Atlus has been steadily increasing its number of Persona spinoffs throughout the years, culminating in its present-day focus on Persona 5 offshoots. Within the past five years, the company has explored a number of genres for the Phantom Thieves that have deviated from its mainline approach. From a rhythm game to a Warriors-like and now gacha and tactics titles, it's evident that Atlus and Persona have been branching further afield to see how these different contexts will be received. Persona 5 Tactica's recent announcement is testament to this, begging the question of where the company might land for future spinoff titles.

Atlus' approach has been considered a double-edged sword by some. While these spinoffs have worked as a way to keep the IP fresh and relevant between mainline releases, their steadily increasing numbers have left many fans eager for Persona's next mainline iteration. It's unclear whether Persona 5 Tactica will be the last off-shoot before Persona 6 gets formally announced, though the company's trend towards genre experimentation would indicate a similar focus following the next mainline game's release. As such, there could be a number of new genres that the company chooses to utilize.

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The Platforming and Character-Action Genres Could Be Viable For Persona

The Persona 4 Arena games are considered some of the most successful Persona spinoffs, due in part to how well the series' core concept translates to a fighting game. A crossover of beloved casts, each with unique Persona designs, attack gimmicks, and melee weapons, makes for a compelling tie-in to the genre, cemented by the title's approach to combo-driven battles. Similarly, Persona 5 Strikers utilized hack-n-slash fights with real-time combat, relying on quick thinking and timed actions. The success of these two suggests a Persona spinoff could go the full character-action route, channeling the strengths of each.

The SMT series has, in the past, experimented with the action side of role-playing, namely with its approach to the Raidou Kuzunoha games. Taking this a step further through meticulous combos and Persona user summons could make for an interesting spinoff that utilizes the strengths of its previous mainline protagonists. Square Enix's Valkyrie Elysium relied on elemental summons through Einherjar, which could provide inspiration to such a concept. Channeling the strengths of past wild-card users for combo finishers and follow-up attacks could make for a compelling approach to real-time combat, given the different elemental affinities of protagonist Personas like Arsene and Orpheus.

Similarly, given Persona's emphasis on the elemental, a spinoff in the platforming genre could be interesting to handle. Terrain that focuses both on player timing and strategy could make use of certain skills, relying on switching Personas between levels. For example, a Persona with the Zio skill could provide electricity to moving platforms, while a skill like Kouga could temporarily light up the player's sight. There could even be instances where support and debuff skills come into play, like the use of Masukunda to slow enemies' movements, for example.

Games like Celeste prove that the platforming genre is capable of delivering powerful narratives, which could combine well with the Persona brand of storytelling. Character-action games like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta demonstrate similar capabilities, which could be an indicator of a Persona spinoff's success in the genre. With the range of narrative conceits and gameplay mechanics that the Persona spinoffs can tackle, the ability to branch out and experiment could be a clever direction to take between mainline titles.

Persona 5 Tactica is set to release on November 17, 2023 for Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

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