Persona 5: The Enemy is Spawning Reinforcements
The doctor is in, and he prescribed just what we needed: Another Persona 5 Spinoff! And the results are... it's kinda good?
Atlus and the Persona team have been on a meteoric uptick since the dawn of the millennia with the rise of Persona and Shin Megami Tensei around the world. With each installment seems to come more and more in the way of commercial and critical success. Persona in particular has made massive improvements from game to game, demonstrating the labor of love that the team puts into development and the reasons why it takes so many years to push a title out. Though my experience with Atlus is limited to a handful of SMT titles and a mishmash of mainline and spinoff Persona titles since Persona 3 Portable, I feel like its safe to say I've experienced the "best" that they've had to offer. This preamble is included in a review of their latest endeavor in Persona 5 Tactica to set the scene for why this game exists: because Persona 5 prints money. The sexy jazz chic that accompanies the user-interface, music, character design, and plot of Persona 5 acts to consumerism like water to a thirsty plant. Everything about the style of Persona 5 screams for the masses to purchase and enjoy, it's an attractive sheen to a video game that I haven't seen to this caliber before.
Much like the last two mainline titles, Persona 5 got a sort of re-release with additional content, known as Persona 5 Royal. Atlus' Persona team knew they could go further, with now eight-plus million copies sold between Royal and its original form, and embarked on a journey to Spaceballs-esque Yogurt-merchandise the series. On top of this it also got a rhythm game, a mobile game, a musuo title (which was effectively a sequel and also really damn good,) and now a Tactics game. Did people collectively groan when this was announced and not a sixth mainline title? Yes! Did people (like yours truly) also reluctantly excite themselves when they realized they got to spend more time with Joker and the gang? Also yes.
So Persona 5 Tactica, what's it about? Well Joker and the crew have found themselves in another metaverse of sorts, after a trip to their favorite hideout Leblanc takes them to Leblanc... in another world. Their journey quickly introduces them to new characters and a fresh dilemma attached: Erina, a new party member, and Toshiro, a member of the Japanese Government who conveniently has amnesia that totally will not set the stage for the entire story (wink wink.) Your party jumps on a quest soon enough to right this world from its wrongs and as one might guess, discovers that the perilous journey they are on stretches far and beyond their original intentions. Who are the villains of this world, and why do they hate Toshiro so much? Why does his intuition and story have so much gravity on the story? Is there a deeper evil at heart? You'll find these out in a near twenty hour campaign, which I found to be the perfect length for this kind of game.
Gameplay in Persona 5 Tactica is respectfully fairly simple for a Tactics game and... I'm VERY thankful for it. Tactics games in general seem to cater toward the hardcore thinky kinds of gamers who like to strategize and weigh numbers against other numbers and set the stage for long intensively thought out battles. It makes sense, you're basically wargaming and there's a lot of fun probably to be had in the set up and engagement of intricately devised stratagems. While I'm a fan of this in theory, I discovered pretty quickly after playing Tactics Ogre sometime in the recent past that there was a limit for me in how serious I liked pre-planning and number crunching my battles.
Persona 5 Tactica takes a page out of the Fire Emblem and recent Triangle Strategy books by crafting an experience that is gratifying when done correctly but mostly pretty simple. Each character has their three basic avenues of attack: their gun, their physical attack, and the Persona that they carry with them as they did in the main game. The unique part in Tactica is that these Persona's can be equipped with other Personas that you find and fuse on the field. No longer is Joker the only one who can use multiple types of moves, but your entire party. I liked this because you could augment certain characters to be more malleable to your playstyle. Anne could be your defacto support character if you wanted, she could also be your magical heavy hitter with several styles of attack beyond her normal fire.
Combat takes place on small to medium scale levels that are fairly light in terms of environmental design. They play to the themes of the dungeon and narrative at large but ultimately don't get very creative, which honestly I found to be pretty excusable. Win conditions for said engagements mostly boil down to defeating all of the enemies on the map, destroying a capture point or boss, or getting your party to the opposite side of the map to "escape." While this can sound monotonous and at points could be where the game seems to be padding for content, I didn't find it to be too egregious in the long run. There are only four or five enemy types outside of bosses that bring their own skills to the fray: normal grunt types, brutes that counter jump any time they are attacked, umbrella wielding phantoms that block encounters from a certain direction, support types, and lastly enemies who switch locations when they are initially attacked. Again while the variety here isn't anything of note, the game was short enough that I felt the enemy variety wasn't a grand issue.
To defeat enemies you have to take advantage of Tactica's surface level combat system. Any enemies or allies who are positioned along cover will take greatly reduced damage, thus is it is smart every turn to position yourself as necessary. To remove these people from cover, you must either knock them away with a physical attack or use an elemental move. Once done, any enemy standing freely is subject to a critical hit that allows you to move one more time. You are actively encouraged to chain these as much as possible (some side quests will force you to take out an entire level in one turn for example,) so that you can take advantage of the triple-threat mechanic (this games version of the all-out-attack) and further your location on the map towards the end-goal. Unlike other contemporary tactics games that rely on you exposing enemy-type weaknesses (Fire Emblem) or managing a living battleground (Advance Wars,) Persona 5 Tactica's combat effectively boils down to chaining moves through your whole party to end battles as quickly as possible. Each map has a reward that gives you a fiscal incentive if you are able to beat them in a pre-determined amount of turns as a bolster to this ideology. Very little pre-planning is required, simply just updating your weapons with every story arc to make sure they're powerful enough and also checking your Persona levels with Personas you've picked up from side content or the main story is all that is really needed.
So after the long tirade about what the meat and potatoes of Tactica are, what are the constants that keep it distinctly Persona? Much like the last major spinoff in Persona 5 Strikers, this game is not composed by long-running series legend Shoji Meguro. While that comes off as a red flag initially, I was very happy to discover that the soundtrack, while maybe not Shoji levels, was pretty dang good all around. The distorted guitar heavy soundscape matches the sinister vibes of the enemies and plight at hand. The between bits and moments at Cafe Leblanc and in repose feature the lower energy jazz that we're all fans of as well. Best part though is that the hero of Persona 5's most epic moments, Lyn, reprises her role as the most electrifying voice in gaming at the moment and provides even more incredible songs to add to the Persona 5 catalogue.
Outside of the music, the returning cast acting just like they did in the mainline titles and Strikers felt like coming home again. Dialogue was chirpy and quirky as it should be, and the same voice actors coming back to lend their talents gives this title extra kick. It was nice to hang out with everybody's favorite idiot in Ryuji who was constantly making himself out to be the fool once more, and also to experience the jests about Morgana being a cat. Every release that has me coming back to the cast of Persona 5 gets me to smile in the same way, and I love it.
Now with the above you may think I'd rate this game a little higher than I did, but unfortunately there was a little bit of a burnout in this off-kilter return to Persona 5. The main gripe I have was the way the title ended and that comes in two forms: the enemy encounters and the tires falling off of the plot. As per usual I wont divulge too much detail about the story but I felt like the game kind of ran out of ways to wrap itself up and made the entire last kingdom/chapter a necessity that it really wasn't. You're thrown into loads of levels that have the party fighting familiar bosses and foes with the difficulty tuned a little higher than what you'd already encountered. Going through the same bossfights and mechanics for each chapter that I already had however many hours ago felt like I was retreading content for the sake of runtime, and that never feels good. Bosses had too much health and the mechanics asked of the player to defeat them were greatly uninteresting. Outside of the way that Tactica ends, it also rubbed off on me in the way it always had a surprise up its sleeves. I really really really hate the "gotcha!" moments in games, and Tactica's vice was to consistently spawn enemies on top of the ones already on the field. The novelty can be engaging or interesting when used in moderation, but it felt like every single level past the midpoint of the game had Futaba screaming something along the lines of "BE CAREFUL, THE ENEMY IS SPAWNING REINFORCEMENTS" so much to the extent that I would wane my movements towards the remaining visible enemies on the map because I knew that a new wave was on hand every single time. This doesn't make the game harder or more interesting to tackle, it only brings a new element of tedium along.
The story was alright, not special. The actual levels were alright, not special. The enemies were okay, not special. The villains were decent, not special. The ending sequence was unfortunately frustrating and a little sloppy. It's with this that I give this game the rating I do. I'm glad we got it, and I had a lot of fun playing it, I just wish I spent the last quarter of the title doing something more engaging and interesting. While I was okay with the game not heading in a grandiose direction like Royal and Strikers, I think it could have done more with its small-scale story writing. My expected ceiling of this game wasn't too high, and it was almost there. I feel like with a few different calls in terms of game direction and narrative sequencing, I'd be higher on Tactica than I was.
I can't recommend Persona 5 Tactica to tactics genre loyalists, but I can and would recommend it to fans of Persona 5 and Persona 5 accessories.
The doctor is in, and he prescribed just what we needed: Another Persona 5 Spinoff! And the results are... it's kinda good?
Atlus and the Persona team have been on a meteoric uptick since the dawn of the millennia with the rise of Persona and Shin Megami Tensei around the world. With each installment seems to come more and more in the way of commercial and critical success. Persona in particular has made massive improvements from game to game, demonstrating the labor of love that the team puts into development and the reasons why it takes so many years to push a title out. Though my experience with Atlus is limited to a handful of SMT titles and a mishmash of mainline and spinoff Persona titles since Persona 3 Portable, I feel like its safe to say I've experienced the "best" that they've had to offer. This preamble is included in a review of their latest endeavor in Persona 5 Tactica to set the scene for why this game exists: because Persona 5 prints money. The sexy jazz chic that accompanies the user-interface, music, character design, and plot of Persona 5 acts to consumerism like water to a thirsty plant. Everything about the style of Persona 5 screams for the masses to purchase and enjoy, it's an attractive sheen to a video game that I haven't seen to this caliber before.
Much like the last two mainline titles, Persona 5 got a sort of re-release with additional content, known as Persona 5 Royal. Atlus' Persona team knew they could go further, with now eight-plus million copies sold between Royal and its original form, and embarked on a journey to Spaceballs-esque Yogurt-merchandise the series. On top of this it also got a rhythm game, a mobile game, a musuo title (which was effectively a sequel and also really damn good,) and now a Tactics game. Did people collectively groan when this was announced and not a sixth mainline title? Yes! Did people (like yours truly) also reluctantly excite themselves when they realized they got to spend more time with Joker and the gang? Also yes.
So Persona 5 Tactica, what's it about? Well Joker and the crew have found themselves in another metaverse of sorts, after a trip to their favorite hideout Leblanc takes them to Leblanc... in another world. Their journey quickly introduces them to new characters and a fresh dilemma attached: Erina, a new party member, and Toshiro, a member of the Japanese Government who conveniently has amnesia that totally will not set the stage for the entire story (wink wink.) Your party jumps on a quest soon enough to right this world from its wrongs and as one might guess, discovers that the perilous journey they are on stretches far and beyond their original intentions. Who are the villains of this world, and why do they hate Toshiro so much? Why does his intuition and story have so much gravity on the story? Is there a deeper evil at heart? You'll find these out in a near twenty hour campaign, which I found to be the perfect length for this kind of game.
Gameplay in Persona 5 Tactica is respectfully fairly simple for a Tactics game and... I'm VERY thankful for it. Tactics games in general seem to cater toward the hardcore thinky kinds of gamers who like to strategize and weigh numbers against other numbers and set the stage for long intensively thought out battles. It makes sense, you're basically wargaming and there's a lot of fun probably to be had in the set up and engagement of intricately devised stratagems. While I'm a fan of this in theory, I discovered pretty quickly after playing Tactics Ogre sometime in the recent past that there was a limit for me in how serious I liked pre-planning and number crunching my battles.
Persona 5 Tactica takes a page out of the Fire Emblem and recent Triangle Strategy books by crafting an experience that is gratifying when done correctly but mostly pretty simple. Each character has their three basic avenues of attack: their gun, their physical attack, and the Persona that they carry with them as they did in the main game. The unique part in Tactica is that these Persona's can be equipped with other Personas that you find and fuse on the field. No longer is Joker the only one who can use multiple types of moves, but your entire party. I liked this because you could augment certain characters to be more malleable to your playstyle. Anne could be your defacto support character if you wanted, she could also be your magical heavy hitter with several styles of attack beyond her normal fire.
Combat takes place on small to medium scale levels that are fairly light in terms of environmental design. They play to the themes of the dungeon and narrative at large but ultimately don't get very creative, which honestly I found to be pretty excusable. Win conditions for said engagements mostly boil down to defeating all of the enemies on the map, destroying a capture point or boss, or getting your party to the opposite side of the map to "escape." While this can sound monotonous and at points could be where the game seems to be padding for content, I didn't find it to be too egregious in the long run. There are only four or five enemy types outside of bosses that bring their own skills to the fray: normal grunt types, brutes that counter jump any time they are attacked, umbrella wielding phantoms that block encounters from a certain direction, support types, and lastly enemies who switch locations when they are initially attacked. Again while the variety here isn't anything of note, the game was short enough that I felt the enemy variety wasn't a grand issue.
To defeat enemies you have to take advantage of Tactica's surface level combat system. Any enemies or allies who are positioned along cover will take greatly reduced damage, thus is it is smart every turn to position yourself as necessary. To remove these people from cover, you must either knock them away with a physical attack or use an elemental move. Once done, any enemy standing freely is subject to a critical hit that allows you to move one more time. You are actively encouraged to chain these as much as possible (some side quests will force you to take out an entire level in one turn for example,) so that you can take advantage of the triple-threat mechanic (this games version of the all-out-attack) and further your location on the map towards the end-goal. Unlike other contemporary tactics games that rely on you exposing enemy-type weaknesses (Fire Emblem) or managing a living battleground (Advance Wars,) Persona 5 Tactica's combat effectively boils down to chaining moves through your whole party to end battles as quickly as possible. Each map has a reward that gives you a fiscal incentive if you are able to beat them in a pre-determined amount of turns as a bolster to this ideology. Very little pre-planning is required, simply just updating your weapons with every story arc to make sure they're powerful enough and also checking your Persona levels with Personas you've picked up from side content or the main story is all that is really needed.
So after the long tirade about what the meat and potatoes of Tactica are, what are the constants that keep it distinctly Persona? Much like the last major spinoff in Persona 5 Strikers, this game is not composed by long-running series legend Shoji Meguro. While that comes off as a red flag initially, I was very happy to discover that the soundtrack, while maybe not Shoji levels, was pretty dang good all around. The distorted guitar heavy soundscape matches the sinister vibes of the enemies and plight at hand. The between bits and moments at Cafe Leblanc and in repose feature the lower energy jazz that we're all fans of as well. Best part though is that the hero of Persona 5's most epic moments, Lyn, reprises her role as the most electrifying voice in gaming at the moment and provides even more incredible songs to add to the Persona 5 catalogue.
Outside of the music, the returning cast acting just like they did in the mainline titles and Strikers felt like coming home again. Dialogue was chirpy and quirky as it should be, and the same voice actors coming back to lend their talents gives this title extra kick. It was nice to hang out with everybody's favorite idiot in Ryuji who was constantly making himself out to be the fool once more, and also to experience the jests about Morgana being a cat. Every release that has me coming back to the cast of Persona 5 gets me to smile in the same way, and I love it.
Now with the above you may think I'd rate this game a little higher than I did, but unfortunately there was a little bit of a burnout in this off-kilter return to Persona 5. The main gripe I have was the way the title ended and that comes in two forms: the enemy encounters and the tires falling off of the plot. As per usual I wont divulge too much detail about the story but I felt like the game kind of ran out of ways to wrap itself up and made the entire last kingdom/chapter a necessity that it really wasn't. You're thrown into loads of levels that have the party fighting familiar bosses and foes with the difficulty tuned a little higher than what you'd already encountered. Going through the same bossfights and mechanics for each chapter that I already had however many hours ago felt like I was retreading content for the sake of runtime, and that never feels good. Bosses had too much health and the mechanics asked of the player to defeat them were greatly uninteresting. Outside of the way that Tactica ends, it also rubbed off on me in the way it always had a surprise up its sleeves. I really really really hate the "gotcha!" moments in games, and Tactica's vice was to consistently spawn enemies on top of the ones already on the field. The novelty can be engaging or interesting when used in moderation, but it felt like every single level past the midpoint of the game had Futaba screaming something along the lines of "BE CAREFUL, THE ENEMY IS SPAWNING REINFORCEMENTS" so much to the extent that I would wane my movements towards the remaining visible enemies on the map because I knew that a new wave was on hand every single time. This doesn't make the game harder or more interesting to tackle, it only brings a new element of tedium along.
The story was alright, not special. The actual levels were alright, not special. The enemies were okay, not special. The villains were decent, not special. The ending sequence was unfortunately frustrating and a little sloppy. It's with this that I give this game the rating I do. I'm glad we got it, and I had a lot of fun playing it, I just wish I spent the last quarter of the title doing something more engaging and interesting. While I was okay with the game not heading in a grandiose direction like Royal and Strikers, I think it could have done more with its small-scale story writing. My expected ceiling of this game wasn't too high, and it was almost there. I feel like with a few different calls in terms of game direction and narrative sequencing, I'd be higher on Tactica than I was.
I can't recommend Persona 5 Tactica to tactics genre loyalists, but I can and would recommend it to fans of Persona 5 and Persona 5 accessories.