Persona 5 Strikers

Honestly, I don't think I can really justify liking this one as much as I do. Everything great about it already existed in Persona 5, and was either just as good or better there, and the significant changes are all downgrades. Some of the additions are nice - none of the three new major characters are as good as the original set were, but they're all still solid, and the broader range of overworld settings allowed by the plot's road trip conceit is appreciated - but no more than that. The palaces (now rebranded as 'jails') range from 'could have been in the original' at their best to 'significant step down' at their worst; the shift toward making the monarchs victims as much as aggressors, spurred into their actions by their own trauma, doesn't add anywhere near as much to the plot or the emotional impact of facing them as you'd think it would; unsurprisingly for somebody that's never enjoyed this kind of hack & slash crowd combat, I think the combat here is a huge downgrade on the best turn-based system I've ever played.

So yes, there's a very significant amount of stolen valour about this game's qualities. That's basically okay though, because I absolutely fucking love Persona 5. Even if the third time around (fourth if you're counting Royal, I guess) isn't anywhere near as good as the first, it's still such a pleasure to get to spend more time in this world, with these characters, that I don't necessarily mind the combat being a bit of an obstacle to get done as quickly as possible, rather than something to really savour in its own right. (In the interests of fairness, it should definitely be noted here that as I write this I'm about 90 minutes into Yakuza: Like a Dragon [龍が如く7　光と闇の行方], a game that does the turn-based to real-time journey in the other direction, and nothing about this ever made me internally scream 'EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT AND I DON'T LIKE IT' the way Like a Dragon has so far - so things could certainly be an awful lot worse.) I feel like I'd happily take a Persona 5 game in any genre, just as long as there was significant focus on the story and the characters and the aesthetics and mood remains unchanged - and Persona 5 Strikers fits into that very nicely. You'd have to create some unspeakably tedious gameplay to overpower the appeal of those fundamentals, and what's here is a long, long way away from being that bad. So maybe this is ultimately no more than a pleasing diversion for big fans of either of the games it's based on - but I'm one of those fans, and it pleased me.