Persona 5 continues to add more variations that take up the various letters of the alphabet and after R and S we now have Persona 5 T for Tactica. Tactica once again stars are beloved Phantom Thieves but in this game a politician named Toshiro Kasukabe is missing and our thieves are mysteriously transported to a world unlike anything they’ve ever seen. There they meet a mysterious person named Erina and manage to find Toshiro by accident as they traverse through a world that is strongly connected to his past and it is only by working together in this tactical RPG that they will be able to make it back to their world

So right off the bat I think I should say that this is not a game to play if you haven’t played and beaten either Persona 5 or Persona 5 Royal. The game takes place around the end of Persona 5 and before the new content in Royal and because of that it assumes players are familiar with the terms explained thoroughly in the main game. However, while the terms are familiar the gameplay is anything but as the turn based combat is modified as a tactical RPG. Instead of just inputting commands your characters now roam freely around a battlefield using various skills and attacks to fire at enemies and buff allies within range. While each character has their own element like in the main game they don’t have the same effects. Rather than having moves that are super effective the elements all have various status effects which either weaken or move the enemies which can be used to gain various advantages. 

If you’ve played Mario and Rabbids, or Codename Steam the concept of the gameplay is very similar. It’s very fun gameplay as you try to figure out how to position the enemies to get the most out of your turn while also finding ways to cover your units to protect them from harm. It doesn’t really do anything to make this gameplay stand out from games that do something similar to it but it’s a fun style that is done well here. Customization is pretty straightforward as this time each character has their main persona and a sub persona, unlike the main game where this was exclusive to Joker. As for equipment you can equip a weapon and you have a skill tree you can freely add and remove skills from. It’s a little on the simple side but it works because the gameplay already involves a fair amount of planning for each move so a simple route for customization was a smart move.

The game features the main story as well as side quests you can do to unlock more points to unlock more skills. The only real downside to the gameplay is that it’s really just a long series of dialogue and then straight to the next mission. It works and was really entertaining but it also gets very repetitive so where Persona 5 Royal had a ton of different things to do to make you want to play the game for extended periods of time, Persona 5 Tactica’s repetitive nature is fun but harder to sit through for longer play times before you’re ready to take a break. I think if they have done an overworld that you can find in Mario and Rabbids and used that as a catalyst to advance the story as well as have random encounters it would have been a much more interactive approach than just having long drawn out conversations and then combat. It really needed something more engaging to go from one to the other.

I do like how it’s modes cater to players of all skill levels as it has a variety of difficulties including one called safe mode that works for anyone who isn’t the biggest fan of the tactical gameplay but still wants to see the story. Plus for every difficulty you have the ability to reset to the previous turn which helps to undo mistakes that proved to be rather costly for your party. 

As for the story I truthfully thought it wasn’t going to compare to Royal or even Strikers as much as it did. Both of the previous games really did a lot to focus on each of the Phantom Thieves and gave them a lot of character development with Strikers doing the same but also developing the new characters. Tactica has no character development for the Phantom Thieves and it’s all about the newcomers Erina and Toshiro. Every single map ties into Toshiro’s story and I thought the singular focus would have made this game have less story as a result but I was wrong. Toshiro’s story is very complex full of compelling moments that really hooked me in to find out more about him. Each boss is personally tied to some level of trauma he has, and trust me he has a lot, and learning about each moment and watching him overcome them was something that never got old. As for Erina there was a big mystery surrounding her that I won’t go into detail here but the development of that mystery was really well done as details of who she really is were sprinkled everywhere in the story bit by bit until we got a big reveal that I did not see coming and I love being surprised. Plus it helps that both Toshiro and Erina were likable and entertaining characters which I felt like was a bit of a gamble here as if they weren’t the entire story would have fallen apart but luckily that wasn’t the case.

I do have an issue with the DLC of this game though. I am by no means a fan of day one DLC. In my opinion if the content is ready on day one it should be with the game and I don’t think that stance is going to change. Though that is really the least significant part with my issue. I wound up researching the DLC rather than buying it to see if it was worth it and I honestly concluded it wasn’t. It does feature the only way to get Crow and Kasumi as it’s a new story that features them and Joker on their own adventure which honestly looks like fun. The problem is while completing them does add them to the main story they do nothing in the main game which already has a ton of characters to choose from. If they had unlocked special moments in the story I probably would have a different opinion but where it’s just a side story with no bearing on the main game I didn’t feel compelled to get it at the price it was at.

Overall Persona 5 Tactica is yet another great installment of the Persona 5 collection of games. It’s tactical RPG style doesn’t offer anything new to the genre but it is done well and a lot of fun and the story does something unique and focuses solely on the new characters while still offering the same depth we’re used to from these games. The only real flaw is that the game is hard to play for long periods of time because it is a series of cutscenes and dialogue interrupted by skirmishes. Unlike the other Persona 5 games there’s not any kind of interactive element that transitions well from one to the other and this formulaic approach just didn’t compel me to sit for long periods of time to play the game. Plus the DLC content just didn’t offer enough of an incentive to justify the purchase to me. These are very minor flaws in an otherwise great game and continues the trend of success for anything with the name Persona 5 on it.