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.