Persona 5 Tactica Reviews

holy peak

WHAT A TWIST!

Atlus did the impossible, They made a politician a likeable person

It's a shame. This was ALMOST a good spin off persona title, but still isn't worth the money at 60% off.

A soulless, shameless, terrible cash grab. Even the music sucks (HOW) Combat is a terrible Baldur's Gate 3(ish) rip off at the same price

This game is pretty damn good! The gameplay is fun, the story is interesting, the characters are as charming as ever (including the new ones), and the music is (as is par for the course when it comes to the Persona games) incredible. If you're looking for more of Persona 5's cast and story, then I'd absolutely recommend this! Not so much if you're looking for more of that style of gameplay. Even then, I'd still say it's worth a shot, unless you just really hate tactics games. Though, generally, you should wait until it's on sale. As much as I enjoy it, I don't feel that it's worth $60.

If after playing Royal and Strikers you want more of the Phantom Thieves, this is the place to get it. However, I would recommend waiting for a sale as this game is not nearly as memorable as the aforementioned titles.

I came into tactica thinking it would be a fun little spin off game with a meh story and some good gameplay. And I was sorta right? First off the gameplay is vastly different to other persona games. I've heard people say it's similar to X-COM but I've never played that so I can't compare. I found the gameplay quite fun. Easy to learn and hard to master. Getting the hang of the basics is easy enough and once you're know what you're doing you can set up some massive combos. It was always satisfying to initiate a Triple Threat (this game's version of an All Out Attack) on a large group of enemies. Unfortunately there are only about 6 or so base enemies in total, but they do have some variations to keep things interesting. Personas function quite different compared to other games: The Sub-Persona System for all Party members from Persona Q has been brought over with the change that all Personas only have 2 skills, 1 innate and one inherited. Character specific personas are excluded from this, they have their own skill trees. As such I didn't find using specific personas had such a big impact. Skills that increase damage in scenarios were helpful, but not life and death, and in most cases I couldn't fuse a persona with a better combination of skills even if I wanted too. Also should make note of the fact that affinities seem to have been completely removed for this game and only status ailments remain (and even they aren't that important). Combine this with the fact that you hold a massive amount of persona (early game 30 and late game 40 I think) and I only swapped out personas 3 or 4 times in the whole game. My only real issue with the gameplay part is that it is way to easy. Considering I don't usually play this type of game I played on hard (there is still merciless mode) and I got one game over... In one of the final optional challenge missions...cause I had to use party members who had not had their equipment updated since the first act... And yes there is still a harder difficulty, but I didn't expect hard to be that easy. I even got almost all optional objectives on my first run. Now to the presentation. Once again pretty good. The art style is pretty cute and different to what the series usually does. The music is also quite good, ranging from some nice calm background music to absolute bangers for battle tracks. Also, this game has different battle themes for individual bosses and acts. Compared to P5 Royal where you only have 2 normal battle themes and almost all bosses use Blooming Villain. Now I honestly expected the story to be kind of meh, while the gameplay did most of the heavy lifting, but it was actually pretty decent. Of course it doesn't come close to normal P5 or even Strikers story, but I was surprised by how invested I was by the end. I think part of this comes from the fact that in some patches it gets pretty dark...or at least darker than I would've expected... From a game that looks like it could be for little kids. The new characters are pretty interesting and had a fair few twists along the way, some unexpected some very much expected. Unfortunately the game mostly focuses on the new characters and dies little to develop the main Phantom Thieves Group, but I didn't really mind that. So all in all, I would recommend Persona 5 Tactica. If you're not a die hard fan maybe wait for a sale...the game is considerably shorter than other Persona Games. Also I call BS on the Repaint Your Heart DLC, where obviously already in the Royal Timeline, Joker already has his grappling hook.

I recommend discounting any reviews made within the first hour or two of play. The first few levels are kind of weak, even for tutorial missions and the story is awkward and confusing at first. After getting over that first bump in the road, it gets progressively better and better. Late game content is very satisfying. The only criticism I will make though is that this is not a $60 game, imo. $30 is a fair price if you can grab it on sale.

The main game was great, especially the story, I really enjoyed Erina and Toshiro, along with the cutscenes. All the Phantom Thieves have pretty funny moments. I would say that the game is mostly pretty easy, but personally I don't mind, that didn't damper me finding the gameplay fun. The DLC was also pretty good, played it before the main game, furthermore easy fights that were still fun with a good spin on the mechanics. Though it was really funny at the end when the two teammates for it acted as if the fights thus far were difficult when no one had taken damage or even used SP, also the foreshadowing (if played prior to the 6th palace) for P5 Royal was enjoyable to see.