Persona 5 Tactica is a more forgiving strategy game than the likes of Fire Emblem. That doesn’t mean you can slack on the strategy in this latest Persona 5 spinoff, though. It purposefully sets up a system where you can squeeze more out of every turn with mechanics like One More and Triple Threat, which can up your damage way more than your character could manage on their own.
The finer details of these mechanics might not be obvious right away. And all the skills and Personas can be overwhelming to balance at first, too. To help, we offer these tips, including how to focus on the best skills and spend money wisely, so that you can better understand the gameplay and optimize your Tactica playthrough.
Get that One More turn from harassing enemies
Persona 5 Tactica teaches you early on about positional weaknesses and encourages you to take advantage. You can gain “One More” turn from gunning down enemies standing in the open, similar to the extra turn you get in Persona 5 from hitting an elemental weakness. Once the enemy is out in the open or no longer clinging to the wall, you can follow up with one of your allies to get another turn out of them. A “Get ‘Em!!” prompt should appear above the enemy’s head if your attack will trigger a One More.
Enemies are usually smart enough by hug walls on default, so you need to throw them out into the open with melee attacks and spells like Garu. Later on, you can also trip them up with Vortex or Hypno skills to get them out into the open. It might seem for naught if you need to sacrifice one character’s turn to set up another’s. However, a Triple Threat (All-Out Attack) is the goal.
The Triple Threat triangle is worth focusing on (most of the time)
I used to finagle with getting Triple Threat, an all-out attack that deals heavy damage to all enemies within it, to pop up once any particular character earned a One More. You can typically activate the Triple Threat with three characters standing in a triangle formation across the map. The triangle sets on fire and the character that activated the One More receives the prompt to let it loose. However, it sometimes wouldn’t work for reasons I didn’t understand.
If you can’t catch an enemy within the triangle, you might as well use that extra turn on something else.
Keep close to the walls whenever possible
Tutorials already cover positional advantages. Still, I found that I forgot to keep characters close to walls mid-playthrough. It’s easy to dismiss how important it is to cover yourself in the early stages when combat isn’t as difficult, but it starts to add up later when more maps will surround you with enemies that can pummel you with additional turns.
Standing against even one wall or edge should help. Even the short boxes that don’t look like they should be able to block any bullets will at least lessen the damage. There should be a black-an-white shield icon with a red (guaranteed block on one side) or yellow (guaranteed “resist”) border around it to confirm how safe you will be. Damage adds up without that protection from wall hugging, plus there’s the extra turn enemies can get from exploiting that. Speaking of which …
Equip Personas with healing and passives you can’t get from skill trees
You can rely on teammates for elemental damage, but healing and passive boosts are another story. Sure, some teammates like Mona and Erina have healing built into their skill trees. However, Personas make it so that anyone can heal teammates in a pinch. Bonus points if they have a passive like granting teammates more XP or money when defeating enemies.
Passives also include offensive types like Finishing Blow, which increases damage dealt to Downed enemies, and defensive types like Iron Body, which decreases damage from enemies after two attacks to prevent them from dogpiling one unit. There’s even one that grants SP for every enemy you defeat. Play around with these perks, especially to complement your skill tree.
Hold off on buying all the guns from the shop
In the beginning, the only way to get new weapons is from the Weapons Shop. Each unit has two weapons available upfront after they become a playable character. One of these weapons upgrades your damage without upgrading your range and the other one upgrades your range without upgrading damage as much. It can be tempting to buy both weapons so that your character has a more versatile arsenal for mixing and matching loadouts for different maps. However, you only need to buy one of these guns. You might need to buy one more before the third chapter of the game, but after that, there’s no need for the shop anymore.
You later gain the ability to fuse Personas into stronger weapons that can inflict status effects, something that shop weapons can’t do. These can cost as much as weapons in the shop, but offer much more for a similar price. It costs much less if you already have Personas available for crafting. The Weapons Shop will ultimately become useless, so save that money for Personas!
You can reset your skill tree, so go wild
You can reset your skill tree as many times as you want, whenever you want. If you ever regret the abilities you chose to focus on or want to give a unit a particular skill before tackling a map, you can just reset your skill tree and select any of the skills you have enough Growth Points (GP) to buy. You can’t get more GP from doing this, but it does return all the points you used to unlock skills in the past and lets you start anew.
Persona 5 Tactica is available for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.
