Tokyo Game Show 2023

Persona 5 Tactica Hands-On: Cover is Your Only True Friend

Right from the start, Persona 5 Tactica feels more fluid than a lot of TRPGs. While the usual grid layout is placed over the battlefield, your characters aren't locked to it and can move freely in any direction within it (as long as it's within their maximum movement range). It's only after you attack each turn that your character becomes unable to move and is locked to a specific square. This means you never have to worry about the most efficient way to move to any location and only have to hard-commit to moving to a specific when attacking an enemy. However, this is far from the only thing that makes Persona 5 Tactica stand out from the pack.

Combat in Persona 5 Tactica is centered around utilizing cover in combat. If one of your characters attacks an enemy that is not in cover, they immediately get another turn. Of course, this is true for enemies attacking any of your characters as well. It's vital that you end your movement in cover every turn.

There are two kinds of cover in the game, partial cover and full cover. If you're in full cover, you cannot hit enemies with normal ranged attacks or be hit by them. On the other hand, if you're in partial cover (or an enemy is attacking you from behind when in full cover), you take greatly reduced damage from normal ranged attacks.

There are four ways to deal with enemies in cover. The first is using your personas to cast magic. Magic hits enemies even through full cover (though it doesn't grant an extra turn) and knocks them out of it—allowing another of your team members to shoot them with a normal attack and gain an extra turn. The second way is using a melee attack—which not only knocks the enemy out of cover but both knocks them back (potentially into walls or other enemies for bonus damage) and puts you into their former in-cover position as well. The third way is to not attack the previous turn. Doing so grants you the ability to use a normal ranged attack that ignores cover. The final way is to surround the enemies using your three-character team which allows you to use a special attack that deals massive damage to all enemies in the middle.

All in all, this makes for an incredibly fun and fluid TRPG experience. Its gameplay is based far more on defense than offense and rewards careful movement and planning. While I'm sad that I was only able to spend 15 minutes and two battles with Persona 5 Tactica at least the full game will be in my hands in less than two months.

Persona 5 Tactica will be released on November 17, 2023, for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.