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 

Review Index

To receive new review updates, follow me:

On BlueSky:

Follow @RandomMusings09 on BlueSky

On Threads:

Follow@randommusings09 on Threads

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax.

Original Release: Arcade, 2013. Version Reviewed: XBox 360, 2014.


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!

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!

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.

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.

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

Review Index

To receive new review updates, follow me:

On BlueSky:

Follow @RandomMusings09 on BlueSky

On Threads:

Follow@randommusings09 on Threads

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

Review Index

To receive new review updates, follow me:

On BlueSky:

Follow @RandomMusings09 on BlueSky

On Threads:

Follow@randommusings09 on Threads