Persona 5 Strikers is finally out in the US, and it truly is a pretty big departure from both the standard Persona and Dynasty Warriors/Musou game formula.
Strikers isn’t quite as gigantic as Persona 5, and it's missing gigantic details and characters from Royal, but just like with all the other Persona games, there are still quite a few Easter Eggs and secrets hidden within its 30+ hours of mainline and optional content.
10 Makoto’s Yakuza Background
While scouting for the first Palace in Strikers, Joker can talk to all his teammates in different parts of the city, including Makoto. When players walk up on her outside the movie theatre, she's muttering to herself about how a certain movie, titled "Dragon: Like a Yakuza". Obviously, this is a reference to Yakuza: Like a Dragon, the newest game in the popular Sega franchise.
There is also a reference to how Makoto’s Japanese voice actress, Rina Sato, voices Nanoha Mukoda in Like a Dragon. Funnily enough, the voice actress for Makoto’s sister, Sae Niijima, is also the same actress for Saeko Mukoda, Nanoha’s sister.
9 Makoto's Still Driving
For those who sort of forgot, Morgana was the method of transport in Persona 5, somehow managing to turn himself into a van on command. But, since all the Phantom Thieves are sort of young, the oldest, Makoto, was letting driving the...cat? Many players have thought, "if Morgana is literally the van itself, why can't he just drive himself"?
In Strikers, players will be pleased to see that Morgana does steer himself around when playing as him, but doesn't that make Makoto's "driver" role is sort of unnecessary? Wrong, because, for some reason, Makoto is still the one behind the wheel of the RV they obtain throughout the events of the story.
8 Futaba Still Hasn't Learned To Swim
There’s a throwaway line in one of the later palaces of Persona 5, where Futaba talks about how she can’t swim. It makes sense as she has been a shut-in for a large portion of her life. Still, in the time between Persona 5 and Strikers, players may have wondered if she’d take the time to learn.
There’s another beach scene in Strikers, and Futaba is right there in the ocean, using a floatie to keep herself above water. It’s not confirmed if she did learn how to swim or not, but her dependence on this little ring of air is a great detail to add to keep the question up in the air.
7 Ryuji Is Still "For Real"
Persona games get a lot of "memes", and for P5, a ton of them had to do with Ryuji "Skull" Sakamoto, Joker’s right-hand man. Ryuji is not an eloquent speaker, for example, the guy ends most of his sentences by using some variation of the phrase “for real”. Whether as a question or an explicative, these two words pop up a ton in the mainline game.
To stay true to form, Atlus decided to double down on Ryuji using his iconic phrase in Strikers, since the game isn’t quite as long, and he says it now more than ever. Honestly, they use it so often it starts to get a bit annoying by the end of the game.
6 Big Mouth Ryuji Finally Does It
Speaking of Ryuji and his crass-ness, let’s talk about his language. Ryuji is a nice kid and his heart is in the right place most of the time, but his manner of speaking is so absurdly embarrassing. Yet somehow, it's endearing in its own way and makes him one of the more "quotable" characters in the franchise. And, there's been a long-running joke/request in the Persona community to "let Ryuji say F*#K", simply because he gets so close so many different times in the story.
Sadly, this kid is never allowed to let this particular cussword fly the entire way through the main game (at least pre-Royal). But, in Strikers, the devs must have felt it was finally time, as there’s a particular scene where Ryuji drops an atomic F-Bomb in defense of one of his friends.
5 The Targets Follow The Same Pattern
Many players far into the storyline of the game might start having an odd "Deja Vu" feeling while playing, almost as if these Monarchs and situations are ones they've been in before. Yes, Strikers tries a lot of new things in terms of its gameplay, but the narrative has a lot of the same building blocks, especially in the motivation behind the Palaces (amazing as they may be).
For example, Ryuji and Joker accidentally stumble upon the first Palace in Strikers, in a very similar way to how they stumbled upon the Metaverse in the original P5. Then, in Sendai, the Thieves encounter a famous fine artist whose work is actually built upon plagiarism, much like the whole Madarame situation from their first adventure. Finally, in Sapporo, Haru once again finds out the dark secrets behind an adult she thought genuinely cared for her, which is sadly just like how she came to join the Phantom Thieves in the first place following her father's death.
4 Unfortunately, Still No Igor
As most Persona fans know, Igor is the master of the Velvet Room, the place between dreams and reality that all Persona protags spend much of their time fusing, selling, and creating new Persona. But, sadly, in the early stages of Persona 5’s production, the Japanese voice actor for Igor, Isamu Tanonaka, passed away. And, rather than simply recasting the character for P5, Atlus chose to honor him in a pretty unique way.
It's a big spoiler to go more in-depth on how exactly this plays out, but those who got most/all of the way through Persona 5 know what we’re talking about. In any case, Igor, sadly, does not return in Persona 5 Strikers, sort of confirming that this character might be retired or re-tooled from this point on.
3 Right Back To The Persona 3 Hot Springs
It wouldn’t be a Persona game without a forced hot springs scene where the girls get mad at the boys over a misunderstanding. In fact, the scene in Strikers takes place in the very same hot springs from Persona 3. Even Makoto's reaction to seeing the boys and her righteous anger is eerily similar to Mitsuru's. It's cute that new Persona cast members are dealing with the same situations that the S.E.E.S crew did, but this joke is getting a tad bit stale at this point.
2 The Kyoto Jail’s Nod To “Life Will Change”
Later on, in the campaign for Strikers, there’s a certain Monarch of a Palace who has a pretty deep connection to both the Phantom Thieves, almost an unhealthy connection. This Monarch, who also has a connection to Zenkichi, the newest Phantom Thief member, worships the mysterious group and tries to be like them in a lot of ways.
This admiration is shown in her Palace design and the design of her Shadow. But, one little nod many people missed is that some of the music that plays in her Palace has little bits that tie into the most well-known tracks from P5, such as "Wake Up, Get Up, Get Out There" and "Life Will Change".
1 They Finally Made Arsene More Viable To Keep Around
A long-time grievance that Persona fans have been vocal about is how little Atlus seems to care about the starting Persona for each protagonist, whether it's P3's Orpheus, P4's Izanagi, or P5's Arsene. Arsene, in particular, has to be one of the strongest designs Atlus has ever brought to life, but it's impossibly difficult to keep this Persona relevant in terms of battle potential. This is due to poor stat scaling after the first couple of levels and a lack of skills learned through leveling up.
Thankfully, in Strikers, things are a bit different, and Arsene can be used for the long haul, as its stat scaling and learnable skills have been greatly improved.