Persona 5 Tactica Preview – Phantom thieving the XCOM-like

thesixthaxis.com:

Persona 5 is the game-turned-franchise that just keeps giving. After the success of Persona 5 Strikers, which came after Persona 5 Royal, which came after Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight, we have a brand new genre-smash for fans of jazzy Japanese teens: Persona 5 Tactica!

At this point it is getting difficult keeping up with how many Persona 5 games there are, let alone which order they come in, but fortunately the timeline on this one is pretty simple. Tactica takes place after the final boss in the base Persona 5 – Royal is not canon, sadly, Dancing is a fever dream and Strikers comes after Tactica. So, essentially, Tactica is the Persona 5 pre-sequel.

For Persona 5 fans you’ll quickly find yourself sinking back into that warm-bath-feeling that is hanging out with your friends after some time apart. Oracle still makes you grin, Inari is still Inari, and it’s just nice to be back.

That said, your friends aren’t having a good time. The game starts with the Phantom Thieves being sucked into a new part of the Metaverse — a Kingdom that operate under its own distinct set of rules. Joker can no longer summon multiple personas, your comrades are captured and the turn-based combat has become tactical. What ensues is another struggle to rescue the oppressed using nothing but elbow grease, imaginary guns and a great deal of charm.

So far, Tactica is surprisingly good. While the evolution from turn-based RPG to a tactical RPG isn’t too much of a leap, the XCOM-like genre is littered with poor-quality imitations that this could easily have ended up being. Atlas is no stranger to genre-smashing and it knows what it’s doing. As with the Musuo action of P5 Strikers, this game takes a gameplay style, lavishly applies the Persona veneer,