I played and finished Persona 5: Tactica. I enjoyed it, I think it is a very solid casual tactical RPG, albeit one that I think is perhaps just a little on the basic side. I liked the story, I think it had a couple of strong moments and I really enjoyed this story’s new characters, Erina and Toshiro.
Gameplay: You control 3 characters and do missions through to progress the main story, as well as a few optional missions on the side. You have a basic cover system, which you and the enemies will use on the maps. If you’re in cover, it gives you a cover bonus, sometimes which can nullify damage altogether. If you or the enemy aren’t next to cover, you can be knocked down. If you or the enemy is knocked down, this causes the person who attacked to gain a “One More”, letting them get a free turn where they can move and attack again. This can be done repeatedly. It’s a big part of the game and can be quite fun to chain together attacks, making your party’s turn last a long time and taking out lots of enemies. Side quests tend to really focus on this aspect, often only giving you a single turn to wipe out all enemies, trying to make you strategise who attacks which enemies and where to move to.
When an enemy is knocked down, and your 3 team mates surround the knocked down enemy and any other enemies within the triangle, you can do a big super attack, which is a very powerful move and when utilised correctly, means you can take out swathes of enemies in a single attack. It can be very satisfying pulling off a big move that wipes out the board of enemies.
Personas are here, but they aren’t quite as big a deal as they are in the mainline series. There is no element weakness system here, instead what differentiates magic attacks is the ailment they put on the enemy. Burn attack will set the enemy on fire continuing to damage them, ice will freeze the enemy causing them to miss their next turn etc. Each character, like in Persona 5, is effectively assigned an element (Joker is Despair, Ryuji Elec, Ann Fire etc), so a big part of your party choice will be what elements you find are best for your strategy.
In addition, the Sub-Persona system from the Persona Q series has returned. Joker no longer has the power of the Wild Card, but instead, party members can equip a second Persona ontop of their default one. The secondary Persona will always have a unique skill assigned to it, and an inherited skill if it was formed through fusion. In addition, the Sub-Persona will have HP, SP, Gun Damage, and Melee Damage values that are added ontop of the character’s respective stats. The fact the Sub-Persona can only have 2 skills is pretty disappointing, especially when compared to Persona Q1 and Q2 where they can have 6 skills. I guess it boils down to being a balance thing, but even still, couldn’t we have even just 3 or 4 skills? I spent little time fusing Personas, I really did it just to try and fill up my compendium. I’ll give it this, this might be the easiest Persona title there is to get a full compendium, mission rewards tend to give you 3-4 at a time, and as long as your sensible about fusing unregistered Persona, you’ll be filling up the compendium in no time. The only reason I never hit 100% was simply because I finished the game at level 81 and I think the highest level Persona is something like 96. So you would probably need to grind if you want to hit the level 99 level cap and gain access to the full Persona Compendium.
Each characters also has a skill tree. Skill trees tend to be fairly standard across each character, their respective element can be upgraded in power over the course of the game, as well as their secondary support skill and a secondary passive skill, as well as a few other bits and bobs. You’ll gain points to unlocks skills through levelling up and doing side quests, and thankfully, all characters share the same level, so no leaving party members behind in level you don’t use like what happened in Persona Q. Futaba as Navigator gets an almost laughably basic skill “tree”, which is literally just 7 skills, 3 of which increase the odds and amount of HP restored, another 3 for the same with SP, and the final one for a “Final Guard”, which means that if a party member is killed in a fatal attack, the Final Guard nullifies the attack and restores that party member’s entire HP, which is extremely useful. I will say though, I am happy that the game makes all 8 party members viable, it’s been interesting reading about what party members people utilised. My final team wound up being Ryuji, Yosuke, and Ann but have read others with completely different teams.
There are elements of Tactica that feel a little half-baked. There is no item system, and money you gain only exists for 2 things: buying Personas from the Persona Compendium, and buying guns from the gun shop. The gun shop becomes obsolete about a third into the game when you’re able to get guns through Persona fusion, which lets you obtain guns with elements attached. (The game makes a point that gun fusion is meant to be riskier than just buying from the gun shop, but I fused about a dozen guns in my playthrough and nothing bad or unexpected ever happened.) I don’t want to say P5T is underbaked in anyway, this game is well designed, it has enough content to justify the asking price, etc. But there are bits that feel a little too simple, like with how little you can use money. I’m surprised you can’t even buy melee weapons since using melee is actually quite effective in this game and at times neccesary. And while there are a good number of missions (just over 50 in the main campaign, 15 side quests), it feels like there could be a bit more level variety in terms of theming, and perhaps maybe some more levels that could utilise some set pieces to stand out. And finally, the game is pretty easy, I beat it on normal, and from what I’ve heard even on the game’s hardest difficulty it doesn’t put up much of a fight. Once you reach the first quarter or third mark and start getting more powerful skills it does fall apart a bit. The only missions that offer challenge are those that have failure conditions beside simply having the party wiped out, like using a time limit.
As for story, I don’t have that much to say honestly, I’m not going to go into spoilers. I do think the game’s setup and first part are the weakest parts of the story. Taking place inbetween the end and epilogue of Persona 5 Royal, this does mean P5T is another Persona spin-off that takes place in the middle of the timeline, which does get a bit tiresome. If the plan is to do more spin-offs for P3, P4, P5, and P6 when that materialises, I do want the spin-offs to advance the timeline and characters. Strikers did that, so I would of preferred this to be after Strikers. It isn’t the worst thing ever, Tactica’s story by nature is fairly self-contained so it isn’t a problem for the story, but it does make it feel very inessential, like just another adventure for the P5 gang, rather than the next big chapter in the Persona 5 saga.
It probably doesn’t help that P5T also has tropes from other Persona spin-offs, especially Persona Q. The gang is mysteriously whisked away to another world through a paper thin excuse. The other world has its own rules and it takes a while for the characters to figure out what the true plot is, like in Q1 and Q2. The plot heavily involves 2 guest characters - usually a boy and a girl - who will be central to the plot, get the most character development, and then will probably never show up again outside of the game. Erina and Toshiro for this game, Rei and Zen from Q1, Hikari and Nagi from Q2, Labrys and Sho from Arena, Sophia and Zenkichi from Strikers. And like I said, the game takes place in the middle of the established timeline, meaning you know nothing is going to change the status quo for the main cast, although thankfully at least this game doesn’t pull the “everybody gets memory wiped at the end” card that some other games have.
I think Tactica does have a good plot, especially once it gets going, it becomes clear what the stakes are and how the characters are relevant to the plot. There was a couple of times that I did choke up, it was effective, and I love Erina and Toshiro. I love the Persona franchise for constantly being great at giving us characters that I do care about. But it does feel safe, it’s hard not to wonder if the higher ups at Atlus have put in some sort of limitation about what can be done with the P5 cast, or the other cast members. Since the main games take place in late high school (the P3, P4, and P5 protagonists are all in their second last year), it’s hard not to wonder if their is trepiditon about letting the characters age out past high school.
Overall, I think Tactica is a fun casual time. I did have a good time with this, but must admit, as someone who doesn’t have that much experience in the tactical RPG genre, I felt much more gripped by the likes of the recent X-COM games and Fire Emblem: Three Houses. But then, those games let you have bigger parties, more customisation, and a bigger scope. And I utterly suck at X-COM, believe me. Tactica is definetly a good game if something like X-COM is perhaps too intimidating. There isn’t much choice, it’s streamlined, the difficulty is fairly soft, and missions tend to last around 15-25 minutes, so you can play it in small sessions if you wish.
Really, I hope Tactica does get a sequel, something that builds up the foundation this game establishes. Perhaps a Tactica using the P3 or P4 cast? I guess we’ll see, I have no idea if this game has sold well or not. It’s also hard not for the game to feel overshadowed by Persona 3 Reload, which is now just 2 months away. I am getting very excited for P3R, as somebody who really liked but perhaps couldn’t quite love P3P, I am sortof hoping P3R will be the game that makes me really appreciate Persona 3 to the extent that I love Persona 4 and Persona 5.
