If the numbered parts of the series Persona were and remain JRPGs, then in the case of spin-offs the developers experiment every time. In the Persona 5 universe, both a rhythm game and a musou game with large-scale real-time battles have already been released, and now Persona 5 Tactica, inspired by XCOM and other tactical strategies, has appeared .
The end is near
The events of the novelty unfold shortly before the ending Persona 5. Guys relaxing in the Leblanc cafe watch the news on TV, which talks about the missing candidate for prime minister of Japan. He had a great chance of winning, but at some point the politician disappeared – the heroes suspect that they will have to save him. Suddenly the TV starts to malfunction and a mysterious door appears in the cafe, which brave teenagers decide to open. She takes the guys to a previously unseen kingdom, where a dictator named Marie mocks the inhabitants, and numerous minions help her prepare for the wedding.
There will be a translation in the Persona 3 remake, but there isn’t one here. Perhaps this is temporary – several unfinished localizations were found in the files, including into Russian.
Marie is able to control the mind of everyone she meets, so almost all of the Joker’s friends are bewitched and serve her. The whole game is not dedicated to saving them – it’s just that the developers decided to introduce characters into the game in doses so that the player’s eyes don’t run wild in the first minutes. In fact, this is only one of three kingdoms that teenagers will visit, and everywhere the problems are approximately the same: the despot interferes with the lives of ordinary people, and we help them.
Since this is not a sequel or prequel, the story does little to expand the universe Persona 5. Plot Tactica can be considered as a big side quest: the guys got into trouble, got out of it after 25 hours of playthrough and then did what they did in the finale of the fifth part. At the same time, we cannot say that the story is bad – the villains are interesting, the dialogues rarely seem drawn out, and there are plenty of intriguing moments – the politician, for example, has amnesia, traditional for anime games, and we have yet to find out the reason for his disappearance. They also added a bonus playable character – this is Erina, the leader of the resistance in the first kingdom, who had no idea that there was another life outside her city.
More complaints arise not about the plot, but about the structure of the game. If and Persona 5, And Strikers allowed to freely explore locations, here this element is completely cut out. You either sit in the Leblanc cafe (available in each of the worlds), or start turn-based combat, or listen and read dialogues. There are no walks through the kingdoms, so the weapons store, the Velvet Room and other elements like side quests were moved to the menu in Leblanc. There is no friendship scale, you cannot spend time with someone or give something as a gift, no crossword puzzles, no cinemas. Just sit in the preparation menu for the sortie, go on it and repeat this process in more than 50 missions.
Therefore, sit and walk for a https://wellecasino.co.uk/ long time Tactica it was difficult for me – it was getting a bit boring. Perhaps, if there was no desire to compare the game with Persona 5, the impressions would be different – the market is full of turn-based strategies in which you read briefings and are immediately transported to the battlefield, and in them such a structure does not cause melancholy. Here you constantly think that this is a game based on the universe Persona 5 and probably some entertainment will be unlocked later. But this does not happen, except for the new options in the Velvet Room.
First come, first served
Tactical battles also turned out to be imperfect, but overall they were a success. There were turn-based battles in regular Persona 5, but if there all the characters stood still, then here before making an attack they can move across a field divided into hundreds of cells. First, the player’s team makes all the moves, then it’s the opponents’ turn. You can either use a firearm (Joker’s pistol, Morgana’s slingshot, etc.), or approach the enemy and hit him in melee, or use “magic” – an ability received from a person tied to the hero.
To complete battles more successfully, you need to use cover. Large obstacles such as large boxes and high walls completely block incoming damage. And small objects will only weaken the enemy attack. Opponents also remember about cover and try to sit behind them, and the player is required not to shoot mindlessly in the hope that the damage will pass, but to try to smoke out enemies – either with the help of a persona technique, or with a blow close.
When a combatant comes out of cover against his own will, he becomes vulnerable. If at this moment someone attacks him and stuns him, the One More option, known from Persona 5, – the attacker will be able to attack again. This is far from the only mechanic that they tried to transfer from the “five”. For example, there is an All-Out Attack – a joint technique, when used, all three team members hit all enemies standing between them. There is also a Baton Pass mechanic, which is triggered if one of the guys dies – another character takes his place, whose characteristics increase.
There are enough ideas to turn every battle into a puzzle, especially when completing the specified number of moves promises to reward. They allow you to freely switch between heroes who can still do something within one turn, so you always try to think through your actions in advance. With one character you knock someone out of cover, with the second you move him to another enemy (either with a melee strike or with a persona move), with the third you activate an ability that hits and stuns several enemies at once. Over time, new mechanics appear – in the first kingdom you are taught not only to climb stairs, but also to throw guards to the ground, to your companions, who will automatically shoot at the falling enemy.
The only pity is that not only the plot suffers from a monotonous structure – the battles are also very similar to each other. The level designers did everything possible so that the player would not get bored: here the mission objectives are different, and the layout of the locations is always different – sometimes there are several ways to complete the task. But all this does not help to turn a blind eye to how few types of enemies there are. New varieties are introduced very slowly, and for a long time you fight with the same guards who behave the same way. Skinny soldiers hide behind covers and fire guns. Armored jump towards the attacker. Drummers speed up or heal comrades.
The longer you go Persona 5 Tactica, the less you want to see your fed-up opponents. There are times when there are half a dozen soldiers on the map and you are glad that the mission will end quickly, but suddenly the same number of enemies appear in the opposite corner of the location. Many missions can be completed in less than ten moves, but you don’t want to spend a long time fiddling around and completing all the “challenges” – you want to quickly complete the next mission in the hope that the next one will offer something new. Sometimes she actually does this, but not as often as she would like.
I found the side quests funny – they look like puzzles even more than the main missions. In them, the player is given certain characters and asked to complete the task in one or two moves. At first this seems impossible – either there are a lot of enemies, or the path to the collection point is long. But as soon as you start passing, everything falls into place: here you need to think through every step, smoke enemies out of hiding, constantly use the One More mechanics and not allow your opponents to do anything.
When you take part in battles, comparisons with Persona 5 also suggests itself: if there we fought with creatures, which we then used for our own purposes, then the local soldiers are just dummies on the way to the goal. You also get new characters in this game, but they drop out randomly after each battle, and the system is structured differently. The main person, for example, cannot be switched – you can only select an additional one, along with which the character will receive this or that ability. The merging of persons also remained in place – if at first merging only two is available, then later three or more can be mixed, purchasing the missing ones for in-game currency.
In other words, additional personas do not have a big impact on the character’s capabilities. But the main person can be upgraded – improve the basic active skill and buy its improved versions, increase the damage from attacks, increase the character’s characteristics, and so on. They don’t give you points for leveling up: you need to try hard to get them – complete additional quests and listen to bonus dialogues in “Leblanc”. From the outside, all these improvements do not seem very important, but in fact they can simplify the passage – for example, with one of them the character will shoot at falling enemies twice per turn, and this allows you to complete missions faster and receive more prizes for them.
Expectations for Persona 5 Tactica weren’t very high, but it wasn’t a bad game. There is a good story, funny dialogues and an adequate combat system – by the standards of a project that is not positioned as a serious tactics. We would add more types of enemies here and at least some interaction with the world – and I would like to recommend the game not only to fans of the series, but also to newcomers who came for the gameplay.
Pros: nice stylized graphics; good turn-based battles with interesting mechanics, including those carried over from the fifth part; charming characters, both old and new; Persona 5 inspired soundtrack .
Cons: monotonous structure – you either sit in a cafe or take part in battles; no location research; little entertainment outside of battle; fighting the same soldiers gets boring.