Persona 5 took me close to a year… I think. It was a gigantic game with unbelievable amount of dialogue. It was also game I deeply enjoyed, despite not particularly liking anything about. The story was ok, the gameplay was ok, the RPG element was ok, the dating was ok. But, somehow, authors managed to join that into one freaking nice experience.
Persona 5: Strikers is none of those things. It’s a linear button masher with characters I like. But it has none of the good elements of P5.
First, it’s not an jRPG anymore. When fight starts, you are presented with dozens of enemies you need to fight in real time. Half of the time, I had no idea what was going on. Fights, for me, are terrible. Enemies were everywhere, and I had no chance to control the battlefield. Lots of annoyances and finger pain, but no enjoyment. Just running into random spots, bashing melee attacks and checking for weakness from time to time. I play on easy and was tired of that very quickly, I can’t imagine having any actual problems with this system you have no enjoyment with.
The real-world activities are almost none-existent. I loved how the Phantom Thieves bonded and became friends. None of this here. You’ve got some dialogue, but no payoff. There is some stat related to bonding, but we all know each other. In P5 the single best part was learning about each other and seeing how their lives improve. None of that is here.
Dating? None. And my chosen love interest from P5 doesn’t even show up!
Extracurricular activities are limited to finding stuff on maps.
Getting to know Tokyo? Nope. Every few hours we move to a new city.
Story? Well, I gave up before it started. After 10 hours, midway through the third jail I gave up. I had to guard Futaba again and after a moment became so frustrated and bored, that I stopped playing.
I give 2/5 for those 10 hours. Maybe it gets better later on, but I don’t care enough. I dropped the game and will never return.