Reviewed by the spoiled
(Played on Switch with both Japanese track and text. 35 hours to beat on Normal estimated from the save file. The direct-to-new-game-plus file does not show playtime for some reason.)
Allow me to lead with the following fact: I had never beaten Persona 5 as the time of writing this, not vanilla nor Royal. It’s not due to lack of trying. I started it as early as September, 2016 when the bloody thing just came out in Japan, but sitting in front of a console for an epic length RPG just cannot fit into my life. The farthest I got was with Royal on Switch. After the amount of time one can see some shorter games through just on tutorial, I felt that I needed a break and had not gone back. At least, not yet. But yours truly is an odd cat who got through Cell Saga before Freezer Saga as a Dragon Ball reading 15-year-old once upon a time. So, why not jumped straight into Tactica, a spinoff made by the RPG’s original studio.
What drew my attention to Persona 5 more than anything was the wall of kanjis in its TGS 2015 trailer announcing the game’s voice cast. All phantom thieves back and couple of “up-comers back, usual suspects right now” type added, all the more incentives to jump ahead and right into this. Then the twists this game put into the turn-based tactic genre are enough to keep me playing. Or is it just because how close this game feels to Gears Tactic?
Inception of 3 Kingdoms
2010’s Inception is a film that can be transformed to a turn-based tactic game like say Invisible Inc. Its main caper’s 3 layers of dream that can be seen as 3 chess board with increasingly complex tasks and numbers of turns to complete those. Well, no one in the AAA space had made those boards played at the same time yet but they did take up the 3-act structure and increasingly complex with each act bit on 2 separate occasions I know. One being 2020’s Gears Tactic and the subject matter here, Persona 5 Tactica.
Like Gears Tactic has 3 acts, Tactica has 3 Kingdoms, first being a context-less French Revolution knock-off, second an Edo era castle being aconitic surveillance state and third, horror of all horrors, a high school. There is a fourth act about killing god though, rule of games for JRPG especially those made by Altus. The writing can be jarring, especially with the second Kingdom. There are so many Japanese puns there that melodramatic tone can be undercut. There is an obvious plot twist delivered in long-winded way there as well, the sliver lining of which being player can choose the “See that one coming” dialogue option.
The sense of Inception is strong for its new protagonist Toshiro who can be seen as the embodiment of Cillian Murray’s all 3 on screen er, personas in Christopher Nolan films. He feels inherently condescending to certain people like a certain Oppenheimer, but who can blame him for being the one grown-ass man among kids there days. He is also a mark dragged into a dream world like Fischer Jr. of Inception fame. As for how Dr. Jonthan “the Scarecrow” Crane fits in, anyone seen the opening hours of Persona 5 would know. Yeah, yeah, I know this man only gets second billing in the end credits but this is obviously his story while the top billing lady is merely his drive. Well, this is Altus we are talking here. How long ago did they really tell a woman’s story if ever?
As I stated in the start, I have not beaten Persona 5 but the references to that game here did not necessarily go over my head. The Heist cinema Altus took inspiration for those game usually implies the history among crew members. One character saying “Remember that stunt we pulled at [REDACTED]’s place？Let’s do it again to get out of this jam.” in this game is obvious referring to something happened in Persona 5 vanilla or Royal. But I just took it as Inception’s “Mr. Charles” aided by “That lovely lady”. Much like how the whole game is about Mr. Potential Future Head of State assisted by a boar-headed girl he knows.
Whack a mole when it’s your turn to whack a mole
Since the game is subtitled “Tactica” instead of “Storia”, let’s get to its namesake, shall we? If you are looking for a reverse Tokyo Mirage Session, aka Persona characters in a Fire Emblem game, Tactica will not provide that. If you want a tactic game with Persona style schedule management, this ain’t that either while a Fire Emblem game subtitled Three House is ironically enough. This game simply moves from one chapter to the next linearly with side pieces called Quest thrown in regularly.
Tactica is closer to the X-Com side of things and has much in common with Ubisoft’s Mario plus Rabbids games. For starters, I had not encountered one single “Miss” in my playthrough, only “Block” when the cover is tall and robust. “Critical hits” are not what I except either, since those usually means pieces get removed from the board at least one turn earlier than excepted. In Tactica though, one still has to dedicate one unit’s action to remove the piece one turn after the so-called Critical Hit.
As turn and cover based fire fights go, Tactica does cut out a few things. Fog of War for starters. There is no reload thus removes the need for side arm switch. This “no clip” design can also be seen as simplification even compared to Persona 5. That JRPG requires one to count bullets at least within a magazine.
Nothing is called “Overwatch” here, but there are 2 things can be. On the one hand, the real life military term “Overwatch” meaning take the high ground, watch over friendlies while rain hell and damnation on foes is present. Shoot from low ground at foes above and those foes have the “Guard” stats as if they are in cover, even when they are exposed. On the other, there is a late game ability called “Ambush” though it does not require line of sight the way guns in this game do.
The 3 (Increased to 4 in the god killing endgame) units with battles move freely within their range before they committed to an action. It is a necessary design given the game’s usually puzzle like encounters. Actions requiring commitment include fire the unit’s gun, the titular Persona attack and a melee whack, my favorite. Attacking an out-of-cover enemy counts as a knock-down and gives the unit one more action and some more ground to cover within the same turn.
Perona serves as explosives, healing and the rest of functions battlefield domination requires. All units except the game top billing boar-head Elle (I wonder why they changed her name to Erina in English. Neil Drukmann’s wrath, maybe) come with the Persona they have in the dungeon crawling RPG and they can equip one more called Sub-persona. Perona attacks is elemental, though Altus’ usually enemies’ elemental weakness and immunity are not present, it’s mostly about dragging some one out of cover. Or maybe it’s just opaque as the four bosses all seem to be immune to one type of element.
The addition of melee strike is a touch yours truly is quite fund of. Except for one unit, all the rest of the squad member can walk up to an enemy and just whack. And the developesr seem rather proud of that. The aforementioned Quests are like puzzles with smaller margin for failure. There are 15 in total and 2 are box pushing puzzles that one is tasked to whack. As someone who played way too many shooters before turn-based tactic games, the last of resort of just melee enemies is something felt missing in the latter. It’s nice of Altus to experiment with that.
Switch on and off
Tactica was announced during Microsoft’s Not E3 2023 presentation instead of some Nintendo Direct, which made me wonder how well would the game run on Switch. The game also came out after my week of taking Deck to work for playing Tales of Arise: Beyond the Dawn expansion. I naturally wanted to put something lighter in the bag for the week after so I bought this one on Switch.
It runs well for the most part, framerate is stable, the cartoonish style looks sharp and the game is surprisingly easy on the battery. According to my save file playing the game’s Splatoonish expansion campaign, a fully charged Switch can run the game for 2 hours and 36 minutes until it only got two percent of the power left. Though the loading is bit much, especially when the stylish load screens repeat themselves.
Verdict
Persona 5 Tactica was marketed as a story of revolution but yours truly found it to be something more personal. It does tackle real life issues, though not too deep since it still wants to be a fun little cartoon by the end of the day. And at the end of that same day that I would regard the touches Altus brought to tactic games as enjoyment. I am sure if this one does well enough, Persona 3 Tactica would not be too far behind the upcoming remake.