Persona 5 Strikers was born in a fit of consternation. 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. It felt like an odd fit – these are games that, to put it mildly, aren’t known for their storytelling. 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’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. Strikers begins immediately after the events of Persona 5. It’s the summer and the Phantom Thieves want to get together for a nice camping holiday. On the way to get equipment, Ryuji and the protagonist come across a promotional event by popular model and fashion designer Alice Hiiragi. 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.
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. 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. 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.
