Few games get the love the Persona 5 received. Not just in terms of fan reception – the JRPG is beloved but many other games have similarly sized or bigger fan bases – but in terms of how much care and attention it got post-release. It’s not a live service game, and so did not come with new chapters, dungeons, or events in the months and years after release. Instead, it received something much less typical, and as we look ahead to the new Persona projects set to be revealed soon, it’s worth celebrating just how much post-launch love Persona 5 was given. It might still not be on Xbox, Switch, or PC, but I guess you can’t have everything.
Persona 5 was followed by Persona 5 Royal, which is essentially a definitive edition of the base game. It adds in new characters Kasumi Yoshizawa and Takuto Maruki, as well as tweaking some of the existing ones. A large chunk of the story remains the same, with some slight changes along the way to support these additional or tweaked characters, to offer new content both along the main path and off to the side, and removing some of the more irritating features – you are no longer forced by a cat to go to bed, for example.
Related: Persona 6 Should Explore The World Of InfluencersAs definitive editions go, Persona 5 Royal is pretty meaty, but many games can point to their own definitive editions – or whatever name they’re given – with extra DLC, missions, and stories to give players a fresh take on an old favourite. Few can point to Dancing in Starlight or Strikers, or the anime spin-off Persona 5 also had, though.
The first spin-off is a rhythm game featuring the main cast of Persona 5, and acts as a fun way to revisit the game’s version of Shibuya with your virtual friends. Narratively, it’s way below the main game’s standards, but it’s a great way to keep the Persona buzz going without needing to give in to another 150 hour playthrough.
Strikers, meanwhile, is a musou game that acts as a sequel to the base game – not to Royal, but the original. In terms of continuity, that can be a little hard to get your head around (as can the fact it’s on PC and Switch when the base game is not), but it makes sense that you can go from Persona 5 into Persona 5 Strikers and enjoy a cohesive story. It establishes the base version as the ‘true’ version and Royal as more of a hypothetical retelling of the story. Royal is clearly not a Persona 5 sequel, since they tell the same story in different ways, so Strikers has to choose one. Picking the base version of the game is not without its issues, but having sold 3.2 million copies to Royal’s 1.8 million, it feels like the correct call.
In any case, Strikers is a brilliant game. It gets the old gang back together for a road trip, and just stepping into Cafe Leblanc again feels nostalgic. In the base game, this acts as the hideout where you plan your heists or take part in several skill boosting minigames, but aside from weird interactions with your teacher who doubles up as a maid-for-hire, it doesn't feel like much of the story organically happens here. You're always there with a distinct purpose, but in Strikers, you get to chill out there.
Soon, you're off on the road, and the game gets to play with the character dynamics a lot more while still keeping each personality intact. Persona 5 is literally played day-to-day, and while characters do grow over the course of the story, the half-year time jump between Persona 5 ending and Strikers starting lets us see these changes in much more depth. It also feels like the perfect goodbye. Persona 5 ends when it runs out of story to tell, but Strikers seems like a deliberate farewell. It's the last day of summer, one final day with nothing to worry about but your best buds. Life and responsibility will be here soon, but for now, it's just Ryuji, Morgana, Ann, Makoto, Yusuke, Haru, Futaba – and you. Not many games get the chance at such a neatly packaged wrap up.
Not all games can get this treatment, of course. The Last of Us Part 2 would be somewhat undercut if a spin-off included Abby dancing to Dua Lipa's Future Nostalgia. But too often, the industry is keen to move onto the next thing. A new sequel, a new game, a new idea. I'm finished playing with this toy now, give me another. We don't get a chance to bask in the world the way we do with Persona 5, and that's a real shame. With so many rich experiences to be found, more games need to give us the opportunity to dive back in.
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