THE PLOT:
Rise is making her comeback as an idol, participating in the Love Meet Bonds (LMB) festival with fellow idol Kanami Mashita. As part of her performance, she has enlisted her friends in the Investigation Team to perform as backup dancers, much to the annoyance of LMB producer Kyoka Ochimizu.
Shortly before the performance, the members of Kanami's group disappear, leading Investigation Team leader Yu Narakami to call the full group to the studio. The next day, they observe giant ribbons descending from nowhere to try to pluck Kanami from the studio. Both the Investigation Team members and Miss Ochimizu intervene at the same time, saving Kanami - but getting dragged in themselves.
They find themselves on The Midnight Stage, where a mysterious voice is trying to brainwash the performers it has kidnapped into surrendering their individuality and becoming living embodiments of their fans' perceptions of them. With violence impossible in this strange world, the Investigation Team members have only one way to free the kidnapped idols: By asserting their own individuality through dance!
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| Naoto dances on the Midnight Stage. |
CHARACTERS:
Busy voice actress Laura Bailey, the English language voice of Rise in all the other games and even the anime, was unavailable for this recording. Thus, Rise is played by Ashly Burch. Burch is a capable voice actress, but I have to admit that her Rise felt "off." A particular shame, as the story mode is so Rise-centric.
The middle of the game gives a fairly substantial amount of material to Dojima, the main character's uncle. We actually get to see him genuinely investigating, while at the same time acting as a father figure to the game's major guest character, Kanami. I'm afraid I didn't enjoy Kanami at all. She's hardly the series' first walking anime trope, but she lacks any particular dimension beyond being a trope, and I found her every appearance tiresome.
Finally, it should be noted that Teddie's lecherous tendencies have been toned down, likely because attitudes in 2015 were already much less tolerant of such behavior than when Persona 4 came out. Whatever the reason, a less obnoxious Teddie is greatly welcome.
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| Most of story mode is a visual novel, with limited interactivity. |
GAMEPLAY:
The story mode closely replicates the format of the Arena titles. The story is almost entirely a non-interactive visual novel, with only a few (fairly meaningless) dialogue options at various points. The only actual gameplay comes through the dance sequences. At least, unlike the Arena games, these sequences last for several minutes each, meaning that you get about an hour of actual gameplay across the roughly 10 hour story mode.
Thankfully, the game also has a free dance mode, allowing you to select different tracks for the characters to dance to. This was the first of the Persona rhythm games, and it's interesting to compare with the Persona 3 dancing game. It's near-identical in gameplay, but less refined. Both the note structure and the dances themselves are more repetitive than in the later game. Also, the backgrounds are occasionally distracting, making it easy to miss notes simply by not seeing them - though this may be partially a function of my playing the Playstation 4 version of a game that was originally made for the Playstation Vita.
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| Chie and Yosuke share the stage. |
THOUGHTS:
Though the rhythm gameplay is a less polished version of the gameplay from Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight (and, I would guess, the Persona 5 dancing game as well), I find even this first variant of the gameplay to be addictive. Matching buttons to notes is intuitive and enjoyable, and the Persona 4 soundtrack has enough gems to make this worthwhile - though, as with the later dancing titles, some of the best tracks are locked behind DLC walls.
While I give this game credit for having a full story mode, I have to confess that the story ended up being by far my least favorite part. It's initially intriguing, but it all dissolves into a repetition of the "power of friendship!" tropes that I was already wearying of by Arena Ultimax. And while it may be fun spending more time with the characters, at this point they've all been pretty thoroughly explored.
I think the later Persona rhythm games were smart to discard the story mode in favor of a simple narrative frame with unlockable conversations. The story mode may be more ambitious, but the result can occasionally be a slog to get through - with very long stretches offering no interactivity at all.
The "Free Dance" mode, however, is a joy, with dances gradually unlocking new characters, costumes, and tracks. Favorite tracks can be played repeatedly, mixing it up with new characters and costumes (leading to different dialogue snatches); tracks that are less interesting can be ignored after one playthrough.
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| The story gets off to an eerie start... |
OVERALL:
I ultimately did not pour as many hours into Persona 4: Dancing All Night as I did into Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight. I found the story mode less engaging than the later game's unlockable conversations, and by comparison it feels like a rough draft. Still, the actual rhythm gameplay is addictive, and the tracks provide an aural highlight reel of the Persona 4 series (and with this many spinoffs, I feel justified in calling Persona 4 a series in its own right).
A game worth playing for fans - but probably only worth buying at a reasonable price point.
Overall Rating: 6/10.
Previous Game: Persona Q - Shadow of the Labyrinth
Next Game: Persona 5
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