Persona 5 Tactica – PS4

The Revolution Is Here

Persona 5 was my first foray into the Persona franchise and it still to this day is one of my all time favourite games. When they announced a new strategy spin-off, I knew I had to try it out! Persona 5 Tactica takes the Phantom Thieves in a new direction whilst keeping the charm of the original. The battles themselves are fast-paced and the ‘Once More’ system from the main games means you can chain together actions to dominate the battlefield. The story also stands out as one of my favourites in a Persona spin-off, so I will be avoiding spoilers beyond the opening.

Lock And Load

The battle system of Persona 5 Tactica is the main difference between this entry and the main games, with combat taking place on a 3D map rather than the traditional turn-based system. You take control of three Phantom Thieves in a battle and you are free to move as each character until they take an action to shoot, melee attack, or use one of their Persona’s skills. Generally, your goal during combat is to get your characters to perform a ‘Once More’ by hitting an enemy that is out of cover or afflicted with a status ailment, like shock or freeze, to knock them down. This gives that character another move and action, and the ability to perform a ‘Triple Threat’ which is very reminiscent of the All-Out Attacks that the Persona games are known for. If all three characters surround a downed enemy, the character who downed them can trigger this punishing attack, damaging every enemy in the triangular area between the team. Pulling off these attacks against most or all of the enemies on a map is immensely satisfying and really recaptures the feeling of pulling off All-Out Attacks in Persona 5.

Battles are quite fast paced affairs thanks to the smaller team size and they feel really satisfying to clear. Generally the story missions have a couple back to back with a few different objective types, while the bonus quests give you more puzzle-like objectives, such as defeating all enemies in a single turn. I played the game on the standard difficulty and managed the story battles without too much trouble, but a couple of the side ones genuinely stumped me and I needed to retry the levels a few times to get the right order to complete them. The game offers quite a few difficulty options so if you are a strategy novice or a hardened veteran, you’ll find a level that’s right for you.

Characters offer the overall team a buff that can impact your team composition; Joker, for instance, gives the team’s guns extra damage, whereas new character Erina gives everyone increased health. Each party member has their own skill tree to flesh out their capabilities and Persona’s skills, although they all have similar patterns to their abilities outside of their ultimate skills. Erina breaks this pattern in some ways but I won’t spoil why that is the case. What I really like about these skill trees is the ability to refund skills and select others at no cost at all, which is a feature that more games could do with implementing! You can customise the characters further by equipping a secondary Persona, unlocking extra skills and buffing their health and damage. You will steadily get more from completing battles and you can fuse them in the Velvet Room just like in the main series to create new Personas and have them inherit skills. This iteration of the Velvet Room is definitely one of my favourites and I found myself not skipping the fuse animation as often as I did in the main series.

Let’s Start The Mission

As you would expect from a Persona game, the story of Persona 5 Tactica is the main driving force outside of battling. Something that the game made clear from the opening sections was that this takes place after the events of the original, and gives memos to help refresh your memory of characters and events. This time around, the Phantom Thieves find themselves trapped in a Metaverse world run by a corrupt ruler and join forces with the revolutionary leader Erina, regroup in a familiar looking hideout, and start to liberate the nation from their reign of terror. The theme really revolves around revolution and standing up against corruption which compliments the previous games in the series. Erina, as the newest character, is quite central to the plot and is a welcome new addition to the Phantom Thieves. The story itself is done through some animated cutscenes and a lot of visual novel style chats between the cast. Without giving anything away, the story takes some pretty serious turns at parts and some of these scenes had me feeling quite emotional. The only issue I had with the story was at times the chats between characters took a bit too long, but overall this is a minor issue.

Looking Good Joker!

Another thing Persona 5 Tactica carries over from the main series is the absolutely brilliant soundtrack. The Persona 5 series of games have some of my all-time favourite tracks and I am pleased to say that this entry continues that, with a brilliant selection of original and remixed tracks. The animated opening starts off really strong and I often found myself tapping along with some of the background music during the story. The stand out tracks were the boss tracks (as is often the case!) and I was humming along to these well before the bosses were taken down.

The voice cast from the main game reprise their roles as the Phantom Thieves and, as always, they really bring the characters to life. Some of the interactions between characters, especially during some of the more lighthearted moments. The biggest difference from the original other than the genre is the artstyle, opting for a chibi art style. I love the style of the original and I think the chibi look really works for the Phantom Thieves, especially with the visual novel approach to the story’s presentation. One of my favourite parts of this is that Morgana looks exactly the same as he does in the main series! The character art really helps evoke the character’s different personalities, Ryuji’s shocked face in particular is so spot on.

Mission Accomplished

Persona 5 Tactica is an incredibly fun and satisfying strategy game for fans of Persona 5. The change of genre works perfectly and the tactical battles themselves feel very snappy and engaging. I really enjoy the chibi art style as it gives a new twist on the original’s stylish theme. If you have not played the original game, or the excellent Royal version, you may not get the same level of enjoyment as the game does reference the events of the original and you won’t have had the opportunity to get to know the characters of the Phantom Thieves. For those who have played Persona 5 before, this is a brilliant spin-off that will scratch that itch for more of the Phantom Thieves.