The Phantom Thieves return... and get a little help along the way.
Persona 5 Tactica is the fourth — or fifth, depending on how you count and consider Royal — entry in Atlus’ Persona 5 juggernaut. This time, the mini-franchise delves into the strategy RPG genre that’s perhaps best known by us casuals through Mario + Rabbids or XCOM.
A new look at themes and events first delivered through Persona 5 and Persona 5 Strikers, Tactica is highly stylised and easy enough to understand, though complex and demanding as all hell if you care enough to go all in.
Pulled into the Metaverse of the Kingdoms — and yes, I’m sick of this concept too — the Phantom Thieves quickly gather with two new characters to thwart evil, change hearts and ultimately, get back home. Toshio Kasukabe is a politician who doesn’t vibe with our heroes’ whole heart-changing aim, adding story beats and complexity into the mix.
Erina is a new Phantom Thief but not, the charismatic leader of the Metaverse’ rebel army. Each Kingdom in the Metaverse has its own boss and theme, and you’ll send out teams of three onto the battlefield in an attempt to overcome each.
Gameplay is devised into three main sections; setting up shop in Metaversed Café Leblanc, you’ll be able to talk out matters, upgrade your party and select new abilities and tools to aid in your quest. From there, you can enter into the Velvet Room to — what else — fuse new Personas or weapons. Once all that’s been done, you can head out onto the battlefield and work to achieve your goals.
Your battles will be performed in a top-down view, with simple controls on console. You’ll be able to change between your party of three to act in any order you wish, moving around the field to find some health-saving cover. In terms of actions, you’ll have Persona skills at your disposal — provided you have the SP to use them — or guns or close-ranged weapons, depending on your mood (and distance).
Classic Persona tropes are of course included; attacks that trigger a critical hit will give you one more attack that round. Better yet, surrounding and downing an enemy will allow you to trigger the spectacle that is the all-out attack.
Level design adds even more complexity to the mix; if you’re up on a ledge and use a close-ranged attack to knock a baddie into the air, you’ve got the chance for a colleague down below to follow up with an additional blow as the enemy sails through the air. Exploding barrels and the like can also cause damage when triggered, both to your party and enemies alike.
On easier difficulties, you can sail through most battles, though each engagement has a set of three optional conditions that might make things trickier. The challenge obviously escalates depending on the difficulty you set, meaning you won’t be able to just stick out like a sore thumb while fighting but actually find cover that’ll mitigate incoming damage.
On top of that, special quests require almost perfect planning to succeed. The second quest on offer requires you to essentially continually trigger critical hits in order to get one more attack to work your way through the map. It’s admittedly incredibly frustrating when things don’t go your way, but so very rewarding when they do.
In big stints, Tactica can become a little repetitious; while there’s a lot of variation between Kingdoms, the battles inside of them largely play out in the same fashion. The amount of narrative that’s weaved between these battles will correct that for franchise fans, though I found the amount of text between the action too much. You can thankfully fast-forward conversations or skip them altogether once you’ve gotten the gist.
In a similar way — and potentially because I was skipping cutscenes that might have been doing some of the heavily lifting on top of loading screens — I was surprised at how long it took to get between environments or into battles at times. Compared to the wizardry seen in the likes of Spider-Man 2 or Alan Wake 2 — and acknowledging this is also available on last-gen platforms — load times are a bit of a disappointment. And yes, if this isn’t the most first-world complaint about this game, I’ll eat my hat.
Boss battles are easily the best part of Tactica, unique and full of different phases that you’ll need to really deliberate upon before enacting a counter-attack. While I think Tactica is overly verbose, these boss battles are a great way to pull a Kindgom and its concepts together before moving onto a new world to save.
I’ve dabbled in a variety of Persona titles and know those who love the franchise will find their affection rekindled through Tactica. I’ve also dabbled with a variety of strategy-RPG games and feel confident enough to say this: if Mario + Rabbids can hold your interest, so too can this.
In the same way that Mario + Rabbids was great for battles on the go using your Switch, so too would be Tactica. While you can certainly pay for the privilege to do just that on your Switch, Persona 5 Tactica is yet another Xbox Game Pass title. That means you can play on the go using Xbox Cloud Gaming and your smartphone of choice without the need to lay down any additional cash. If you’ve somehow got some space that’s not being taken up by a pile of shame, give it a go.
Persona 5 Tactica heads to Windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, PS4, PS5 and Switch on 17 November. As we’ve mentioned, it’s also available through Xbox Game Pass.
Persona 5 Tactica was reviewed using a promotional code on Xbox Series X, as provided by the publisher. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.
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Persona 5 Tactica17 November 2023PC PS4 PS5 Switch Xbox One Xbox Series S & X
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