Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth.

Original Release: Nintendo 3DS, 2018. Version Reviewed: Nintendo 3DS, 2018.


THE PLOT:

During the period in which the Phantom Thieves have struck an uneasy alliance with "Detective Prince" Goro Akechi, the group decides to train in Mementos. However, something feels off, and they soon find themselves ejected into a bizarre world dominated by a superhero known as "Kamoshidaman" - who looks exactly like the gym teacher who so badly tormented Ann and Ryushi.

They discover that they are inside a movie, one that is rife with Shadows.  They are able to escape into a movie theater, but are unable to exit to the outside world. There are only two people inside: Nagi, the theater's manager, and Hikari, a painfully shy teen girl who is the only customer. Also present is "Doe," a mysterious creature who shows movies - films that are "wrong," showing stories about giving into authority and conforming to groups regardless of personal beliefs.

To escape this strange place, the Phantom Thieves will need to enter these movies and change them for the better. And as they do so, they learn that they are not the only group that has been brought here...

The Persona casts set out to "fix" a series of bizarre movies.

THE LANGUAGE ISSUE

Persona Q2 was the final 3DS game to receive a physical release in the West. By the time it came out, the 3DS was already effectively a dead system. As such, it's really no surprise that Atlus did not pour money into doing an English dub featuring three full casts made up of some heavily sought-after voice actors. Instead, they subtitled the dialogue while retaining the Japanese audio.

I honestly had no problem with this, and even found some fun in comparing the Japanese and English voices. I'm certainly not going to blame Atlus for refusing to throw a large amount of extra money to dub a large-cast release on an already obsolete system. That said, if you have difficulty with subtitled movies, this game probably won't be for you.

In the movie theater, which acts as the home base and quest hub.

CHARACTERS:

Persona Q2's most interesting character ends up being its most surprising inclusion: the female protagonist from Persona 3 Portable. When she is reunited with the Persona 3 cast, she finds that these familiar faces don't recognize her at all - because they are from the male protagonist's Persona 3. This creates some nice character moments, as she insists on acting cheerful even while privately feeling that she doesn't belong.

The game combines the casts of Personas 3 - 5. The first Persona Q, Shadow of the Labyrinth, did a decent job balancing two casts... but even there the strain showed, with many characters reduced to simply one or two traits. With three full casts to deal with, the sequel has trouble finding anything interesting for most of them to do. Futaba has an effective strand that spans the game's first half, with the painfully shy Hikari reminding her too much of how she was before meeting the Phantom Thieves. Aegis and Akechi get a few decent bits, and Teddie receives just enough prominence to make clear that his Japanese-language voice is even more aggravating than his English-language one. The rest of the supporting characters might as well not be there.

This situation is made worse by a change to the first game's format. In the first Persona Q, the characters interacted with each other through "Strolls," while you got additional bits of interaction and experience through optional side quests. This game eliminates the strolls, moving all its character asides to the quests. A poor decision, as character interactions are now brief and broken up by long stretches of wandering and random encounters.  Also, since these quests are entirely optional, no character arcs build for the Persona casts. As a result, the only substantial character development belongs to Hikari, while the characters actually used to sell the game are left all but entirely static.

Persona 3 Portable's female protagonist meets the Phantom Thieves.

GAMEPLAY:

Core gameplay is identical to the first Persona Q game. The movies the characters enter are dungeons, each designed around a theme: an urban superhero movie, a dinosaur-themed theme park, a sci-fi dystopia, and a brightly colored children's musical. You map each dungeon as you explore, fighting turn-based random encounters and exploiting enemy weaknesses. A boss waits at the bottom of each labyrinth, and you will need to employ careful strategies to defeat each boss.

As with the earlier title, all of this proves addictive. There's something very satisfying about putting the pieces of the maps into place, and the combat is well-designed and enjoyably challenging. Optional side missions give you a chance to level up further, with short explorations of dungeons you've already defeated. The gameplay is generally well-balanced, with bosses providing enough of a challenge to engage without being difficult enough to frustrate... though for masochists, higher difficulty levels are available.

The film-obsessed Hikari watches wide-eyed as
the theater's oppressive movies are made better.

THOUGHTS:

Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth makes a strong first impression. The first hour of the game offers up a jaunty opening cutscene and a strong introduction to the basic scenario. The next few hours are also enjoyable, as you figure out (or, if you played the first game, are refreshed on) the mechanics while exploring a first dungeon that is terrific fun. When the heroes finally confront Kamoshidaman, there's even a Persona 5-like Calling Card delivery, complete with the instrumental for Life Will Change. At ten hours in, I fully anticipated delivering a glowing review.

Unfortunately, the spell fades in the subsequent dungeons. The second and third labyrinths do almost nothing to advance the plot, save for hammering some obvious and repetitive themes. They mainly serve to introduce more Persona casts to the increasingly bloated ensemble, while the main story basically stands still.

It isn't until the fourth (of five total) dungeons that the story actually comes into focus. There are some effective scenes once that happens... but by that point, most of my emotional investment had faded, and so even these well-written moments didn't hit as strongly as they should have.

As with the first Persona Q, the story is centered around Q2's original character - Zen and Rei in the earlier game, Hikari in this one. The first game made Zen and Rei playable characters, which increased player connection to them. In this game, Hikari is an NPC (you do act as her once - but even then, it's in entirely scripted encounters), and so we are never as connected to her as we were to Zen and Rei.

Even with regard to gameplay, which is this title's strongest point, it just isn't as good a title as its predecessor. The maps are simpler, with relatively few creative puzzles or curveballs. The final boss is tedious, an otherwise straightforward boss battle but with an aggravating "Retake" move that requires you to periodically redo a turn. This is an utterly pointless bit of business that doesn't make the battle more challenging in any way; it simply makes it take longer.

The Phantom Thieves in "Kamo City,"
their introduction to this bizarre world.

OVERALL:

Persona Q2 disappointed me, which may be why I'm focusing so much on the negatives. Let me emphasize, then, that this remains an enjoyable game overall, with engaging combat and mapmaking mechanics. But after an excellent first Act, the story stalls for much of the running time - likely in part because it's overburdened by cramming in the full casts of all three "modern" Persona games.

This is not a bad game. But even the things it does well were done better by the previous Persona Q, which is also more widely available. Given that, for all but die hard completists I would recommend playing Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, and giving New Cinema Labyrinth a pass.


Overall Rating: 5/10.

Previous Game: Persona 5 - Dancing in Starlight
Next Game: Persona 5 Strikers

Review Index

To receive new review updates, follow me:

On BlueSky:

Follow @RandomMusings09 on BlueSky

On Threads:

Follow@randommusings09 on Threads

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

Review Index

To receive new review updates, follow me:

On BlueSky:

Follow @RandomMusings09 on BlueSky

On Threads:

Follow@randommusings09 on Threads

Persona 5.

Original Release: Playstation 3, Playstation 4, 2016. Version Reviewed: Playstation 4 "Royal" Version, 2019.


THE PLOT:

After being falsely accused of assault, a young man transfers to Tokyo's Shujin Academy for his year-long probation. He is instantly regarded as a troublemaker by the adults at his new school, and is warned by his wary guardian that he is exactly one problem away from being sent to juvenile detention.

After he discovers a new app on his phone, he is transported to an alternate reality: the cognitive "Palace" of volleyball coach Kamoshida, a former gold medalist who is physically and sexually abusing students. There, he and his new friend Ryuji meet Morgana - a strange being who appears to be a talking cat. Morgana informs them that they have the power to change the evil teacher's heart if they can battle their way through this cognitive world to the "treasure" that has corrupted his worldview.

With help from Ann, a student being pressured and harassed by Kamoshida, they succeed in this mission. But after seeing that their strange power can result in changes to corrupt adults, they decide to pursue other targets as "The Phantom Thieves" - attracting the attention of the authorities in the process!

Igor welcomes a new guest to the Velvet Room...

CHARACTERS:

As far back as the first game, the Persona series has benefited from likeable protagonists. Each new entry introduces a new set of characters whom you just plain enjoy spending time with. Persona 5 is no exception, with an ensemble of characters who slowly evolve from anime tropes into full-blooded human beings. This time, I ended up liking all the party members. Even the talking cat/mascot character, Morgana, manages to avoid being either overly cutesy or creepy (traps that rather firmly ensnared Persona 4's Teddie). The main character is perhaps a bit too much of a blank slate for my tastes, but the rest of the group makes up for it.

My pick for the game's strongest character, at least in the updated Persona 5 Royal, would be "Detective Prince" Goro Akechi, who is essentially this game's answer to Persona 4's popular Naoto, but with a couple twists thrown into the mix. Akechi suspects the main group from early on, and finds excuses to insinuate himself ever further into the protagonist's life. As we get to know him through his Social Link, however, he turns out to be very different than he first appears. Particularly strong is the scene in which he reveals his actual feelings in a well-written encounter which is superbly played by English language voice actor Robbie Daymond; in the space of one scene, all preconceptions about the character are upended. It should be noted, however, that much of Akechi's best material was apparently added for Royal, and that he was noticeably less well-received in the game's initial version.

The game's first real boss battle. 
Yes, this series is just as weird as ever.

GAMEPLAY:

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Persona 3 reinvented the series' format by splitting players' time between daily life, focused heavily on developing relationships with other characters, and dungeon crawling. Persona 4 refined this split, expanding daytime activities and making the dungeon crawling more varied and enjoyable.

Persona 5 moves even further with those improvements. The dungeons are now "Palaces," reflecting the mental state of each target. A corrupt painter's Palace, for example, is an art museum; a jaded prosecutor's, a rigged casino in which the only thing that matters is winning. Oh, and the demon negotiation that was a major part of the Playstation 1 Persona games? It's back, and I couldn't be happier about that.

If I have one quibble with the game play, it's the difficulty. Unfortunately, one area in which the PS1 titles have outstripped all of the modern Personas has been in difficulty balance, with the early games being neither too easy nor too hard; the modern Persona games have either been frustrating and arbitrary or ridiculously easy.  Persona 5 actually made me double-check that I wasn't accidentally playing on "Easy" mode! Only two boss battles provide a real challenge: one around the game's midpoint, one at the very end of Royal's new content.  Both of these were added for Royal, and they actually seem too difficult... mainly because their difficulty is so out-of-whack with the rest of the game!  One hopes they manage to balance it out a bit better come the next installment.

The second Palace: a corrupt artist's private museum.

THOUGHTS:

Persona 5 is a gorgeously designed, highly immersive experience. Save for the Persona series' usual "on rails" beginning (which is itself less tedious than the opening hours of its two predecessors), the entire package is designed to draw you into the game's world and make you want to keep playing to just one more save point, or one more social link, or...

So yes, as a game, Persona 5 is absolutely addictive. It is also unabashedly political. The main character is socially stigmatized by his unjust conviction, just the first of many broadsides the game aims at Japan's legal and political systems. The first villain is gym teacher/former Olympian Kamoshida, who is physically and sexually harassing students; the school's administration is aware, but is silently complicit because the man's profile boosts the school's athletics program. This is the game's most emotionally effective arc, because Kamoshida feels largely believable in his style of evil... and impression chillingly reinforced when a bit of research shows that he was based on Hajime Komura, a real-life coach whose abuse led to a pupil's suicide.

The game's ultimate villain is corrupt politician Masyoshi Shido, a career politican who sabotages the current government to advance his ambitions of becoming Prime Minister. Some US gamers became either upset or delighted when they decided the game was bashing Donald Trump. It almost certainly wasn't; Shido bears no resemblance to Trump in either speech patterns or background, and all the rest of the game's targets are entirely specific to Japan.  Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe - at the time of the game's release, in his third term in office - seems by far the most likely model for Shido. 

Tackling such material does result in a story that isn't nearly as light-hearted as Persona 4. Even so, the game retains a considerable sense of charm and humor, and never approaches the darkness of parts of Persona 3, let alone that of the PS1 entries. 

The game's weakest aspect is the overall conspiracy theory surrounding Shido. By the end of the main narrative, Persona 5 has made Shido responsible for more or less everything we've seen, attempting to connect him to all the various sub-villains. It breaks the game's internal credibility, and I would have preferred more of those secondary villains to have simply been abusing the system all on their own. Still, it ends with a pair of pretty decent boss fights and a nice overall wrap-up, leaving me with few serious complaints about the base game.

Oh, and the soundtrack is absolutely fantastic, to the point that I find myself seriously considering purchasing a video game soundtrack. The jazz/rock hybrid proves a perfect complement to both gameplay and visual style, with track ranging from stirring and exciting (Life Will Change) to mournful (Throw Away Your Mask).

Whisked from the streets of Tokyo to a literal Palace!

ROYAL ADDITIONS

Persona 5 Royal was the enhanced 2019 re-release of Persona 5. Basically, it's this game's Persona 3 FES or Persona 4 Golden: an enhanced experience with a boatload of additional content.

Royal is the only edition I've played.  Still, based on what I have read, most of the new content helps the game. Dungeons have been streamlined. The Batman-like grappling hook, which is frequently used to advance in Royal's dungeons, was evidently not part of the original release - and given how enjoyable and generally cool it is to use, that hook may in itself justify Royal's existence. A genuinely difficult boss battle was added to one dungeon, and Akechi's character was reinvented by restructuring and expanding his social link.

The most significant additions are two characters: School psychologist Maruki and honor's student/gymnast Kasumi. Their Social Links are basically required if you want to unlock the all-new "third semester," but this should not be seen as drudge work. Both characters are engaging, and I looked forward to my character's conversations with them.

My reaction is more mixed when it comes to the extra semester. It offers up an interesting story in itself, but by the time I was infiltrating the (very long) final palace, I couldn't quite suppress the sense that the game was insisting on continuing after the story had ended. In my opinion, this extra material (which is, in itself, quite good) would have benefited by being presented as a sequel campaign, much like Persona 3's The Answer was. By bolting it onto the main game, it just felt like extra innings.

The Phantom Thieves prepare for another infiltration.

OVERALL:

Persona 5 is yet another excellent entry in what has emerged as one of my favorite video game franchises. Given the capabilities of the Playstation 4 versus the Playstation 2 (the original home of Persona 3 and 4), it's no surprise that this is the most visually stylish entry to date; and for most of its 120+ hours, it is thoroughly addictive.

If pressed, I don't think it's quite as good as Persona 4, let alone the Persona 2 duology. There are a few story issues, with the conspiracy plot stretching a bit too thin, and I feel that a few of Royal's additions extended the narrative past its natural end point. Even so, Persona 5 is great fun, and all signs point to this 25 year old franchise still having a lot of life left in it.


Overall Rating: 8/10.

Previous Game: Persona 4 - Dancing All Night
Next Game: Persona 5 - Dancing in Starlight

Review Index

To receive new review updates, follow me:

On BlueSky:

Follow @RandomMusings09 on BlueSky

On Threads:

Follow@randommusings09 on Threads

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 Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth.

Original Release: Nintendo 3DS, 2014. Version Reviewed: Nintendo 3DS, 2014.


THE PLOT:

It's the week of the Culture Festival... in two time periods. In 2011, the members of The Investigation Team not-so-stoically endure the failure of their class's "Group Date Cafe." In 2009, the members of SEES mourn the cancellation of their festival due to a severe and unexpected typhoon. For both groups, in both time periods, the festival is an absolute disappointment.

Until they find themselves transported to an alternative Culture Festival, in a pocket dimension where time has no meaning. At first glance, all appears normal enough: A high school festival, with fried food and games. But behind the displays are labyrinths, which mysterious new arrivals Zen and Rei insist are dangerous.

Zen and Rei admit that they have no memory of a life before this bizarre festival. Zen has taken it on himself to act as the waifish Rei's protector, while she becomes enthusiastic at the idea of returning to the real world with the main characters.

But to return to reality, they must first overcome the labyrinths - which means overcoming the Shadows that lurk their floors, guarding precious secrets within!

A meeting that defies the laws of time...

CHARACTERS:

Persona Q brings together the full casts of Persona 3 and Persona 4. Something already done by the Arena games... but the team-up works better here. This game recognizes what those earlier ones didn't: That the two teams have very different dynamics. The Persona 4 group is made up of people who quickly become close friends who place inherent trust in each other. The Persona 3 group is united by a common goal, but is kept separate by secrets and individual agendas.

It is easy enough to tell which characters interested the game developers - simply by which characters most successfully come across as three-dimensional. In the Persona 4 route, supposed meathead Kanji recognizes that young Ken is troubled, and manages to reach out and bond with him while teaching the boy how to repair his shoelaces. In the Persona 3 route, Yukari observes the closeness among their newfound counterparts, which prompts her to push against Mitsuru's secretiveness.  In both routes, Rise and Fuuka bond over the plight of guiding the others in combat while not actually being able to directly help.

Unfortunately, not every character is as well treated. Akihiko's characterization follows all the worst tendencies of the Arena games, reducing him to a meathead bodybuilder with a protein fetish... which is basically completely unlike the intelligent, quietly resolved upperclassman from Persona 3. Persona 4's Chie is similarly reduced to an obsession with meat and training, and not much else. Finally, Teddie is just a bad running joke.  Now unlike Akihiko and Chie, I already hated Teddie in the main game, but I could at least see what the game developers were going for.  Here, he's almost exclusively a lech; and given the disdain with which the other characters treat him, it's a genuine mystery as to why they keep him around.

One of the game's many random encounters.

GAMEPLAY:

The gameplay is apparently lifted pretty directly from the popular Etrian Odyssey series. As you explore each labyrinth, you use the 3DS stylus to create a map on the bottom screen, dropping icons for doors, conveyor belts, and other notable features as you go. I expected to find this wearisome; instead, it became my favorite part of the game. The mapmaking is startlingly addictive, to the point where I occasionally felt annoyance when it was interrupted by combat or story scenes.

Combat is almost entirely through random encounters, which do borrow elements of the Persona combat system. Enemies have weaknesses, which can be exploited and can potentially result in them being knocked down. A successful enough turn can end with an All-Out-Attack, which is less devastating here than in the main Persona series, but can still greatly shorten boss battles.

In addition to random encounter and dungeon bosses, each labyrinth contains powerful enemies known as FOEs. Initially, you are best advised to avoid them. Later, there will be times when you will need to fight them (and times when it will just make traversing an area much easier if you fight them). As with normal enemies, exploiting weaknesses is key to defeating them - though in most cases, you will also want to apply various buffs, de-buffs, and other status effects to win.

The group encounters Zen and Rei,
who have lost their memories.

THOUGHTS:

Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth feels a lot more like a "proper" Persona game than the Arena spinoffs did. The gameplay, while far from exact, is similar enough to the main games to feel of a piece with them. The story is revealed in the course of explorations of increasingly convoluted labyrinths, and character interactions are both sprinkled throughout the story and made available outside the dungeons through "Strolls" (this game's equivalent of the main games' Social Links).

It is also a long game. I would argue that it ends up being slightly too long. The first three dungeons are sprightly and fun, each utilizing clever gimmicks to maintain interest. "Group Date Café" was my favorite of these, with your explorations and battles interrupted periodically by quizzes that will determine which of the characters is your "destined partner," with genuinely funny results (wisely, the game allows you to replay this mini-game to see what happens with different partners). The fourth dungeon, however - the "Inaba Pride Festival" - is visually uninteresting and takes far too long to fully explore; and its gimmick of unlocking doors with a lit torch quickly becomes tiresome.

The story is generally strong. The first half builds up an effective mystery. When the answers come, they fit the overall tone and style of the piece, and a combination of good writing and excellent voice acting grants some of the revelations genuine power. A bit of the heavy-handedness that plagued the Arena games creeps in near the end... but just as it starts to feel preachy, the game has the good sense to switch to a well-designed, multi-stage boss battle, which is followed by an enjoyably good-natured epilogue.

Indulge in some comically bizarre
matchmaking at "The Group Date Café."

OVERALL:

Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth is the first spinoff that truly feels like a Persona game. It's a game of two crossovers: narratively, by combining the Persona 3 and Persona 4 casts; and mechanically, by combining the gameplay of Persona and Etrian Odyssey. Both combinations work - and in fact, my enjoyment of the game's mapmaking has me now interested in the Etrian games, which never particularly attracted me before.

If it didn't get so bogged down during the Inaba Pride dungeon, I would rank this as at least an "8." Unfortunately, that dungeon stalls the game's momentum. Though the final dungeon was back to being visually interesting and mostly well-designed, I never felt as fully connected with Persona Q after the Inaba Pride stumble.

Still, this is a fine game, enjoyable both in story and gameplay terms. It's long - probably a little too long. But it's well worth spending time with.


Overall Rating: 7/10.

Previous Game: Persona 4 - Arena Ultimax
Next Game: Persona 4 - Dancing All Night

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