Recently, the latest iteration in the longstanding Persona series launched. This one adds another chapter to the fifth installment of Persona, and with a bit of a twist. Persona 5 Tactica greatly and deliberately distances itself from the turn-based, Pokemon/Sims hybrid style gameplay. Instead, it offers the player a bird’s eye view of a given map and allows them to use their characters of choice to fight enemies in turn-based combat. Similar to playing a game of Persona 5 Chess.

How has it gone? Well, on paper, it would seem Atlus has designed their next masterpiece. Let’s talk about what the game has done well.

General Gameplay

Overall, the second by second gameplay is pretty good in this game. Map design is straightforward, but varied enough to where each stage doesn’t feel the same as any seen previously. There is a fair bit of enemy variety that meshes well with said map design as well. The player unfortunately only gets two skills per character, and can only use three characters at a time, but this leaves just enough nuance to make decisions on what or who to bring, and when, important and meaningful.

In particular, setting up All-Out Attacks is really satisfying, as it relies on each of the three characters being positioned in a way where they surround an enemy unit which has been downed. Being able to catch other enemies in the crossfire adds to the satisfaction of pressing that X button when everything is set to launch.

Soundtrack

Atlus rightfully gets praised almost all the time for their masterpiece OST design. This game is no different. Each and every single track found during a quest or a mission is an absolute banger. Arguably, this game does it better than its past entries, as it does a brilliant job offering a wide variety of music to accommodate all sorts of tastes. In particular, “Truth or Dare”, “Quiet Storm” and each unique theme heard when getting to a new hideout are quite satisfying to just sit there for a moment jam out to when hearing them.

DLC

The base game was good and fun, but overall the DLC was a better experience. Here, the player can only use Joker, Kasumi Yoshiszawa and Goro Akechi with the rest of the Phantom Thieves left for the base game. However, not only are those three probably the best, most fun members of the team to use anyway, but gameplay and the general story suit these three way more than getting the entire squad involved.

Most non-boss fight missions and pretty much every quest in the game flies by incredibly fast, with many not even expending ten turns before being completed. The DLC is much shorter than the base game, and such fast-paced tactical gameplay definitely suits a more abbreviated offering. The story is easier to follow along with, and gameplay is similarly short and sweet. Also, Akechi and Kasumi are arguably two of the more well-written Phantom Thieves anyway, so it was good to see them get some action after both were left out of Persona 5 Strikers entirely.

Quests

Generally speaking, quests are far more engaging and challenging than the base game’s missions. Often, they have very strict time sensitivity that can contort the player’s approach to the game, often in productive ways. It may seem impossible to kill north of a dozen enemies in just a single turn, but a perceptive player may notice that they’re all clustered in the same area, ripe for the pickings of a well-placed All-Out Attack. Such foresight is greatly rewarded, as each quest often has a gimmick that makes it difficult or even impossible to defeat without addressing it.

Quality Of Life

There really isn’t anything annoying or offputting about this game. There are and were no serious bugs or glitches at launch. The game’s tutorial is very distinct and straightforward, the game’s UI is useful but not invasive, and it’s easy to get into a rhythm playing this game and just… play it, without thinking about much else, for a long time. In a nutshell, this is a great quality for a game to have.

As has been said, this is an excellent game ‘on paper’. Yet, no part of this article has committed to labeling it a masterpiece just yet. Let’s address why that is…

It’s time to retire the Phantom Thieves of Hearts

In a nutshell, if you never played anything Persona 5 related and then came to play this, there would be seemingly nothing wrong with the game whatsoever. It’d probably get an A or maybe even an S rank in your eyes.

However, in the context of what Persona 5 has done with the Phantom Thieves, Persona 5 Tactica is what happens when you get too much of a good thing. Not only is it quite convoluted where the events of this game appear on the general universe’s timeline, but regardless of where, it’s just too much over-the-top action for a single cast of characters.

Persona 5 Strikers and Persona 5 Royal made it extremely clear when these ‘canon’ events take place. The former is clearly based after the very first original Persona 5, while the latter is literally the same thing with a well-defined expansion towards the end of the story. Yet, all we can do are use context clues to make an attempt at where Persona 5 Tactica ends up on the game’s timeline. Moreover, it makes zero sense that the Phantom Thieves would find themselves in yet another series of cataclysmic world-ending events after and before dealing with more of these threats. It’s just too much. The game is trying to get the player to take some very heavy-hitting issues quite seriously, and it’s difficult to do that when immersion is being negatively impacted this way.

It’s time for a Persona 6. A new, fresh cast that can get themselves into all kinds of epic trouble for the player to experience. Persona 5 can still end off on a good note before this figurative milk has any more of a chance to spoil.

Ultimately, this is hands-down the biggest criticism to be made of Persona 5 Tactica, and it’s probably the only serious flaw the game has. On one hand, it’s very understandable that a theoretical Persona 6 wouldn’t come out when Atlus is reinventing the game mechanic wheel. On the other, perhaps a Tactica-esque game could have been pushed a few years down the road, to follow up a theoretical Persona 6.

In any case, this is a fine game and the aforementioned issue isn’t necessarily ‘objective’. Because of that, I’ll give this game an A. It’s time for the Phantom Thieves to gracefully bow out now.