Persona 5 Tactica is a strategy-based spinoff of Persona 5, where cute chibi renditions of the Phantom Thieves face off against dark forces in a brand-new realm. As you battle through the combat stages, you’ll earn Growth Points (GP), which you can use in skill trees to upgrade your favourite character’s skills and make them stronger in tactical combat.
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Each member of the Phantom Thieves has their own combat style and associated skill tree to work through. This means there is not one ‘best upgrade’ overall but rather a whole range of upgrades to focus on. Our guide will show you how to earn Growth Points, upgrade your skills in Persona 5 Tactica, and run through our picks for the best early upgrades to help build a menacing crew.
What are Growth Points and how to earn them
As you gain access to all of the Phantom Thieves across the campaign, you’ll be able to invest in their unique skill trees and personalise each playable character to your liking. But before you upgrade skills in Persona 5 Tactica, you’ll need to earn Growth Points, otherwise known as GP.
The most straightforward way to earn GP is simply by playing through the main story, earning XP and levelling up your Phantom Thieves. As your Phantom Thieves Level evolves, you earn GP that you can spend across the skill trees.
Outside of playing the game as normal, you’ll also find yourself earning extra GP by taking part in conversations using the ‘Talk’ menu located in the hub between story missions. Additionally, you can complete the optional Quests available in the hub, which will reward you with even more GP as well as delicious plot tidbits.
How to upgrade skills in Persona 5 Tactica
To upgrade your skills, go to the hub between missions and enter the Prep submenu to find the ‘Skills’ menu Here, you can see all of your playable characters with their Max HP, Max SP, and Movement ability available to preview.
When you’ve earned enough GP to upgrade a skill in the tree, the individual characters will have an exclamation mark symbol next to their GP bar. From here, you can go into the specific character’s skill tree and start manually selecting the skills you want to upgrade. If you want to let the UI take the wheel, you can also let the game automate your GP allocation.
When you’re manually choosing skills, you can hover over the one you want and press the Details button. The game will then throw up a visual prompt to show off what the skill can do if chosen. If you are unhappy with a choice, you can also hit the ‘Reset’ prompt at any time and reassign your skills as you please – so you don’t need to get bogged down in your choices. You’ll also find certain skills will remain locked in the early game. We recommend that you always use your points as you receive them, as you can always just reset your skills later on if something more appealing shows up.
Best upgrades in Persona 5 Tactica
Due to the bespoke and reversible nature of upgrading skills in Persona 5 Tactica, it’s hard to point out the specific ‘best’ upgrades. It’s up to you when it comes to the specific characters and playstyles you want to nurture.
Upgrading the elemental spell damage associated with each character is a surefire way to make you more powerful. However, we found that the ‘A Rebellious Resolve’ branch (which is available for each character except Oracle) was always a great starting point. In the beginning, the Break and Recovery and Soul Repose skills will buff your character’s health after an All-Out Attack and increase SP whilst in cover, respectively.
However, the latter five skills are what really make it worth it. It’s a mix across all of the characters, but broadly, they add extra squares to your attack range, skill range, and movement range, as well as some character-specific buffs, like increasing Queen’s knockback distance.
Extra squares sound boring, but they can close the gap between you and the final enemy and can often make the difference between life and death. As puzzles and larger stages are introduced, the added distance can help you achieve the coveted 1 More shot that takes down a dangerous boss.
If you’re struggling with anything else in Persona 5 Tactica, we’ve also put together this collection of tips you should keep in mind while playing, along with this guide on how fusion works.