Persona 5 Tactics is another spin-off game that allows us to control the Phantom Thieves. As the title suggests, it's not a turn-based RPG like Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal; instead, it's a tactical game similar to XCOM.

I really enjoy tactical games, but I must say that Persona 5 Tactics is the easiest game in this genre. There are almost no consequences for your wrong actions on the field. The main story consists of easy stages, and you only face some challenges when playing the side quests.

Talking about the story is challenging for me. As someone who loves the Persona 5 story, I can say that this spin-off falls far behind in this aspect. However, when compared to other games, it's still interesting. The best part, for sure, is the characters who remain super charismatic. At some point, I felt the game was unnecessarily huge.

To understand the story, you have to play Persona 5 or Persona 5 Royal first. Otherwise, you won't grasp a significant part of the game and won't have the connections with these characters, who are the heart of this franchise.

The art initially made me feel like it took a step back. After a few hours, I started to enjoy it.

Persona 5 Tactics is a game destined for fans of Persona 5 and the Phantom Thieves. I don't recommend it if you've never played the main title before or if you don't want to spend more time with these characters. The gameplay is okay, but there are better tactical games out there.

Naw I'm done with this trash. I will start off by saying I've never played a tactics game that I've actually liked but I thought I'd give this a chance considering how much I like persona and I will try to keep my criticisms off the tactics genre as much as possible.

The designs are butt ugly. The music has way less energy than it does in any other persona game I've played. The story is forgettable and uninteresting and the characters are basically just devolved to their most basic character traits. I was hoping for some interesting development or fun evolution to the persona/smt combat/monster collecting systems (which is what I got in droves from P5S) but in the 3-4 hours I gave this a shot I got pretty much nothing out of it but boredom and frustration with the dragged out wordy cutscenes.

This is by no means a bad game, and like most of the Persona spinoff titles, does an admirable job of translating the staples and mechanics of the RPG games into a wholly new genre. However, I will say that 1) I'm not a huge fan of tactics titles and P5T doesn't offer up anything to turn me around on the genre, and 2) as much as I adore the Persona 5 cast (P5 is one of my all-time favorite games), I'm kinda over these characters now. Strikers was a fantastic game and a solid sendoff to the Phantom Thieves, and when it came to an end I was ready to move on to the next generation of Persona.

That was almost three years ago; P5 itself was seven years ago. I know they got a good eight years of milking out of Persona 4 too but to see them do it again...I'll be honest, it kind of sours me on the gang the longer this drags on. Persona 5 Tactica makes zero arguments for its existence; it's a dull, super non-canon sidestory in a style of game no one was really asking for. Please, let this be the last one Atlus. LET US BE FREE.

For me, the Persona 5 burnout isn't so much of the amount of spin-offs, it's the stories of them. Like Strikers, this one focuses on rebelling against oppressing forces (this time in a new metaverse with places called Kingdoms) and standing up for what's right. Then you come up against an oppressive god-like being who says "no it's the will of the people they want my variation of being ruled under my thumb" and then you say no to that god-like being for the 5th time and it dies and then the credits roll. Normally I wouldn't talk about the true antagonist like that but if you're coming from the Persona 5 spin-off era you knew it was coming and it's far from a surprise at this point. (Don't worry, there are no specific story spoilers in this review though).

The story of presents the idea of the collateral damage of these rebellions and stopping suppressors, this game's take on it, but once again the protagonists are never actually challenged or questioned about their actions and it's more focused on....Like Yoshizawa, Hikari, and Sophia before, this game's focus is on one of it's new characters. No, not Erina, but someone else introduced early on, Toshiro. He's enjoyable. While of the spin-off and sequel gang I connected with Hikari the most on a personal level, Toshiro's story can be quite engaging when it wants to be. I can't go too into detail about it, but he feels realized and understandable, admirable by the end even while holding a solid dynamic to the rest of the group (even if it's similar to Zenkichi's at times). The thieves themselves are mostly just kinda there in the story, especially Joker. You select choices but he rarely factors into anything, especially with Toshiro. The other thieves and how they relate to his experiences with their own are better, but outside that they just repeat any 1 of their 3 jokes. Morgana is not a cat, Makoto and Haru are scary, Futaba is a gamer, Yusuke is poor, etc etc. So while they have their select moments, they're mostly the peanut gallery and usually all of them will have to chime in on a conversation which can slow things down.

But I've got to give the gameplay props, it does make you think a little...in the puzzle-structured missions anyways that have you use what you have to clear an objective in a set way, highlighting one of the game's mechanics. It's a great way to learn and wrap your brain around it. The triangle attack is also great, encouraging the positioning of your units for maximum damage and efficiency, especially if you can make a triangle that spans the whole map. There's also the One More system this game, the key factor to clearing maps quickly and efficiently since you can go farther and take out more. Building up a chain of kills is also pretty satisfying. Being able to clear missions this quickly, however, leads to another problem: The gameplay to story ratio feels out of balance for most of the game - For every 5-10 minutes of Tactical gameplay, you'll get about 15-25 minutes of story. As soon as I begin getting into the strategy mood, it's already over and back to the VN. It gets better near the end where the plot is resolved and you're just off to punch a god again at least.

I always like when Persona does different artstyles and this one being different from the Q style (though similar) is nice. I also liked the CG artwork that really brings out the best of this particular style. I also enjoyed certain CGs and interfaces taking inspiration from Soviet propaganda, it helps this one stand out just a bit more. The music is also solid and I respect them holding back from throwing any arrangements of songs from P5 in this game, as it takes away from that P5 fatigue people are feeling.

If your stomach has room for one more Persona 5 story, this game will offer some interesting but very easy tactical gameplay that may fill you up for a bit.

See you in Persona 5 X everybody!

I unabashedly love the Phantom Thieves and have voraciously consumed as much Persona 5 content that I can stomach, but this feels like it's reaching the limits of what's reasonable with this series. The game still has a solid Persona 5 core and the gameplay itself is serviceable, but it shows its cracks with some repetitiveness in terms of both the gameplay and story, retreading ground that it feels like these heroes have already trodden. Tactica also felt needlessly lengthened with a final act that had me re-fighting the game's previous bosses in a long, almost entirely non-voice acted gauntlet which reeked of padding. Despite my negativity, it was still enjoyable to spend some time with the Phantom Thieves, I'm just ready for Atlus to move on.

Not a perfect game, but a fun one indeed.

I do think the first half was dragged a lot, but the last half was good and overall i liked the (again) new way to bring the P5 style to another genre.

Like i said in my Strikers review: i will be there for every last drop of milk Atlus get from P5... See you next year my fellow thieves!

I think to start this review one thing needs to be made very clear. I despite tactics gameplay. I do not like the challenge or the strategy involved, I do not like the difficulty, and it's just something I've personally never jived with,

I feel like Persona 5 Tactics was made for someone like me, more than the hardcore tactics fan. Someone who's a hardcore Persona fan, who maybe wants to dip their toe into something a little bit new.

Dare I say, by the end of this game, I enjoyed some of the creative style boss fights and gameplay. Not enough to try more difficult ones, but just enough to keep the experience from being Dull for me.

What really shines here for me is the story. Erina and Toshrio are fantastic characters, and just perfect additions to the persona cast. This is certainly more of a side story than Strikers (strikers was a proper epilogue really) but if I'm being honest, I think I enjoyed the story in this game even more than Strikers, based off the work by these two damn strong characters. Erina is someone so awesome I wish she was in the main cast. It's a shame she wasn't.

The music, as always is tremendous. My biggest complaints about this game (besides the gameplay being a style I don't really like), I think the side quests sucked. They were mostly puzzle based ones where you'd need a pretty exact solution to figure it out, and that just wasn't fun to me.

Overall though, This was a wonderful game, and a total surprise from me. I didn't even have plans to play it this year, but I gave it a shot and it hooked me. Persona games clearly hold a special place in my heart (from the tremendous Persona 5 Royal being one of my favorite games of all time) so I'll clearly give anything involving this cast a bit of a bump, but this one was genuinely fantastic in my opinion.

The cast of Persona 5 continues to trek into new genres, and does competently in them. In this case it doesn't go much further than competent though.

Maybe it's just that I'm not a fan of the genre (I've played very few of them) but this game felt very bare bones compared to the main Persona 5, or even Strikers. When you're not playing the levels you're either watching cutscenes (and I'll talk about that soon), fusing personas or exploring the skill trees. The only real break from the main campaign comes from the handful of side-quests you get. There's only about 10-15 of them in the whole game, but they have much tighter restrictions than the main game. However they very rarely actually deviate from the basic formula of "kill all enemies" or "get to the end of the level". The ones that make you kill everyone in 1 turn are more like puzzles though, so I guess it's technically different. The one standout was when you had to push a box to the end goal (by characters hitting it). It was a fun change of pace, but it also stands out just because of how incredibly rare a change in the 2 basic mission types are.

Even when it comes to unique enemies, I can think of only 1 level that had a one-off enemy that wasn't a boss, which was the one in the 2nd Kingdom that created clones of itself and you had to find the right copy. I don't understand why they didn't base more levels on gimmick enemies like that, it was easily a highlight.

Enemy variety itself only really stopped at being acceptable. They get introduced at a weirdly paced rate, it feels like a very slow drip feed in the first 2 Kingdom's, then suddenly we get a lot at the end of the second and through the third, before the fourth Kingdom generally acts as a "here's everything you've fought before, but harder. Including bosses". I don't think it introduced any new ones, but I may be wrong.

The level design was usually just some pocket dimension made of lego bricks to make use of whatever abilities the Phantom Thieves had, it was rare that it felt like it actually took place in any kind of natural location. Those were some of my favourite levels though, like the wedding hall where you had to weave between tables to make it to the end.

Anyway what really made the game drag was just how much dialogue there was. And I get it's a Persona game so it's going to have dialogue, but at least the other genres allowed for long play sessions between the long cutscenes, here it's a 20 minute cutscene followed by 5 minutes of gameplay followed by another 20 minute cutscene. So much of the dialogue is so superfluous too, and many points are repeated ad nauseum. They also keep the option to let the player pick between 3 dialogue options when Joker needs to respond, except with no confidants to increase these are all completely redundant with maybe the following line being a tiny bit different. There's only 2 times I think it had a more notable change - the one with the wedding fantasies of course, and the biggest one when you decide which group to go with in the second Kingdom, which of course determines which scene you see.

On the plus side, when the game isn't doing it's dialogue through cardboard cutouts with speech bubbles, some of the cutscenes are pretty cool to watch. The music of course is up to classic Persona 5 standards. The characters are the ones you (presumably) know and love - seriously if you didn't already play Persona 5, don't play this because they do nothing to catch you up.

So yeah, the game itself is fine. But it's also very bare minimum with only the odd idea that feels fresh in the repetitive locations and enemy types. But it's dragged down further by overly padded writing.

Not as bad as people make it to be really. I found the gameplay to be more fun than other typical Tactical JRPG. I think the triangular all-out attack is a great feature because when you play smartly, it makes the gameplay much more dynamic and snappy and you can beat a stage with surprisingly few turns. But this mechanics also overshadows most of the other RPG mechanics in the game including the persona system, making it more like a puzzle game than an RPG. The last 1/4 of the game also felt dragged out because it's basically just wave after wave of boss rush without anything new or challenging.

Oh boy, people are really sleeping on this game. Don't overlook it because it seems like a meaningless spin-off. It is probably my favourite Tactical RPG. It's pretty similar in a few ways to the Mario + Rabbids series, but it does a better job in most categories.

Unfortunately, I played the game on the regular difficulty and I totally forgot there were other options. Nearing the end of the game I was thinking "Hmm, one of my main issues is that it's too easy." By that point, I didn't feel like swapping difficulties suddenly but I have read that the higher difficulties are balanced better. I wish I would have played on hard or higher. Instead, I'll just leave this here in case this review convinces you to play the game. It's not just about health increases, it makes the game more tactical due to friendly fire and a couple other changes. Check 'em out. I don't recommend playing on normal unless you want to breeze through or have a tough time with games like this.

I would also like to point out here that I played Persona 5, but not Royal or Strikers. I did play Dancing, but that wasn't much of anything. Anways, I say this to acknowledge that I don't feel "burnt out" by P5 whatsoever, which may have made this experience better than what others may claim.

I'm gonna go with a simple positives and negatives list for this one.

+ This combat system is awesome! I love the way you move around. I love how you can strategize to take your turns in a certain order to maximize your movement. I love how you can position enemies a certain way to consistently enable "1-more!" attack and extend your turn.

+ With your team of 3, you can use your mobility options to maneuver the map and then triangulate your position. If you make sure you are surrounding at least one "downed" enemy - anyone within the triangle you have created will be eviscerated by an All-Out Attack. It's probably the most fun and engaging thing I've done in an RPG of this nature. It's so satisfying every single time. It made me feel like a genius consistently. Ensuring your team is spread out is more risky, as you are less able to help one another; but it allows you to cover the entire map in a giant deadly triangle.

+ Partially related to the above comment is how much I liked certain levels in this game. For example, navigating an arena that has tons of rising/falling platforms that can only be accessed from certain directions is actually really fun. It turns the battles in to a maze of sorts, but in a good way. It adds to your sense of mobility. It makes it harder to move around, but it also allows you to really feel like you're solving a fun perspective puzzle at the same time. This isn't always executed well in games; but it's great here.

+ ... and partially related to THAT comment is just my general enjoyment of the verticality of the battle arenas. I love using height to your advantage. There are multiple ways they use the vertical nature of levels to give you ways to advantageously position yourself. Rising/falling platforms, ladders, attacks that take advantage of height, etc. all make for really fun ways to turn the layout of the map in your favor.

+ Fine-tuning each characters stats to suit the role you want them to fill is very rewarding. They all have strengths built in, but you can customize them a bit to do exactly what you want. Whether it be firearm usage, Persona usage, melee attacks, or mobility. There are lots of options in terms of the crafting of your team.

+ Not only that, but in a miraculous turn of events that most games fail to do... YOU DON'T HAVE TO USE JOKER! It's painful when you're playing a Mario RPG, for instance, and you have to use Mario. Ew. The supporting cast in most RPGs are almost always my preferred team to use, and it's rarely an option to ditch the MC. Funnily enough, I actually like Joker so I used him frequently. Actually, this leads me to my next point.

+ The game encourages you to not use the same team every time, by incentivizing you with bonuses. Most missions consist of 2 or 3 back-to-back fights. Between them you can tweak some things. One of those tweaks you can make is your team set-up. However, if you swap to a new team member at this time - you get an HP and SP (Skill Point) bonus! What I did was switch up my team every single time. You can use 3 party members at once so I swapped between Makoto, Erina, Haru, Ryuji, Joker, and Ann. Use 3 of them, then swap to the other 3. Love it. Morgana and Yusuke were only used when I was forced to in a side mission. I really don't care for them as characters, so I was happy to leave them out. Ann isn't the best either, but I prefer her to them. To wrap up my point - not only did I not HAVE to use the main character, but I was also able to reasonably use all the characters I like! Not only was I not punished for switching up my team all the time, but I was encouraged to do so! This might be my favourite implementation of the way a team is structed in an RPG. Good stuff.

+ As always, the art style, UI design, and animation quality is top-notch. Love it. I'm not a HUGE fan of the "chibi" nature, but it doesn't really bother me. It's only really present in a couple of cutscenes and it doesn't subtract much from the experience. Otherwise, it's beautiful in every way. I will never get over the way Persona games look. The Persona team are untouched in this category. Actually, Hi-Fi Rush managed to match it, tbh.

+ I enjoyed the Persona fusion system. What was even more fun is something you unlock a bit later that I won't spoil, but it involves your weapons. It's a cool feature that I'd like to see more of.

+ Great music, as per usual. I will say nothing stood out as a uniquely fantastic track, but overall it's one of the better OSTs this year.

+ The two new characters introduced in to this game are excellent. Erina especially is a lovely addition to the cast. Toshiro is cool, too. I won't spoil anything about them here.

+ Additionally, the voice acting is great. It is mostly voice acted outside of side activities, which is greatly appreciated. Again, the 2 new characters specifically do a great job here.

+ It's written well, though it does get a bit repetitive with its messaging at times. Mixing wholesome with humour is something Persona always does well, and it's no different here.

- At what turned out to be about 75% through the game, I was satisfied with the games length. I thought it was ending, but then it continues for another 5-8 hours in classic Persona fashion. I kinda wish it didn't. I was happy with the 25 or so hours I had spent with it, but it ended up being about 32 hours (I think?) I'm glad it's as short as it is (as opposed to it being 100 hours), but it does get a bit repetitive in the later missions.

- The enemy variety is a bit lackluster. One of the enemies in particular is just annoying, as well. It isn't really satisfying to deal with; it's really just there to block your path which kinda sucks.

- Contrary to one of my positive points, a couple of the levels are annoying to deal with, particularly when you're presented with doors that open/close. Some are by your doing, and some are based on what turn it is. Either way, they impede movement. Your movement options are a highlight of this games combat system, and you're pretty restricted in the levels with doors. Not a fan.

- It's too easy. But again I don't know if this is truly valid as I didn't play on a harder difficulty, which I totally should have. I wish I could comment on the added features of the higher difficulties.

Overall, if you like Persona or you like tactical RPGs; I highly suggest you do not skip this. It's one of the best of both of those things, though it does have its fair share of issues. I could see a world where I could give this game a 5/5. If I had played on a higher difficulty... it may have happened. Although the game does suffer from a problem of repetition, which might just be too big an issue for a more glowing review to occur.

Video version of this review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRBQOJsowE0

"If You Want Peace, Prepare for War."

After a long hiatus of end-of-semester finals and Christmas vacation I am back and have missed this! Also, finally got to sink my teeth into this game and see what it was all about.

Wasn't sure how I would like the tactics style since I have hardly played many besides "final fantasy tactics advance"and "Valkyria Chronicles", but the combat became very cool to learn and fun to do and strategize. Pulling off an all out attack and moving your players around to get the most enemies in the triangle was very satisfying! Classic Persona 5 style OST with an emphasis on a more chill vibe kind of feeling to it.

I am a die-hard Persona fan, but I feel as though the story and dialogue kind of dragged a bit. Erina was a cool character, but I did not get really invested into her and Toshiro's story until around the middle of the 3rd Kingdom of the game. Until that point, it was constant dialogue of just the typical Phantom Thieves banter of what's been going on and what to do next with some off topic conversations for the characters. I love the Phantom Thieves and all of the group, but I feel at this point i'm kind of getting burned out as I still have Strikers and New Cinema Labyrinth to play in the future. Just like my OG P5 and P5R playthroughs my go tos were Haru and Morgana which both dominated just like they did in the original games and were just an unstoppable force with wind and grenade launchers!

Persona fusion was really fun in this one as you can put them on nearly all party members to add extra skills and boost stats even with a higher consistency of fusion accidents, or maybe just my terrible luck! Hitting me with a accident right when I do the 4-way fusion for Trumpeteer was pretty damn dirty. Also, adding the ability to fuse personas and make them into even more powerful weapons was awesome and each had their own cool design. Continuing the Persona/JRPG trend of adding newer mechanics later to freshen up the gameplay loop was nice, but one of them felt like it should of been implemented way earlier in the game.

A nice combo of Persona gameplay elements with the Tactics style works really nice with this one and makes me wanna try other Tactics games. I have a bunch too, this playthrough has got me more keen to give them a go when I get to them. Great game for beginners in the genre as it is pretty damn easy and even a little bit of strategy goes a long way with this one.

I am so ready for Persona3R and everything else coming out very soon, seems like a damn good year for gaming and looking forward to experiencing all the releases with you all! Happy New Year! And remember, "There's 99 ways to start a revolution! I don't know any of em!!"

I went into P5T with mixed feelings. This is the 4th or 5th spinoff and it's been about 6-7 years since we first met the cast. For a game that was originally about 'taking your time' and letting time and experience change you, every new release aside from Royal has flattened the characters more and more. I wasn't expecting a ton of character development, nor is there any to be found.

As a Persona game there's a requisite amount of storytelling and visual novel elements so even when there's not much to say, half or more of the game takes place in dialogue exchanges. The character interactions hit all the familiar beats and the humor is there, but it never feels fresh. Ryuji and Morgana are at each other's throats, Yusuke is aloof, Haru is naive, etc. All of this feels like it's weighing the game down a bit, and I don't think the new characters or their troubles particularly carry the game. I like Erina and Kasakube well enough but there's not much substance to work with.

As far as gameplay, this game is very easy on Hard, and on Merciless it just seems to add more enemies to the point where it feels tedious instead of like a real challenge. Each character gets a "1 More" every time they knock down an enemy, and additionally you get an overpowered triangle attack, so it feels very easy to exploit these things. The only real challenge comes from beating these little puzzleboxes in as few turns as possible. It never feels like you're in any danger of actually getting killed or a game over. Instead its like the game wants you to eventually win, and come back later to get a better score. I understand some people may like gameplay loop but I think it takes the stakes out of the game.

Even if a character gets KO'd there's a baton pass so that they get replaced by someone with full HP and SP, so it can be advantageous to kill your own character. The game also has a cool spin on elemental attacks, where they work as status effects, so things like Bufu freezes, Garu knocks enemy back, and Psio hypnotizes the enemy... but it doesn't really get more complex than that and adding a few exploding barrels to the maps.

It's a very generous game if it's what you're into, and I can see why some people would love it, but it's just missing the stakes I am looking for from a strategy game.

This was a very difficult game for me to review. Overall I have to say I'm disappointed with the game. It has some great moments but is also really bogged down but a few things. First of all the gameplay as a huge tactics fan was overall very boring and easy. I will say at the end of chapter 3 the gameplay becomes way better and the tactical gameplay becomes fun, but that is way too late into the game especially when the first 2/3rds of the game are boringly easy.

The story took a long time to get going for me. The Phantom Thieves get basically no development because it takes place during P5. At least in Strikers it was after and was far more interesting. The focus is on the new characters for this game and while it's good I just didn't enjoy it as much as past Persona stories.

Overall if you are a Persona fan it's worth playing, but if you are just playing for the tactics I would recommend other games

I think Strikers set the bar for Persona spin-offs, and Tactica falls a little short. It's good, but there's more that could be done here. If they iterate on the design (P6T maybe?) I think they could be onto a winner. It also runs longer than it should - we didn't need a separate kingdom for the final boss, it should've followed immediately on from the emotional climax of the story. Also needs to have a number of playable characters immediately available (not locked behind DLC) so you can rotate complete squads. I don't think everyone did from what I've seen, but with shared EXP it's good for variety. No one felt useless. If you enjoy puzzles the "clear in one turn" challenges are good ones, you could make a whole game of those (probably). I enjoyed my time with it.

Me surpreendeu!

A história, apesar do baixíssimo orçamento e os clichês de Persona, é EXCELENTE! O Toshiro e a Erina são personagens FANTÁSTICOS! Eu comparo a estrutura bastante com Persona Q, só que bem mais focada já que temos bem menos personagens.

Sobre a gameplay tática, eu não quero elaborar muito porque é o primeiro RPG tático que levo a sério na vida então não tenho nada pra comparar, mas o jogo é MUITO fácil. Só 2 missões principais me complicaram. As mecânicas no geral são bem satisfatórias, maneiro fazero all-out-attack e tudo mais.

Eu entendo quem esteja cansado já de P5 e etc, mas o Tactica é um jogo que sim, merece ser jogado! Estando no game pass e rodando em qualquer computador mixuruca ainda? Recomendação muito boa pra quem gosta da série!

Persona 5's oversaturation is becoming very clear, another spinoff later. The gameplay is fun, although it feels redundant after a while, and doesn't really feel like "persona gameplay", and fusions just feel like a waste of time

The story is okay, but it doesn't feel like P5's cast even needs to be here, the story revolves around 2 characters, while the main cast is just an accessory, because there's nothing else they can do with these characters

The wait for the next game is feeling uncertain, it's really time to let go.