Persona 5: The Phantom X.

Original Release: Android, iOS, Windows, 2025. Platform Used: Steam Deck.

Note: This review is based on 60 hours of playtime, including the first two palaces, various side-quests, and the "Crossroads of Fate" event.


THE PLOT:

After observing a fellow student's attempted suicide, a high school teen attending the Shujin Academy in Tokyo finds himself whisked away to The Velvet Room, where attendants Igor and Merope inform him that he is facing "ruin" unless he can find a way to fight back against it. He dismisses this as just a dream... until he presses a strange icon that appears on his cell phone.

He is abruptly transported to a world where he must battle Shadows alongside Lufel, an owl who is somehow able to communicate with him. Lufel dubs them "Phantom Thieves," and insists they use code names to disguise their identities, with the boy now dubbed "Wonder."

Wonder's new double life begins at just the right time. Disgraced former baseball player Kiuchi has begun violently bumping into women on the subway, evading consequences by claiming this was accidental. His behavior is becoming steadily more aggressive, and he has started targeting Wonder's fellow student, Motoha. When her best friend gets injured shielding her from this "Subway Slammer" (yes, really), Motoha's own Persona awakens, enabling her to fight alongside Wonder and Lufel to get justice for her friend by changing Kiuchi's warped desires.

Meet the Phantom Thieves. Um, the discount versions.

CHARACTERS:

Wonder may well be the dullest Persona protagonist. He has little personality, either in artwork or dialogue options. Persona 5's Joker had been set up as a delinquent, making him an outsider before he even arrived at Shujin; Persona 4's Yu Narakami had a preppy aesthetic that fit well with that game's social circle, and the uncle he lived with was investigating the crimes that gave that game its structure. Wonder is just... present. He has no personal stake in defeating either of the first two bosses, and he seems generally blank and featureless.

The supporting cast is better, with Motoha both enthusiastic and quick to anger and later supporting character Shun burdened by feelings of guilt, but neither of them transcends basic anime tropes. Talking owl Lufel, meanwhile, just feels like a discount version of Persona 5's Morgana.

Not helping are crossover events with the Persona 5 cast. In every instance in which Wonder's group shares the screen with Joker, Ryuji, and company, I just end up being reminded how much more dynamic the earlier game's characters were.

The boss fight against the first Palace ruler, a former baseball
player. Combat, like most of the gameplay, is excellent.

GAMEPLAY:

One area in which The Phantom X excels is the gameplay. As a free-to-play gacha title that many will play on their smartphones, its exploration and combat mechanics are simplified from those of Persona 5. However, it retains the feel of the earlier game. When you infiltrate palaces, you will have to find ways to get through locked doors, with various types of puzzles to solve. Ambushing Shadows is clunkier than in Persona 5 thanks to the cruder interface, but it's also more forgiving - to the point where you just about have to try in order to end up being ambushed.

The gameplay and combat remain addictive when you're in the Palaces or the Metaverse, and the game designers have done a terrific job of translating Persona 5 to a simpler, handheld-friendly format. The gacha elements can be intrusive, particularly when they "pop up"on the screen... but that more or less goes with the territory, and in most other respects, this is an extremely well-made title.

I just wish I could be half as positive about the writing...

Your first enemy: Takeyuki Kiuchi, The Subway Slammer.
The whole subway's his for the slammin'.

WRITTEN ON THE SUBWAY WALLS:

"The whole subway's mine for the slammin'!"
-The game's first boss, "The Subway Slammer," becomes an accidental Internet meme in the space of a single line.

Persona 5: The Phantom X has a lot going for it. It looks great, it plays well, and it boasts a fantastic score. Thus far, I haven't spent one penny, and I've found it generally free-to-play friendly - not as much as a Hoyoverse title, perhaps, but more than most gacha games I've dipped into.

But as I was playing it, even as I mostly enjoyed myself, a single thought kept popping into my brain - a tired Internet meme that nonetheless perfectly describes my reaction:

"We have Persona 5 at home."

Phantom X delivers a taste of what Persona is and how it plays (post-PS1 era, at least). It has the school/life division, though without the calendar that aspect is greatly diminished, and it attempts to tackle themes of alienation and social issues that have marked the modern Persona series. I'd say it's a decent enough free sampler of the series... except that the writing is so much worse than any of the actual mainline titles.

The opening "Subway Slammer" arc tries to build a story around a legitimate problem in Japan, of disturbed individuals deliberately and forcefully slamming into others (mostly young women, of course) with their shoulders and claiming accident. This is a passable seed to build a story around. Too bad, then, that Kiuchi, the villain of the first Palace, is cartoonishly over-the-top. At one point, he charges one of his victims and body slams her over a protective wall. Tokyo subways have a lot of security cameras, and he barreled toward his victim like he was an NFL linebacker. Claiming "accident" would simply not fly.

Oh, but the game has a "get-out-of-jail-free" card: "Apathy Syndrome." This isn't new to this entry, having been used in previous Persona titles as a growing sign that the world is moving toward ruin. Here, though, it becomes a magic wand that can justify any plothole.

There's more than enough evidence to throw Kiuchi in jail and be done with him? "Apathy Syndrome" means that neither police nor public care. The second villain is a popular restaurant reviewer who destroys good restaurants by giving bad-faith negative reviews (yes, really). And this works flawlessly in ruining even successful and well-loved establishments because "Apathy Syndrome" means that people will take his word over the delicious meal they ate last week.

It's difficult for the game's story to capture any real world resonance when its villains require a Magic Syndrome in order to be effective threats in the first place.

The Palaces are big, to make sure you don't get through
them too quickly. But they're too big to remain interesting.

LEVEL-GATING AND TIME-WASTING:

The gameplay is this title's saving grace... almost.

As I said earlier, the addictive Persona 5 gameplay has been effectively streamlined to work in a mobile format. The Palaces are beautiful to look at, the soundtrack is fantastic, and the combat flows smoothly. Puzzles are mostly well integrated (though if I never see another colored baseball that I need to fit into a lock, it will be too soon), and the palace designs cleverly reflect the individual villains - frankly, the level designers do a better job of characterizing the baddies than the actual script does!

But it's an online, ongoing gacha game, which means that the developers don't want you getting through content too quickly. Hoyoverse mostly tried to avoid this issue in their gacha games by creating lots and lots of content, with side quests and daily missions that further developed their settings and were often quite interesting in themselves (and, yes, some that were effectively fetch quests). Black Wings/Atlus follow a more time-honored strategy:

They waste your time.

There are multiple points in the game at which you will find yourself level-gated, pushing you off to grind side activities until you are graciously allowed to continue the story. This is a mild annoyance, as you can gain levels reasonably quickly, but it turns those side activities - quick combats that gain you Personas or upgrade materials - into chores.

The palaces are also big. Too big. If the first of these dungeons - which is larger than all but the final Persona 5 ones - had been the standard size, then I would be reasonably OK with this. But the second Palace is almost double that size, to the point where its repetitive hallways and trap puzzles become boring.

Lastly, at the end of the second Palace - which, until an update earlier this week, marked the end of the initial story content - the game unveils its final delaying tactic: a sudden difficulty spike. The second boss is recommended for a party of Level 58 or higher. You can comfortably reach him, defeating most of the mini-bosses along the way, with a party of about Level 40. I would generally call this poor design - except in this case, the design is doing exactly what's intended. It's just that the intent is to delay players by sending them back to grind for several sessions.

Of other games I've played, I'd most compare these time-wasting tendencies to the "four Tombs" quest in Anthem - unnecessary barriers that exist only to keep you from running out of story, even if it transforms gameplay that had been enjoyable into a tedious irritation. It's a massive misjudgment, one that I suspect has caused at least some players to drop the game entirely.

Igor and Merope, in The Velvet Room, offer you a contract.

OVERALL:

Persona 5: The Phantom X is entirely salvageable. The designers have done a terrific job of adapting Persona 5's gameplay into a mobile format, and it's genuinely fun to play. The problem isn't the game's architecture but its writing - and it's my understanding that Atlus has already stepped in to change writers for the latest update, so there is an excellent chance that this will improve.

I'm disappointed in Phantom X, but I haven't given up on it. It's my hope that, in due course, I will find myself issuing an update to note improvements. As of the end of the second arc, however, I would rate this as a passable Persona sampler, but one that falls well short of any of the "real" Persona games.


Overall Rating: 4/10.

Previous Game: Persona 5 Tactica

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Persona 5 Tactica.

Original Release: Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Ninendo Swittch, 2023. Version Reviewed: Playstation 5, 2023.


THE PLOT:

After bringing down Minister Shido and defeating the dark god Yaldabaoth, the Phantom Thieves have earned a rest... but they aren't going to get one.

They are in Cafe Leblanc, watching a news report about the disappearance of politician Toshiro Kasukabe, who is favored to become Prime Minister. Suddenly, the group finds itself transported into an Alice in Wonderland-like Kingdom, ruled over by Marie, a wedding-obsessed tyrant. Joker and Morgana manage to escape, thanks to the intervention of rebel leader Erina. However, their friends are captured.

While staging a rescue, they stumble across another prisoner: Toshiro. He's been abducted, but he has no memory of it happening. In fact, there are large gaps in all of his memories. Even as the Phantom Thieves are reunited, they come to realize that Toshiro's past holds the key to their presence in this strange world.

Getting back home will mean keeping him alive - which, given Toshiro's general uselessness, might be easier said than done!

Toshiro is shaken after being transported to an impossible world.

CHARACTERS:

There are more than a few similarities between this title and the Persona Q games that came out for the 3DS. One of the biggest is that the Phantom Thieves are essentially "guest characters" in their own game. The real focus is on the new characters, Toshiro and Erina. They have full character arcs, and both of them gain considerable depth as the story progresses.

By contrast, the Phantom Thieves are basically "present." There are parallels between some of Toshiro's and Erina's issues and problems that some of the Thieves went through during Persona 5, notably Futaba and Haru. But the Phantom Thieves are static characters. They observe the events happening to Toshiro and Erina, they react to those events, and they protect the pair - but in the end, this isn't their story.

Setting up a devastating Triple Threat - this
game's version of the series' All Out Attack.

GAMEPLAY:

The gameplay segments of Tactica represent a very basic tactical RPG. If you've played any Fire Emblem, or Suikoden, or X-Com, the grid-based maps will be entirely familiar. Also, if you've played any of those, the difficulty will seem downright laughable by comparison, even on the hardest setting. I managed to botch parts of the fight with the first Kingdom's boss, with my characters getting literally run over and scattered about the map like ragdolls... and not only was I able to salvage the level, my units didn't even take that much damage! Call this "Baby's First Tactics Game."

There are a few neat curveballs. If your character manages to score a critical hit (easy to set up once you know how), that character gets an additional turn. Exploit it properly, and you can stretch one turn into several offensive actions. Also, once you get a "One More!", you can position your characters in a triangle around enemies and perform an All Out Attack. Yes, all of this makes an easy game even easier... but I'd be lying if I said it didn't feel satisfying to pull off.

There is some difficulty. Not in the main story missions, but optional "Quests" will test your ability to exploit the game's mechanics in bite-sized encounters that have strict conditions for victory. Some of these get repetitive, though, particularly the altogether too many "defeat all enemies in one turn" quests.

Erina plants the flag symbolizing her rebellion as she and
the Phantom Thieves take their fight to the Tyrant, Marie.

THOUGHTS:

Persona 5 Tactica might as well be titled Persona Q: Tactics. Yes, the Etrian Odyssey-inspired mapmaking has been replaced with tactical grid maps. In all other respects, though, this is essentially a Persona Q title. The cast gets whisked into a fantasy world, where they act as protectors for the actual focal characters while traversing four dungeons related to the new arrivals' arcs. There's a base, where character development occurs through optional conversations. All the characters get to equip sub-Personas, just like in the 3DS games. Oh, and it utilizes a Chibi art style.

I will say that I enjoyed it more than the second Persona Q game, though I didn't think it's as creative as the first one. That said, for a current gen game, there's little if anything here that couldn't have been accomplished on the 3DS. The maps are mostly small; even the boss levels have less elaborate maps than some of what was seen in the 3DS Fire Emblem games. It's also quite short. You can blow through the main story and all Quests in about 30 hours.

I enjoyed it on its own terms, but I can't deny that it feels... well, small. I think I'd be a lot more forgiving of its limitations if not for one thing: the price point. This looks and plays like a $30 game, but it was released at a full $60. Tactica ended up with soft sales compared to most Persona offshoots, and I strongly suspect the asking price had a lot to do with that.

The story starts out poorly, with clunky dialogue that makes it even harder to adjust to the art style. Futaba gets some particularly bad lines. Yes, she's a techie, a hacker, and a gamer; but in the first part of the story, practically every word she utters is a gaming reference. The main game's Futaba was working through severe issues related to grieving, guilt, and anxiety, but she still did her best to connect with and help her friends. I liked that Futaba. This game's version? Well, not for the first time in a Persona 5 spinoff, she's been flattened into someone I would find unbearable in real life.

Thankfully, the writing improves as the story progresses. The dialogue improves, even if many of the conversations are a bit repetitive. Toshiro and Erina grow from one-dimensional ciphers into genuinely engaging characters. Oh, and it's a Persona game, so it goes without saying that there's a terrific soundtrack, though my personal favorite track ended up coming from the DLC campaign.

Joker teams up with Akechi and Kasumi for
the Repaint Your Heart DLC campaign.

DLC: REPAINT YOUR HEART:

Yes, the game has a DLC campaign - Day One DLC, no less.

Repaint Your Heart is a fully separate story, set during the "Sae's Palace" segment of the original game. The story teams Joker with Akechi and Kasumi as they're drawn into a street artist's nightmare world. It's actually a lot of fun, with both your characters and the enemies having to "paint" areas of the map to gain tactical advantages (Persona: Splatoon!), and it benefits from some excellent voice acting, particularly by veteran voice actress Susanne Blakeslee as the villain.

The story is engaging, and the element of "tactical paint" suits the narrative while improving upon the main game's gameplay. Character interactions are well-written, sometimes more so than in this game's main campaign, with several exchanges playing on the secrets kept by both Akechi and Kasumi. It does feel like a missed opportunity that Yusuke, the artist member of the Phantom Thieves, is completely absent for a story centered around art, but that's really my only complaint about the story.

If it was $10, I'd recommend it without reservation. As with the main game, though, I think it's a bit overpriced. This DLC lists at $19.99, and it lasts all of four hours. Yes, you get some challenge levels after you beat it, and you unlock Akechi and Kasumi for your next playthrough of the main game. But it's hard to see this trifle, enjoyable though it is, as something that's worth the asking price.

The Phantom Thieves find themselves in
a bizarre fantasy world. It must be Tuesday.

OVERALL:

Persona 5 Tactica is too small scale to justify its price. It's a Playstation 5 game that feels like it should be a mobile or handheld title, a sense not helped by it being so strongly reminiscent of the 3DS Persona Q spinoffs.

It is enjoyable, as its DLC campaign. I don't think it's worth full price, but I'm not going to deny that I had fun playing it. Catch it on sale at a decent discount, and I'd say it's worth giving a go. But at its list price, it costs about double what it actually merits.


Overall Rating: 6/10.

Previous Game: Persona 5 Strikers
Next Game: Persona 5 - The Phantom X

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Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight.

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


THE PLOT:

The Phantom Thieves have won. The corrupt politician Shido has been defeated, as has the demon Yaldabaoth, and the Velvet Room has been restored.

So why have the Thieves suddenly all found themselves in a transformed version of the Velvet Room, redubbed as dance spot "Club Velvet"? Twin Velvet Room attendants Caroline and Justine inform the confused teens that they are to participate in a dance-off against their unseen sister's "guests," a competition that will be held in painstaking recreations of familiar settings, from the street of Tokyo to the various Palaces they have infiltrated to the depths of Mementos itself!

The Phantom Thieves are enlisted for a dancing competition.

CHARACTERS:

Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight was developed jointly with Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight... and given how much I liked that title, this one is extremely disappointing by comparison. The Persona 3 dancing game captured those characters beautifully - I'd argue, better than any of the other spinoffs that have featured them - while also finding ways to deepen the already strong original characterizations. This was one of many reasons why I found that dancing spinoff a surprise joy to play, and why I was genuinely looking forward to this one.

Sadly, with the exceptions of a couple good moments, the Persona 5 dancing game offers only one-note versions of these characters. Futaba ends up with the worst of it. In Persona 5, she was painfully uncomfortable with social interactions, but she was never deliberately rude or mean; even when she nicknamed Yusuke "Inari" after an anime villain, it quickly developed into a sort of semi-fond nickname. In Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight, Futaba is... obnoxious. When she is on the sidelines, she snaps at Yusuke to "shut your mouth hole!" - with a sharp, non-joking line delivery, and usually in response to perfectly innocuous comments. When she's onstage, she constantly chants, "Hype! Hype! Hype!"  In short, a character who was likable in the main game has been turned into an active irritant.

The rest of the cast is more or less in character, but each Phantom Thief is reduced to just one or two traits. Morgana has a self-delusional crush on Ann; Makoto is a control freak; Ann is an airhead; and so on. An occasional moment will slip through that rings true, but these are too few and too far between.

Persona 5 protagonist Ren shares the stage with Ann.

GAMEPLAY:

Gameplay here is identical to the other Persona dancing titles, which turns out to be this game's saving grace. As I observed in my reviews of Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight and Persona 4: Dancing All Night, these games benefit from a remarkably intuitive interface. While the characters dance in rotoscoped animations, symbols float toward a ring at the edges of the screen. Some call for quick button prompts, others for holding a button in a slide, still others for moving one of the analog sticks to create a record scratch noise (this last can be reconfigured to be read by a press of the shoulder button instead). The simplicity does not negate a challenge; on higher difficulties, the variations in tempo and rapidly changing prompts will test your dexterity. It just means that the controls don't get in the way of you playing the game - and the core gameplay remains as addictive as it was in the other two dancing titles.


THOUGHTS:

I have been consistently impressed with the quality of the Persona series' various spinoffs. Even the ones I haven't liked have felt like legitimate expansions of the series rather than the cynical cash-ins I half-expected.

That trend had to break at some point, though. Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight is the first Persona spinoff that really feels like a cash grab. Sure, the gameplay is fun. But while the Persona 3 dancing game shone with love in its character interactions, this game... doesn't. Only a very few Social Links are actually interesting or effective, with the rest just feeling like hastily-scripted skits. Nothing is added to the characters or their relationships with each other, and few of the conversations are as enjoyable as the ones in the actual main game.

Added to that are the slim track offerings. Because this game was rushed out after Persona 5 proved to be a hit, it only features tracks and remixes of tracks from the core game. Nothing from Royal, or Q2, or Strikers. I like Life Will Change and Rivers in the Desert... but there are only so many variations on those that I'm actually interested in listening to. And while DLC tracks are available, most of them are taken from earlier games in the franchise.

I think this game fell victim to a rush to release. With the Persona 3 dancing game, more than a decade had passed since the release of even Persona 3 FES, and I think the creative team had new reflections on that set of characters. Here, Atlus had just released a 100+ hour game featuring the Persona 5 cast. With no distance between that game and this one, they can hardly be blamed for having nothing new to say about the characters.  I strongly suspect this would be a stronger title altogether had they just waited a few more years.

The Phantom Thieves celebrate their bonds,

OVERALL:

For all of my issues, Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight is not a bad game. The actual rhythm gameplay is as fun as ever; and while I wish there was a greater variety of Persona 5-specific tracks, I do like most of the music that's presented. Still, given how much I enjoyed the other two dancing spinoffs, I can't help but feel disappointed about how bland this one ends up. Since this was developed jointly with the Persona 3 dancing game, it seems clear that - likely unintentionally - the developers put more heart and effort into that game than they did into this one.


Overall Rating: 4/10.

Previous Game: Persona 5
Next Game: Persona Q2 - New Cinema Labyrinth

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Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight.

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


THE PLOT:

The members of SEES are startled to awaken in the Velvet Room, which has been remade into Club Velvet for a very special contest. Velvet Room attendant Elizabeth cheerfully informs the confused teens that, since they are soon to face particularly dark times, she has whisked them away for a cheerful dance competition... but when that excuse doesn't hold up under questioning, she admits that she has made a bet with one of her sisters that her guests could win in a dance-off, to be conducted in painstaking recreations of familiar settings: the school, the mall, and the various stages of Tartarus itself!


CHARACTERS:

Though this is a rhythm game, care has been taken to keep characterizations spot-on. Most of the original voice actors return (timid Fuuka's original voice actress had already been replaced by Wendee Lee for previous spinoffs). In addition to the introductory and ending scenes, the game also includes Social Links - conversations between your protagonist and the rest of the characters, which you unlock as the game progresses. These mostly consist of light-hearted banter, but the characters are recaptured effectively, and there is some pleasure in seeing this usually broody bunch in a more laid-back scenario.

Elizabeth enlists the SEES team into a dance competition.

GAMEPLAY:

Dancing in Moonlight's primary mechanics are reasonably typical for a rhythm game. While the characters dance in rotoscoped animations, symbols float toward a ring at the edges of the screen. Some call for quick button prompts, others for holding a button in a slide, still others for moving one of the analog sticks to create a (vaguely annoying) record scratch noise (this last is more intuitive if you reconfigure it to be read by a press of the shoulder button instead). It is a clean, simple interface. Which doesn't mean that higher difficulties aren't challenging - The unlockable "All Night" mode initially seems to demand the impossible of your beleaguered digits. It just means that the controls don't get in the way of you playing the game.

The default settings require rapid finger movements, but the game allows you to adjust these - indeed, even encourages you to do so by tying trophies to certain adjustments. This allows players to slow down or speed up the rhythms, or allow the game to do all "record scratches" automatically, or reduce penalties for mistakes. These options should make the game more accessible to those with mobility issues than otherwise would be the case.

Aegis contemplates using heavy weapons in her dance moves.

THOUGHTS:

I approached Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight with wariness. On the one hand, I discovered a while ago that I (surprisingly) enjoy well-made rhythm games, and the positive reviews were encouraging. On the other hand, it seemed... well, honestly, like a shallow cash grab.

It may be a cash grab, but it's not a shallow one.  From the moment the game begins, it feels infused with genuine love from its creators. The opening titles are catchy and overflowing with nostalgia.  The introductory scene, setting up the bizarre situation, is very funny, with all of the characters feeling perfectly in character (though Yukari's more antagonistic tendencies are toned down).

The gameplay is also increasingly addictive, to the point where I would sit down to kill just twenty minutes or so with a few tracks, and end up finding an hour had passed.  The dances are well-choreographed, with each character's style tailored to his or her personality.  The interface is clean, with instant feedback for every button press (and calls of encouragement from the non-dancing SEES members).  Finally, while not all of the music is to my taste, many of the numbers are flatly spectacular - none more than the group number set to the main game's original theme song, Burn My Dread, featuring each of the characters interacting with others, reminiscing and offering encouragement as they dance together at the site of the main game's final battle.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Social Links. Some are funny: Aegis and Elizabeth discuss ways to incorporate heavy weapons upgrades into her dance routines; Junpei becomes increasingly self-delusional about his prospects as a superstar; Elizabeth ruminates about how she can either hide this competition from her long-nosed master or, failing that, blame it on her hapless brother.

The members of SEES dance at the site of their final battle.

A FEW NITPICKS...

The game is very good, but not perfect. The PSVR mode, which allows you to explore your friends' rooms once you unlock them, is so blatantly tacked-on that I half-expected to see "SONY WANTED US TO HELP SELL HEADSETS" running across the bottom of the screen. PSVR owners will have some fun the first time they engage this mode, as each room has been carefully designed to reflect the character's personality. But since it only takes a few minutes to thoroughly explore a given room, it wont' take long for many players to determine it's not worth the bother of switching the headset on.

The soundtrack is terrific, of course... But it does feature too many remixes of the same songs (at least three versions each of Mass Destruction and Burn My Dread, for instance). Greater variety is available by purchasing DLC tracks - including the game's hardest offering, the equal parts maddening and hypnotic Tanaka's Amazing Commodities. Still, at least a few of those feel like they should have been in the base game. The availability of major supporting character Shinji is entirely via DLC, for instance - though once you buy his track, his voice pops up making comments with the other characters in the base game's songs, indicating that he was in the code the entire time.


OVERALL:

Dancing in Moonlight boasts intuitive gameplay, a good soundtrack, and fantastic graphics. The HD recreations of settings I had previously viewed mainly in fuzzy PS2 form are the best argument one could make for an HD remaster of Persona 3. The characters feel entirely like themselves; and even though the tone is overall fairly light, I still came away feeling like I knew them just a little bit better after playing this.

A note about the score: Yes, I'm awarding this game a higher score than Persona 3. It's a different genre - rhythm game vs. JRPG - and as such, has a different set of ambitions and limitations. It is clearly a less emotional experience, for example. However, unlike RPGs, the rhythm game genre generally has no time for characterization of any kind, let alone the kind of detailed character work seen here. Even very good rhythm games frequently have interface issues... which are all but absent here. By the standards of its genre, this is a very fine game - and quite close to being a great one.


Overall Rating: 8/10.

Main Game: Persona 3

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