Persona 5 Strikers is only a few weeks away, so it’s time to rally the Phantom Thieves together for one last adventure. Developed by Omega Force and P-Studio, Strikers is a radically different style of game than the smash-hit JRPG Persona 5. Combat is no-longer turn-based, but a mix of the army smashing battles of the Dynasty Warriors franchise and the strategic combos of Final Fantasy VII: Remake. Just like Persona 5, players can have a party of up to four Phantom Thieves. While one of them has to be Joker, the other three slots are left up to the player to decide. This can make assembling a party a daunting task because unless you’ve played Persona 5, you won’t know what to expect from each character.
(Author’s Note: I will be omitting some information and focus only on the characters available when you reach the first Jail. This is simply to avoid any spoilers.)
The Best Persona 5 Strikers Party
Assembling the “best party” in Persona 5 Strikers is a little tricky because each Jail often allows one member of the Phantom Thieves to excel over others. For example in the third Jail, Haru’s psychic abilities are terrific since this is the weakness of a lot of enemies. Additionally, you can separate the Phantom Thieves into either support or damage roles. The former’s personas usually revolve around healing or buffing their allies, while the latter will be your primary method for dealing damage in combat. This doesn’t mean support characters cannot hold their own, just that their primary purpose is to keep your team alive. Here is where I would categorize each of the Phantom Thieves excluding Joker because he’s, sigh, the wild card.
Support
- Morgana
- Makoto
- Sophie
Damage
- Ryuji
- Yusuke
- Ann
- Haru
Now that we have our teammates classified, it’s time to assemble our team. What I recommend is having a dedicated support, damage, and one slot you will rotate throughout the game. This rotating position will be for exploiting the weaknesses of either a specific boss or enemies in a Jail. Joker will pick up the slack and should try to have personas of varying elemental abilities to ensure you can always take down a specific foe.
In our support role, we are going to pick Makoto since she has a terrific balance of buff/debuff spells and healing options. While Sophie and Morgana have great healing options, I prefer the flexibility of Makoto’s abilities. This also ensures that Joker won’t always need a dedicated support persona in his collection. There are often a ton of enemies that have a weakness to Nuclear, which makes Makoto especially dangerous in the later Jails.
For the damage role, either Ryuji or Yusuke are terrific choices. Both are terrific for fighting enemies as their abilities let them deal high amounts of damage to large areas of enemies. I like Yusuke over Ryuji, only because his entire counterattack design lets him quickly dispose of tougher enemy personas even if you don’t have the weakness. Plus, being able to freeze targets to set them up for a Technical Attack is both satisfying and extremely useful. Ann is also fine, but she is more of a specialty character like Haru. This is the party I pretty much stuck with on Normal difficulty throughout the entire game:
- Joker
- Makoto
- Yusuke
- Alternate depending on the Jail
Keep in mind you can really use any combination of the Phantom Thieves, but having a mix of damage and support roles will ensure a much smoother experience. Just remember to purchase new equipment for your lesser-used party members from time to time. You never know when you might need their specific element to defeat a boss that’s giving you trouble. This is especially true for Sophia, but I won’t spoil why it’s important to ensure she’s properly geared.
