Persona 4: Dancing All Night.

Original Release: Playstation Vita, 2015. Version Reviewed: Playstation 4, 2018.


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!

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.

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.

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.

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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Persona 4 Arena.

Original Release: Arcade, Playstation 3, XBox 360, 2012. Version Reviewed: XBox 360, 2012.


THE PLOT:

Two months after leaving the small town of Inaba, Yu Narukami (Persona 4's no-longer-nameless protagonist) returns for the Golden Week holiday. He is looking forward to reuniting with his friends from the Investigation Team. It's a rainy night, however, so out of habit he checks to see if the supernatural Midnight Channel is showing.

It is - and this time, what it's broadcasting is what looks like a cheesy promotional video featuring him and his friends, as if they were contestants in a fighting tournament. When he catches up with his friends, he learns that Teddie, Kanji, and Rise are missing, and that Naoto is out of town on another investigation. They decide to go into the TV World to determine just what is happening.

They are greeted by none other than Teddie himself, wearing a strange outfit and calling himself "General Teddie." This figure informs them that they must fight each other in a recreation of their high school, with Rise acting as emcee. Why are their friends behaving so oddly? And just who are the other strangers inside the TV World - an imperious woman in a fur coat, a half-naked man in a red cape, and a blonde robot girl - and what is their link to this bizarre tournament?

The only way to find out is to move forward. And since only the winner of each match may proceed, that means the friends must fight each other - and win!

Yosuke encounters a young woman
who can't remember her own name.

CHARACTERS:

For a fighting game, Persona 4 Arena offers a surprisingly exhaustive "Story Mode," as the above summary shows. The story acts as a direct sequel not only to Persona 4, but to Persona 3 as well, with prominent roles for P3's Mitsuru, Akihiko, and Aegis (along with a couple other cameos). The premise was devised by the producer and character designer of the Persona series, so it's little surprise that the characters mostly feel as complete here as in the core games.

I mentioned in my review of Persona 4 that I didn't think the characters were quite as distinct as the ones in P3, and the results here bear that out, with Mitsuru and Aegis coming across as particularly dominant figures. Of the P4 group, sidekick character Yosuke ends up with the meatiest arc, his narrative ultimately being more fully satisfying than Yu's. Each character gets at least one moment to shine, however. Even Kanji's largely comedy-relief strand sees the muscled doofus showing both strength and insight when apparently confronted by his effete Shadow.

Naoto's investigation brings her into
contact with Persona 3's Mitsuru Kirijo.

GAMEPLAY:

The game tries to cater to both fighting game fans and fans of the Persona series' storytelling by offering multiple modes.  The Story Mode is substantial. You start with four characters to choose from, and play the first roughly 2/3 of their stories, up to a cliffhanger. As you play these characters' stories, more characters unlock - until you end up with twelve total parallel narratives. Ultimately, if you play every character's version of events, you will end up with around 30 hours of content.

Content - but not gameplay.  Each of the stories is presented as a visual novel. All dialogue is voiced, but save for occasional cutscenes, the action is largely described through text against still images. Occasionally, you may get to make a choice between two courses of action (and in a few stories, the wrong choice can lead to a humorous "bad ending"), but there's not much interactivity beyond that except for the actual matches. In Story Mode, each match is only a single round, and the AI opponents are extremely easy to defeat, leaving less than ten minutes of actual gameplay for each 2 -3 hour long character tale. Fine if you just want to see what happens next to the various characters... But probably not very exciting for fighting game enthusiasts.

The other modes are gameplay-intensive. An "Arcade Mode" pits your selected character against either eight or nine opponents. While not actively difficult, the AI here is tougher than in Story Mode and will call for players to do more than simply repeatedly mash "X."  For those who want a genuine challenge, a "Score Attack Mode" is available; I dipped my toe into this a few times, and can attest to it being genuinely pretty tough, moreso than I personally was looking for. Multiplayer is technically available... Though given the game's age, I doubt there's enough of an online player base anymore to easily put together a match, even assuming the servers for it still exist.

Be prepared for reading.  A lot of reading.

THOUGHTS:

Persona 4 Arena was the series' first major spinoff, made as the series was becoming more of a genuine mainstream success. I'll admit, I expected a quick cash grab and nothing more, and was genuinely surprised by the detailed narrative. The story is genuinely intriguing - and, once the backstory becomes available to play around the midpoint, quite emotionally effective as well.

The single biggest problem with the Story Mode is that it's intriguing once. Well, actually three times - once from the viewpoint of the Investigation Team; once from the Persona 3 cast's viewpoint; and once from Naoto's, which straddles the two strands. Had the alternating viewpoints been restricted to simply one strand for each unique POV (plus the backstory and a nifty surprise side-story that opens up at the very end), then it would have worked just about perfectly. But if you want to see all the story material, then you will be completing this narrative with each of the characters. Since the story itself remains largely the same, that means a lot of repetition. I rarely hit the "SKIP" button in video game cutscenes. By the time I finished the final strand, I was skipping regularly.

Another issue is the lack of interactivity in the Story Mode. I suspect this title was given a limited schedule and budget, certainly compared to the mainline games. There are several parts of each story that would have made for strong gaming moments. Aegis deals with a hostage situation. Naoto must race through an airport to fling a tracer onto a departing vehicle. All the characters have to navigate a high school turned into a labyrinth by invisible walls. Each of these bits (and more) would have been great to play. Instead, they are described by text over still images, making them considerably less exciting.

A final issue, one that strongly points to a rushed schedule, is the text itself... which is positively riddled with typos and grammatical errors. I don't tend to harp on the occasional misspelling in game text. Persona 4 Arena, however, has a jaw-dropping number of these. Misspellings abound, as do sentences with missing words or phrases. At one point, during a conversation between Aegis and Chie, a line being spoken by Chie is attributed to Aegis. Even a cursory proofreading would have fixed many of these, making it incredible that they remain in a professional, licensed product.

Lest I come across too harshly, it should be said that the actual gameplay, particularly in Arcade and Score Modes, offers a lot of depth and detail. The characters aren't just skins on a basic fight template; each character has a unique fight style, with some being most effective at close range and some most effective as distance fighters. The sheer number of combos available will test the memory of ardent fighting game enthusiasts, and multiple options to block and evade attacks are available.

The story itself is a worthy one, and it is enjoyable to see the casts of the two games brought together in this way. I suspect with a bit more time and money, this could have been something truly special; even with all the issues, it's well worth a rental or a cheap purchase. At the same time, I hope that some of the issues that keep Persona 4 Arena from being all it could have been were resolved for the sequel.


Overall Rating: 5/10.

Previous Game: Persona 4
Next Game: Persona 4 - Arena Ultimax

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Persona 4.

Original Release: Playstation 2, 2008. Version Reviewed: Playsation Vita "Golden" version, 2012.


THE PLOT:

A high school student comes to the small town of Inaba to live with his police detective uncle and his 7-year-old cousin while his parents spend a year working abroad. Inaba is a quiet place, and everything points to a simple, if slightly dull, year.

Then a murder happens: A TV announcer who was taking refuge from a scandal in the local inn is discovered, her body hanging from an antenna. Shortly after, the high school girl who found the body turns up dead in the same way. The young man discovers that he somehow has the ability to pass through a television screen, using it as a portal to another world - one permeated by fog and populated by monsters.

It quickly becomes apparent that the killer has the same ability, and is throwing his victims to this other world, leaving them to be dispatched by it. With help from a steadily-expanding band of friends, the young hero resolves to rescue the victims and unmask the person responsible!

Around those week-long exams, of course. And a ski trip. And soccer practice. And...

Kanji is understandably confused by recent events.

CHARACTERS:

For the most part, I don't find this game's characters as distinctive as the protagonists from Persona 3 - though as with the rest of the games in this series, they are still a highly likable bunch.  The cast standout, in my opinion, is teen detective Naoto, who initially works with the police on the case (somehow) before joining the heroes and who hides a secret that is honestly pretty darn easy to guess. The worst of the group is Teddie, a resident of the other world who eventually crosses over to Inaba. He's meant to be childlike, but his behavior toward literally every female character he comes across ranges between boorishness and outright harassment, which is made worse by these bits apparently being intended as humorous.  Most of the characters (even Teddie) get at least a few moments to emerge as more fully-rounded than they initially seem, and by the end of the game you will feel like you know these people quite well.

Summoning your first Persona.

GAMEPLAY:

The gameplay in Persona 4 is essentially the same as that of Persona 3, only with refinements that make it much more enjoyable. Though I was gripped by Persona 3's story, I came to intermittently dread the dungeon-crawling treks through Tartarus. Persona 4 improves this situation in every possible respect.

First are the dungeons. Instead of a single, interminable dungeon, this game offers up multiple smaller ones. Each of these has a theme that ties into the character being rescued or pursued. Yukiko dreams of someone coming to rescue her from a life that's been completely planned out for her; her dungeon, the game's first, is a fairy tale castle, with her Shadow talking about how she's waiting for her "prince."  In this way, the settings further the characterizations, making this part of the game instantly more absorbing. My favorite dungeon ("Void Quest") is modeled after old 8-bit video games, and sees the characters traversing pixelated hallways on their way to the series' most inventively-presented boss fight thus far.

The combat has been adjusted. You are no longer left to pray that your teammates won't do something horribly stupid that loses a winnable fight. The default option is the same structure as Persona 3, with teammates left to act freely, but you can bring up a Tactics menu and change that to allow yourself full control over party members. This lowers the luck basis of the battles substantially. The "Golden" version released to the Vita (and now on PC) also adds an option to reduce the penalty for dying. Instead of being reset to your last save, you can now retry from the start of the floor. Instead of losing an hour or more of progress because of an ill-timed critical hit, you'll now lose, at most, 15 minutes.

In short: While retaining the same basic dungeon crawling/combat systems, this game has adjusted them to make them a lot more enjoyable to play - meaning that the gameplay portion is now just as much fun as the rest.

The 8-bit Void Quest: The series' most
inventive dungeon and boss fight thus far.

THOUGHTS:

Persona 3 was the series' breakthrough, moving these titles from niche to mainstream and setting the template that the Persona series follow to this day.  For that reason, P3 is probably the series' most important entry... but it's Persona 4 that usually gets singled out as the series' best.

I still prefer Persona 2: Eternal Punishment for its complex, compelling story. Still, I would agree that this is a better overall game than Persona 3 was. Though I didn't find the characters quite as strong, the cast was still an overall well-drawn bunch, and I came to feel close to most of them as the story progressed. The tone is much lighter in this game.  The color palate is brighter, even in the dungeons, and the characters tend to be a happier and less haunted lot than in previous installments.  It's also quite funny - The scripted dialogue had me regularly chuckling and occasionally laughing out loud.

The story is structured as a murder mystery, which makes it just grounded enough to relate to the character stakes. The outlandish material is largely restricted to the TV World; so even though things get pretty bizarre, suspension of disbelief isn't overstretched by the characters just leading their normal lives much of the time. 

Oh, and bonus points for me not guessing the culprit, even though enough clues were provided that I probably should have.

Complaints I might levy are minor. Probably the most significant barrier to enjoying this is the slow pace of the early game. There is only one way to describe the first few hours: Boring. Far too much time is spent introducing the characters and situation in an almost entirely non-interactive way. This should have been broken up with moments that gave you control and some mild goals to fulfill, if only to increase engagement. Instead, you'll have to make it through a good 3 - 4 hours before you're in the Yukiko Castle dungeon. At that point, the game becomes fun, and it stays that way. But I suspect a lot of players will run out of patience and switch off before that point.

Seeking a villain at the end of the world...

PERSONA 4 GOLDEN

I can only imagine the frustration that must have been felt by the developers of the Playstation Vita. They created a genuinely brilliant piece of hardware... only to watch it crash and burn on the market, destroyed by poor advertising and a parent company that wasn't interested in supporting it. The Vita itself has long since emerged as my very favorite handheld, but certainly not for its great library of games; it's telling that almost everything I've purchased for it was originally released for either the PS1 or the PSP.  I just love how comfortable it is in my hand, how good games look on it, and how well they play.

Persona 4 Golden emerged as one of the few Vita titles to actually succeed in selling the system to the public.  When a PC port was released last year, people declared that it marked the moment at which the Vita was dead. Rest in peace, severely mis-marketed and underappreciated handheld.

Golden is to Persona 4 what FES was to Persona 3. It offers gameplay tweaks, new Social Links, and extra recorded dialogue (with a couple of roles in the English language version recast for the expansion).

The biggest change is to the ending. Assuming you don't get one of the game's many bad endings, you end up with an additional dungeon with an additional character to rescue. This part feels almost like a DLC follow-up to the main game, offering something that's more of a brief sequel than an integral part of the main game.  Still, it's a welcome addition, if only because it allows that much more time with characters and a world that have been great fun to visit.


Overall Rating: 9/10.

Previous Game: Persona 3 - The Answer
Next Game: Persona 4 Arena

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