By Jason Van Horn
My absolute favorite franchise is the Persona series of games (and by extension
the SMT games that spawned them). In fact, my love for the Persona series is so
deep that I've bought Persona 3 a total of three times now, would buy Persona 4
for a second time had I a PS Vita, have bought several figures from both Persona
3 and 4, and I've bought exclusive packs from Atlus just to get things like an
extra art book or a little stuffed Teddie. I love Persona 3 and 4 and their
wonderful characters and stories. When I learned of a fighting game featuring
characters from both games, I was excited and yet apprehensive about what the
final product might be like. As it turns out, I had the right to be, as it's a
mixed bag of a game that is sensational in some aspects, but a disappointment in
others.
The story of the game concerns itself with the main protagonist from Persona 4,
who is no longer the silent hero, and has even been given an official name now.
As Yu you'll head back to your home away from home of Persona 4 in order to
spend time with your friends, but find yourself getting swept away into the TV
realm once again, this time trying to solve the mystery of why you're being
forced to fight your friends, what's wrong with Teddie, and who is this
mysterious new girl you've never seen before?
Persona 4 Arena's story is most fully realized in the game's Story mode, which
has you taking on the role of a specific character and playing their story out
to completion to see what's up with this new mystery and what's been happening
since Persona 4 ended. As you advance and complete character stories, you'll
unlock additional characters to see things from their point-of-view. As I said,
I was a huge fan of Persona 3 and 4 because of their stories, but there they
were told in an engaging way, while in Persona 4 Arena the narrative is told
primarily through static text with music playing in the background or featuring
semi-static characters (though at least fully voiced by most of the same cast)
talking to one another. The narrative isn't interactive or cinematic in the
least, so it boils down to reading a book in order to learn of the group's
continuing adventures. I knew what to expect going into the game, but that
didn't prepare me for just how long these narrative moments would go on and how
little fighting there was to at least break-up the droll reading. I much prefer
the Persona 4 Arena story presented in the game's Arcade mode, as it not only
condenses the story down into more digestible chunks, but you get to do a lot of
fighting as well, which is something I expect to do in a fighting game. You'll
get a handful of cinematic moments with your character talking to those you're
fighting, but between that the rest of the story is firmly cemented in
additional post-fight screens and a cinematic ending (though the vagueness is a
turn-off). So the story isn't perfect and not ideal for those fans of the RPG,
but it's still admirably told and given a lot of detail considering fighting
games aren't known for their stories.
The thing I'm most impressed about is how the developers managed to cram so much
of the Persona world and flare into the fighting game mechanics and the
characters themselves. Each character has four primary attacks: strong and weak
character attacks and Persona attacks. Combat breaks down into learning how to
use not only your character and their Persona for the right situation, but
figuring out how to bridge one move into another for maximum damage. The system
plays out somewhat like tag fighting, as calling out your Persona has risks that
come with its rewards. If you try to use your Persona and they're hit by the
other player, they'll instantly disappear and stop their attack mid move; if
your Persona takes too many hits, your Persona will break and you'll find
yourself unable to call them out for an attack until a certain amount of time
has passed.
As you fight and are attacked, you'll build up both a Burst meter and an SP
meter, which is quite similar to the RPG. Burst is a way to break yourself out
of combos and give you a temporary buff, while SP is needed to not only use some
special attacks like those that a Persona would use, but SP is also needed in
order to modify a move into a more powerful version of the old one and to
unleash special skills and attacks; if you've played any fighting game of recent
the system will be one almost instantly familiar to you and will take very
little getting used to when playing. The game throws in other RPG game elements
into the fighter by way of familiar spells, music, stages, the All-Out attack
that has similar graphics to the one found in the RPGs, there are status
ailments that you can inflict on another player, and the characters retain their
idiosyncrasies as well.
The game's roster is quite small - only 13 characters - but they each control
different enough, have their own strengths and weaknesses and play styles, and
retain fan favorite elements from the RPGs. Yu is an all-around fighter, Yosuke
is quick and agile, Naoto is a master projectionist, others are more well-versed
in their Personas and magical abilities, while some like Kanji are the
hard-hitting grapplers of the bunch. The characters are balanced decently,
though there are some characters that are more powerful than others, such as
Kanji whose grapples are super effective and two basically ruins the game for
you and three will almost certainly cost you the round.
When it comes to a fighting game, ultimately you learn the ropes, get better,
and start hanging with the big boys in ranked, or you either push the game to
the side or only ever play it for its single-player narrative. While you can
become a good player at Persona 4 Arena, I don't see it making the fighting game
scene like other titles. Good players will learn all the ropes and match-ups and
how to pull-off impressive combos, but the game is too user friendly and takes
away some of the fun of the game by making it so easy to perform powerful combos
in the game. Combos should be about proper timing, correct inputs, and knowing
how moves flow from one to the next; in other words if a combo zaps you of a
chunk of your life, you'll know it's because the other person is better than you
and that's that. The problem is that Persona 4 Arena tries to be user friendly
to those who might never have played a fighter before, but in the process dumb
down the fighting so that it's too easy to spam damaging combos. I have no
problem with fighting games making it so there are some easy bread and butter
combos that are easy to pull-off, but Persona 4 Arena allows players to pull-off
damaging, hard to imagine combos by doing nothing more than hitting the
square-button over and over.
I have no problem either allowing players to use the auto-combo system outside
of multiplayer and if you're only playing against the computer, but the game's
online play (and thus its longevity) is marred by the fact that too many matches
result in players blocking, waiting for an opening, and then doing absolutely
nothing else than spamming square until a combo is done and then repeating the
process again. Yes, once you get skilled enough you'll be able to beat these
types of players with ease, but when you're just learning the ropes or getting
your feet wet in the online community, being able to counter square spamming
right off the bat isn't going to be an option. The network code itself is pretty
solid and I only encountered a little slowdown here and there, but beyond the
square spamming my only other online multiplayer complaint is that I don't think
there are enough online options to find the exact kind of match you're looking
for and the ranking system is off as I all too often find myself getting paired
against players who are way beyond my skill level. One online feature I do like
is the ability to save replays of matches, so you can go back and re-live a
close, barely won fight, or go back to analyze a fight to see what you did wrong
and see how you should've reacted instead.
Outside of the Story, Arcade, and Online modes, there's also a Lesson mode
(takes you step-by-step through every system in the game), Score Attack (fight
extremely hard CPU matches to get the best score and post them to see who the
best in the world is), Training mode (practice moves against a dummy), Challenge
mode (learn and try to pull-off various moves and combos for each character),
and Versus mode (two players locally or battles against the CPU for quick
fights). The Challenge mode isn't exactly a new idea, but I love one feature the
developers added to it that I've never personally seen before in another
Challenge mode. In a lot of games, I find myself repeating the same moves over
and over or struggling trying to figure out exactly how to do the actions in the
combo string or what the timing is; I often end up lucking into the new move or
have to go online to get an idea on what I'm supposed to do. In Persona 4 Arena,
however, if there's a challenge giving you problems, you can press a button to
watch the computer do the combo and see how it should properly be done. The game
still won't reward you with completing the challenge as you still have to do it,
but being able to see what a combo should look like helps immensely.
Graphically speaking Persona 4 Arena is a stunning 2D fighter, as the characters
and animations are bright, pop off the screen, and are silky smooth in their
fluidity. As you use Personas and unleash special moves, the screen dazzles with
special effects lighting and it's all sensory overload in the best possible way.
It's not just the graphics, however, as the game features some excellent music
(songs from previous games or tweaked in most cases) and the majority of the
vocal talent who originally recorded the voices for these characters return (or
are replaced by capable stunt voices) and further show why Atlus is one of the
best companies out there when it comes to excellent voice actors.
As a Persona fan, Persona 4 Arena was a game that would always find its way into
my collection, if even only for completion sake (though I like good fighting
games too, so win-win I guess). Persona 4 Arena isn't quite the game I was
hoping for, as the story of the game isn't told in a worthwhile way, and
automatic combos spoil what could've been a fighting game I'd invest hours into
in hopes of entering a tournament for it. As it stands, Persona 4 Arena is just
a good game; Persona fans (especially those who played Persona 4) will get more
from the game and appreciate it more than others, but for those looking for a
solid fighter with a story that is there (even if you have to work too hard to
learn it) then Persona 4 Arena isn't a bad game to go with.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
http://www.atlus.com/p4arena/ |
