ATLUS hasn’t made a method RPG in nearly a decade. Eight years to be actual, and that was a Nintendo 3DS re-release of the Nintendo DS sport Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2. In that point, Persona has proven itself to be a malleable property. Fighters, rhythm video games, motion adventures, dungeon crawlers, you identify it. Persona spin-off video games, even when not at all times excessive artwork, are wildly experimental and persistently enjoyable. I am keen on SRPGs and have wished the developer to revisit them for a while. Persona 5 is one in every of my favourite video games, so the announcement of Persona 5 Tactica bought me excited that ATLUS was internally creating SRPGs once more.
What we bought is way from something I anticipated, however in methods I’d be hard-pressed to say are unhealthy. Far from it, Persona 5 Tactica is a splendidly made sport in so many areas. As I performed it, I felt it was charming, and enjoyable, however a bit uneven. In the time I’ve needed to play the sport forward of launch, it’s felt like a rollercoaster of an expertise.
Persona 5 Tactica has a precise place the place it lands within the Persona 5 timeline, however due to its preliminary setup you’d be forgiven for pondering it doesn’t matter a lot. After the occasions of December in the principle sport, the Phantom Thieves are transported to an alternate world whereas hanging out sooner or later. In this model of the Metaverse there are separate sub-worlds referred to as Kingdoms, with rulers who deal with their topics cruelly. One of the sport’s latest characters, Toshiro Kasukabe, is a politician from the true world who finds himself trapped right here. He joins forces with Joker, the Phantom Thieves, and a insurgent named Erina in overthrowing the rulers of those Kingdoms and liberating their residents.
As a sport, Persona 5 Tactica isn’t similar to many SRPGs I’ve ever performed. That’s not saying it’s wholly distinctive, however acknowledging my very own blindspots within the style. I usually play technique video games within the vein of Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics, and at first look, Persona 5 Tactica seems much like it. It is as a substitute nearer to the likes of XCOM and Mario + Rabbids. Taking cowl on the finish of turns and distance-based assaults are your bread and butter, and never one thing that may be ignored except you need to be severely punished.
At first, I discovered these XCOM inspirations to be a misfire (pun meant), however the extra I performed the extra I discovered it to suit. This might have been a standard SRPG, however that will hardly match when adapting a sport all about stealthily transferring between cowl. Persona 5 Tactica finally ends up providing a number of the most enjoyable I’ve had with the style on a gameplay stage in years.
You can construct a celebration of three characters from your entire Phantom Thieves and Erina. Every character falls below a task they specialise in that may give the entire social gathering buffs: Gun Damage, SP, HP, or Melee Damage. Joker, regardless of being an excellent all-round fighter, will not be even required to be in your social gathering after a sure level. I want there had been a number of extra characters to select from as a result of, after the primary world, you gained’t see a lot selection except you exit of your method to change up your social gathering. But what it provides up right here it does so to make character constructing wildly versatile.
Your whole social gathering shares a stage, however every of them has their very own distinctive talent tree that’s explored with their very own pool of factors referred to as “GP”. Each character’s tree is constructed equally, and aren’t very huge (due to Persona 5 Tactica being on the shorter aspect) however the way you go down these bushes provides loads of freedom to the curious and indecisive. At any level, you can’t solely respec your whole talent tree at no cost however even take away particular talents to get their GP value again. Let’s say you used all your factors to construct up a personality’s assist talents, however discover they’re now missing in injury output. You can select one or all of these talents to be faraway from the tree after which dump all of these factors elsewhere. While this might positively be taken as eradicating consequence, Persona has at all times been about rewarding adaptability in its gameplay.
This usually occurs with the Velvet Room, which may now be used with all characters in your social gathering. Personas are obtained as rewards in battles after which will be taken into the Velvet Room and fused collectively. The system isn’t as advanced because it usually is, however it works nicely in permitting you to additional customise every of the Phantom Thieves. Elements at the moment are tied to standing results, so equipping your characters with Personas that improve their latent Status assaults or giving them an additional is fairly partaking. Where Fusion shines probably the most is with weapons, the place you’ll be able to flip one or two of your Personas right into a gun for every social gathering member. These weapons are usually higher than something you’d discover within the store, and require a Persona of a selected stage and kind. It’ll truly change the weapon mannequin and can give your characters standing results on their gun assaults. It’s a cool system and comes into play proper when the traditional loop of shopping for gear begins to get a bit boring.
Guns are the one factor you should buy within the store as a result of they’re meant to be the principle type of interplay with every enemy. They don’t value SP to make use of, and so they don’t include a threat that bodily assaults might need. Those aren’t totally ineffective both, however their principal function is to reposition enemies. If you run as much as somebody in cowl and assault them this manner, you’ll take their spot in cowl after which knock them far-off leaving them open for a gun shot by one other enemy or a Persona Skill. Since these now have particular standing results with them, you are able to do intelligent issues like use Garu, Agi, or Psi abilities on enemies in cowl to maneuver them out of it. In Psi’s case, you’ll be able to pull enemies near the person relying on the place they’re. Skills like Bufu will freeze an enemy as nicely, making them unable to behave within the following flip.
Character motion provides a stage of freedom you hardly ever see in these sorts of video games. When it’s the participant’s section of a battle, they will swap between any of their models so long as their present motion hasn’t been used up. This means you’ll be able to transfer characters round, swap to a different one, after which swap again when you didn’t act with them to reposition them if you need. The instant profit to that is that it lets you totally customise how your flip performs out, not requiring you to decide to an motion till you actually really feel such as you’re prepared. But mixed with stage gimmicks that play with verticality in fascinating methods, what Persona 5 Tactica does is open itself as much as be exploited by the participant’s benefit in devilish methods. I can’t consider something extra “Persona” than that.
Exploiting enemy weaknesses returns, however not precisely in the way in which you assume. What catches enemies off guard isn’t elemental assaults, but when they’re in cowl or not. Multiple completely different sorts of enemies react in several methods to assaults, however usually, when you hit somebody once they’re out of canopy that character will get a One More. If this occurs their motion is reset on the place they attacked on, and the enemy is downed. You can primarily take a number of turns in a single if in case you have a very good technique and massively increase your motion per section.
Enemies can do that too, so when you’ve forgotten to finish your flip behind a bit of canopy you’ll find your self swarmed quick by a bunch of enemies doing repeated injury. What they will’t do is use Triple Threat, this sport’s model of the All-Out Attack. When you down an enemy, a triangle is fashioned between your three characters. As lengthy as one downed enemy is on this triangle, you should utilize an All-Out Attack to ship critical injury to something on this triangle.
So say you begin by climbing up a ladder and knocking an enemy down beneath to a celebration member ready. This will set off a follow-up assault, which is able to give the initiator a One More. So they run throughout the rooftops to increase the triangle and pop any unguarded enemies alongside the way in which. Your Triple Threat vary is now hypothetically huge, and you may take out massive quantities of enemies immediately due to your planning. All of those mechanics are fairly easy, however the way in which they work in tandem with each other is one thing that appears wholly distinctive and is good to see play out.
Despite adoring all these options, nonetheless, I feel they make the sport only a bit too straightforward when you acquire any quantity of mastery with them. Obviously, I’m talking from the attitude of somebody who performed the sport on Normal problem, however I by no means discovered it to supply a significant problem in the principle marketing campaign. It’s really easy that you simply don’t really want to interact with loads of the methods to succeed. If you’re in search of that, I’d advocate taking part in on Hard mode. I used to be nonetheless content material with my Normal playthrough and had loads of enjoyable with the sport’s missions thanks to every world’s intelligent gimmicks, however when you come to this style for the problem you is perhaps left disenchanted.
But, having mentioned that, the aspect missions supply up a problem in one of the best ways potential: turning SPRG maps into puzzles. Typically you’ll be given targets like “defeat each enemy” or “transfer to the opposite aspect of a map” however with the added restriction of needing to take action in an extremely brief quantity of flip phases. Most of them count on you to determine it out in a single. Doing all the quests in a world provides you with a particular fusion, however the true reward for me was simply the satisfaction of beating them. They’re actually difficult, and even when I didn’t do all of them I find it irresistible when sport builders notice their sport is versatile sufficient to be performed in totally other ways.
The presentation on Nintendo Switch, regardless of some points, is total fairly robust. The story performs out with visible novel-like dialogue scenes, with occasional fancier cutscenes sprinkled all through. The backgrounds look nice, with sprites being diverse and touting a beautiful artwork model. While the later sections of the sport don’t have as many rendered cutscenes as the primary world does, the improbable voice appearing retains issues partaking. This is the primary time a brand new Persona sport has been launched concurrently worldwide, and the localization is simply pretty much as good as we’ve come to count on from the workforce at ATLUS. The dialogue is sharp, and the humor comes by means of from the banter of the Phantom Thieves.
I don’t have a precise decision, however fashions look very crisp each docked and undocked. The sport targets 30 frames-per-second and hits it persistently however I did discover a few body pacing points within the early missions. The Switch model’s greatest challenge is simply the load instances, which may drag down beginning a mission. The loading phase into each battle is a star made up of weapons that’s meant to shake after which have all of them hearth off when the map is loaded. I’m certain on stronger {hardware} that is temporary sufficient for the impact to land, however when you might have an extended interval of a shaking star of weapons it comes throughout as comedic. Given that I’m a naturally affected person individual I’ll settle for gradual load instances if it means an excellent transportable expertise although, and Persona 5 Tactica is strictly that.
Persona 5 Tactica’s story facilities across the dangers and rewards of rebelling in opposition to authoritarian regimes. I don’t assume this story presents any groundbreaking new concepts, however I love the place its coronary heart is at and total it doesn’t make any obvious missteps in presenting its story about preventing again in opposition to oppression. Thematically there are lots of concepts I inherently agree with, with the writers primarily utilizing Erina as a mouthpiece for these. She’s a delight to see in each cutscenes and gameplay, and I think about shall be a fan-favorite if this sport takes off. The Phantom Thieves themselves work nicely to implement these concepts, having gone by means of all of their arcs from the unique sport and well-versed in rebelling in opposition to damaged methods. From a pure fan perspective, they’re additionally simply loads of enjoyable to see banter amongst themselves. I feel all the post-Persona 5 spin-offs have managed to retain the group’s chemistry, and Persona 5 Tactica isn’t any exception.
The just one left to actually develop within the story is Toshiro, and that’s the place a number of the story’s weaker points come into play. Toshiro fills the function of the grownup of the group, beginning against the younger teenagers’ strategies and stern in his beliefs. I don’t assume he’s a foul character, and the sport being centered round him does result in some glorious moments, however the writing doesn’t precisely stick the touchdown with him as a lot as I might have preferred. It additionally doesn’t assist that he roughly suits the very same function as Persona 5 Striker’s Zenkichi Hasegawa (an grownup authority determine who finally learns to just accept the Phantom Thieves and works with them), however the novelty doesn’t actually work as nicely the second time. Despite additionally being in Persona 5 Tactica for almost your entire runtime, his arc feels inconsistently paced and backloaded. I like him as a personality, and the place the writing takes him is gratifying, however it hits you laborious after which shortly after the sport rushes to the end line. Not one thing to sentence, however it makes the sport stand out amongst Persona spin-off tales that usually go on too lengthy for their very own good.
If you’ve been a long-time fan you most likely are going to count on the story to not be a giant focus. I wouldn’t say Persona 5 Tactica’s story is unhealthy, the truth is, it’s fairly good given the flimsy spin-off premise. I feel my issues stem from the gameplay and story faltering at across the identical factors. When the story begins to hurry to its conclusion, the gameplay selection begins to undergo. It’s laborious to speak in an excessive amount of element right here with out spoilers, however it felt that there might have simply been about 5-10 extra hours of content material. It’d permit the gameplay concepts to be fleshed out extra, alongside the story beats that take you from mission to mission. The second half isn’t as robust as the primary in terms of stage design and mission selection, however it nonetheless retains a stage of high quality all through.
I may not adore the story, however it’s ok to not bathroom down how a lot of a good time I had taking part in the SRPG on supply. I sincerely liked taking part in this, a lot in order that I used to be let down when it began to wind down. You might positively make a sequel with this core to expound on all the nice sport concepts, however it gained’t cease Persona 5 Tactica from feeling like a little bit of a stepping stone. Optimistically I feel the mechanics they developed would work as an excellent basis to construct on high of, however exterior of the Repaint Your Heart DLC (which I didn’t have entry to whereas scripting this) it’s not sure if that may occur.
So a lot of this sport works extremely, that it makes the moments the place it falters stand out extra. Persona 5 Tactica is a superb SRPG with gameplay that beckons you to be taught its ins and outs to make it yours. When I do get my fingers on the DLC I’m sure to dive proper again into the principle marketing campaign on a better problem afterwards. While I want the sport was longer, I can settle for the worth in a shorter Persona expertise that packs this a lot of a punch. It may not supply the total bundle of a sport like Devil Survivor 2, however it as a substitute delivers an approachable SRPG that Persona followers might simply use as a jumping-off level into the style. If you’re a fan of this collection, however perhaps not of SRPGs, you’ll most likely nonetheless really feel proper at house.
The factor about curler coasters is that even a number of the finest ones have moments of downtime, however finally stay thrilling and enjoyable. The experience didn’t go away me modified in any manner, however I definitely need to get again on and go once more.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch
Review copy supplied by ATLUS
