Persona 5 Strikers

Persona 5 Strikers sends the Phantom Thieves from Persona 5 on a summer road trip across Japan, where they are caught off guard by incidents tied to a strange version of the Metaverse called a Jail. Instead of the main series' classic turn-based battles, Omega Force, the creators of Dynasty Warriors, working together with Atlus and its P-Studio team, bring a real-time musou action system with crowds of enemies and the ever-present summoning of Personas for special abilities and attack combos, complemented by traveling between cities and conversations with familiar companions.

While PlayStation 4 and Switch received the game already in 2020 at its Japanese release, the PC version on Steam only arrived with the international release a year later, alongside the western console versions. Thanks to the later release, it could benefit from more polished code and offer unlocked frame rates and higher resolution than either of the launch platforms, similar to what is common for PC versions of Japanese action games released some time after the console editions.

Controls work with both keyboard-and-mouse and gamepad, though given the action-heavy nature of battles against crowds of enemies, most players end up reaching for a controller just as on consoles. Content-wise, the PC version does not differ from the PlayStation or Switch releases – it is the same game with the same story and characters, just with the opportunity to get higher technical visual quality out of it on a powerful computer.

Because the PC version launched alongside the western console releases, it was also, for many players outside Japan, the very first opportunity to try Persona 5 Strikers at all. The Steam platform also brought standard benefits such as easy reinstallation of the game, cloud save games, or the ability to play on a laptop as well as a desktop computer without depending on a specific game console.

For players who generally prefer an open platform with the possibility of future performance improvements when upgrading their rig, or who want to keep the Persona series together on Steam, the PC edition of Strikers represented a sensible and sustainable long-term choice, even though they had to wait a year longer than players in Japan.

Why play: For players who prefer an open platform with a view toward future rig upgrades, or those who want to keep the entire Persona series together on Steam – you just have to wait a year longer than players in Japan.