Got the platinum but skipped most of the story. The problem is that making all P4 spin-offs as VN with little to do beside choices and gameplay (because that's what P4A+U did as well) can potentially be both interesting as much as turn-offs.
Core gameplay is fine, just a good enough rhythm game.
Core gameplay is fine, just a good enough rhythm game.
Actually had a story and it was pretty interesting. They definitely put the most effort into this dancing game than the other ones.
Definitely the best of the Persona Dancing game since it's actually a real game but it's still a shitty rhythm game.
É o melhor entre os 3 dancing
I picked up this game thinking it would be similar to the other persona dancing titles, light on story, high on fun and good music.
And, this game has all that in spades. Arguably more so than the games that follow it. The gameplay is fun, the remixes are genuine improvements over the originals, which is something I feel 3 and 5 (especially 5) dancing lacked.
But, to my surprise, this game ALSO has a very in depth and genuinely compelling story mode ❓ Yeah, persona 4 DANCING has a campaign. It’s pretty meaty too, it took me about 20 hours to finish it all.
As for the stuff I didn’t care so much for, only one thing really comes to mind. The story mode is permanently locked at “normal” or “easy” difficulty, and you’re unable to adjust the note speed or modify the difficulty in any way. I’m sure newcomers to this genre wouldn’t mind, and maybe if I did the story mode first I also wouldn’t have minded as much. But the whiplash going from hard difficulty with max note speed to snail’s pace tracks on normal made it difficult to enjoy the gameplay, to be honest. Furthermore, being that I played the PS4 version I found the timing windows on the notes to be difficult to adjust to. I suspect this is because the game was originally on vita, so the increase in resolution distorted them slightly. Either way, these are minor problems in the grand scheme of things.
As far as persona spin-offs go, this trumps 3 and 5 dancing easily, but I think it has much less to offer than something like Persona 5 Strikers or the Persona Q duology. Even so, it’s a great standalone game and was much better than I expected. The gameplay is exciting and highly replayable, the campaign is engaging and even has some of the mystery elements that made the original game so great. I (surprisingly) would highly recommend this game to any fans of Persona 4. 3.5/5
And, this game has all that in spades. Arguably more so than the games that follow it. The gameplay is fun, the remixes are genuine improvements over the originals, which is something I feel 3 and 5 (especially 5) dancing lacked.
But, to my surprise, this game ALSO has a very in depth and genuinely compelling story mode ❓ Yeah, persona 4 DANCING has a campaign. It’s pretty meaty too, it took me about 20 hours to finish it all.
As for the stuff I didn’t care so much for, only one thing really comes to mind. The story mode is permanently locked at “normal” or “easy” difficulty, and you’re unable to adjust the note speed or modify the difficulty in any way. I’m sure newcomers to this genre wouldn’t mind, and maybe if I did the story mode first I also wouldn’t have minded as much. But the whiplash going from hard difficulty with max note speed to snail’s pace tracks on normal made it difficult to enjoy the gameplay, to be honest. Furthermore, being that I played the PS4 version I found the timing windows on the notes to be difficult to adjust to. I suspect this is because the game was originally on vita, so the increase in resolution distorted them slightly. Either way, these are minor problems in the grand scheme of things.
As far as persona spin-offs go, this trumps 3 and 5 dancing easily, but I think it has much less to offer than something like Persona 5 Strikers or the Persona Q duology. Even so, it’s a great standalone game and was much better than I expected. The gameplay is exciting and highly replayable, the campaign is engaging and even has some of the mystery elements that made the original game so great. I (surprisingly) would highly recommend this game to any fans of Persona 4. 3.5/5
Decent story, peak songs, some meh remixes.
Better music than P5 but the story is way too long and not very good
Started ~10:50pm ET.
Moi qui m'attendais à être mauvais au rythm game mais à kiffer les musiques... j'ai eu exactement ce que je voulais !
Toute l'histoire est un peu trop verbeuse en revanche (en même temps, c'est Persona), mais c'était vachement cool à découvrir
Toute l'histoire est un peu trop verbeuse en revanche (en même temps, c'est Persona), mais c'était vachement cool à découvrir
Skipping all cutscenes like nature intended should have made this a slam dunk, but we've got a new problem now: Someone did not think this port through, and going from itty-bitty handheld to massive TV with no real adjustments was frankly horrendous. The game is still fun, but if your screen is bigger than the devs anticipated, prepare for frequent frustration.
specialist.
There aren't enough songs. That's what sticks out once you clear the story and move onto Free Dance. Some of the choreography is weird but I'm not a dancing guy and your eyes are drawn away from it by the UI.
Story is bad, you can see why the later dancing games dropped the idea like a stone.
Story is bad, you can see why the later dancing games dropped the idea like a stone.
Samba de Amigo but mid
I have a light history with rhythm games, mostly in the form of genre hybrids like Metal: Hellsinger, Cadence of Hyrule, and Hi-Fi Rush. I do generally enjoy rhythm gameplay, and I very much enjoy Persona music, so I figured a game centered entirely on that would be an easy win. I did not entirely know what I was getting into with this one.
The biggest thing I didn’t expect was the story. There’s a LOT more than I expected. Taking place after the events of P4, the gang gets back together to perform in a music festival at the request of their resident idol, Rise. Naturally after they get there a group of meat themed idols that were meant to perform get kidnapped by supernatural forces and the Investigation Team is back at it to investigate and rescue them.
I was NOT expecting a proper Persona story here at all, but it very much felt like one. I mean the story starts with a little girl seeing her favorite idol committing suicide, so there ya go. Deeper themes, such as burying one’s own personality to appease others and depression are touched upon, as are the typical cheesy stuff like believing in oneself and the power of friendship. While not nearly on the scope of the game from which it’s spun off, it tells a deeper story than I’d expect, which would be great if not for its presentation.
There is a LOT of exposition and dialog, told through entirely static character portraits and textboxes. It is a slog to get through all of it, which is unfortunate given that I broadly like the story and characters. Similarly letting it down are the voice performances. I can’t explain why, but I never cared for Chie’s voice after the original P4, and Rise in particular sounds like she’s phoning it in. I know this is a portable rhythm spinoff of a series that doesn’t tend to have a super high budget regardless, but presentation does matter. If you’re trying to tell an involved story, especially in a genre not known for it, there should be at least something to look at while going through so much dialog.
Enough of that, you play rhythm games for the gameplay and music and it’s…interesting here.
As a song progresses there’s a circular border with six nodes around the screen, three on the left and right, that notes fly to from the center. The more accurately you time a note reaching one of the nodes the better your score. There are some notes you must hold for a time, others you have to hit simultaneously, and optional notes with a different input for bonus points. Some of the optional notes are special, where hitting them activates Fever mode, where your main dancer has a partner join for a bit with a harder set of notes to hit for more points. Mistime too many notes, you lose. Simple stuff.
There’s two modes of play, story mode and free play. Story mode has you go through a set order of tracks in a set difficulty, with cutscenes and dialog in between. In free play, various modifiers can be used to make songs easier or harder, such as making timing more forgiving or harsher, having notes fly faster or slower, fading them into view or making them outright invisible. All of that, plus several difficulty modes, impact your score. The better the score and thus rating, the more currency you get after the song which can be used to purchase those modifiers as well as cosmetics for your dancers. It all works well to incentivize you to master the songs and shoot for high ranks, and it’s satisfying ending a song without missing any notes.
That’s all well and good, but I personally feel these games are harder than other rhythm games I’ve played, and it all comes to that border. There’s a reason I couldn’t keep up with the songs past Normal difficulty. The border being around the screen means your eyes have to watch and travel around essentially the entire tv screen at all times, as opposed to most rhythm games generally only forcing you to watch over a relatively confined area. In addition, there’s also the matter of the dancing going on in center screen, which has tons of colors popping all over the place. Fun to look at, less fun when notes blend into the background without any options to alter the color of the notes or border. I feel like these issues were likely less prevalent with the game’s original hardware, it’s easier for your eyes to track everything happening on a portable screen, but it’s a lot to manage on a larger screen.
Unfortunately for a rhythm game, I’d probably say the music is the most disappointing part. Not including DLC both paid and free (MAN Atlus likes making some much stupid stuff as paid DLC btw), there are 27 tracks, the vast majority of which are remixes spanning the original P4 and its rerelease Persona 4 Golden, as well as spin-offs such as Persona 4 Arena and Persona Q. Not a particularly impressive number as is, but made even worse by the fact that there’s actually only 18 unique tracks, as the remaining of remixes of some of those, with one track even getting two remixes! With Persona 4 alone having 52 tracks, which doesn’t include Golden or spinoffs from P4, I don’t feel like it's unreasonable to have expected more. Additionally, while I understand that not all of P4’s tracks are exactly dance tracks, and the remixes are uniformly bad per say, I like P4’s music, so I would’ve liked even just the option to have the original versions of all tracks here.
I did end up enjoying my time with the game overall, but it’s not as easy a recommendation as I’d hoped. It was really nice spending more time with the Investigation Team, the dancing is fun to watch at least, and the gameplay is still enjoyable. But between a painfully presented story, aspects of gameplay better suited to other hardware, and a small, mediocre track list, I will say it’s not nearly as compelling as it could’ve been.
The biggest thing I didn’t expect was the story. There’s a LOT more than I expected. Taking place after the events of P4, the gang gets back together to perform in a music festival at the request of their resident idol, Rise. Naturally after they get there a group of meat themed idols that were meant to perform get kidnapped by supernatural forces and the Investigation Team is back at it to investigate and rescue them.
I was NOT expecting a proper Persona story here at all, but it very much felt like one. I mean the story starts with a little girl seeing her favorite idol committing suicide, so there ya go. Deeper themes, such as burying one’s own personality to appease others and depression are touched upon, as are the typical cheesy stuff like believing in oneself and the power of friendship. While not nearly on the scope of the game from which it’s spun off, it tells a deeper story than I’d expect, which would be great if not for its presentation.
There is a LOT of exposition and dialog, told through entirely static character portraits and textboxes. It is a slog to get through all of it, which is unfortunate given that I broadly like the story and characters. Similarly letting it down are the voice performances. I can’t explain why, but I never cared for Chie’s voice after the original P4, and Rise in particular sounds like she’s phoning it in. I know this is a portable rhythm spinoff of a series that doesn’t tend to have a super high budget regardless, but presentation does matter. If you’re trying to tell an involved story, especially in a genre not known for it, there should be at least something to look at while going through so much dialog.
Enough of that, you play rhythm games for the gameplay and music and it’s…interesting here.
As a song progresses there’s a circular border with six nodes around the screen, three on the left and right, that notes fly to from the center. The more accurately you time a note reaching one of the nodes the better your score. There are some notes you must hold for a time, others you have to hit simultaneously, and optional notes with a different input for bonus points. Some of the optional notes are special, where hitting them activates Fever mode, where your main dancer has a partner join for a bit with a harder set of notes to hit for more points. Mistime too many notes, you lose. Simple stuff.
There’s two modes of play, story mode and free play. Story mode has you go through a set order of tracks in a set difficulty, with cutscenes and dialog in between. In free play, various modifiers can be used to make songs easier or harder, such as making timing more forgiving or harsher, having notes fly faster or slower, fading them into view or making them outright invisible. All of that, plus several difficulty modes, impact your score. The better the score and thus rating, the more currency you get after the song which can be used to purchase those modifiers as well as cosmetics for your dancers. It all works well to incentivize you to master the songs and shoot for high ranks, and it’s satisfying ending a song without missing any notes.
That’s all well and good, but I personally feel these games are harder than other rhythm games I’ve played, and it all comes to that border. There’s a reason I couldn’t keep up with the songs past Normal difficulty. The border being around the screen means your eyes have to watch and travel around essentially the entire tv screen at all times, as opposed to most rhythm games generally only forcing you to watch over a relatively confined area. In addition, there’s also the matter of the dancing going on in center screen, which has tons of colors popping all over the place. Fun to look at, less fun when notes blend into the background without any options to alter the color of the notes or border. I feel like these issues were likely less prevalent with the game’s original hardware, it’s easier for your eyes to track everything happening on a portable screen, but it’s a lot to manage on a larger screen.
Unfortunately for a rhythm game, I’d probably say the music is the most disappointing part. Not including DLC both paid and free (MAN Atlus likes making some much stupid stuff as paid DLC btw), there are 27 tracks, the vast majority of which are remixes spanning the original P4 and its rerelease Persona 4 Golden, as well as spin-offs such as Persona 4 Arena and Persona Q. Not a particularly impressive number as is, but made even worse by the fact that there’s actually only 18 unique tracks, as the remaining of remixes of some of those, with one track even getting two remixes! With Persona 4 alone having 52 tracks, which doesn’t include Golden or spinoffs from P4, I don’t feel like it's unreasonable to have expected more. Additionally, while I understand that not all of P4’s tracks are exactly dance tracks, and the remixes are uniformly bad per say, I like P4’s music, so I would’ve liked even just the option to have the original versions of all tracks here.
I did end up enjoying my time with the game overall, but it’s not as easy a recommendation as I’d hoped. It was really nice spending more time with the Investigation Team, the dancing is fun to watch at least, and the gameplay is still enjoyable. But between a painfully presented story, aspects of gameplay better suited to other hardware, and a small, mediocre track list, I will say it’s not nearly as compelling as it could’ve been.
I'll be honest - if you're playing this game on a bigger screen, then you're at a disadvantage. This was probably one of the few rhythm games I played where I legitimately had to get used to how the notes appeared, since the basic UI is far too spread out to properly gauge everything at once. Get used to moving your eyes around in main gameplay. It feels awkward at first, but once you get used to it, it doesn't become too difficult a task.
A lot of people will remember this game for the Story Mode, which I can't blame them for. A lot of it is a repetitive bloated mess of the same rescue stories for a group of idols, and had admittedly only gotten interesting for once when the game at one point left the main cast to focus on Nanako and Kanami.
Actually, speaking of - it is nice to see Kanami in the flesh, who used to only be mentioned by name in the original P4. She adds a lot to the story, and I daresay she was what made the story interesting to begin with had it not been for the filler.
The songs, interactions, and even choreography in the game are all charming. The modifiers are also a welcome addition, since they easily allow for someone new to rhythm games to get into harder difficulties without pushing them out of their comfort zones, so long as they're willing to sacrifice a bit of lost change and score at the end of it all. Need I also mention the prospect of an easy Platinum Trophy this game poses? It took me a week's worth of days to get mine, and I had a blast doing it.
This next outing by the Investigation Team is a strange one. It embraces all that is weird about it and essentially uses it as fuel to blatantly add dancing and music at every corner. Normally, this would be horrendously stupid and obscenely strange a thing to do from a series as tonally serious as Persona and SMT - but this time: It gave us Nanako singing to the Junes theme, so I think we should all collectively clap at ATLUS for their almost heavenly gift.
A lot of people will remember this game for the Story Mode, which I can't blame them for. A lot of it is a repetitive bloated mess of the same rescue stories for a group of idols, and had admittedly only gotten interesting for once when the game at one point left the main cast to focus on Nanako and Kanami.
Actually, speaking of - it is nice to see Kanami in the flesh, who used to only be mentioned by name in the original P4. She adds a lot to the story, and I daresay she was what made the story interesting to begin with had it not been for the filler.
The songs, interactions, and even choreography in the game are all charming. The modifiers are also a welcome addition, since they easily allow for someone new to rhythm games to get into harder difficulties without pushing them out of their comfort zones, so long as they're willing to sacrifice a bit of lost change and score at the end of it all. Need I also mention the prospect of an easy Platinum Trophy this game poses? It took me a week's worth of days to get mine, and I had a blast doing it.
This next outing by the Investigation Team is a strange one. It embraces all that is weird about it and essentially uses it as fuel to blatantly add dancing and music at every corner. Normally, this would be horrendously stupid and obscenely strange a thing to do from a series as tonally serious as Persona and SMT - but this time: It gave us Nanako singing to the Junes theme, so I think we should all collectively clap at ATLUS for their almost heavenly gift.
hip wiggle
Peak Persona dancing game but an average rhythm game. Yet when I see Yosuke dancing I kneel
Only good persona game for me. Just the soundtrack. The only best part for me in persona. (I guess there is a story too but idc about persona's writing)
It's a rythym game where you need to perfect your timing, but nicely added dancing animations and fun remixed songs adds to the enjoyment as well
Except the de de de mouse remix of shadow world. It's so bad that I lost the ability to hear. It's so bad that I just removed an 2 stars for it... It's so bad that... you know what, hear it yourself. Here it is https://youtu.be/FSv-IYM7otQ?feature=shared
But rest of the remixes are nice. So yeah, it's a nice enough game to play couple of musics, get energized and then continue your life.
I can't talk about rest of the games in the collection tho, because I haven't tried their remixes that much(p3 and p5)
It's a rythym game where you need to perfect your timing, but nicely added dancing animations and fun remixed songs adds to the enjoyment as well
Except the de de de mouse remix of shadow world. It's so bad that I lost the ability to hear. It's so bad that I just removed an 2 stars for it... It's so bad that... you know what, hear it yourself. Here it is https://youtu.be/FSv-IYM7otQ?feature=shared
But rest of the remixes are nice. So yeah, it's a nice enough game to play couple of musics, get energized and then continue your life.
I can't talk about rest of the games in the collection tho, because I haven't tried their remixes that much(p3 and p5)
This review contains spoilers
Acho que esse jogo é um adicional sensacional para quem gosta dos personagens de persona 4.
Além de ter um tempo extra com aqueles que ja gostava, tive um apreço maior pela Rise (que nesse jogo consegue largar a sua personalidade rasa e adere a uma mais agradável que não se baseia somente na inconveniência e ciumes descabido) e é sensacional ver um protagonista FALAR e ter uma personalidade bacana, não somente um papelão com respostas genéricas (eu amo o joker, mas vamos admitir, o Yu é bem superior)
Em relação aos personagens novos, não tenho reclamações, tenho certo desgosto pelo design da Kanami (mas somente ele também) e devo admitir q a Ochimizu é provavelmente a personagem feminina com o design que mais me agradou (romanticamente, duh) até agora. Me deixa possessa ela não ser uma personagem de persona 5, já q se encaixaria muito bem, até mesmo um design alternativo para a Sae talvez. De toda forma, todos os personagens introduzidos foram um adicional super legal, o jogo tem uma história interessante, momentos engraçados e um tópico legal a ser debatido. Me surpreende ser da mesma temática e franquia do Dancing in Starlight
Além de ter um tempo extra com aqueles que ja gostava, tive um apreço maior pela Rise (que nesse jogo consegue largar a sua personalidade rasa e adere a uma mais agradável que não se baseia somente na inconveniência e ciumes descabido) e é sensacional ver um protagonista FALAR e ter uma personalidade bacana, não somente um papelão com respostas genéricas (eu amo o joker, mas vamos admitir, o Yu é bem superior)
Em relação aos personagens novos, não tenho reclamações, tenho certo desgosto pelo design da Kanami (mas somente ele também) e devo admitir q a Ochimizu é provavelmente a personagem feminina com o design que mais me agradou (romanticamente, duh) até agora. Me deixa possessa ela não ser uma personagem de persona 5, já q se encaixaria muito bem, até mesmo um design alternativo para a Sae talvez. De toda forma, todos os personagens introduzidos foram um adicional super legal, o jogo tem uma história interessante, momentos engraçados e um tópico legal a ser debatido. Me surpreende ser da mesma temática e franquia do Dancing in Starlight
See now THIS is how you do a persona cash grab babybeeeee
eu sou o melhor jogador desse game nao ironicamente
It hurts my eyes like no other game has done before
yes it has the most content but what if I just disliked all of it?
Great game if you skip the cutscenes and hate yourself
The story is truly fucking abysmal but come post-game this didn't leave my Vita for actual years, so fair's fair.
peak
Played through the whole story in a plane ride to hawaii, skipped through every cutscene cause I'm not here for story, I'm here for gameplay.
[Ref Played 2023] I'd recommend to fans of Persona 4 with easy access to the game or who already like rhythm games
Pros: Just a bit of extra silly story with the Persona 4 cast, makes for funny gifs, the music works well in this context and the game is fun in a silly kind of way
Cons: The plot is kinda batshit even on Persona spinoff standards, cutscene quality is kinda jank compared to the gameplay sequences
Pros: Just a bit of extra silly story with the Persona 4 cast, makes for funny gifs, the music works well in this context and the game is fun in a silly kind of way
Cons: The plot is kinda batshit even on Persona spinoff standards, cutscene quality is kinda jank compared to the gameplay sequences
Ooooh that music remixes are so damn GOOD.
Jumping back into the Persona 4 world with its charming cast of characters was delightful. Has an incredible soundtrack with some awesome remixes too.
I mean, listen to this fire remix and get lost in Elvis Teddie's dance choreography!
That's one thing that probably is downplayed the most in this trilogy of games too, but I must emphasize that the dance choreography in all of these 3 Persona games is really well done...
One only needs to watch someone take the dances from the games, and replicate them in real life, while cosplaying as the characters, to really appreciate it... and boy do they fit each character perfectly. And I happened to find a YouTuber that demonstrated that (see below) as I got lost in their videos:
CystAAHHL YouTuber - Persona Dancing videos
Dance with Nanako cover - my personal favorite from her list and the most adorable one that she performed... but saying that, her entire playlist is pretty damn incredible, even coming from a "non-dancer". I can appreciate her talent and dedication to the cosplay craft.
But anyways, getting back on track - this is easily the best of the Persona Dancing games, even if only because it has a legitimate visual novel / story mode.
I mean, listen to this fire remix and get lost in Elvis Teddie's dance choreography!
That's one thing that probably is downplayed the most in this trilogy of games too, but I must emphasize that the dance choreography in all of these 3 Persona games is really well done...
One only needs to watch someone take the dances from the games, and replicate them in real life, while cosplaying as the characters, to really appreciate it... and boy do they fit each character perfectly. And I happened to find a YouTuber that demonstrated that (see below) as I got lost in their videos:
CystAAHHL YouTuber - Persona Dancing videos
Dance with Nanako cover - my personal favorite from her list and the most adorable one that she performed... but saying that, her entire playlist is pretty damn incredible, even coming from a "non-dancer". I can appreciate her talent and dedication to the cosplay craft.
But anyways, getting back on track - this is easily the best of the Persona Dancing games, even if only because it has a legitimate visual novel / story mode.