Persona 5 Tactica Cleverly Rewards Players for Engaging With One Persona Storytelling Trope

Persona 5 Tactica is the latest spin-off in the franchise. P5 launched the series into the mainstream, but Persona has been no stranger to spin-offs in the past and has branched out into the rhythm, fighting, and action genres before. Tactica brings the phantom thieves into the tactical strategy genre, bearing a resemblance to games in the XCOM and the Mario + Rabbids series. Persona spin-offs aren’t all created equal, but Persona 5 Tactica‘s new art style, genre, and story work to make it stand out from the crowd; the game feels both incredibly fresh and remarkably faithful to the spirit of P5. Much of this can be attributed to the game’s excellent writing.

Persona 5 Tactica eschews the explorable world of P5 in favor of a more menu-driven experience. This makes sense, given the story and the new Metaverse in which the Phantom Thieves find themselves. The world of Tactica is one in which a group known as the Legionnaires rules over the other citizens in an authoritarian manner. As a result, the Rebel Corps, with whom the Phantom Thieves have aligned themselves, take shelter in their base, Leblanc, when they are not out on a mission. While the Phantom Thieves and their new comrades Erina and Toshiro are forced to hide in Leblanc, the game maintains the slice-of-life charm that has set the franchise apart.

Persona 5 Tactica Rewards The Player For Interacting With Its Characters

Persona 5 Tactica does not share the original game’s confidant system. The result is that building social connections with specific characters isn’t as integral to the leveling and party-building experience. Despite this, Persona 5 Tactica is being marketed on the appeal of being another adventure with the beloved Phantom Thieves, so excluding the cozy slice-of-life vibes that helped make the series popular isn’t an option.

Persona 5 Tactica rewards players for engaging in optional social content rather than cramming it into the story. Games in the series are often filled with scenes that develop the characters despite being inessential to the plot, but Tactica allows players to engage with it at their own pace, or not.

The dialogue in Persona 5 Tactica‘s main story is less dense than the game on which it is based, making it a more fluid experience. P5T‘s approach makes its story more binge-able and replayable, allowing players to finish challenges they missed in previous missions more quickly. At their base in Leblanc, players can engage in optional social interactions that provide them with more lore and fun moments with the Phantom Thieves. More often than not, the player is rewarded for doing so with GP, the points used to progress skill trees in Persona 5 Tactica.

Other Persona Games Could Learn From Persona 5 Tactica’s Character Building

Tactica can relegate some of its character building to optional content not just because it is a spin-off that expects its player base to have some familiarity with the characters, but because of its approach to writing and art. The chibi art style of Persona 5 Tactica is more expressive, allowing for each character’s demeanor to be shown more readily.

In addition to this, Tactica‘s writing is more over the top, giving players a more immediate insight into each character. This truncated approach prevents the Phantom Thieves from overstaying their welcome since long-time fans have already spent so much time with the characters, but it could also serve as a model for other Persona titles.

Other Persona Games Could Use More Optional Content

Persona 6 and other future titles in the series are unlikely to share P5T‘s truncated form, but they could still learn from its optional social content. Rather than including it as part of the mandatory story progression, character development that is inessential to the plot could be placed in side content, rewarding players for spending their time wisely and providing something more to do outside progressing social links and working part-time jobs.

Persona 6 represents a changing of the guard in terms of its development team, and it will likely be a vastly different game from P5. This makes it the perfect opportunity to implement this approach to storytelling tropes from Persona 5 Tactica.

Persona 5 Tactica

Franchise

Persona

Platform(s)

PC, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, Switch

Released

November 17, 2023

Developer(s)

P-Studio

Publisher(s)

Atlus

Genre(s)

Tactical

ESRB

T For Teen Due To Blood, Language, Partial Nudity, Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence

How Long To Beat

18 Hours