Persona 5 Tactica: Goro Akechi's Role in 'Repaint Your…

Summary

Persona 5 Tactica brings a new strategy genre experience to the Persona franchise, resembling Fire Emblem.
The timeline placement of P5 Tactica is unclear, but the presence of Kasumi and Akechi as DLC characters suggests it takes place after Persona 5 Royal.
The Repaint Your Heart DLC could explore Akechi's redemption and offer a strong plot, potentially answering questions left from Persona 5 Royal.

Persona 5 Tactica is promising to deliver fans of Persona 5 a chance to go on a new adventure with the Phantom Thieves. The Persona franchise is no stranger to spin-off titles and adaptations, but Persona 5 Tactica is going to bring the series into the strategy genre in a new way. While the Persona Q games borrowed from Etrian Odyssey's combat and exploration systems, P5 Tactica is providing an experience that is more akin to Fire Emblem. Announced for the game already is a day one DLC entitled Repaint Your Heart. This DLC pack will feature Kasumi Yoshizawa and Goro Akechi who are both seemingly absent from the base game.

Persona spin-off games are something of a mixed bag. While some of them, such as Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, build on the games characters and world in a meaningful way to tell new stories, others, like Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight, feel somewhat frivolous and lazily jammed into the Persona canon. Persona 5 Strikers and Persona 5 Royal present 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.

Persona 5 Tactica's DLC Has Some Explaining To Do

Persona 5 Tactica Raises Questions About Persona 6's Identity

P5 Tactica's timeline placement presents something of a conundrum. The game seems to be taking place in February or March following the events of Persona 5. Akechi and Kasumi's absense from the base game makes perfect sense in this case. Kasumi only exists in P5 Royal and Akechi does not survive the events of the game. The addition of them as DLC,

however, implies that Persona 5 Tactica must be set after Persona 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 of Persona 5 Royal's third semester feature a long stretch of gameplay where the player's party is limited to Akechi, Joker and Kasumi. The second trailer for Persona 5 Tactica which revealed the Repaint Your Heart DLC shows Kasumi and Akechi saving Joker. This DLC pack could reprise this trio of characters working together. Since most of the content from Royal is seemingly relegated to this DLC, it makes sense that Persona 5 Tactica would recreate this dynamic.

Goro Akechi Will Remain An Anti-Hero

Goro Akechi in his Crow disguise, standing in a battle-ready stance against a vivid red backdrop.

When Persona 5 Royal brought Goro Akechi back, it made sure to maintain his anti-hero status, and it will be important that Persona 5 Tactica does the same, at least to start. The title Repaint Your Heart could perhaps be referring in part to Akechi. In spite of his villain status in Persona 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 of new Persona 5 Tactica characters.

As the release of Persona 5 Tactica approaches, hopefully Atlus will provide more details about Repaint 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 5 Tactica has a unique opportunity to answer some of the questions left about Akechi's fate at the end of Persona 5 Royal. Regardless of how the DLC is handled, Persona 5 Strikers omitted Akechi entirely, so Persona 5 Tactica is already doing more for fans of the character.