Persona 5 Tactica is an odd game because of what it isn’t. Atlus already had a tactical RPG series in the Devil Survivor games, and those games were already not far from being Persona tactics games. Considering that Persona Q was just Etrian Odyssey rethemed, I’d have expected this to establish a pattern and be Devil Survivor 3 but with Persona 5 characters. Instead, it actually has much more in common with XCOM and is arguably more of a puzzle game than a true strategy RPG. DS2 is still my favorite tactical RPG ever made, so I’m disappointed that this is certainly not DS3, but it’s still worth playing.
Let’s get the strategy vs puzzle game issue out of the way first. Bosses and objects aside, there are only four enemy types in the game, and two of them don’t appear until you’re well past the halfway point. You can only use three characters per battle, don’t get to choose their starting locations, and can only assign them one persona with two possible ability slots. Each character does have a skill tree and a unique elemental affinity, but since many of the skills are shared and there are no elemental weaknesses, most characters don’t actually feel very different from any other. The strategic choices you make in other similar games about which units to equip, how to arrange your forces, etc, are largely not present in this game. At the tactical level, the core of the game is the idea that hitting a defenseless enemy gives the attacking character a bonus turn that can also be used to perform an all out attack on every enemy contained in the triangle formed by your three characters. Where most games in this genre are about carefully planning your advance to pick off enemies while taking minimal damage, P5T is about chaining bonus turns to get your characters spread out so that you can do an all out attack on the entire board and wipe everyone out in one move. If there was any doubt about that being the intended way to play, most of the optional sidequests are puzzle battles where you have to accomplish that setup in one turn.
So mileage will vary on the gameplay depending on how much you enjoy setting up those attacks. Battles can definitely feel repetitive thanks to the limited number of different enemies and the fact that it’s easier to just use the same three characters in every battle and keep their equipment current, but the puzzles do eventually get pretty satisfying. Later areas introduce some dynamic stage elements that allow you to pull off exceptionally long turns if you’re careful about your placement and order of operations. Alas, that really is only true of the second half of the game’s levels. The first kingdom (which takes up almost the entire first half) just isn’t that interesting and spends too much time on trivial tutorial battles that aren’t very interesting as either puzzles or tactical battles.
Unfortunately, the story follows a similar arc. The first kingdom takes too long to establish anything interesting about its new characters and, presumably to avoid dumping the entire cast of P5 on you at once, comes up with some gimmicks to slowly drip feed you the Phantom Thieves two at a time. It takes far too long to get through this part of the story and, since you already know these characters and they don’t play very differently, there’s not even much payoff. It gets better and ends well, if never close to the level of regular P5, but I wouldn’t blame anyone for not wanting to fight through the underwhelming first area.
The last two things I want to mention are the music and how this fits in with the original game and other Persona spinoffs. You probably won’t be surprised to find out that the music starts off unremarkable and gets better as the game goes on. That really is the story of this entire game. As for how it fits in, it’s supposed to take place some time after the main game and, while it doesn’t exactly spoil anything, would be pretty hard to follow if you haven’t played P5. The events and characters of Royal are not mentioned in any way, nor are Strikers or the other spinoffs. I think this does a better job of feeling like a part of the P5 story than spinoffs like Dancing or P4 Arena, but it doesn’t do anything as interesting as Q did by having the casts of different games join together.
In the end, this is a pretty good game with a rather niche audience. You’ll want to have played all the way through P5, of course, but you’ll also need to be okay with it being primarily a puzzle game and taking its time to go anywhere. The difficulty is pretty low on the default setting, but there are two other levels that might help with that for people who want more of a challenge. Personally, I think the story is the main reason to play this, at least provided you can get past the weak opening hours. If not, well, this isn’t anything essential. It’s a decent time for people who fit its niche and an easily skipped experience for everyone else.
Rating: 75%
Time to beat: 29 hours to do everything on normal
MSRP: $60
For more reviews, see my Steam curator page: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/43219041