Developed by: Atlus
Published by: Atlus
Release Date: 12/4/2018
Imagine a world in which you and your high school friends have been whisked away into a strange world with creatures all around you ready to strike and your only way to fight back is through the power of dance, A natural Tuesday right? Well with the Persona Endless Night Collection you no longer need to be thrown into peril just to show off your flashy dance moves. If you’ve played the Persona series, then you know these characters, but this is a very different game. Instead of managing high school and dungeon crawling you have to nail the rhythm of each song well enough, so you don’t get kicked off stage and torn apart by shadow monsters.
Now I’m going to split this review into two parts because one of these games is relatively different than the other two.
Let’s start with Persona 4: Dancing All Night, the first venture into a dancing game for the series. I love the Persona series and fall into it mostly for its story, and boy oh boy this game is chock full of story. Much more than I was expecting. You jump back into the story of Yu and his friends from Inaba, and through some form of logic, they are performing with teen idol and best friend Rise Kujikawa at a festival. All of this is a backdrop for our group of loveable characters to jump back into the Midnight Channel and save some lives. But instead of grinding and fighting they need to Dance!
Persona 4 dancing all night
If you’re looking for a straight dancing game with no interruptions, you shouldn’t play the story. It takes a long time to get between levels. That being said if you love these characters as I do and what to hear most of the same voices again check it out. It also shows it’s age or former platform at least by some of the background images being slightly low quality but the character illustrations look as sharp as ever. It also has dialog choices but the amount to the same response either way. Your goal in this story is to save four teen idols from being trapped in the Shadow World much like the Persona 4 story, it works, and while the Idols aren’t as in-depth as a regular Persona game, they have their own cute quirks.
Now for Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight and Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight. These games being the more recent ones are built much differently than their Persona 4 counterpart. Instead of the standard 2D character illustrations, both games rely on 3D renders of each character. I wasn’t sure how to feel about it at first considering those illustrations are such a big part of the series and what helps make Persona 5 so stylish but they really work. It was nice to see the characters emote for a change. And instead of being reliant on the story to buffer each dance level these games space things out. And give you time in between story or no story at all if you prefer. Levels unlock as you play them and the more you accomplish, the more social events open up. It’s a nice albeit a short story that can be wrapped up fairly quickly, that being said It’s not nearly as in-depth as P4 dancing. I won’t say how but P5 and P3 dancing are connected in a nice way that makes the events of the game feel more earned then initially believed, at first glance, it’s just a dancing game for the sake of dancing but the more you dig It spans a nice plot that fits the Persona story.
Persona 3 dancing in moonlight
Just like in any rhythm game, you need to hit buttons to match the prompts on screen, but this one is different than any I’ve seen before. The X, Circle, and Triangle function as the right-hand side of the screen and your D-pad functions as the left-hand side. Notes will fly by, and you need to hit the correct button as they pass, Now that sounds relatively standard it’s just interesting the way it’s implemented not using any other part of the controller or the way they appear on the screen. Also, notes on screen don’t always correspond to notes in the songs, Most of the time they do but It doesn’t feel like a consistent rhythm sometimes.
Persona 5 dancing in starlight
The biggest flaw of these games may just come down to Its song selection. Now the Persona series has some great music but a lot of it sounds the same and playing a remix of a well-known song on a new map with a different character doesn’t go as far as a new and different song would go. Obviously not all the characters are in this game either, as enjoyable as Sojiro dancing would be It makes sense for story to have a limited roster.
Ultimately the two new games bost great looking characters and some cool customizations and Persona 4: Dancing All Night should strike a chord with anyone who’s a fan of P4. Other than it’s limited song range this collection of rhythm games is certainly worth any Persona fans time.
