Atlus has released new footage of the Dynasty Warriors-style Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers, and it brings not only a Japanese release date and gameplay featuring several playable Phantom Thieves, but also shows you’ll be able to travel around its depiction of Tokyo once more in the spin-off.
From the looks of it, you’ll be able to have a load out of four Phantom Thieves at your disposal and can switch between them at a moment’s notice. Fan favorites like Ryuji Sakamoto, Morgana, and Ann Takamaki are all seen alongside Joker (who was kind enough to return to the world of Persona 5 after his Super Smash Bros. appearance) as playable characters, wrecking Shadows in their own stylized way. A new character is seen too, who appears to use some kind of yo-yo styled weapon to take out enemies at a longer range.
Along with seeing some of the Phantom Thieves in action, there’s some new animated scenes, looks at new antagonists, but surprisingly enough, Scramble looks to feature Tokyo as an over world you can explore again. Between Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight and Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth, no other spin-off has brought back the city and the original game’s exploration sections, so Scramble seems to be one of the bigger scale projects Atlus has brought out following the Phantom Thieves.
The trailer also reveals the spin-off’s release date in Japan. Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers will be coming to PS4 and Switch overseas on February 20 next year. While there’s no information on when the game will come to the west, Persona 5: Royal, the upcoming re-release of the original game, has around a six month gap between its Japanese launch next week and its projected American release window of Q2 2020. This has been relatively consistent for Persona projects, with past games like Dancing and Q2 coming out six or seven months later in the west.
