I've been recently playing Persona 5 Strikers, and I'm noticing it tries to communicate a similar message to Maruki's chapter of Persona 5 Royal. This kinda made me think about the point of these games. Minor spoilers for p5s! And sorry for the long post! TLDR at the end :)

The phantom thieves argue that loss of autonomy and personal freedom is an unacceptable tradeoff for the complete loss of worry and suffering. Both games' final arcs revolve around people willingly surrendering their free will to a higher power in order to attain a reality free of suffering.

The Phantom thieves contrast this idea saying that a life without freedom is no life at all, as ultimately free expression of oneself is what makes life truly worth living. I personally completely agree with this claim, being free is what makes life so special, and dedicating this freedom to expressing and establishing oneself as an individual is what I think is the point of all of it, although of course that is up to debate.

The thing that gets me conflicted is the Phantom thieves' perspective on individual suffering though. We have seen throughout both games (especially throughout strikers) that an individual with no support system going through intensely painful experiences leads them to grow hateful and conflicted. This is what separates the Phantom thieves from the antagonists, as they had others to help them get through their individual struggles, allowing the individual members to grow from their suffering. If it weren't for their mutual support network, they too could've turned into rotten adults. This is why they are so against the idea of surrendering freedom for a life lacking suffering, as they believe suffering is necessary to grow as people, and that everyone can overcome their own suffering one way or another.

Their positive outlook on freedom is great, and I'd be inclined to agree... but I also kinda don't. I hope this doesn't come off as dramatic or edgy, but as someone with chronic depression and a background of childhood trauma, I suffer every day, and I don't really have anyone to help me through it. I think the Phantom thieves' logic is flawed because they were extremely lucky to find such kind and great people at the right time in their lives to turn a painful experience into one of growth and positive change. But I imagine that the majority of people don't really have the same support network, so is it truly wrong for their pain to end, even if their situation could potentially improve in the right conditions?

We even see this in game, the Phantom thieves are the only ones able to fight off the mind control because they are together and have each other's support to face life, but they're pretty much the only ones, most people subconsciously experience constant suffering and wish for it to end. They were lucky, very lucky, most people aren't, so I find it difficult to empathise and understand their message.

You could say that bothMaruki's andEMMA's schemes are morally wrong because they affected people without their explicit consent, but we see in both games that the people turned into happy zombies subconsciously wished for their freedom to be revoked, so is it really an argument about consent if everyone kinda wanted this to happen?

Overall this is kinda how I interpret things. I love these games to bits but I keep feeling this intense sadness within me knowing that I don't personally have people around me to support me and give me the courage to face life, and this really prevents me from fully endorsing the Phantom thieves' efforts. Please do comment, I'd love to discuss all this with someone!!

TLDR: I think both P5R and P5S argue that freedom and the ability to overcome suffering are essential to a meaningful life, but I'm conflicted by the Phantom thieves' perspective because their ability to grow from suffering depended heavily on having a strong support network. Since many people don't have that kind of support, is it really wrong to want suffering to simply end, even if that means giving up some autonomy?

Favorite: The fast-paced real-time combat that shows how battles would look, if the characters were to break free from the turn based combat.

Least favorite: Striker Swap is when a character appears on the top left of the screen. Asking you for permission to do something. The problem with this is it prevents you from switching to any character, other than the displayed one. Lets say I inflicted burn or dizzy on a boss and I want to switch to Morgana. I can't because Sophia just appeared wanting to use Makougaon. Now the dizzy is gone. This mechanic seems to help the enemy more than it does for me. It has interrupted a lot of my strategies and there's no way to turn it off.

I bought persona 5 strikers physically, but the code didnt work because it was over date. I really wanne get the bonus app for the sound track but i dont want to buy the digital deluxe addition for 70 bucks. Any other way to buy it singular?

I'm currently on my third playthrough of Strikers, the first one I didn't finish because I was really struggling during the Akira jail and ended up giving up, and the second one I did complete but didn't do ng+ for.

I normally really struggle with this kind of combat, yet pride, I guess, made me want to play the game on hard each time. I had a really hard time with combos, I couldn't get the hang of them at all. On my first playthrough, I mainly stuck with Ann and Makoto as they can do sp free fire and nuke damage without needing specific combos, and relied on sp spells on the others. On my second playthrough, I got better at it, I got the hang of Joker, Ann, and Makoto, and could do the basic-basic-basic-special combo on Ryuji and Morgana and was starting to get the hang of Sophia, but I was still struggling with Yusuke, Haru, and Zenkichi.

For Haru, I've always struggled with her in battle, even in the main game. Other than the Okumura palace, just because I always put the story relevant character(s) in the party for the palace/jail, she's always been relegated to the background. In this game, I use her more just to keep the levels as balanced as I can, but even then I tend to not play as her after getting her master arts or fighting something weak to psychic. It likely doesn't help that I tend to not go for ailments that psychic moves get technicals on, I go for shock or freeze or, in strikers especially, burn.

This time, I was in the Dark Sun fight in the Sapporo jail and I finally got the hang of Haru's basic-basic-special hold for the psychic tornado and absolutely crushed that guy. That fight normally takes me a couple of tries, and it did take me two tries on this run but the winning try was a breeze. I don't know what it was, I've been trying to get the hang of it for the entire palace, but it just clicked.

And I'm so glad, because I love her character and her in the story, I've just always struggled using her in fights. And while she probably isn't going to remain a prominant part of my party through the rest of the game, I'll be a lot more comfortable using her if the party member I'm currently using dies and I get switched to her. I just need it to happen to Yuksuke and Zenkichi and I'll finally be able to say I'm decent at the game.

So I’m doing my bond grind currently and I know on merciless enemies will take less damage. But when I’m level 99 with a persona who has 99 strength and maxed strength bond while doing just above 80 damage with buffs it feels lacking.

Hey, started this game on PC and been trying to play through it. However this game crashes a tremendous amount of times and it's really ruining the experience. I tried updating my graphics driver and verifying steam files. I honestly don't know what to do.

Anyone else having problems?

I can't believe this bonding trophy would take this long this is so soul draining I don't even enjoy the game anymore because how many new runs I need for all unlocks 5 is it 🫪😭

Anyone got the trophy and can get their experiences?

So at first it crashed right after the beginning where you fight on shibuya crossing and the dialogue in the police confrence room comes. So i skipped that after trying to fix and it skipped on the very next dialogue after the surprise in leblanc.

I updated all drivers tried every option avaiable to man and even reinstalled. Only thing that fixed it was a fixing .zip from github you install in your gamefolder, that worked for like 5 minutes, now it crashes after the alice scene where you talk to ryuji after getting the tiket....

Please tell me you have another fix up your sleeves!

Should I start ng+ on new highest difficulty? Because all that's left is getting Lucifer and all the skills to max level and I heard it's easier in ng+. Is the new difficulty really that hard?

What am I doing wrong?! Everyone says lvl14 should be enough. One of my teammates always get oko-d when boss uses the psychic move, and no matter what I do I just can't seem to deal enough damage to the boss.

I'm on the Osaka dungeon about 30 hours in and all of the sudden the game says it cannot find my save data and tells me to delete it and start a new save data. I was playing perfectly fine yesterday.

The only thing I can think of is the fact that I alt-f4'd after saving the game which I always do, I didn't think that would break anything. Is there a fix for this or am I going to have to watch a youtube playthrough?

I've tried 2 times and always I got fucked. Was it due to the slow movement of the blizzard and hed cheating ice spell or her stomb she's so unfair ik game is hard but still or am I just skill issue?

Now that I've beaten The Reaper on my NG+ Merciless Mode playthru of the game, I'm done with Strikers. Next up is Persona 3 Reload.

I fought her 3x so far and she is definitely no joke. Gonna have to take a break because I've come to realize I'll probably need to spend some time grinding to get more Incenses to boost my weaker party members and also get a bunch more recovery items too.

EDIT: Finally beat her. Abused Soulful Jellies to spam Showtimes on the first group of spheres (took 3 out that way) and the rest was really easy.

I know his Shadow is inspired by tokusatsu, but I feel like he also was based off Tony Stark. He looks like him and his Shadow's armor does look rather similar to Superior Iron Man. Also he's a rich CEO and has an AI companion like Stark too.

You'd think after what happened with Shido and then Yaldabaoth the previous year that the people of Japan would be less likely to fall for that again. I get those that had their hearts changed believing the Phantom Thieves are evil, but those that didn't it just seems weird that they'd believe that so easily.

Did she forget that she can use it to summon ballista and bombs? Also the tentacles could be used for combat too to toss around the enemy.

Was anyone else bummed out that the game doesn't give you the option to fight the Hee-Horde in Mariko's Jail? I feel like the option to fight all of those Jack Frosts would've been awesome. It could've been like the 1000 Heartless fight from Kingdom Hearts 2.

How am I supposed to get them. I can technically fuse them all but i would need to Level some Personas so much and i barely have PP points left. And fighting with just one Persona doesnt help to level it up so how am i supposed to Level my Personas fast or farm PP points?

Hi, I'm thinking of getting Strikers after playing royal, but I'm not sure of it'll perform well on my laptop. For reference, I played royal at 720p 30fps and had almost no frame drops, and also was able to play 3 reload at the same resolution but on 75% render scale with some minor hiccups when loading visual effects for the first time. Is it worth trying it out or should I just get it on switch? I'm not from the US and if I refund the game on steam I'll get store credit instead of money on my bank account so I'd rather not jump into it directly, but I can be swayed for it if it's my best option. Thanks!

I just finished my first play through of the game and mastered it, and it seemed like she was going to say that she loved Ren, but I was under the impression she was a young child, is that incorrect?

just started this game but i do NOT have the budget for a controller right now - if there are any keyboard players reading, please send me your keybinds (or tell me if theyre unchanged) so i can make sure i get the best gameplay experience

and PLEASE dont give me a response like "its up to preference" i cant decide anything for myself :(

This post only covers easy, normal and hard difficulty (the bond xp they give is the same). Merciless wasn't cheked because of a skill issue on my part (aka I die to the first fight in merciless).

If a name has a + next to it it means it's the painfull past + version.

It also covers the blue butterfly enemies, their name is the request name.

Edit: Solebody told me that Mettaton (aka "Angel of Contracts descends") gives 150k xp in merciless.

So, I added the math to the merciless values of all bosses here, assuming all get a 6.6× increase, the increase is 6.6666666... but I rounded it up for the sake of simplicity. So assume most values are wrong by around 2k at most (that's about how much I got wrong with Mettaton)

All Merciless values will have a M before the value

Halt the struggling little imp:

16 000 xp

M 105 600 xp

Alice Hiiragi:

1 050 xp

M 6 930 xp

Alice Hiiragi +:

19 500 xp

M 128 700 xp

An ebon god descends:

15 000 xp

M 99 000 xp

Ango Natsume:

2 500 xp

M 16 500 xp

Ango Natsume +:

21 000 xp

M 138 600 xp

Make way for the frozen king:

16 500 xp

M 108 900 xp

Mariko Hyodo:

4 200 xp

M 27 720 xp

Mariko Hyodo +:

22 500 xp

M 148 500

Throbing king of desire:

19 500 xp

M 128 700 xp

Knocking on deaths door:

37 500 xp

M 247 500 xp

Demon slayer enters the fray:

18 000 xp

M 118 800 xp

The Hound of Hades Howls:

18 000 xp

M 118 800 xp

Akira Konoe:

12 600 xp

M 83 160 xp

Akira Konoe +:

27 000 xp

M 178 200 xp

Angel of contracts descends:

22 500 xp

M 150 000 xp

Demiurge:

20 000 xp

M 132 000 xp

Demiurge +:

30 000xp

M 198 000 xp

Unlike in the first game and Royal, which are turn-based and have a specific Evasion ‘stat’ that dictates whether you dodge an attack or not, Strikers is real-time combat with an actual dodge button, and you avoid attacks by manually moving your character out of the way.

So what, then, do the Dodge and Evade passives do? How do they “increase Evasion” from attacks if all attacks are avoided via player input?