Hands on Persona 5 Tactica: Your gateway game into Tactical RPGs

destructoid.com:

Persona 5 Tactica continues a fascinating tradition of Persona spinoffs that want to break you into new genres.

It wasn’t until I sat down to write this that I realized how wild the Persona brand has gotten. I mean sure, every big brand has to have a Musou eventually. And you can see the RPG throughline that connects Persona with the Etrian Odyssey-style Persona Q. But a fighting game set in the Persona universe? A collection of rhythm games based on Persona soundtracks? The crazy part is, no matter what direction Persona spinoffs take, they always seem to land strong and find fans. Heck, I know a guy who’s chomping at the bit for a Persona 5 fighting game, even though he’s since graduated to fighters like Guilty Gear and Street Fighter.

I say all this to set the stage for what kind of game Persona 5 Tactica is. During my recent trip to an event held by Sega, I sat down and spent time with this tactical RPG. As a Devil Survivor fan, I felt eager to see what Atlus came up with here. And after playing the game, I can certainly say that Devil Survivor is not a good comparison for Persona 5 Tactica. However, while I still need to see how the full game will pan out, I think Tactica could easily find similar success to the spinoff titles that came before it.

So, I need to take this opportunity to make a deep, dark confession. I never played Persona 5. I know that’s appalling for a self-proclaimed RPG fan like me. It was just one of those games that wasn’t available on a platform I had on hand for the longest time, and now I lack the time for a massive RPG outside of work. I know, I’m a very, very bad Persona fan.

However, this means I can inform you that Persona 5 Tactica is plenty easy to follow without playing the source