YMMV / Persona 5 Tactica

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is the real Marie going to horrifically abuse Toshiro if she did marry him, or she only wanted to use him as an opportunity to play dirty politics as she wishes? Make no mistake, Marie is a horrible Jerkass, but unlike the arranged marriage forced onto Haru by Okumura, Marie's stakes are much higher as she would be potentially marrying the future prime minister of Japan, so if she actually abused Toshiro she would likely face severe consequences had she stepped a foot wrong, unlike Sugimura who has way more room to actually subject Haru to some legitimately nasty Domestic Abuse. However, is she instead used her position to influence and pressure Toshiro into pushing policies in her favor or preventing him from exposing his father's political corruption, then she could get away with that pretty easily.
• Character Tiers: All the characters in the game are perfectly usable, but the general consensus among the vanilla game's roster is separated into the following tiers:
  • The best: Ann and Yusuke (extremely strong magic and great speed and stats, respectively).
  • Great but less so: Joker (good all around stats), Ryuji (good utility with physical attacks and the Shock status), Morganna (very fast and can heal), and Makoto (a good Jack of All Stats who can hit hard and heal).
  • Decent but not magnificent: Haru (good in situational needs, wide splash damage with her gun, but slow) and Erina (solid stats and skill spread, but can't equip a sub-Persona).
• Demonic Spiders: In a game where KOs are rarely a threat, any "brawler" type enemy on Merciless can hit characters for around half their health in a single blow, and downing them relies on one character to hit them and trigger their leaping attack first (and some member's guns don't have enough range to avoid damage from this).
• Game-Breaker:
  • Among all main games and spinoffs, Ann may be at her strongest here. Fire has the highest damage of all skill types, hits in an area and causes small knockback (better than the hard-to-exploit far knockback of Wind), she learns the Tarukaja line to boost damage further, and her machine gun hits in a wide area. Her Voltage skill summons a high-damage remote bomb that also gives her another action, and a later skill tree ability halves the cost of all her skills during a One More, letting her spam high-damage skills with impunity.
  • Yusuke is quite powerful in this game, which might be why he's one of the last party members you save. He can be given Auto-Masuku almost as soon as he joins, which dramatically raises the movement of the entire squad for the first 3 turns if he's deployed. As this skill is a passive, it doesn't have the SP issues other high-tier skills face if picked up early, letting you blaze through the early maps with no downsides. Beyond this, he can also consistently freeze groups of enemies, has great movement range, has a large gun range which is bolstered by him passively boosting gun damage for all party members, and his Voltage skill creates illusions which draw enemies' attention and give him an extra turn on top of it. Once he joins, it's very hard to justify not including him in any situation which does not force you to use certain other party members.
• Genius Bonus: Marie torturing Joker and Morgana by tethering them to her chariot and dragging them around the square is an accurate depiction of part of a real historical execution method, one reserved for high treason or traitors against the crown.
• Goddamned Bats: The Guarded Geisha (and the third Kingdom variant, Missing Madam) nullifies all damage and attacks from the front, and cannot be knocked back or moved in any way. Even when hit from behind, only gun attacks can knock it down, and these are typically weaker than skills. They also have a lot of HP, making Triple Threats the only way to kill them quickly. Later missions love putting them on switches and walling them off on either side, forcing you to set up pincer strikes the long way.
• It's the Same, So It Sucks: It's a long standing problem with the Persona franchise itself, but the Salmael, the game's Big Bad, being another Made of Evil villain in a similar vein as Yaldabaoth, Enlil and Mikuratana-no-Kami has yoked the ire of some players who are bored with the same "Evil God" cliché played over and over. At the very least, the developers made his intervention personal with lower stakes this time.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Crow and Violet in DLC jail.^Explanation Many fans were dismayed when it was confirmed Crow and Violet would be included only in DLC content, and took to poking fun at the obvious cash-grab nature of the decision.
  • The gameplay's heavy emphasis on firearms and prominence of gun-related imagery has led to it being ironically labelled "the most American Persona game." It's a bit ironic given that Toshiro, a rare case of an undeniably good politician in the franchise, is later revealed to have a Persona (who also has guns for legs) based on none other than Che Guevara.
• Narm Charm: Toshiro's Rousing Speech to rally the townsfolk of the second Kingdom somehow manages to be genuinely heartwarming even though said townsfolk are silly-looking Cartoon Creatures with Helium Speech, especially as it's a major point of Character Development for him.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • You sell weapons at the Velvet Room, but buy them from a separate shop menu in the hideout. While it's Gameplay and Story Integration (Lavenza is the one who dismantles weapons in return for money, while Erina runs the shop), most players would've preferred both being in the same menu.
  • When fusing weapons in the Velvet Room, the game will only let you use Personas from the Compendium if you don't have any on-hand that meet the requirements. While the game is technically prioritizing the cheaper option, it'd be preferable to pay for a weaker Compendium Persona than to use up one of your current battle Personas and end up paying more to get it back.
• Scrappy Weapon: Some of the custom guns from the Velvet Room come with random ailment chances. These can end up hurting your strategies more than they help, for example, inflicting Freeze on a brawler-type enemy will prevent it from lunging forward and opening itself up to a One More.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: While it has its more challenging moments, compared to both the vanilla and Royal editions of the original and Strikers (especially the latter) it's far easier for a number of reasons. You can only purchase guns meaning there's very little in the way of getting used to the mechanics quickly since you don't have to worry about armor or melee weapons, the skill tree is generous with healing abilities, critical hits are far more common due to the grid system, the boss fights are incredibly straightforward with only a few gimmicks, and your entire party levels up at once no matter who you use. Even on the default difficulty, it's unlikely you'll have many roadblocks if you have a decent amount of experience with strategy games so long as you do enough quests and have strong enough sub-Personas. The Repaint Your Heart DLC is more difficult, however.
• Shocking Moments: Erina's true identity took many fans by surprise, as her heavy Jeanne d'Archétype imagery had led most to suspect she'd later awaken to her as a Persona. Instead Erina herself is actually Toshiro's Persona, and her true form is a Gender Flip of Che Guevara.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: "The Night We Stood" from the Repaint Your Heart DLC sounds like it was inspired by "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga and "Bad" by Michael Jackson.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • The simple fact that Tactica is another spin-off focused solely on the Phantom Thieves has put off some fans, as (with the exception of the Dancing games) SEES and the Investigation Team have only ever returned in crossover games whilst the Persona and Persona 2 casts haven't returned ever.
  • The fact that Crow and Violet are confirmed to be demoted to and locked behind day 1 DLC has soured fans' perception, as well as the concept of the game having Day 1 DLC at all. Similarly, many fans were disappointed when a trailer revealed that Crow and Violet would still be using their fake personalities.
• That One Level: "Garrison Liberation Mission 2" can be frustrating to navigate. It's a maze of toggling switch gates, only this time there are two types of gates and corresponding switches (red and blue), requiring tricky combinations of switch-pressing to get Erina to the goal. Making matters worse is most switches start with enemies standing on them, and knocking them off with a melee attack will place the attacking unit on the switch and end their action, locking the switch in place for the rest of the turn. Making things even worse is the map's bonus objective is defeating all enemies, and most of them (including the reinforcement waves) are bulky brawler types that aren't easy to kill quickly (especially when the terrain and switches make setting up a Triple Threat very difficult).
• That One Sidequest: Some of the extra quests are very stressful due to the viciously strict requirements, particularly the ones where the objective is to defeat all enemies in a single turn. Ostensibly, these really exist for advanced training on some of the mechanics of the game - but the unforgiving level of setup required to even get to those mechanics is just entirely convoluted.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: Upon the reveal trailer releasing, many criticised it for looking and playing extremely similar to Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle and its sequel, down to the UI looking similar.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Despite featuring the Royal trio exclusively, Repaint Your Heart does very little to explore their dynamic further. Joker almost never interacts with Kasumi or Crow beyond story-related events, only the former's inner demons are touched on despite hints indicating otherwise, and paintings of Cendrillon and/or Robin Hood are never seen. Aside from Kasumi's interactions with Guernica and Luca, any of the other Thieves could've accompanied Joker and the story would've played out almost identically.
• Unexpected Character: Due to spin-offs typically only including the core roster of Phantom Thieves, after the first trailer came out with no sign of any of the temporary members, many fans were ready to mourn their lack of presence and were therefore quite surprised when leaks confirmed both Crow and Violet would be part of the game, albeit DLC only.

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