As one of the resident Persona fanboys on these here VGChartz, I have a confession to make: I don't particularly like the Persona spin-offs. I enjoyed the battle system of the Persona 4 Arena games, but I found the story of those games to be insufferable. I found Persona Q to be boring in every aspect. While I enjoyed the first anime series of Persona 4 due to its entertaining portrayal of Yu Narukami and the fact that it provided me with my Persona 4 fix in a condensed form, I found the Golden animation to be absolutely pointless. I have to admit that due to the difficulty in getting the Persona 3 movies at a reasonable price, I have been unable to watch the Persona 3 movies -- and yes, I am aware that the second movie is on Netflix, but I would like to watch the movies in order.
So, when Persona 4: Dancing All Night was announced. I audibly groaned (well, I groaned after I laughed my ass off at the initial trailer). This was supposed to be the shining example of Atlus milking a franchise to death. It was absolutely ridiculous -- it was a bastardization of the game and its characters and proof that Atlus didn't care about the artistic intregrity of its game. It was supposed to be a trainwreck. It was supposed to be.
Of course, I was more that pleasantly surprised to see that the game that supposed to be horrible turned out to be the best spin-off of the recent Persona games.
Gameplay and Controls:
I will admit that I am not particularly well verses in Japanese rhythm games, so if you are a veteran to these types of games, you may want to read what I have to say with a grain of salt. Prior to this game, the only rhythm games I was familiar with was Guitar Hero and about twenty or so hours of Osu! But, as an outsider to these types of games, I found the gameplay to be solid and enjoyable. It's very simple, inputs fly to the side and you have to press the corresponding button in time. The closer you get to the proper rhythm, the more points you get. One thing I noticed was that the game was extremely forgiving with regards to when you could press your buttons -- perhaps too forgiving. One thing that was problematic but fixable involved scratches in the game. To perform a scratch, you would have to flick one of your analog sticks, which was incredibly uncomfortable. However, in the options menu, you can set it so that the left and right shoulder buttons could be used instead of the analog stick. Using the left and right shoulder buttons should have been enabled from the beginning. This sort of problem isn't the end of the world, of course, but it is a slight annoyance that could potentially prevent a few newcomers from properly enjoying the game. Another problem I found came in the difficulty -- I found that there should have been a difficulty setting between normal and hard. I found that the easy and normal difficulties to be extremely easy, but the hard difficulty was a very sharp jump. Luckily, there are special items that serve to either increase or decrease the difficulty of the songs, and I found that some of these items helped ease my way into the game's hard difficulty. I have yet to try All Night difficulty, so I cannot comment on that.
Visuals:
The graphics are good and perfectly depict the Persona 4 cast in more modern graphics. The visuals in general capture that charmingly campy feel of the original Persona 4. Like in Persona 4: Golden, you are able to purchase a wide variety of costumes for your characters which range from the classic, to the skimpy, to the ridiculous -- so you can choose your preference. I usually went with random to try my luck. Each character has his or her own unique dance style that encapsulates the characters, so Naoto's is jazzy, Kanji's is aggressive, Teddie's is ridiculous, and Nanako's is adorable. Additionally, for their main outfits pop idol outfits, each character gets an outfit that is similar to their iconic Yasogami high school clothing, but modified slightly to seem more pop idol-y. It works well, with the exception of Rise's outfit which is just too gaudy and ridiculous. I understand that they wanted her to be an idol, but it doesn't work. Throughout the rest of the review, you will notice that one of my biggest gripes is that Rise sticks out like a sore thumb.
Sound:
Since this is a rhythm game, this is arguably the most important aspect of the game. The game offers about thirty tracks, which is fairly sizable for its $50 dollar price tag and for the fact that it comes with an extensive and well written story mode. That said, there are a LOT of remixes in the game, and when you consider the fact that the main theme Dance! is a remix of Pursuing My True Self, you will realize that there are even more remixes. That said, I am generally a fan of remixes, so I didn't mind. The tracks have a lot of diversity, ranging from J-Rock to J-Pop to electronica to dubstep to even jazz. This allows for a range of difficulty as some songs are extremely fast, some songs have a lot of double notes, and some songs are heavily syncopated. I also noted that the characters seemed to star in songs that exemplify their personality traits -- Naoto stars in more syncopated songs; Yukiko dances in slower songs; Kanji dances in more aggressive songs; and Nanako takes the stage in adorable songs (and of course, she dances in the Junes theme.) For some reason, Rise's songs tended to be the hardest for me, which was just another reason that I disliked her in the game.
The other aspect of the sound of the game comes from the voice acting -- and that was of course bittersweet for me. Since I have the America version, of course I played with the English dubs (which I would have anyway, because I prefer the English voices for Persona 4, but that's my personal preference). It was so strange when I realized that Yu, Yukiko, and Yosuke were the only characters to retain their original voice actors -- and when you consider that Yu was a silent protagonist originally, it really only left Yukiko and Yosuke and the untouched voices. That said, for the most part, the new voice actors were fire. Chie's second voice actor is arguably better than her original voice actor. Kanji and Teddie are virtually indestinguishable from their original voices. Naoto's new voice actor is more noticeablely different, but she manages to capture the feel of her character well. Of course, it's Rise's new voice actor that absolutely sticks out horribly. She sounds blunt and almost monotone and she fails to capture the cheery but manipulative tone Laura Bailey perfected. It's not only that, but Rise loses a lot of her mannerisms as well -- she never ends any of her sentences with 'yeah?' anymore, and she barely even hits on senpai. It was weird and it was wrong.
Story:
Since this a Persona game, it should come as no surprise that this game has a long and in-depth story mode. The story mode is approximately 10-15 hours. I took my time with the game, because I have a tendency to re-read lines a lot, but I assume most people would take significantly less time to beat the story mode of the game. The game's story mode takes place roughly two months after the Golden Ending of Persona 4: Golden. Throughout the game, you take control of either Yu Narukami, Rise Kujikawa, or Kanami Mashita as you investigate the mystery of the Midnight Stage which seems to be related with a great deal of coma cases. It's an interesting set up that resonates well with the original story. The story mode functions essentially as a visual novel with the occasional punctuation of a dance battle. As per usual with Persona games, the opening takes really, really long, but it sets up the story quite well. Throughout the story, you see quite a few familiar faces and several new characters as well. Inoue and Kanami Mashita, who had very small roles in the original Persona 4, see their roles heavily expanded in Dancing All Night.
I won't spoil the story, because it's quite good, but I will instead focus my critique on how it was presented. The worst part of the story happens when Rise and Yu Narukami split up into two teams about a quarter of the way into the campaign immediately after the incredibly long opening. It is here that the game becomes incredibly formulaic and it also tries hard to give character depth to four new characters in a very small amount of time, but generally fails at acheiving that. That said, upon getting through that part of the game, the story mode improves greatly. Upon taking control of Kanami Mashita, the game's tone more accurately reflects the tone of the original -- which is to say, and enjoyable contrast between a light-hearted romp and dark and involved mystery. If I were to provide a small additional complaint with the story mode, it would be that the game, despite being ridiculous in its premise, isn't particularly funny -- which is a shame, considering all the great comedic moments the original Persona 4 had. Overall, I enjoyed the story mode and it was a good follow-up to the original game.
Final Notes:
Persona 4: Dancing All Night was a surprise pleasure for me. It's a good rhythm game with an enjoyable story, and I would consider it to be a must play for fans of Persona 4. I have, so far, played about 35 hours of the game, and just managed to get the Platinum Trophy today -- and I still plan to continue to play the game, so it is definitely a great value for its cost. My only real quibbles with the game involve the weaker first half of the story mode and the general portrayal of Rise Kujikawa. Additionally, there is way too much DLC, which makes me fear how much I will spend in the coming weeks. Other than that, I had a blast.
Score: 8.7/10
Persona 4: Dancing All Night was released on September 29th for the NA region and November 6th for the PAL region, exclusively for the PlayStation Vita.
