, to fulfill his duties in the police… and to be something. For once, it is the father who wishes his daughter was truly proud of him, because maybe, if she was, he could be proud of himself. Only to learn that the distance between him and his daughter was also caused by his very obsession with being good enough. His growth was absolutely captivating, and he was a worthy addition to the team.

Sophia, meanwhile, absolutely shocked me with her depth by the end. What originally seemed like yet another cute mascot turned out to be so much more. I’m definitely a fan of Morgana myself but he’s still my least favorite PT while Sophia is among my favorites. And it all lies in her story. While the game begins by making her seem like a simple cute character to assist the team and help them find their way, as it goes on, her true mission is revealed to you - understanding the human heart. And this story is more than an individual arc, as I believe it also ties into the game’s entire theme - everything she knows by the end, she learns from the PTs. Their own experiences help shape her own perception of the world. The lessons they learned, the values they stand by, and the people they choose to be every day stand as an example of what it means to be human in front of Shophia’s eyes every day. She always has questions to ask, and she always gets an answer, but never a perfect one, showing her how complicated being a human really is. And she gets to truly shine in another jail I skimped over - the final jail, in which Ichinose has a starring role. Ichinose stands to represent the depths a person can sink into when they’re alone. A woman in need of companionship, of the same kind the PTs all have - a woman who needs their help more than anybody else. But it is not the PTs that convince her of this - but rather, it’s Sophia. Ichinose’s very own creation. Born to be her companion, originally failing at this task, it is here that she shows her understanding of everything that the Phantom Thieves are, everything they represent - when she is now able to fulfill her original function, to be humanity’s companion, and offers Ichinose a helping hand. A perfect cap off to this group and their connections to each other, all encompassed in a single character, sent off by the end to help more people see the same light as the PTs - as showing people that light is their true calling.

And all of that was almost entirely about the characters. I can also bring attention to the absolutely gripping plot - the game managed to hold me in so many ways. The jails being artificial brings constant mystery to the question of who created them, fueled consistently by our small glimpses of their effects, the intervention of Maddice, and especially the exciting Okinawa jail. The question of Zenkichi’s trustworthiness is another one you almost never stop asking yourself, all until Akane’s jail fully shows you what side he’s on. The use of a fakeout villain making you shrug at “yet another corrupt politician” only for him to be quickly discarded by the real puppetmaster, a dark PT mirror pretending to be Iron Man, was a genius play, and the final jail with Ichinose’s true plan at the end felt like a perfect climax and had me at the edge of my seat. This part is less organized because talking about drama and mystery isn’t quite as deep, I just want to give the game credit for tying it all together into such a gripping storyline.

From its complex themes that tie into and enrich the original story, to the excellent ways in which it expands upon existing characters, to it’s brilliant new characters that are among my favorites in the saga, along with great group dynamics, funny humor, thrilling twists, and a sense of adventure, Persona 5 Strikers’ story kept me captivated for it’s entire runtime. This, along with gameplay that, while not as special as the original, was quite fun to me in and of itself, many elements tying the package together into a true Persona experience, and an even better OST than it’s predecessor, made for one of my all-time favorite video games, yet another unforgettable experience in this world. And I hope I helped some others see what I see in this masterpiece.