Summary
Persona 5 Tacticais promising to deliver fans ofPersona 5a chance to go on a new adventure with the Phantom Thieves. ThePersonafranchise is no stranger to spin-off titles and adaptations, butPersona 5 Tacticais going to bring the series into the strategy genre in a new way. While thePersona Qgames borrowed fromEtrian Odyssey’s combat and exploration systems,P5 Tacticais providing an experience that is more akin to Fire Emblem. Announced for the game already is a day one DLC entitledRepaint Your Heart. This DLC pack will feature Kasumi Yoshizawa and Goro Akechi who are both seemingly absent from the base game.
Personaspin-off gamesare something of a mixed bag. While some of them, such asPersona 4 Arena Ultimax, build on the games characters and world in a meaningful way to tell new stories, others, likePersona 5: Dancing in Starlight, feel somewhat frivolous and lazily jammed into thePersonacanon.Persona 5 StrikersandPersona 5 Royalpresent branching paths of sorts, featuring different characters and conflicting timelines.Tactica’s timeline placement remains something of a mystery, and the presence of Kasumi and Akechi in the DLC only make it harder to parse.
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Persona 5 Tactica’s DLC Has Some Explaining To Do
P5 Tactica’s timeline placementpresents something of a conundrum. The game seems to be taking place in February or March following the events ofPersona 5. Akechi and Kasumi’s absense from the base game makes perfect sense in this case. Kasumi only exists inP5 Royaland Akechi does not survive the events of the game. The addition of them as DLC,
however, implies thatPersona 5 Tacticamust be set afterPersona 5 Royal. If this is the case, the absence of Kasumi in the base game makes little sense.Persona 5 Royal’s true ending also implies that the newly revived Akechi has handed himself over to the authorities, so how he is able to help is also a mystery. A DLC centered around these two characters makes perfect sense though.
The initial segments ofPersona 5 Royal’s third semesterfeature a long stretch of gameplay where the player’s party is limited to Akechi, Joker and Kasumi. The second trailer forPersona 5 Tacticawhich revealed theRepaint Your HeartDLC shows Kasumi and Akechi saving Joker. This DLC pack could reprise this trio of characters working together. Since most of the content fromRoyalis seemingly relegated to this DLC, it makes sense thatPersona 5 Tacticawould recreate this dynamic.
Goro Akechi Will Remain An Anti-Hero
WhenPersona 5 Royalbrought Goro Akechi back, it made sure to maintain his anti-hero status, and it will be important thatPersona 5 Tacticadoes the same, at least to start. The titleRepaint Your Heartcould perhaps be referring in part to Akechi. In spite of his villain status inPersona 5, he is a character who redeems himself and offers companionship to Joker. Because of this, it is not hard to imagine that this DLC could be about him working alongside Kasumi and Joker in order to right some of his wrongs and “repaint” his heart. A strong plot like this for the DLC could help justify Akechi’s absence from the base game in spite of its addition ofnewPersona 5 Tacticacharacters.
As the release ofPersona 5 Tacticaapproaches, hopefully Atlus will provide more details aboutRepaint Your Heart. It is possible that DLC will be primarily gameplay based and lacking a meaningful story, but this would be a missed opportunity.Persona 5Tacticahas a unique opportunity to answer some of the questions left about Akechi’s fate at the end ofPersona 5 Royal. Regardless of how the DLC is handled,Persona 5 Strikersomitted Akechientirely, soPersona 5 Tacticais already doing more for fans of the character.
Persona 5 Tacticais set to release on June 04, 2025, for Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
