Beat On The Queen (Persona 5 Tactica)
Well, this is quite the season for Atlus/Sega. Just a month or two before the main games are out. Yakuza 8 and Persona 3 R, meanwhile some teases like the last game I reviewed and this one, are telekinetically drawing money out of the wallet. Sort of fanserving am not into.
Funny enough, the company put both games out on Game Pass enough for me to play. So I liked Yakuza Gaiden, what do I have to say about Persona 5 Tactica? Same issue, it's sort of underbaked, and takes awhile before the fun really starts. Me finishing up Persona 5 Royal is still fresh on my mind, and no spin-off has come close to fulfilling the hole left by that game.
At least I can say it's longer, brought some good fun that I wish Tactics game this year could have done much more to bring more life to strategy games in general. The same for this, a lot of cool ideas, great foundation, little less fun in the long run.
Right around the end of P5R, I mean, right at that end where the story is resolved, Café Leblanc goes through a weird dimension shift, and the rest of the gang are somehow teleported to another world. And the fact that everything looks like a Nendoroid rendition.
There's also something to be said about the dialogue sequences, it's just animated slideshows with bubbles, and with characters that look like Tezuka drew them. It has novelty, but ah, I am expecting a lot here, and I'll get to why later. Nonetheless, this does the spin-off treatment well enough.
The same sadistic characters and plight as well remember from the original is reprised here, under more unfortunately circumstances, with the gang being brainwashed by the queen herself, Marie. All except Joker and Morgana, and so beaten to a pulp with no strength, before their savior, Erina comes to get them out of there. And queue the explanation as to how they got here.
You know, the last game had this good VN dialogue setup with in-game visuals and character heads with moving mouths, that sort of had a way of bringing engagement. Even if done for over 100hrs. This game is mostly anemic of that. Despite the same voice actors reprising their roles.
But a queen really got on their last nerve, and now they want to wreck some havoc, with some new characters to boot. The game also plays entirely different here. Like, Personas don't have many abilities or passives. And interestingly, some characters have Arts instead of Personas.
There's a lot more to it. First off, the cover system means anybody is immune to takedowns unless they do a melee attack of which they send the other unit flying to another spot, like something out of a Looney Tunes show. Attacking when vulnerable adds an extra turn, and when done the same to another exposed enemy, I get another turn. Though, not always easy in the scheme of things.
Having cover is important, because they can do the same thing to me. And what I do like about this is that the enemy types do have unpredictably behavior. After some observation, it works. It makes it difficult for my squad to take them down in few turns only. Where I need to adapt.
Each of the main characters have both Persona Skills from equipped ones, and one that is embedded into their personality. Arsene here can truly shine now that his abilities are easy to upgrade just by earning points. Though, use cases of both Skills and Arts are limited each mission.
The gameplay loop draws ideas from P5, but in its own nuanced way, makes the gameplay feel kind of fresh. Reminds me of Gears Tactics and Mario + Rabbids, conceptually similar to those games in general. Except, first 5hrs, the reward pool and progression was low. But hey, it does actually pick up. Even in the game's so-called short run time of 20+ hours.
Now, the real fun starts when I learn an All-Out attack called Triple-Threat. Basically, all I have to do is land a takedown, and then make sure two of my other units are positioned in a triangular surrounding. Press of the trigger, anybody surrounded gets attacked and knocked out of cover.
This easily applies to the basic infantry unit, but soon as the big guy comes, it's different. They do reactionary attacks when hit, afterward exposed for a takedown. But no reaction to All-Out attacks. The level design, while challenging each mission, provides room to experiment.
Some of these areas provide vertical challenges and benefits, like it's difficult to takedown any enemy using gun alone if they're high up, even if exposed. But on top, it's easier to reach areas, and ambush them, while it's difficult for them to take my units down from there. With a combination of powerful Skills/Arts, One More turns, and Triple Threats, the odds are usually on my side.
Before each mission, I can make prep by unlocking new Skills, talking to my crew with dialogue segments that are incentivized with rewards, upgrading weapons, selecting available Personas for use, and some other additions to waste time with.
Fusing Personas come back, but that means using the ones I've earned from missions to sacrifice, which had pretty limited options at first. Each Persona can give upto 2 Skills, or one passive additionally. It's not robust per se, but in here I guess gets the job done. Also, Lavenza is back.
I do like the side missions, few of them serves as training and fun challenges. Like using the enemies in a level as One-Time passes to reach the end goal in 1 turn. That one took me a long time to accomplish, each gave me a great sense of achievement everytime time I succeeded. And they become super handy later on, because holy heck, does the game get really hard much later.
The main story is cliché Persona at best, and nothing interesting, but what really drives the narrative are the new characters. One of them is a support character, and the other is, I am guessing, is an antagonist of sorts. I can't explain the rest, since I didn't get far enough.
But the new villain is obnoxiously crazy, the game is a lot more light-hearted than the far serious tone of the original game. I mean, chiblis do their thing alright. Yet, I do miss the energy from that game as well. Here, it just felt campy, and lacked substance. Like a weekend special for your favorite show.
Look, you get to do cool stuff. Like, conceptually speaking, I do like how the first few boss battles are basically brainwashed old members of your crew that needs to be saved. All I had to do was damage a flag, and that's it, they were easily taken down. There's also extra rewards if I complete missions under certain conditions, like no KOs or do it under a few turns.
It gets seriously challenging later on, forcing me to experiment with different squad member, with different Persona builds, and upgraded weapons. Also, buying Personas and weapons cost money, no way to farm that easily too. Which is odd, yet, level design does its thing about being fair play.
Ok, so enjoyable tactical strategy game, but what really turns me off is a few things; starting with the learning curve. It takes awhile to fully grasp how the gameplay works, especially if you've never played Persona 5 before. Also, the full price is poorly justified. A number of things are rehashed here, most are derivatives of P5 without much of variation.
There's barely much content here to keep me busy. Even few enemy types in-between. Sorry Atlus, I'd rather put more time in the new Yakuza game than this. Could have been baked longer in the oven.
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