Persona 5 Tactica.

Original Release: Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Ninendo Swittch, 2023. Version Reviewed: Playstation 5, 2023.


THE PLOT:

After bringing down Minister Shido and defeating the dark god Yaldabaoth, the Phantom Thieves have earned a rest... but they aren't going to get one.

They are in Cafe Leblanc, watching a news report about the disappearance of politician Toshiro Kasukabe, who is favored to become Prime Minister. Suddenly, the group finds itself transported into an Alice in Wonderland-like Kingdom, ruled over by Marie, a wedding-obsessed tyrant. Joker and Morgana manage to escape, thanks to the intervention of rebel leader Erina. However, their friends are captured.

While staging a rescue, they stumble across another prisoner: Toshiro. He's been abducted, but he has no memory of it happening. In fact, there are large gaps in all of his memories. Even as the Phantom Thieves are reunited, they come to realize that Toshiro's past holds the key to their presence in this strange world.

Getting back home will mean keeping him alive - which, given Toshiro's general uselessness, might be easier said than done!

Toshiro is shaken after being transported to an impossible world.

CHARACTERS:

There are more than a few similarities between this title and the Persona Q games that came out for the 3DS. One of the biggest is that the Phantom Thieves are essentially "guest characters" in their own game. The real focus is on the new characters, Toshiro and Erina. They have full character arcs, and both of them gain considerable depth as the story progresses.

By contrast, the Phantom Thieves are basically "present." There are parallels between some of Toshiro's and Erina's issues and problems that some of the Thieves went through during Persona 5, notably Futaba and Haru. But the Phantom Thieves are static characters. They observe the events happening to Toshiro and Erina, they react to those events, and they protect the pair - but in the end, this isn't their story.

Setting up a devastating Triple Threat - this
game's version of the series' All Out Attack.

GAMEPLAY:

The gameplay segments of Tactica represent a very basic tactical RPG. If you've played any Fire Emblem, or Suikoden, or X-Com, the grid-based maps will be entirely familiar. Also, if you've played any of those, the difficulty will seem downright laughable by comparison, even on the hardest setting. I managed to botch parts of the fight with the first Kingdom's boss, with my characters getting literally run over and scattered about the map like ragdolls... and not only was I able to salvage the level, my units didn't even take that much damage! Call this "Baby's First Tactics Game."

There are a few neat curveballs. If your character manages to score a critical hit (easy to set up once you know how), that character gets an additional turn. Exploit it properly, and you can stretch one turn into several offensive actions. Also, once you get a "One More!", you can position your characters in a triangle around enemies and perform an All Out Attack. Yes, all of this makes an easy game even easier... but I'd be lying if I said it didn't feel satisfying to pull off.

There is some difficulty. Not in the main story missions, but optional "Quests" will test your ability to exploit the game's mechanics in bite-sized encounters that have strict conditions for victory. Some of these get repetitive, though, particularly the altogether too many "defeat all enemies in one turn" quests.

Erina plants the flag symbolizing her rebellion as she and
the Phantom Thieves take their fight to the Tyrant, Marie.

THOUGHTS:

Persona 5 Tactica might as well be titled Persona Q: Tactics. Yes, the Etrian Odyssey-inspired mapmaking has been replaced with tactical grid maps. In all other respects, though, this is essentially a Persona Q title. The cast gets whisked into a fantasy world, where they act as protectors for the actual focal characters while traversing four dungeons related to the new arrivals' arcs. There's a base, where character development occurs through optional conversations. All the characters get to equip sub-Personas, just like in the 3DS games. Oh, and it utilizes a Chibi art style.

I will say that I enjoyed it more than the second Persona Q game, though I didn't think it's as creative as the first one. That said, for a current gen game, there's little if anything here that couldn't have been accomplished on the 3DS. The maps are mostly small; even the boss levels have less elaborate maps than some of what was seen in the 3DS Fire Emblem games. It's also quite short. You can blow through the main story and all Quests in about 30 hours.

I enjoyed it on its own terms, but I can't deny that it feels... well, small. I think I'd be a lot more forgiving of its limitations if not for one thing: the price point. This looks and plays like a $30 game, but it was released at a full $60. Tactica ended up with soft sales compared to most Persona offshoots, and I strongly suspect the asking price had a lot to do with that.

The story starts out poorly, with clunky dialogue that makes it even harder to adjust to the art style. Futaba gets some particularly bad lines. Yes, she's a techie, a hacker, and a gamer; but in the first part of the story, practically every word she utters is a gaming reference. The main game's Futaba was working through severe issues related to grieving, guilt, and anxiety, but she still did her best to connect with and help her friends. I liked that Futaba. This game's version? Well, not for the first time in a Persona 5 spinoff, she's been flattened into someone I would find unbearable in real life.

Thankfully, the writing improves as the story progresses. The dialogue improves, even if many of the conversations are a bit repetitive. Toshiro and Erina grow from one-dimensional ciphers into genuinely engaging characters. Oh, and it's a Persona game, so it goes without saying that there's a terrific soundtrack, though my personal favorite track ended up coming from the DLC campaign.

Joker teams up with Akechi and Kasumi for
the Repaint Your Heart DLC campaign.

DLC: REPAINT YOUR HEART:

Yes, the game has a DLC campaign - Day One DLC, no less.

Repaint Your Heart is a fully separate story, set during the "Sae's Palace" segment of the original game. The story teams Joker with Akechi and Kasumi as they're drawn into a street artist's nightmare world. It's actually a lot of fun, with both your characters and the enemies having to "paint" areas of the map to gain tactical advantages (Persona: Splatoon!), and it benefits from some excellent voice acting, particularly by veteran voice actress Susanne Blakeslee as the villain.

The story is engaging, and the element of "tactical paint" suits the narrative while improving upon the main game's gameplay. Character interactions are well-written, sometimes more so than in this game's main campaign, with several exchanges playing on the secrets kept by both Akechi and Kasumi. It does feel like a missed opportunity that Yusuke, the artist member of the Phantom Thieves, is completely absent for a story centered around art, but that's really my only complaint about the story.

If it was $10, I'd recommend it without reservation. As with the main game, though, I think it's a bit overpriced. This DLC lists at $19.99, and it lasts all of four hours. Yes, you get some challenge levels after you beat it, and you unlock Akechi and Kasumi for your next playthrough of the main game. But it's hard to see this trifle, enjoyable though it is, as something that's worth the asking price.

The Phantom Thieves find themselves in
a bizarre fantasy world. It must be Tuesday.

OVERALL:

Persona 5 Tactica is too small scale to justify its price. It's a Playstation 5 game that feels like it should be a mobile or handheld title, a sense not helped by it being so strongly reminiscent of the 3DS Persona Q spinoffs.

It is enjoyable, as its DLC campaign. I don't think it's worth full price, but I'm not going to deny that I had fun playing it. Catch it on sale at a decent discount, and I'd say it's worth giving a go. But at its list price, it costs about double what it actually merits.


Overall Rating: 6/10.

Previous Game: Persona 5 Strikers
Next Game: Persona 5 - The Phantom X

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Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth.

Original Release: Nintendo 3DS, 2018. Version Reviewed: Nintendo 3DS, 2018.


THE PLOT:

During the period in which the Phantom Thieves have struck an uneasy alliance with "Detective Prince" Goro Akechi, the group decides to train in Mementos. However, something feels off, and they soon find themselves ejected into a bizarre world dominated by a superhero known as "Kamoshidaman" - who looks exactly like the gym teacher who so badly tormented Ann and Ryushi.

They discover that they are inside a movie, one that is rife with Shadows.  They are able to escape into a movie theater, but are unable to exit to the outside world. There are only two people inside: Nagi, the theater's manager, and Hikari, a painfully shy teen girl who is the only customer. Also present is "Doe," a mysterious creature who shows movies - films that are "wrong," showing stories about giving into authority and conforming to groups regardless of personal beliefs.

To escape this strange place, the Phantom Thieves will need to enter these movies and change them for the better. And as they do so, they learn that they are not the only group that has been brought here...

The Persona casts set out to "fix" a series of bizarre movies.

THE LANGUAGE ISSUE

Persona Q2 was the final 3DS game to receive a physical release in the West. By the time it came out, the 3DS was already effectively a dead system. As such, it's really no surprise that Atlus did not pour money into doing an English dub featuring three full casts made up of some heavily sought-after voice actors. Instead, they subtitled the dialogue while retaining the Japanese audio.

I honestly had no problem with this, and even found some fun in comparing the Japanese and English voices. I'm certainly not going to blame Atlus for refusing to throw a large amount of extra money to dub a large-cast release on an already obsolete system. That said, if you have difficulty with subtitled movies, this game probably won't be for you.

In the movie theater, which acts as the home base and quest hub.

CHARACTERS:

Persona Q2's most interesting character ends up being its most surprising inclusion: the female protagonist from Persona 3 Portable. When she is reunited with the Persona 3 cast, she finds that these familiar faces don't recognize her at all - because they are from the male protagonist's Persona 3. This creates some nice character moments, as she insists on acting cheerful even while privately feeling that she doesn't belong.

The game combines the casts of Personas 3 - 5. The first Persona Q, Shadow of the Labyrinth, did a decent job balancing two casts... but even there the strain showed, with many characters reduced to simply one or two traits. With three full casts to deal with, the sequel has trouble finding anything interesting for most of them to do. Futaba has an effective strand that spans the game's first half, with the painfully shy Hikari reminding her too much of how she was before meeting the Phantom Thieves. Aegis and Akechi get a few decent bits, and Teddie receives just enough prominence to make clear that his Japanese-language voice is even more aggravating than his English-language one. The rest of the supporting characters might as well not be there.

This situation is made worse by a change to the first game's format. In the first Persona Q, the characters interacted with each other through "Strolls," while you got additional bits of interaction and experience through optional side quests. This game eliminates the strolls, moving all its character asides to the quests. A poor decision, as character interactions are now brief and broken up by long stretches of wandering and random encounters.  Also, since these quests are entirely optional, no character arcs build for the Persona casts. As a result, the only substantial character development belongs to Hikari, while the characters actually used to sell the game are left all but entirely static.

Persona 3 Portable's female protagonist meets the Phantom Thieves.

GAMEPLAY:

Core gameplay is identical to the first Persona Q game. The movies the characters enter are dungeons, each designed around a theme: an urban superhero movie, a dinosaur-themed theme park, a sci-fi dystopia, and a brightly colored children's musical. You map each dungeon as you explore, fighting turn-based random encounters and exploiting enemy weaknesses. A boss waits at the bottom of each labyrinth, and you will need to employ careful strategies to defeat each boss.

As with the earlier title, all of this proves addictive. There's something very satisfying about putting the pieces of the maps into place, and the combat is well-designed and enjoyably challenging. Optional side missions give you a chance to level up further, with short explorations of dungeons you've already defeated. The gameplay is generally well-balanced, with bosses providing enough of a challenge to engage without being difficult enough to frustrate... though for masochists, higher difficulty levels are available.

The film-obsessed Hikari watches wide-eyed as
the theater's oppressive movies are made better.

THOUGHTS:

Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth makes a strong first impression. The first hour of the game offers up a jaunty opening cutscene and a strong introduction to the basic scenario. The next few hours are also enjoyable, as you figure out (or, if you played the first game, are refreshed on) the mechanics while exploring a first dungeon that is terrific fun. When the heroes finally confront Kamoshidaman, there's even a Persona 5-like Calling Card delivery, complete with the instrumental for Life Will Change. At ten hours in, I fully anticipated delivering a glowing review.

Unfortunately, the spell fades in the subsequent dungeons. The second and third labyrinths do almost nothing to advance the plot, save for hammering some obvious and repetitive themes. They mainly serve to introduce more Persona casts to the increasingly bloated ensemble, while the main story basically stands still.

It isn't until the fourth (of five total) dungeons that the story actually comes into focus. There are some effective scenes once that happens... but by that point, most of my emotional investment had faded, and so even these well-written moments didn't hit as strongly as they should have.

As with the first Persona Q, the story is centered around Q2's original character - Zen and Rei in the earlier game, Hikari in this one. The first game made Zen and Rei playable characters, which increased player connection to them. In this game, Hikari is an NPC (you do act as her once - but even then, it's in entirely scripted encounters), and so we are never as connected to her as we were to Zen and Rei.

Even with regard to gameplay, which is this title's strongest point, it just isn't as good a title as its predecessor. The maps are simpler, with relatively few creative puzzles or curveballs. The final boss is tedious, an otherwise straightforward boss battle but with an aggravating "Retake" move that requires you to periodically redo a turn. This is an utterly pointless bit of business that doesn't make the battle more challenging in any way; it simply makes it take longer.

The Phantom Thieves in "Kamo City,"
their introduction to this bizarre world.

OVERALL:

Persona Q2 disappointed me, which may be why I'm focusing so much on the negatives. Let me emphasize, then, that this remains an enjoyable game overall, with engaging combat and mapmaking mechanics. But after an excellent first Act, the story stalls for much of the running time - likely in part because it's overburdened by cramming in the full casts of all three "modern" Persona games.

This is not a bad game. But even the things it does well were done better by the previous Persona Q, which is also more widely available. Given that, for all but die hard completists I would recommend playing Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, and giving New Cinema Labyrinth a pass.


Overall Rating: 5/10.

Previous Game: Persona 5 - Dancing in Starlight
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