If you're stressed about having to make real-time decisions, you can turn down the difficulty to easy while upping the challenge level will give you a more traditional action RPG experience by forcing you to really care about evading attacks. The combination forces you to have the strategy of the turn-based combats without making any one battle feel like a slog. It's also a good idea to utilize other characters to conserve Joker's resources in areas where you can't quickly return to the real world.

While it's easy to lean on Joker, the protagonist of Persona 5, because he has the most diverse special attacks, alternating between characters will unlock new moves and allow you to unleash devastating attacks faster. They make the characters feel distinct and your team will also offer shouts of encouragement to whoever is taking the lead that add extra charm to the fights. All of the Phantom Thieves are playable characters in Persona 5 Strikers and each has their own move set and special attacks. You feel satisfied when you can nail the timing to hit a powerful combo while paying attention to prompts from the AI controlling the rest of your squad to swap characters to let someone else show off. Persona 5 Strikers employs a hybrid system that is surprisingly fun. You'll need to have a solid grasp of both techniques to make it through the tougher fights or just to endure the waves of enemies that come at you in some timed sequences. While mainline Persona games use turn-based combat, Persona 5 Strikers employs a hybrid system where you mix hack-and-slash attacks with pauses that let you select items or special powers without pressure.

The terrain is also a powerful tool in combat, where you can blow up cars, throw swords, drop hanging objects, and find plenty of other creative ways to hurt your foes besides using your standard array of powers. You'll explore these realms stealthily, avoiding unnecessary fights by jumping around and hiding until you can ambush foes, finding hidden treasure by shimmying over wires, blinding enemies through shooting out spotlights, and using your special ability to find the unseen to discover invisible platforms. Each Jail is impressively realized with gorgeous visual details and thrilling boss fights such as the model Alice's Wonderland-themed realm filled with candy and carnival rides or the mayor of Sapporo, a city famous for its annual Snow Festival, who sees her home as a desolate but beautiful frozen palace. It's a deep narrative that tackles topics like toxic fandom, the price of political power, and bullying while pushing each of the protagonists to examine their lives and choices by looking at a dark mirror of themselves. 'It comes from living through painful experiences.' In Persona 5 Strikers, the combination of those traumas and Emma's power manifests in Jails, twisted realms ruled by Monarchs who steal the desires of others resulting in those people worshipping the monarch in the real world. 'Trauma is like an invisible wound in a person's heart,' the Phantom Thief Haru explains to Sophia.

Persona 5 strikers review