Persona 5’s Phantom Thieves Are Ready to Scramble

You might remember when Atlus first announced Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers. The game was teased a mere day after Persona 5 Royal, the now-expected updated version of Persona 5, was announced for the worldwide audience in April. Given the comparative amount of info provided during both reveals, Royal took priority for Atlus. Heck, it even skipped Tokyo Game Show, though it’s not the first time Atlus passed over the event (continually declining in relevance) in recent memory. Since Royal will arrive in Japan in a week, it’s time for the Scramble promotional campaign to rev into gear.

Atlus released the first real trailer for Scramble, and it looks a bit different than expected. The initial teaser suggested this would be a straight-up Warriors game with Persona 5 aesthetics and music, with the player choosing one character and going to town on enemies — demons in other Megaten titles. But there will be more to Scramble than fighting. Instead of taking inspiration from the likes of Hyrule Warriors and, to a lesser extent, Fire Emblem Warriors, details and footage imply it will take more cues from the Dragon Quest Heroes games. Fitting, considering that’s another adaptation of a Japanese RPG.

Scramble will remarkably be the first Persona 5 title to explicitly take place after the main game’s story. This will differentiate it from the stories of Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth and Persona 5: Dancing Star Night, which (presumably?) occur during the latter half of the main game. This game’s story will begin six months after Persona 5’s, when the Phantom Thieves of Hearts get together for a vacation. But despite the main mystery of the previous game being solved, there’s always a new one lurking around the corner to justify a sequel. Palaces have started returning in Japan for some unknown reason, which brings the Phantom Thieves back into action.

After the successors Atlus made for Persona 4, it would have been a surprise if the Phantom Thieves didn’t return for some kind of follow-up, especially considering the original game sold even better. The real surprise here involves the gameplay features.

As implied above, this won’t be a Warriors game with Persona 5 elements, but a Persona 5 title with Warriors elements. The game will be a collaboration between some members of the Persona 5 team (those who aren’t working on Persona 6 and Project Re Fantasy, among other projects) and Koei Tecmo’s Omega Force that will incorporate RPG features from the main game.

The trailer provides glimpses of the protagonist, aka Joker of the Phantom Thieves, running around locations in Japan, specifically, Tokyo, Osaka, Sapporo, Sendai, and Okinawa, during the day with NPCs walking about, similar to the main game. There’s another segment showing a conversation among the main characters, and a small glimpse at a calendar. Whether this game will keep other social elements like Confidants/Social Links remains to be seen, though school life presumably won’t be involved considering that no parts of the trailer or screenshots depict the main characters in uniforms. The Palaces will also have similar designs aesthetically to those from the main game, including the platforming aspects.

This almost qualifies as a sequel to the main game, with the most meaningful difference being the action-based battles. Aspects of the trailer show how four characters will be available in dungeons, with the player having the option to switch between them. There’s a good possibility that the aforementioned gameplay features won’t be as in-depth as those from the main game, but it does look like a deeper adventure than, say, the aforementioned Dragon Quest Heroes games — even the second game. There’s potential for this to be the best Warriors adaptation of a game from Omega Force yet.

Most of the main Phantom Thieves from Persona 5 are shown in the trailer, including the protagonist, Ryuji, Ann, Morgana, Makoto, Yusuke, Futaba, and Haru. Goro Akechi is missing, but it’s even more notable that Kasumi Yoshizawa, the new character in Royal, is absent. Perhaps they’re not showing them yet so as to not spoil any of Royal’s twists, though there’s perhaps a tease at Goro’s appearance near the end of the trailer. A couple of new characters are shown, including yet another new female playable character, and a mysterious character who opposes the Phantom Thieves. They’ll be fully revealed along with further details in the near future.

You’ll want to emphasize “near” there, because this game isn’t far off. Scramble is due for a Japanese release on February 20, 2020 for PlayStation 4 and Switch. Between this and Royal, there’s too much Persona 5 stuff releasing in a short time. The first-print bonus for Japan involves bonus battle music from previous Persona games, which shockingly includes Revelations: Persona, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona (the PSP one), and the Persona 2 duology.

There’s no way this won’t release in western territories considering the original Persona 5 sold 2.7 million copies worldwide, so the question is when it will arrive. The timeframe will depend on when Royal releases early next year, in order to create space between that game and Scramble. Well get an idea of that when Royal gets a more definitive date than “spring 2020.”