Persona 5 Strikers: the guide to leveling faster
Persona 5 Strikers
Persona 5 Strikers, just arrived in Europe, is an Action RPG with musou elements, if you are in the early stages of the adventure you may be interested in understanding how to quickly increase the level of your character. Here's how to easily level up in Persona 5 Strikers.With equipment always to improve and new skills to learn, you will surely want to reach level 99 with all the characters in the group and avoid wasting hours of wild grinding; so here is a short guide with all the useful tips to quickly increase the level in Persona 5 Strikers. We will explain which Bond skills to invest the points in, although we will mainly focus on how to increase the level of each character and not the party bond level, which we will talk about in another guide.
How to level up in Persona 5 Strikers
To level up faster you will have to complete a series of key actions, which we will now see in detail. Treasure Hunter Bond Skills First, it is worth investing points in this Bond ability, which increases the chances of finding Treasure Demons in every dungeon in the game. These enemies are in fact very useful as they guarantee you large amounts of coins and experience points once defeated: if you try to level up faster, increasing the chances of them appearing is a must. This skill is located right in the center of the lowest staff and can be improved twice to maximize its effect.
Fighting all enemies and progressing through the story
The second way to increase your level gain is to progress through the main story, unlock more Prisons and fight all the enemies you encounter. By doing this you will not only unlock new areas of the game, with higher level enemies that will therefore give you more experience, but also Requests, which will lead you to fight against powerful bosses that, once defeated, will automatically level you up. br>
Using both of these methods you should be able to reach level 70 relatively quickly with each character, before making it to the final dungeon. You can therefore avoid wasting time in the other phases of the game, just to gain experience and prepare yourself.
Reach level 99
If you want to go beyond level 70, to reach level 99 ( massimo) with all the PCs you will have to use a very specific method that also in this case will save you time.
After cleaning each Prison, you will have the possibility to accept Special Requests, called "Painful past": basically side missions that will allow you to face, again, all the main bosses of the game. This way you can literally "farm" large amounts of experience points quickly, as well as get a better idea of which strategies to use for the game's final bosses. Continue to accept these Requests and defeat the available bosses, and in a few hours you will find yourself with the entire group of characters at the highest level, ready to eliminate any threats that stand in front of you.
Persona 5 Strikers Review: Gameplay Impressions, Videos and Speedrunning Tips
Fighting all enemies and progressing through the story
The second way to increase your level gain is to progress through the main story, unlock more Prisons and fight all the enemies you encounter. By doing this you will not only unlock new areas of the game, with higher level enemies that will therefore give you more experience, but also Requests, which will lead you to fight against powerful bosses that, once defeated, will automatically level you up. br>Using both of these methods you should be able to reach level 70 relatively quickly with each character, before making it to the final dungeon. You can therefore avoid wasting time in the other phases of the game, just to gain experience and prepare yourself.
Reach level 99
If you want to go beyond level 70, to reach level 99 ( massimo) with all the PCs you will have to use a very specific method that also in this case will save you time.After cleaning each Prison, you will have the possibility to accept Special Requests, called "Painful past": basically side missions that will allow you to face, again, all the main bosses of the game. This way you can literally "farm" large amounts of experience points quickly, as well as get a better idea of which strategies to use for the game's final bosses. Continue to accept these Requests and defeat the available bosses, and in a few hours you will find yourself with the entire group of characters at the highest level, ready to eliminate any threats that stand in front of you.
Persona 5 Strikers Review: Gameplay Impressions, Videos and Speedrunning Tips
Persona 5 Strikers might end up being one of the more interesting releases in gaming this year.
Developers Omega Force and P-Studio take a beloved franchise and cast of characters, slam them into a new-feeling genre and manage to offer up a direct sequel with potentially broader appeal while not feeling like a strange side-release.
A sequel to the 2016 classic Persona 5, Strikers sheds the strict JRPG confines of the series and embraces more of an action-RPG feel. That's the biggest diversion, though, as the characters, presentation and story scream direct sequel.
Releasing across multiple platforms, including PC, how Strikers executes the attempt at opening the series to a broader spectrum of players could say much about what comes next.
Graphics and Gameplay
Strikers could pass as Persona 5 to those not paying enough attention.
The game is, in a word, vibrant. Everything from the flashy menus to the creative, eye-catching characters and beyond places the game happily at home in the series—all while the varied soundtrack pumps in the background, surely getting stuck in the heads of those who hear it.
Granted, the colorful trip to interesting locales while monsters and magic fly left and right can get overwhelming at times on the screen during battles. But the eye candy is a visual treat most games can't pull off, nor does it suffer greatly for it in the performance department.
Speaking of visual treats, the anime cutscenes interspersed with in-engine conversations and gameplay are fantastic and high quality. It's also easy in the chaos of battle to miss some of the finer details that are done so well, such as great-looking environmental shadows.
Of course, things looking good in this anime-stylized series isn't anything new. At worst, the designs are distracting to a player and not appealing. At best, it's one of the most interesting releases of the year that won't see much competition in the creativity department.
The same might end up being said for the gameplay, too.
Strikers is not a traditional turn-based RPG. Instead, it is a fun hybrid blend of genres. Exploration is a simple dungeon-crawler, while actual battles are hack-n-slash fun in the Dynasty Warriors genre (Musou). It should be noted that this isn't a simple reskin of a Dynasty Warriors game in the way, say, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity felt. It's heavy on the Persona 5, which is a huge deal.
Battles will feel familiar to those with experience in such a genre. Characters tend to face overwhelming odds against an impressive amount of enemies on the screen at once, making the light and heavy attacks all the more stunning and powerful-feeling.
At its most basic, characters are equipped with a melee and ranged weapon, albeit varied enough to make each character feel distinct. They also come equipped with a huge list of combos that make the possibilities seem endless.
The Persona system is a fun wrinkle to the well-trodden genre, too. Summoning a character's Persona pauses the action and lets the player filter through some spells to cast during combat. This is a simple system at face value, though the layers of strategy it presents are many—before long, seasoned players will be flipping through multiple spells across several characters in different areas to hit on weaknesses and environmental details.
It's all well controlled, too. A simple tap of a button switches characters, and while the action on the screen can look overwhelming, it's always rather intuitive to control. Maybe the only exception is juggling it all so fast on the fly, especially when working in things like environmental attacks. But the adjustment period isn't long despite how chaotic things look on the screen.
Jails will give Persona 5 players deja vu in the form of palaces. Going to the Metaverse to upend a baddie to impact the real world remains a fun concept, though it seems pretty blatant these are dialed down and more linear this time.
The linearity is a fair complaint across the board. The puzzles aren't very puzzling and the dungeons mostly ask the player to go down a straight path and maybe around a bend before stumbling into waves of enemies that need cleared out and mini-bosses or bosses that seem to vary in difficulty.
But overall, Strikers is a pleasant surprise in the gameplay department in large part because some of its contemporaries that got side-tracked into this genre stumbled. This doesn't, and it's a fun, fast-paced mixup that fits snugly in the series.
Story and More
Story is another area Strikers could have ran into trouble. Asking new players lured by a different gameplay system to understand a story that could take 100-plus hours to beat and was released five years ago would have been a problem.
Instead, players don't need to be familiar with the series, but it sure sweetens the experience for those who have invested hours and hours into it. While it's littered with little references and nods that hardcore fans will adore, the bulk of the game and tale it weaves is enjoyable enough without having played its predecessor.
This one takes place five months after Persona 5's conclusion and boasts a sprint across Japan with some familiar faces. It's a fun romp, and each stopping point on the map has its own feel that surely represents the real-world location well. That said, it's a little like the level and dungeon design in that it's disappointing in its linearity and brevity. One location, for example, is just a parking lot.
What we can say about the story is it takes a nice modern twist. The baddies, normally just overlords of their own little universes, can now influence the masses this time out. It's a nice call to the perils of social media and such complicated topics, even if the payoff to besting the negative characters who made poor choices or had improper goals isn't always satisfying.
But things do struggle a bit when we don't paint with such broad strokes.
Much of the depth and RPG-ness of the characters just isn't here like it is in the base game. Maybe that's to be expected given the nature of this release, but it's still a little disappointing. There's a 'bond' system in place between characters, but none of those in-depth social mechanics of the past. At times, it can leave conversations feeling a little ho-hum.
This is actually a bigger deal than it seems given how integral the social circle was to the base game. Plotting out an entire day's worth of RPG goodness while juggling relationships, often on a deadline that created tension, was a thrill.
There are side quests to tackle and the usual gauntlet of items to earn that assist in battle, but even these feel dialed down. The Velvet Room also returns and still permits the creation of new Persona, though it is clearly scaled back a tad as well.
Still, if the overarching tradeoff is an inspired genre-blend that doesn't feel forced and the bulk of the experience is a blast, it's hard to complain too much. It's not like Persona 5 hasn't amazingly passed the test of time. Some tradeoffs had to happen, and as disappointing they might be, they're clearly the right ones.
Speedrunning Tips
It wouldn't be much of a shock to see Strikers develop a big speedrunning base.
Persona 5, after all, maintained a healthy speedrunning community for a long time. In a testament to the depth of that game, the world-record time is still over the 15-hour mark.
Eventually—on paper—Strikers could undercut such a number. It will take some of the basics, like slamming through cutscenes and dialogue and taking the most direct routes possible in dungeons after some practice pathing.
Unlike other Musou games, there aren't bases and such to steal and collect, so speedrunning is as simple as picking and choosing the fights a player wants. As a bonus, tucking tail and running isn't penalized. Meaning, it will come down to a time vs. experience debate for optional battles, as the characters will need to be properly ready for the endgame.
In the majority of battles against mobs, initiating specials to pull off an all-out attack is the quickest route to getting through to the critical points of the game. Bosses and endgame moments have specific weaknesses to exploit that will need to be discovered and memorized during pathing.
Given the wealth of options and style of playthroughs available, Strikers should be appealing to skillful runners and an interesting watch on streaming platforms.
Conclusion
Strikers should walk the tightrope between hardcore Persona fans and newcomers quite well.
In the end, it's impressive that Strikers manages to upend the base of the series gameplay, innovate on it with a new genre, and still feel like a superb Persona game.
Yes, there are some shortcomings in the form of a few select in-depth RPG systems that are lacking or absent. But the fresh take, combined with a continuation of a beloved series and storyline with familiar characters makes for a strong effort.
Even better, Strikers is available across a number of platforms, including on the go with the Nintendo Switch. Given what should be a strong reception while casting a wider net than usual, Strikers could be the first of many multi-device efforts in the series to roll out over the next generation.
