Never let or not it’s mentioned that Atlus is one to let its star franchises go untapped. It’s now been seven years for the reason that Phantom Thieves have been first launched in Persona 5, and since then we’ve gotten an enhanced re-release of that recreation, a dungeon crawler, a rhythm recreation, a musou, an anime, a manga, and several other crossovers with different franchises, similar to Joker making an look as a fighter in Super Smash Bros. While we proceed to attend for the inevitable unveiling of Persona 6, Atlus has determined to maintain the spinoff prepare rolling proper together with Persona 5 Tactica, a tactical RPG that includes the beloved solid in one more new journey. We’re completely satisfied to report that Persona 5 Tactica doesn’t really feel like a half-hearted try to money in on the Phantom Thieves as soon as once more — this is a fascinating technique recreation with loads of cool concepts and enjoyable moments.
Persona 5 Tactica picks up throughout the occasions of Persona 5, when the Phantom Thieves are hanging out in Café Leblanc and discover themselves all of a sudden pulled into an alternate universe which may or won’t be the Metaverse. Our daring heroes’ powers don’t work fairly the identical right here, and so they quickly discover themselves accosted by a crazed, highly effective bride named Marie who instructions a legion of Shadows. Marie guidelines over her area with an iron fist, and she or he simply crushes the Phantom Thieves, kidnapping and brainwashing all however Joker and Morgana. These latter two are nearly to be subdued themselves once they’re saved by Erina, a mysterious woman who leads a small resistance effort that Marie is hellbent on stamping out. The two thus workforce up together with her and got down to reclaim their mates, hoping to defeat Marie and escape from this unusual world.
It’s a fantastic sufficient narrative, pushed by the sturdy characters and relationships of the Phantom Thieves, although it feels decidedly extra low-stakes than the central plot of Persona 5 — this actually looks like extra of a ‘bottle episode.’ Even so, the plot takes some attention-grabbing turns throughout its run and has some notably emotional moments, finally feeling prefer it justifies its existence no matter whether or not the occasions depicted right here can be thought-about ‘canon’ in the long term. Characters like Erina or Toshiro, a hapless politician whom the Phantom Thieves inadvertently free of a dungeon, add some welcome spice to the combo of the previous gang, and the established characters are as pleasing as ever of their banter and conversations.
Gameplay in Persona 5 Tactica is extra XCOM than Fire Emblem, centering a lot of its strategic problem round successfully using cowl. Though there’s a free grid-based system, characters can freely transfer round in a large circle and in case you finish a flip subsequent to a wall, that character will take cowl and be successfully invulnerable to any enemy assaults. The identical goes for enemies, however in case you can handle to flank their place, you possibly can push them out of canopy and expose them to follow-up assaults from different workforce members. If an uncovered enemy takes harm, they’ll be downed and set off a “One More” for the character who put them down, which grants them an additional flip. In follow, this results in nearly puzzle-like gameplay the place you spend every flip making an attempt to determine essentially the most optimum strategy to steadiness harm, flip uptime, and enemy placement.
Every character has a firearm they’ll use to hit enemies—typically a number of without delay—from afar, whereas they’ll additionally dish out the ache up shut in the event that they go in for a melee assault. Additionally, most characters have Personas that they’ll use to burn some SP and inflict magic assaults on foes that trigger quite a lot of debuffs, similar to how psy-based assaults hypnotize enemies. We appreciated how this fight system adapts (however doesn’t instantly copy) the standard SMT elemental system, taking part in with fan expectations and making a battle circulate that feels true to the broader collection whereas nonetheless having its personal identification.
As you give and obtain harm, you’ll additionally construct up a party-wide Voltage Meter, and as soon as stuffed, any character can spend it to set off a robust one-time motion similar to planting a flag that heals characters inside a large radius on the finish of some turns. The Voltage Meter provides a welcome X issue to fights—it’s not one thing that you could precisely plan a method round, however you usually get entry to a Voltage motion proper across the time that issues are beginning to take a flip for the more severe. In this sense, Voltage actions can act as the mandatory rallying cry that turns the tide, and the truth that each character has their very own distinctive manner of spending the meter helps to maintain everybody’s area of interest within the broader workforce well-defined.
All of that is to say that gameplay selection is a key spotlight of Persona 5 Tactica—it feels such as you’re encountering one thing new right here each quarter-hour or so. Whether that be the introduction of a brand new enemy kind that’ll demand a change in techniques, or a brand new type of mission goal similar to defending a unit it’s a must to escort throughout the sector to a set extraction level, Persona 5 Tactica revels to find methods to shock or problem you. You’ll after all all the time be partaking in the identical previous motions of directing models round a battlefield in turn-based fight, however we appreciated how Persona 5 Tactica isn’t afraid to mess around with its conventions—this isn’t the type of techniques recreation that’s content material to throw you into uninspired map after map and process you with killing a set variety of enemies.
Another necessary a part of what makes Persona 5 Tactica so compelling is how successfully it incentivizes you to combine up your technique and shrink back from adhering to a inflexible view of essentially the most optimum method. For instance, it might be essentially the most strategically sound concept generally to maintain your three models in battle shut collectively and slowly get rid of enemies one after the other, however this doesn’t make for very attention-grabbing missions. So, to push you to unfold out extra, there’s an excellent assault known as Triple Threat that may be triggered by a personality who will get a One More. In a Triple Threat, every of your characters varieties the purpose of a triangle, and any enemies contained inside the triangle’s space are successfully deleted when you set off the assault. So, to make sure that as many enemies as doable could be affected by it, it’s a must to hold your characters comparatively unfold out from one another—exposing every of them to extra danger and making particular person skirmishes far more compelling.
In one other instance of this design method, it might historically take advantage of sense to stay to a set workforce of three models that you just use in each mission and spend money on closely to remain forward of the problem, leaving the remainder of your bench to languish and atrophy again at base. To spur you to frequently cycle by means of the complete lineup and hold everybody sharp, characters who’ve spent a mission off the sector can be powered up within the interim, granting them boosted stats in comparison with whomever you at present have lively in your workforce. You’re thus incentivized to swap in these powered-up models every mission, which ends up in far more attention-grabbing gameplay.
To foster this concept of utilizing the entire workforce as a lot as you possibly can, character development is dealt with in an attention-grabbing style whereby finishing missions results in you leveling up the complete celebration without delay, reasonably than simply the person models you used within the final battle. Alongside the bottom stat bumps that include this, every character is then given just a few extra factors that you could make investments into their ability tree to additional diversify their skills or strengthen current ones. In this sense, particular person character development actually feels easier when in comparison with different SRPGs, however we appreciated the way it forces you to consider your whole workforce as one ‘character’ that you just’re constructing from varied angles.
Though demon negotiation isn’t a part of Persona 5 Tactica—you’re merely given just a few new Personas on the finish of every mission—basic Persona fusion nonetheless options right here, whereby you stage up your arsenal by frequently mixing two Personas collectively to get a extra highly effective one which maintains a few of their traits. The gimmick right here is that Joker’s ‘Wild Card’ energy works a bit of in another way on this nook of the Metaverse—he can solely equip one extra Persona apart from Arsene, however the tradeoff is that everybody else on the workforce can even do the identical. You’re given much more leeway to construct your workforce in response to the area of interest that you really want every member to fill, as they’ll every tackle a kind of ‘subclass’ relying on which Persona you give them along with their major.
The solely disadvantage to Persona 5 Tactica’s method is that particular person Persona development feels prefer it takes a backseat. Though geared up Personas will stage up after you full a mission with them, they gained’t achieve any new abilities or skills from doing so—every Persona solely options the one ability it begins with and one inherited ability it obtained from its fusion fodder. This was seemingly executed to chop again on the fusion characteristic overshadowing the techniques gameplay, but it surely looks like Personas are a bit of restricted right here when in comparison with their look in the primary collection.
Though Persona 5 Tactica isn’t so long as Persona 5—the complete story ought to run you about 40-50 hours—it nonetheless looks like there’s loads of replayability right here. Every mission has three sub-objectives, similar to beating the stage in a sure variety of turns or with out workforce members getting hit too many occasions, and fulfilling these can typically require coming again later with a extra highly effective workforce or optimizing your Persona loadouts higher. Also, there are numerous optionally available ‘Quests’ that you could interact in between story missions, every of which duties you with clearing a shorter mission with a set workforce. Completionists have quite a lot of work reduce out for them, then, however the recreation doesn’t really feel unnecessarily bloated.
Visually, Persona 5 Tactica adopts a method that’s considerably harking back to the graphics used within the Persona Q video games on 3DS, characterised by extra cartoonish Chibi designs. This looks like a slight step down from Shigenori Soejima’s wonderful and detailed artwork featured in the primary collection, though we might additionally contend that it provides P5T a novel aesthetic inside the broader context of the spinoffs thus far. It looks like a becoming artwork model whenever you see the best way that characters transfer right here, whereas all of the character and atmosphere design really feel at residence within the Persona universe whereas nonetheless being distinct. And don’t fret, the menus are nonetheless each bit as easily animated and trendy as you’d anticipate.
Meanwhile, the soundtrack looks like extra of an extension of that featured in Persona 5, which is to say nice. The distinct combination of acid jazz and high-energy rock is current and proper, offering a bombastic and invigorating tone for the varied fights you end up caught up in. Some tracks could really feel a bit of ‘been there, executed that,’ however the music nonetheless helps to set an efficient tone that’s maintained for the complete run.
