Alert: This Article Contains Spoilers For Persona 5 Tactica’s Story
At this point,Persona 5is starting to overshadow all the games in the series that preceded it. With the release in November ofPersona 5 Tacticaand the upcoming spinoff Persona 5: Phantom X, coupled with an action RPG and areally weird dance game, there are now more ways to play Persona 5 than there is nearly the entire rest of the series, and that’s not even counting Royal, which is just an extended and definitive edition of the original, and Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth, which is a mishmash of multiple Persona games.
With as bright of a spotlight asAtlushas been giving to The Phantom Thieves, I’d be expecting to want the publisher to put some pressure onP-Studioto get the ball rolling a little faster on the sixth mainline entry in the series (which, to be fair, is a spinoff series from Shin Megami Tensei). But here’s the thing — more than seven years after their first caper, I’m still hooked on Joker and his crew, and I’m not ready to close the last door to the Metaverse just yet.
Persona 5 Tactica has a lot to do with that. I couldn’t really get intoStrikers, the first real Persona 5-2 from a RPG enthusiast’s perspective, and I’m not sure why. Maybe the heart from the first game just wasn’t there, or maybe it was that I was missing the newfound nostalgia of diving into a new take on the old turn-based RPG strategy, but it just didn’t enthrall me like the original and Royal did. Tactica, though, hits both of those notes, letting me plot out my moves even more carefully in a Strategy RPG setting and giving me what’s (so far) one of the best stories in Persona 5 lore.
Ruler Of The Four Kingdoms
I’ve really got to give credit to the writers for Toshiro. As the character at the center of this game’s palace — well, series of kingdoms may be more accurate in this case — he’s got a backstory jam packed with trauma, and moving between the worlds inside his cognition was a brilliant way to express that his problems are stacked across more than just a single issue.
Persona 5 Tactica: 10 Tips & Tricks For Beginners
P5T offers a different twist on the Persona formula, carrying over many of the established mechanics now in a tactics-style game.
To be fair, I’m currently working my way through the third kingdom, so I’ve yet to even make it all the way through the story (and can you blame me? 2023 has been an amazing year for the gaming world.) But at the point I’m currently at, I’m feeling more compelled by this cognitive world than anything that was offered in base game Persona 5 or Royale.
It’s a fair assessment to say that’s only natural, as we’re spending the entire game helping Toshiro work out his deep-seated confidence issues and guilt, but you know what? That just makes the whole adventure feel more organic. I don’t want to take away from the original game’s story, because it’s been the most influential JRPG in the past couple of console generations, but the depth into which we have to dive to really change his heart makes some of the other palaces seem shallow by comparison.
Long-lasting trauma can be tied to a single incident or life-changing moment, as is the case with characters like Futaba Sakura and Sae Nijima, whose lives have been altered forever by the loss of a parent (and don’t worry — Toshiro’s story goes there too), but the source of the young politician’s internal distress can’t be isolated, targeted, and eliminated quite so easily, and it just makes him and his story feel more real. It brings to mind what indie developerFreebird Gamesdid withTo The Moonback in 2011, a game that saw its two heroes navigating the troubled past inside a dying old man’s mind and reworking things he’d done to give him a happier sendoff.
Phantom Thieves To The Rescue Again
Of course, I can’t underplay the importance that our eight mainline heroes play in fleshing out this story. After all, they’re not trying to create a false narrative of the past to appease the dying; they’re helping Toshiro face the demons from his past so that he can face the life that still lies ahead of him.
A particularly touching moment comes in the second kingdom, an ancient Japan-themed world ruled over by a harsh dictator who takes the form of a statue of Buddah and has his people convinced that all the harm he inflicts upon them is done out of love. This man is, in fact, Toshiro’s cognition of his own draconian father, who also claimed that his cruel parenting methods were done out of love for his son. After Toshiro comes to realize that the kingdom’s resistance leader, Yuki, is his cognition of his mother, who collapsed and died when he was a young boy after he’d snuck her out of her hospital bed for a fun day together at an amusement park, the story has both Futaba and Yusuke step in.
It’s Really Weird How We Never Got An ImSim Persona Game
Atlus seems to have overlooked this genre amid the onslaught of spin-offs.
And it’s fitting. Futaba became a shut-in and created her own cognitive palace after her own mother’s apparent suicide, which the extended family blamed on Futaba’s insistence that they spend more time together. Yusuke, while not possessing a palace of his own, rebels against his abusive art mentor and adoptive father figure, Madarame, after discovering that Madarame allowed his mother to die so that he could take credit for her unfinished masterpiece, Sayuri. Just like them, and through their shared empathy, Toshiro comes to discover that the mother he’d forgotten truly loved him, and his father placing the blame for her death on him was an abusive lie meant to control him further.
Still Not Tired Of This Team
The consistency of the Phantom Thieves in Tactica is one of its strongest storytelling points, but are they becoming parodies of themselves? Well, kinda, but that’s a natural flow considering how well we’ve been able to get to know them over the ever-increasing subseries of games they’ve starred in. The game’s cutesy, chibi presentation of the characters is a nice direction, considering that they’ve become a little more cartoonish in their actions, like the constant poking fun at Makoto for being unintentionally frightening or Yusuke’s degradation from hapless, irresponsible starving artist to handsome, dumpster-diving aesthete.
RPGs that focus on the same character or set of characters across multiple games run a lot of risks. First, if the games are running chronologically, you’ve got to either up the ante from the get-go or explain away the massive decrease in the protagonists' power. Luckily, Tactica is an in-betweener story, taking place before the final events of Royal, and Lavenza is still there in The Velvet Room to explain that this world works differently than the rest of the Metaverse, so only a little bit of handwavium is required, allowing for a familiar world that still seems believeable despite everyone starting over at Level 1.
Lastly, you’ve got to stay consistent with what made the characters compelling in the first place while letting them do things that still feel fresh and new. I enjoyed the Horizon series, but by the second game, I was ready for Aloy to step into a supporting role and for the game to let me step into the shoes of a new character in her fascinating world. God of War (2018) reinvented Kratos as a stoic father figure, which was an amazing shift from the blind rage that fueled him through the first several games, but the change in demeanor was so deep and drastic that it made everything that came before seem somehow less authentic.
Person 5 Tactica thankfully manages to avoid both of these pitfalls, serving up familiar heroes I know and love without taking away from their previous adventures — yes, even the dancing one. I’ll still gladly dive into Persona 6 when it inevitably comes, but for now, I’ll gladly wait for Phantom X, because I’m still not done with The Phantom Thieves.
