Persona 5 Tactica beginner’s guide – 8 tips and tricks to get your head around the series’ switch to tactical combat

Looking for Persona 5 Tactica tips and tricks? Persona 5 Tactica takes place in the same world as mainline series entries, but the pivot to turn-based tactics means that newcomers and series veterans are more or less on equal footing when it comes to figuring the granular subtleties and nuances of Atlus’ latest effort.

To smooth you into Persona 5 Tactica, we’ve pulled together 8 tips and tricks to help you get your head around the spin-offs switch to turn-based combat. Once you found your footing and pushed on beyond the tutorial, check out our P5T Quest 2 guide if you’re having a hard time with this early, but demanding challenge.

Understand and chain One More Attacks

One More Attacks grant an extra attack within a single turn, theoretically allowing you to extend a turn to several moves if used tactically. You’ll want to chain as many as possible whenever you get the chance to make easy work of combat encounters.

One More Attacks are only triggered under specific conditions, as follows:

• When attacking an enemy that isn’t behind cover with your thief’s gun.
• When attacking an enemy that is defenceless or can’t resist your attack, indicated by them not having the ‘Resist’ indicator when you target them.

Enemies will occasionally dart out of cover to move around the battlefield giving you an opportunity to get an easy One More Attack. If they are behind cover, you can use a Persona skill to make them defenceless, then follow up with a normal gun attack to get a One More Attack.

Getting a single One More Attack is useful, but an even better option is to aim for a further One More Attack to extend your turn. Done well and you can conceivably clear out the majority of enemies in one fell swoop.

Complete optional Quests for a GP boost 

Though the main story should keep you nicely fed with GP to level up your skills, optional Quests plump up your stocks with short, but sometimes demanding challenges. These are presented as bite-sized combat scenarios with a set of stringing goals, such as reaching an objective in a set amount of turns. 

You’ll need to muster up your best problem-solving skills and showcase a firm grasp of P5T combat mechanics to best Quests, but they are well worth the GP boost. They are also a great way to get to grips with the more intricate aspects of Persona 5 Tactica’s combat, including how to chain One More Attacks.

Cover is life 

As stressed in the opening hours of Persona 5 Tactica, cover protects your Phantom Thieves from damage, either entirely or partially. Leaving them out defenceless in the open at the end of your turn almost guarantees a meaty chunk out of their HP bar. 

Not all cover is equal though and the protection offered directly relates to the size of the cover offered by a wall, crate, or other battlefield object. Aim for full cover that protects your phantom’s entire body at the end of each turn to ensure resistance to direct attacks coming from the front.

Get enemies out of cover to get the upper hand

Cover affects enemies in the same way as you Phantom Thieves: cover offers complete or partial resistance to damage, while no cover opens them up to critical attacks. Use this to your advantage by using elemental Persona skill (Erina’s Partisan or Joker’s Eiga, for example)) to get enemies out of cover and make them defenceless. Follow up with a normal attack from your next character to get a critical hit and then a One More Attack.

Use and abuse Triple Threat

Triple Threat is a powerful all-out attack that tears through enemy numbers and has no cap on how many enemies are targeted, but you’ll need to meet certain strict requirements to unleash it. 

First, you need to knock down an enemy using either your Phantom Thieves’s guns or Persona attacks. Second, you’ll need to manoeuvre your three thieves to create a triangle around the downed enemy. 

Tick off these two criteria and you’ll get the option to trigger a Triple Threat, dealing damage to all enemies that happen to be within the triangle, regardless of their status, size, or if they are behind cover or not. The idea is to move your thieves tactically to form the biggest triangle possible to hit as many enemies as possible.

Skills are refundable

When you visit the Hideout for the first time, you’ll gain access to the skill menu. Skills cost GP (Growth Points), which are accumulated for progressing the story, having conversations at the Hideout, and completing optional quests. 

GP is spent to unlock skills, but can also be refunded and reused at will. Simply tap the skill to refund the GP and add it back to your total current GP count. This allows you to experiment with skills with no penalties. Each Phantom Thief has their own stock of GP points as well so there’s no need to worry about spreading it across several characters either.

✓ Tip

Use Undo to correct your mistakes

If things do get a bit hairy, you can always use the Undo option from the pause menu or lower the difficulty setting.

Use the environment to your advantage

Each combat encounter is peppered with elements you can use to your advantage. Cover is an obvious one and as above always try and keep your Phantom Thieves behind cover whenever a turn wraps up.

Blow up barrels to make enemies defenceless then follow up with a gun attack to chain One More Attacks. These aren’t in all levels, but when they do pop up, base your strategy around them as much as possible.

Lastly, many battlefields have different platforms and levels of different height with climbable ladders and jump pads. You’ll want to manoeuvre your thieves whenever possible to higher ground. You get a damage boost if you attack an enemy from above, while attacking an enemy from below comes with a damage penalty.

Replay levels to unlock all goals

At the start of each combat encounter, you can view a list of goals. These range from beating the level within a set amount of turns, avoiding KOs, and so on. Ticking them off grants extra experience and money, which you put towards better weapons. If you missed a goal or two the first time around, you can jump back in between main story missions to give them another go. This is done from the Hideout.

With these Persona 5 Tactica tips and tricks, you should be set up for a smooth playthrough.