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!

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.

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.

"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.

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.

sometimes i feel like i am pretty obviously the problem. i don't necessarily believe in the "vote with your wallet!" shit because that's been proven not to work as old as 2014 (https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/03/01/why-its-scary-when-0-15-mobile-gamers-bring-in-50-of-the-revenue/?sh=4ad6b8264065). but i think there is some level of blame to place at my feet for pre-ordering a game i didn't even particularly have high expectations for. hell, the only reason i pre-ordered this thing was because i knew, at some point, i'd want to play it for myself, so why not secure a new copy and be done with it? the pre-order bonus was incredibly insulting (oh joy, i get orpheus picaro and izanagi picaro for free) and it didn't even get me the day one DLC (very much love how this sort of thing doesn't even raise eyebrows anymore). so, i want you all to know, in spite of this, i still tried to have a good time with this game. and, truthfully, it's not that bad. it's just simultaneously not that good either. there isn't anything outstanding or noteworthy here if you aren't already a fan of P5's cast, and even then, i'm tired of these characters.

i think what really sucks my enthusiasm out of this game is how low-effort everything feels. my cynical pet theory is that this was a game that was originally going to be a mobile release in the vein of something like nier reincarnation, but atlus thought they could get away with releasing this at full price on current gen hardware. joke's on me, i did buy the game. still, i don't feel as though enough people have been critical of how little this game demands of its hardware. graphics are stylized to a degree that this could run on 3DS hardware with little issue, the mechanics lack complexity or depth such that every character functionally plays the same with a modest tweak here and there, and there's actually very little strategy required for a tactics game. the very few missions that actually require planning and thought are the side-quests that will ask you to clear the level in one turn by cleverly using its mechanics to their full extent. this is stuff that we should've been seeing in the maingame by the halfway point, not as optional side content. instead, basically every challenge the main missions throw at you can be easily brute-forced. this plays less like a game based around tactics and more one around trial-and-error. the addition of an "undo the previous turn if you make any egregious mistakes" function in the menu certainly doesn't help that accusation.

indeed, this game introduces nearly all of its mechanics pretty early and then never develops them or asks the player to utilize them in uncanny or unexpected ways. there are no surprises in tactica's gameplay, and very little competency is asked of the player. i don't even consider myself a particularly smart/great video game player, but i played on hard mode and only saw the game over screen once (and that was by accident due to misunderstanding an endgame sidequest's objective). nothing about tactica feels challenging and, by extension, interesting. there are a few novel gameplay features here, such as how all-out attacks are handled, but they're given very little cost and are almost trivial to execute. combine that with a persona system that is so simplified it makes raidou blush, and there's ultimately very little going on under the hood which, again, reinforces my belief that this could've run comfortably on my phone. i'm not asking for a new final fantasy tactics, but it is interesting how that game managed to have so much more intrigue in both narrative and gameplay despite also being a spinoff of a popular turn-based JRPG series 20 years ago. the tactics genre hasn't stagnated this much, i think atlus just really assumed the persona 5 fanbase lacks standards for this sort of thing. and, loathe as i am to say it, there is a convincing argument to be made in atlus' favor.

i sound exceptionally negative on this game and it's more because even though the majority of my playthrough was brainless skinner box dopamine collecting, i resent what this game represents more than i find any major flaw with it. not every game has to shoot for the stars, and a lack of ambition hasn't stopped me from enjoying other games. again, it's just the cynicism behind all of this. the story isn't particularly interesting and feels fairly predictable. the P5 cast has been sanded down now and have lost the 3-dimensionality that they had in their original game so now you have futaba saying "sus" and makoto's main thing is how she can be scary sometimes. everyone's going through the motions. i will obviously never know the full story of production here, but i feel such a lack of passion for this game from its own dev team. again, i went into this with dim prospects, and i still managed to walk away underwhelmed. in that sense, maybe 2.5/5.0 is too high.

among other things, i just don't feel like this is a game particularly worth your time. i did roughly 2 playthroughs (big ups to locking like 9 personas to NG+ so i had to do a NG+ playthrough just to get the platinum), and i couldn't overcome the feeling that this was a disposable Q4 release for atlus rather than something they cared about. i mean, sure, that's obvious to see, but i was at least a little hopeful that atlus' autopilot was a little better than this. i'm truly baffled that this game's release has been as positive as it is. disregard that one clickbait kotaku article about this game being lgbt positive or whatever; look at the average rating + the general consensus in the reviews here. it legitimately feels like everyone played a different game than the one i am talking about. most likely it's a self-selection bias situation where the people who would've disliked this game more than the current group already removed themselves from the sample. even with that in consideration, it's dire that this hasn't come under greater scrutiny. persona 5 fans really think this is a good spinoff?

i guess that's part of the problem when you're part of the problem: no one's going to join your bandwagon against self-flagellation when you bear the scars on your back.