Persona 5 and Musou have come together, not like peanut butter and jelly but something else entirely. It’s hard to know what to expect when you come into Persona 5 Strikers for the first time, as the two genres are so finely blended it can be hard to process at first.
But you’ll eventually learn the intricacies here, and become an expert in the coolest MegaTen action game since Devil Summoner. I mean, yeah, it’s the only one since then, but still. It’s good.
As I played through Persona 5 Strikers on the way to writing our review, I took note of some of what felt like the most important points. Some of them came up in the review, but the rest are great material for a general “tips and tricks” style guide.
So here we are. We may go further in-depth if necessary, but for now if you haven’t dived in yet, these pointers may be worth keeping in mind before you get started.
Persona 5 Strikers Tips and Tricks
Like a normal Shin Megami Tensei-adjacent game, SP is a precious resource. It’s the same in Strikers, especially since it can be hard to even find useful SP restorative items. That said, you’ll only be burning SP if you summon your Persona to use a skill directly.
If magic comes out as part of your combo-enders, it’s free. However, even if you hit a weakness you won’t get the same bonuses.
You’re gonna have to grind; sorry. Persona 5 Strikers does have some level checks. They aren’t intense, but in some cases (especially minor boss fights), if your numbers aren’t high enough you’ll see your margin of error dissolve pretty quickly. Sometimes you just have to run around and level up a bit.
Speaking of leveling up, you also want to swap your party members around as much as you can early on. This is because in addition to leveling up and getting stronger, characters also gain new abilities or passives for things like their gun attacks. These are all super useful, so filling that stuff out as early as possible will help you out big time.
Most of the time in Musou games you don’t really have to pay attention to what enemies are doing. Every now and then there’s an exception, but generally speaking you’ll be fine just worrying about how you’re issuing pain. Strikers is different, thanks to all the different consequences of eating damage.
And the different spells have very different physical properties, even within the same line. For example, when an enemy casts Bufu you’ll see a little AoE indicator on the ground and have time to react. But if you see a demon cast Mabufu, you have about the time it takes to read that to get out of the way as a trail of ice barrels towards your face.
From Zio to Garu, there’s almost always some variation of physicality, so it’s important to pay enough attention to learn those variables and what you need to do.
You’ll come to learn quickly that Strikers has replaced Social Links with something a bit simpler in the team’s overall Bond level. This extra meter builds up passively as you play and advance the story, and it’s pretty slow.
But if you can hold off a bit and just buy some rate ups, your Bond level will go up way faster, and you’ll be able to snag super helpful stuff like post-combat HP/SP heals much earlier.
The best asset to your progress is the facet you can run away. Unlike the Persona games proper, Strikers lets you dip out of a Jail early without any repercussions. Combined with the checkpoint system, there’s no reason not to dip out for a bit to heal up, check the shop for more items, manage your Personas or whatever.
If you don’t want to blow items just leveling or exploring, there’s nothing wrong with leaving outright even if you’re gonna jump back in right away.
My biggest problem with Persona 5 Strikers is the camera. It’s zoomed in a bit too much for what’s actually happening in the game, making some of the chaos harder to digest compared to other games like this. But if you keep that in mind and prepare yourself to put a little extra effort into keeping tabs on the battlefield, you’ll be fine.
This is mostly relevant for making sure you don’t miss things like All-Out Attack prompts, which can pop up all around you depending on the circumstances.
In regular Persona games, keeping the protagonist’s starting Persona around is more of a thing you have to want to do. But in Strikers, Arsene has quite a few more skills than usual, so he’s definitely worth keeping around for a while to fill that up.
Arsene is also good fusion material though, but it can be worth the money to grab them right back from the compendium.
Persona Points seem like something you’ll want to hang onto, since Personas are plentiful and leveling them up is slow going otherwise. But it’s super easy to get these points, especially once you get certain Bond skills.
Don’t hesitate to pump up your Personas as soon as you can, to make sure you’re getting access to skills and not falling behind in strength. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.
Persona 5 Strikers is a super busy game that throws all kinds of stuff at you. Reacting to everything can seem overwhelming at first, but once you click with the systems you’ll adjust just fine. This applies to fans of either side of the hybrid here, both Musou fans, Persona fans and anyone in-between.
If you’re on the fence about whether or not you even want to try Strikers out, hopefully our coverage will help you decide. Afterwards, let us know if you enjoy the game or not over at the Prima Games Twitter and Facebook channels!
