The Shin Megami Tensei series has seen a bit of a resurgence in recent years with the release of Shin Megami 3: Nocturne HD Remaster and Shin Megami Tensei 5. This success can be partially attributed to many new players trying out the series after falling in love with it Persona game. As the series moves forward, it would be wise to capitalize on its success Persona and looking towards creating a spin-off in the style of Persona 5 Strikers. Acts as a direct sequel to Personas 5, Persona 5 Strikers follows a new story involving the Phantom Thieves, only this time, the gameplay is like a Musou-style hack-and-slash game.
Shin Megami Tensei is a prime candidate to receive the Musou treatment. Persona 5 Strikers showed how a turn-based RPG with a large cast could be translated into this style of play. With a long history of spin-offs and spin-offs, is Shin Megami Tensei the series has a massive cast to draw from. The demon-summoning mechanic the series is known for parallels the persona-collecting mechanic Persona 5 Strikers and has worked well as an interesting twist on the genre when it comes to the latter. With the popularity of other Musou games such as Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopesnow is the perfect time to give Shin Megami Tensei an action-packed series crossover.
Persona 5 Strikers’ Precedent for RPG adaptation
When Persona 5 Strikers was first announced, many fans were curious about what a turn-based RPG like Personas 5 would work as a hack-and-slash action game. The result was quite well received as the levels retained the exploration and problem solving aspect Personas 5‘s Palaces, and the incorporation of Persona collecting was a natural fit. Combat still retained some elements of turn-based gameplay, such as having battles paused while the player selects a persona’s skills from a menu, but these elements never ended up breaking the flow of the action-based combat.
Persona 5 Strikers also allowed players to directly control other members of the Phantom Thieves both in and out of combat for the first time. This was a welcome feature made possible by having a diverse cast of characters that each had their own play style. The ability to fuse Personas to create new ones was another welcome mechanic that returned from the main series. Allowing players to switch between Personas like Joker and swap out playable party members on the fly helped keep the combat fresh and added some depth and strategy to the gameplay.
Shin Megami Tensei’s legacy role offers a lot
Fans of Persona the series may not be aware that Shin Megami Tensei game stretches back as far as 1987 with the release of the Japanese exclusive Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei which marked the first entry in the series. Since then, the series has received a plethora of spin-offs and spin-offs alongside mainline releases. The Persona game – along with Devil Summoner and Soul Hacker games – make up only a part of the games in the series. With many of these games only ever reaching a somewhat niche audience, a crossover game would give them the chance to introduce their characters to a larger amount of players and inspire many to go back and play the original games.
Characters like Raidou Kuzunoha from Devil Summoner series, Demi-Fiend from Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturneand the Nahobino from Shin Megami Tensei 5 would all make great playable characters. Including newer characters like Joker from Personas 5 and Ringo from Soul Hackers 2 would help round out the representation and add some characters recognizable to a wider audience. There are even more potential characters too numerous to list that would make great additions to the list. All of these characters have the power to summon demons (or Personas) in their own canon, making the ability to collect, fuse, and use demons a universal trait and a cornerstone of the game.
Megami Tensei already has a precedent for in-universe crossovers
This series is no stranger to crossovers between the mainline and spin-off games. The Persona Q game is the first thing that comes to mind, along with the cast Personas 3 and Personas 4 cross over in the first game, and add the crew from Personas 5 into the mix in the sequel.
Next to Persona games, important characters from across the series appear outside of their home games. Raidou appears as a bonus boss in Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne and the 3DS version of Soul Hackers, while the Demi-Fiend appears in both Shin Megami Tensei 4: Apocalypse and Shin Megami Tensei 5 as DLC manager. It’s clear that developer Atlus sees the value in having fan-favorite characters appear next to each other.
A series crossover also makes sense within the lore of the universe. Most Shin Megami Tensei game features worlds colliding, causing angels and demons to enter the human realm. It wouldn’t be out of the question for a multiverse crossover to occur, causing characters from other worlds in Shin Megami Tensei the universe to unite against a catastrophic event. From a lore perspective, it arguably makes more sense for characters to cross over here than the explanations given for the phenomena in Hyrule Warriors or Fire Emblem Warriors.
Given the tendency to Shin Megami Tensei to have silent main characters, it would be interesting to see them in full voice acting along with the rest of the voiced cast. The Persona Q game added some voice acting for the otherwise silent main characters from Personas 3 and Persona 4, so it’s possible for Atlus and Omega Force to do it again for another spin-off title. All the elements for a love letter to fans of Shin Megami Tensei series are there, and with success Persona 5 Strikersthe groundwork has already been laid for another Musou-style game.
Persona 5 Strikers is now available for PC, PS4 and Switch.
