Persona 4 Arena Ultimax Review

The Persona franchise is vast — so vast, in fact, that it can be difficult to keep up with. First, we have the main franchise and their expanded editions, like Persona 5 Royal. Then we have the action spin-offs, like Persona 5 Strikers and the rhythm game subseries, Dancing All Night. But did you know there was a Street Fighter style fighting game that came out in 2013? Like I said, it can be difficult to keep up with, but Persona 4 Arena Ultimax is here to give you a timely reminder.

Atlus has a history of working with the very best when it comes to the spin-offs, each of which tends to be a solid standalone game while offering something unique and new for dyed in the wool fans like yours truly. Strikers, for example, was done in collaboration with Omega Force — the minds behind Dynasty Warriors, and their expertise in the genre really shone through.

In this case, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax (and Persona 4 Arena before it) was created in collaboration with Arc System Works (ArcSys) — the minds behind Guilty Gear and BlazBlue, to name a few. Once again, the collaborator’s pedigree is on display in full force.

Weirdly, the area where Ultimax falls down isn’t the combat — it’s the storytelling and the perplexing lack of combat. I know this is baffling for a Persona game, so stay with me here…

A quick recap of the story so far: Persona 3 sees a group students in the town of Iwatodai who fight monsters that appear during the ‘Dark Hour’ — a mysterious time after midnight that most people are completely unaware of. Persona 4 investigates a series of murders in the town of Inaba, where another bunch of students discover the murders are committed in a dimension inside the TV, called the Midnight Channel.

These two games happen in the same world, and the characters discover each other in Persona 4 Arena in a fighting tournament held within the Midnight Channel — the protagonists of Persona 3 having gone to Inaba to track one of their Anti-Shadow weapons that has gone AWOL. A tournament ensues and everyone becomes friends.

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax takes place the very next day, and takes the idea one step further by asking what world-ending catastrophe would happen if the Midnight Channel and Dark Hour collided? The Persona 3 protagonists are captured and crucified, and their new buddies are sucked back into the fight to save them — but this time, there is a twist: the baddies from Arena and Persona 4 are both back…

So far, so interesting, right? Storytelling is always a strong point for the franchise, which is why it’s such a shame that the story here is all graphic novel with the occasional cutscene.

Once every 15 minutes or so, you’ll be thrown into a 1v1 fight to advance the story, which is a little jarring. If you don’t want to fight, you can (almost) always just put the game on auto-fight mode and leave the controller on the table. I say ‘almost’ because while this works for the most part, I tried this with the last boss and watches as I got my ass categorically handed to me.

It’s a shame because the story is genuinely interesting, and the fact that that the storytelling is split between the Persona 4 protagonists, with each character narrating a different chapter as you play (well, watch) the game is a nice touch.

Outside of the story, Ultimax is a solid fighting game — it looks, feels and sounds great, with the entirety voiced by the original voice actors. And if the idea of Teddie-ously clicking through the story (and its shameless bear-related puns) is offputting, you’ll be pleased to know the arcade mode is available from the start.

Each character feels well balanced and unique, though I certainly performed better with some than others. There’s a tutorial mode if you want to learn the ropes, but it’s one of those frustrating 70-step tutorials which covers the very basics of walking for the first 5 levels.

Getting onto combat, it’s got everything you’d expect: weak and strong attacks; weak and strong persona attacks; combos, throws and the kitchen sink. It’s basically exactly what you would picture if you said “Persona, but as a fighting game”.

So what about the RPG aspect of the franchise, I hear you ask? There’s a tower attack mode where you level up a given character as you win. From here, your character’s persona learns new abilities and you increase their stats as you see fit. This new release even throws in the DLC from the original Ultimax, telling the story from Adachi’s perspective.

• Coinsmart. Europe’s Best Bitcoin and Crypto Exchange.
• Platoblockchain. Web3 Metaverse Intelligence. Knowledge Amplified. FREE ACCESS.
• CryptoHawk. Altcoin Radar. Free Trial.
• Source: https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2022/05/02/persona-4-arena-ultimax-review/