THE PLOT:
It is only the day after the P-1 Grand Prix alerted Yu and his Investigation Team to the existence of a mysterious new enemy. The friends have barely started discussing what to do next... When suddenly, they find the choice made for them. The town of Inaba is engulfed by a mysterious red fog, and the entire population vanishes. A broadcast by General Teddie informs them that they are now participants in the P-1 Climax. To compel participation, the general shows them Mitsuru and her Shadow Operatives, now held captive, and informs them that they have one hour to rescue them or it will mean the end of the world!
The team moves out, following their separate paths, all of them leading to a bizarre tower that has appeared at the site of their high school. As they converge on the site, they face opponents: Shadow versions of themselves. But each fight leaves them increasingly exhausted, and they gradually realize that the fights are siphoning off their energy. They must fight to continue on their journey - but with each bout, they strengthen their enemy and bring him closer to his ultimate goal!
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| Yukari, Ken, and Koramaru arrive, determined to rescue their friends. |
CHARACTERS:
Several of the original English language voice actors have been replaced for this title; Kanji, Naoto, Igor, and Margaret all get new voice actors for Arena Ultimax. Fortunately, the replacements for Kanji and Naoto work well. Matthew Mercer, as Kanji, pitches his voice to sound so much like Troy Baker's earlier performance that few will be able to discern a difference. Naoto's new voice actress, Valerie Arem, isn't quite as dead-on, but her voice is close enough - and, critically, she gives a very performance in her own right, making it easy to quickly accept the change.
The new voices for Velvet Room denizens Igor and Margaret are... less successful. The new Igor is outright terrible, and it's a relief that he only has a single scene. Marisha Ray, taking over as Margaret, makes a reasonable vocal match to her predecessor, but her performance is stiff and awkward. I've read it was apparently her first voice role, so I have hopes that her performance improves in future titles.
Though I retain my distaste for Teddie - the real one as much as (if not more than) the General - the rest of the cast remains engaging. The Persona 3 characters who were excluded from the first Arena return here, and their presence is very welcome. I particularly enjoyed the scenes in which we caught up with Yukari, Junpei, and Ken and learned which paths their lives had taken since the events of P3. Labrys, introduced only one game earlier, slots right into the ensemble, feeling like someone who has always been there - which is good, given that the Persona 3 storyline makes her the lead, rather than any of the old fan favorites!
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| Yosuke battles a Shadow version of his friend Yu. |
GAMEPLAY:
Story Mode has thankfully been streamlined from Persona 4 Arena. Instead of offering a separate narrative for each character, the game presents two large-scale ensemble narratives, one centered on the Persona 4 cast and one on the Persona 3 cast. This greatly reduces the repetition, particularly since the two narratives, while telling the same overall story, are starkly different in which aspects of the story are emphasized.
Story Mode still is largely presented as a non-interactive visual novel, with the fights themselves being the only real gameplay elements. The rest of the time, the player is left to watch and read as the story unfolds, though the game does take regular breaks to allow the player to select from available subplots. Nevertheless, anyone not a fan of either the visual novel format or of the Persona mythos and characters is likely to grow impatient.
The Main Menu grants access to various fighting modes. Both the "Arcade" and "Score Attack" modes from Persona 4 Arena return. They are joined by a "Golden" Mode, in which you select a character to fight through 50 battles. After sets of battles, you are able to level up. It was more of a marathon than I was interested in, and I abandoned the mode about 20 battles in; however, fighting game enthusiasts will likely enjoy it a lot.
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| A familiar-looking tower looms over the fog-covered town of Inaba... |
THOUGHTS:
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax makes several improvements to its predecessor... but also suffers from some continuing annoyances and even takes a few backward steps. Not being a fan of fighting games, I spent most of my time with the game's Story Mode, which will be the focus of this review. Fight game fans can probably nudge my final score up by at least a point.
I'll start with a note about the visual presentation. This game offers a better variety of artwork than the first Arena, and most of the still images are of high quality. A few of them are genuinely gorgeous to look at. There are also more cutscenes, particularly in the early parts of the game, which helps to break up the static nature of the overall piece.
Ultimax's single biggest story improvement over the first Arena is the streamlining of the narrative into two main viewpoints, one for each cast (a third, DLC viewpoint is also available, and I would recommend this bonus chapter). This removes much of the repetition that marred the previous game. Also improved is the text. As I noted in my earlier review, the first Arena featured a truly ridiculous number of typos and grammatical errors in its copious text; this game only has a few such errors that I spotted, and falls within what I would consider acceptable for a professional product.
However, one aggravation remains - and is actually more irritating in this game than the previous one. With the narrative distilled to two main strands, it should have been entirely possible to make the two strands consistent with each other. There has been no effort made to do this. Instead, the two stories actively conflict with each other, to a degree that is irreconcilable by even the most flexible fan brain. Therefore, after I cleared the Persona 4 strand, my playthrough of the Persona 3 one was marked by an increasing sense that I was... well, watching officially licensed fanfiction rather than a proper, unified sequel.
The other issue is that the story is thematically heavy-handed. I'll grant that a certain heavy-handedness is part and parcel of the Persona series. This title, however, goes truly over-the-top with its moralizing, stating and restating the importance of bonds and friendships to a point where the makers of '80s after school specials would likely advise the writers to dial it down. After a while, I actively began to sympathize with the villains' sardonic dismissals of these very things.
Finally, I genuinely hated the final boss. In addition to being a sledgehammer-like personification of selfishness, the villain is a generic Giant Shouty Demon who, after losing the final fight, topples to his death screaming about the impossibility of his defeat. As trite as that sounds on paper? It actually plays out worse in the climactic cutscene. The combination of this ending and the preceding heavy-handedness leave Arena Ultimax feeling ultimately weaker and emptier than the first Arena's story.
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| Teddie faces his evil doppelganger. Who is arguably slightly less annoying than the real thing. |
OVERALL:
Despite the improvements, I ended up liking Persona 4 Arena Ultimax even less than Persona 4 Arena. While the most glaring issues have been fixed, the newer game introduces off-putting issues of its own. The story mode may be better presented here... but that is offset by the story itself, which suffers from preachiness and a weak climax.
I admit, my final opinion is colored by my indifference to the fighting game genre. I appreciate that, rather than just churn out a quick cash-in, real effort went into creating a spinoff that doubles as a full, earnest-to-a-fault sequel. Still, I can't pretend that the end result best reflects the series' strengths, and it arguably amplifies some of the series' weaknesses. To my tastes, at least, the Persona 4 Arena duology feels like a minor footnote to the larger overall franchise.
Overall Rating: 4/10.
Previous Game: Persona 4 Arena
Next Game: Persona Q - Shadow of the Labyrinth
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