At this price, I'll give the Persona 5 spinoff a chance

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By Julian Benson
published

Strike while it's hot

Persona 5 Strikers
(Image credit: Atlus)

I came to the Persona party very late, only diving into the long-running JRPG series with Persona 5. It drew me in with its achingly stylish anime aesthetic and funky soundtrack. Still, I quickly tumbled into the depths of its world and spent hours exploring the back streets of its Tokyo suburb-setting and the recesses of its villains’ mind palaces.

I don’t usually play JRPGs; I’ve bounced off the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games many times. Perhaps it was the modern-day setting of Persona and the way it weaves a fantasy adventure into the day-to-day lives of schoolchildren, making the stakes of surviving an encounter with a monster in a mental dungeon on par with the importance of passing your exams, but I fell for Persona 5 hard.

Persona 5

(Image credit: Atlus)

Still, as much as I’ve enjoyed Persona 5, it wasn’t enough to make me pick up Persona 5 Strikers, at least not at full price. Strikers takes Persona 5’s complex RPG systems that make it a unique sandbox – putting you in charge of managing friendships, developing your character as a student and as a fighter of mental demons – and turns it into an action game where you fight hordes of monsters.

The Koei Tecmo brand is to take its Dynasty Warriors formula and apply it to other series. We’ve seen the publisher do it with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and most recently with Fire Emblem: Three Houses. And, while it’s done an excellent job of capturing the look of those games’ worlds, the result is off lesser than the original. An, at best, playable spin-off. At least, that’s how I’ve unfairly thought of them.

In the Persona games, you face off against enemies in turn-based battles, only ever facing a few at a time. That slower pace and smaller scale combat let you focus on and appreciate the monster design. Considering this is a world all about facing the purer impulses that we find deep in our psyche, they’re often grotesquely exaggerated sexual creatures, like the unmistakable penis-shaped Mara demon. I can’t help but think something of that will be lost when facing hundreds of them at once, like stumbling onto a beach covered in fat innkeeper worms.

You may feel the same way – about Dynasty Warriors combat not fitting the Persona series, not that fat innkeeper worm thing – and have avoided picking up the spinoff, too. But, there are two compelling reasons to give it a try. 

First off, Persona has had weird genre spinoffs before. Persona 4: Dancing All Night turned the JRPG into a rhythm game, and it is honestly one of the best spinoffs of any game ever. Stripping out the RPG elements and simply having the characters take part in a joyous dance routine, after all the horrors you’ve seen them go through, is a beautiful surprise. Seeing the characters of Persona 5 in a new genre, one that’s pared back to pure action, may give us a new appreciation for them.

Reason two is that Persona 5 Strikers has a massive discount as part of Prime Day. On PS4 in the UK, it’s down from £49.99 to just £16.95, a 66% discount reduction. The deal is less good on Switch, with only 50% off, but that’s still no small amount of money.

If you’re shopping in the US, you can get Persona 5 Strikers for PS4 for $39.49, down from its usual $59.99 price tag., and on Switch you can get it for $39.99.

US deals

Persona 5 Strikers (PS4): $59.99 $39.49 at AmazonSave $20.50

Persona 5 Strikers (PS4): $59.99 $39.49 at Amazon
Save $20.50 - Persona 5 Strikers is the Hyrule Warriors-style spinoff of turn-based JRPG Persona 5. The genre switch turns the considered slow-burn combat of the original into an intense action game. It's a strange turn but worth investigating at this price.

View Deal
Persona 5 Strikers (Nintendo Switch): $59.99 $39.99 at AmazonSave $20.00

Persona 5 Strikers (Nintendo Switch): $59.99 $39.99 at Amazon
Save $20.00 - Persona 5 Strikers is the Hyrule Warriors-style spinoff of turn-based JRPG Persona 5. The genre switch turns the considered slow-burn combat of the original into an intense action game. It's a strange turn but worth investigating at this price.

View Deal

UK deals

Persona 5 Strikers (Nintendo Switch): £49.99 £24.75 at AmazonSave £25.24

Persona 5 Strikers (Nintendo Switch): £49.99 £24.75 at Amazon
Save £25.24 - Persona 5 Strikers is the Hyrule Warriors-style spinoff of turn-based JRPG Persona 5. The genre switch turns the considered slow-burn combat of the original into an intense action game. It's a strange turn but worth investigating at this price.

View Deal
Persona 5 Strikers (PS$): £49.99 £16.95 at AmazonSave £33.04

Persona 5 Strikers (PS$): £49.99 £16.95 at Amazon
Save £33.04 - Persona 5 Strikers is the Hyrule Warriors-style spinoff of turn-based JRPG Persona 5. The genre switch turns the considered slow-burn combat of the original into an intense action game. It's a strange turn but worth investigating at this price.

View Deal

At that price, I’m picking up the PS4 version here in the UK because £17, while not nothing, is a price I’m willing to take a punt on, especially considering how much I’ve enjoyed Persona 5. And, who knows, if I fall in love with Strikers, I’ll have to reassess Hyrule Warriors (which is currently down to £33 in the UK) and Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes ($52 in the US, and £35.99 in the UK).

More Prime Day deals in the US

More Prime Day deals in the UK

Julian Benson
Julian Benson
Contributor, TechRadar Gaming

Julian's been writing about video games for more than a decade. In that time, he's always been drawn to the strange intersections between gaming and the real world, like when he interviewed a NASA scientist who had become a Space Pope in EVE Online,  or when he traveled to Ukraine to interview game developers involved in the 2014 revolution, or that time he tore his trousers while playing Just Dance with a developer.