Persona 5 Tactica feels like it'll be the best spinoff the series has had yet
Persona 5 Tactica faithfully converts Persona 5's style, mechanics, and charm over to the tactical RPG genre, with a spinoff that feels like it's had as much love poured into it as a main entry.
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax has been the king of the mountain in my eyes when it comes to Persona spin-offs. While the Rhythm games are fun enough – and Persona 5 Strikers was an okay follow-up let down by barebones combat – none of them have reached the heights of Arc System Works' fighter, and by extension, the mainline series.
However, after roughly 40 minutes with Persona 5 Tactica, I feel like Arena may have a challenger to the Persona Spin-off throne.
Persona 5 Tactica does exactly what it says on the tin by adapting the world, mechanics, characters, and – most importantly – style of Persona 5 to a turn based tactical RPG. Despite past examples of JRPGs going down the tactical route like Final Fantasy Tactics have gone down well – as well as Persona 5 Royal being one of my favourite games of all time – I wasn't fully sold on Persona 5 Tactica at first due to the past spinoffs being a bit middle-of-the-road. But after actually getting my hands on it at Gamescom, I can't wait for it to come out.
I was first plunged into the games opening minutes which set up the story nicely (which if you know Persona, you know the opening hours can go on) before throwing the Phantom Thieves into the Metaverse once again, and running us through the mechanics.
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Then I got to go straight into some later missions in the game which give you a good idea of what the actual combat encounters will feel like. In terms of the basics its actually most similar to Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle: three-player parties, the ability to knock enemies into the open with physical attacks, and the system where full cover will result in no damage from gun attacks, rather than the percentages found in the likes of XCOM 2.
Where Persona 5 Tactica makes its mark however is through the seamless blend of Persona mechanics with the tactics gameplay. First is – of course – the Personas themselves which bring the elemental attacks, and weaknesses alongside it. Critical attacks will floor enemies and leave them open for an All Out Attack like in Persona 5, except this time you'll need to form a triangle around the downed opponent to perform it as opposed to the regular button prompt like in Persona 5, which feeds into the positioning and movement layer of tactical RPGs perfectly.
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Simply having the name Persona on your game already puts you in at a top contender for best soundtrack and best visual design. While I'm not the biggest fan of the chibi-styled character designs, the UI and little flourishes are still absolutely incredible. And once again the soundtrack from the few tracks we heard seems to be another winner with the new tunes and new spins on classic Persona 5 tunes.
For a game I was not too excited for previously (which to be fair might be because it was overshadowed by Persona 3 Reload being announced at the same time) Persona 5 Tactica is now one of the games I'm adding to the ever-growing list of must-play 2023 titles.
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