Persona 5 Scramble Demo

The Persona 5 Scramble demo! Did you guys play it? Well you should! Fair warning though, it's only available on the Japanese PSN or Nintendo Store. Don't have access to it? Fret not! I will give my thoughts on it as to whether or not we should look forward to a musou Persona.

The demo was around an hour-ish in length and goes through what I believe is the start of the game up until the end of the first...Palace? If you can call it that. The game serves as a direct sequel to Persona 5, taking place around 6 months after the end of game. MC is back, Makoto and Haru are in college, the squad wants to go on vacation and...bad things happen obviously.

Now, if we know Atlus, we know that they can nail the story and characters for the most part. Writing isn't an issue. I mean, I found the story of Persona 4 Arena to be touching and I very rarely ever touch fighting games much less for the damn story! So narrative aside, the main meat of this game is going to be around the gameplay.

Persona 5 Scramble is a collaboration between Atlus (more specifically P-Studio) and Omega Force (creators of the Dynasty Warriors series). This can only mean one thing of course. Musou gameplay. Love it or hate it, you can't deny that it's basically a distinct genre of gameplay at this point. Lots of fodder enemies, cool skills and a linear level design. That sounds like a recipe for disaster for our beloved Persona series. Why would they soil their incredibly strong gameplay with that of some mindless hack and slash!?

Well, because why not. And surprisingly, it's quite fun! Now, I do admit I am slightly biased towards the series but from what I've tried, I can tell that they're going somewhere with this. Every main character (and some original ones) are playable, you unlock new skills for both your characters (combos) and Personas, you have the Velvet Room, you get to explore the real world and the Palaces in the same way as Persona 5, you get deep character interactions and possibly more social links (confidants)? It's quite a lot to unpack.

The hack and slash itself is relatively straight forward. The demo only allowed you to use Joker but he came equipped with his dagger, his gun, some environment attacks, situational attack (all-out attack on a 'downed' enemy) and of course, Arsene. Using your persona in combat is actually a great addition to the general combat of the Musou series. Time pauses as you pick and choose your skill to execute over an area of effect with the possibility of striking your enemy's weakness. I've only ever tried a spell and a physical attack but swapping out personas to nail an elemental weakness on a mini boss is still rewarding despite the real-time action that has you dodging at crucial times and jumping (yes you can double jump) to avoid mobs.

Entering the menu, you get greeted with more of that delicious Persona vibes with Joker and the Phantom Strikers in different poses depending on your sub-menu selection. If anything, I would say that it's a little slower now to choose menu items simply because the animations seem to take a little while to go through. They really wanted to nail the style of the Persona series. One would assume that that might be because they wanted to appeal to the musou fans who might pick it up but honestly, it's a direct sequel to P5 with zero backstory. It's a game made for the fans who played the original.

I couldn't really do much other than combat so that's all I have to work with honestly. The rest of the info I know simply because I watched the trailers but trying it out here, I can understand what sort of direction they seem to be taking the gameplay design towards.

Now, one other distinction is the platform. This game is out on both the PS4 and the Switch and luckily for you, I wanted to test it out on both my systems to debate on which platform I should get it for. The Switch provides portability at the expense of power and definition but the PS4 is a stationary console for what seems to be an 'on-off' type of game. Actually, it's part of the Persona series. It's definitely a 'sit-down' type of game.

The loading time on the Switch is much longer than the PS4, sometimes even twice as long. It's not something I prefer especially for a title which you can bet would have quite a big amount of loading between scenes and combat and dialogue and animations and transitions. The PS4 Pro also allows you to choose between a 'graphics' or 'framerate' mode so that's always a bonus to have.

In conclusion, if you're looking for more Persona design, music and characters, look no further. Not only is it of good quality, it's a direct sequel to P5. If you've been on the fence about the gameplay, rest assured that it seems deep enough to last through the entire game with plenty of customisation and multiple characters to choose from. There seems to be additional gameplay outside of combat too so you can look forward to more than just fighting.

Persona 5 Scramble is unfortunately, only coming out in Japan (for now) at the end of the month. The English announcement has not been made yet.

P.S. I did not see Kasumi anywhere. Who knows how they're handling her character.