Persona Dancing Games

How did we end up in a world where there are three of these games?

Seriously, a rhythm game based on a series of JRPGs that somehow got successful enough to spawn two sequels?  How did that happen?

So, you remember that time, years ago?  The Persona series was great, everybody loved the last two entries, but the series hadn’t seen anything new except for the somewhat related Catherine.  Sure, they had given an opaque announcement for Persona 5, but we didn’t know anything about it except for “You are slave.  Want emancipation?”  Then one day, bam!  A slew of new games incoming.  Not just more details on Persona 5, but there was an announcement for a Persona 4 fighting game!  Really?  And a gameplay crossover between Persona characters and the Etrian Odyssey engine.  Huh.  And a rhythm dancing game with a new story based on Persona 4.  Ooookay.

Those were some odd expansions.  The Persona series was very much a JRPG, and that genre doesn’t really have any natural overlap with others.  Sure, JRPG fans might well be fans of fighting games and what not, but there’s nothing that inherently makes a JRPG player more likely to get into those genres.  And yet, as time went on, and we got to see those games in action, well, things developed.  The fighting game turned out to be excellent, even by the genre’s standards.  The Etrian Odyssey mix?  Not so much.  So where did the rhythm game end up on that spectrum?

It’s good, but simple largely due to its delivery method.  There.  That’s the review.  Yeah, sorry, I spoiled that for you.  We’re not doing the traditional review here.   To be frank, you already know whether you want the game or not.  We’re just going to have some thoughts here.

Frankly, the Persona dancing games are about as good of rhythm games as you’re going to get on the controller.  It’s mechanically sounds, your beats are usually well-suited to the songs, and the gameplay is complicated enough to be involved without being so complex as to be overwhelming.  Like all good rhythm games, it’s easy to get into but there’s a high skill ceiling, and it feels so viscerally satisfying to be hitting a good run.

But, on the other hand, this is a genre that has come to be defined by its alternative control methods.  Your dance pads, your plastic instruments, your microphones, or even without the peripherals, your motion controls or your touch screens.  The Persona dancing games are played entirely with six buttons and a stick.  That makes them way more accessible, but also limits the sort of complexity you’ll see in them.

Persona’s music is great.  Really, one of the most distinctive parts of the games, and for really good reason.  And you get that fully delivered to you here.  Along with some remixes of the classic songs of… kind of mixed quality.  Some of them really do improve on the originals, while others, not so much.  You do get to see some Names in video game composition adding their talents into these, and they hit a good place, for me, more often than not.

The visuals are really interesting, although you’ll probably be paying more attention to the notes you have to hit than the dancers.  Everyone is mo-capped by a dancer in a different genre.  Most of them are rather distinct, and fit the character really well.  The historically prim and proper Haru Okumura does ballet, for example, while the rough and physically oriented Kanji is into a more wild take on locking, and the idol Rise dances just like an idol.  They’ll do all that in settings that either fall into the game’s story in Persona 4 Dancing or call back to distinct locations from the game for 3 and 5.  There have been plenty of times I’ve watched a replay just to see the dancing again.

The characters have always been one of the stronger parts of the Persona games, and one of the big draws with the Dancing games is they give you more time with them.  Persona 4 does so through its original story, while 3 and 5 don’t have a story of their own but have some more social link scenes with them to unlock.  I am impressed by how accurate their characterizations are, given that other side games tended to… let’s say… highlight certain aspects of certain characters to a degree beyond what they used to have in the source material.  It’s something I appreciated, but it really doesn’t go deep into the characters.  You don’t see them facing their personal challenges and growing as a person the way you do in the original games.  You might say that the Persona 3 and 5 Dancing games have a ‘plot’ of their own, but that’s really setting up for disappointment.  They have some animated excuses for why everyone’s found themselves in a dance party, but those are really better off ignored.  The more the game calls back to it, the more it just reminds you that this doesn’t make any sense, and then the game just gives up on it anyways at the end.  Persona 4 Dancing does have an original story, which I do have to give it props for, even if it’s just sorta… there.

As I said, you know if you want these games or not already.  These are total love letters to the Persona games.  If you’re a fan, and the music is already drawing you in with its siren’s call, then there you go.  If you’re not already into the original, these have nothing for you.  I really enjoyed my time with these games, because I both love Persona and really enjoy rhythm games.  If you’re not into either, this game is probably not for you.  Again, the rhythm gameplay is simple, but really satisfying, and the music and characters call back to the original games in a way that really tugs on that part of my heart that wants to marry Persona.  And the games are basically the same, so if you enjoy one, you’ll enjoy them all.

Well, mostly.  This is totally a meta thing, but the games do have a bit of a different feel on them.  Persona 4 Dancing All Night feels like it’s experimental, it’s trying a lot of new and bizarre things, and it’s made for the fun of it.  It was made in a time when this had to force it’s own way into the market.  Persona 3 and 5 Dancing came out years later.  They don’t try anything significant that’s not already done in Persona 4 Dancing.  And there’s really no reason they should be two seperate, full priced games.  They came out at the same time, and each seem to be lacking in the amount of content and creativity you’d expect in a $60 game that follows in the vein of something earlier in the franchise.  I still really enjoyed the games, but the latter two just came with the feeling that they were made because they wanted my money rather than because they wanted to deliver a good experience to me.  I have a few issues with tone, as well.  In Persona 4, you already had a pop star as a party member, so that was already established there, but Persona 3 had strong themes of death and trauma, and having that imported into a happy fun dance game left feelings a little off.  Persona 5 fared better, but it was still a little weird seeing the agoraphobic and generally scared of people Futaba exuberantly prancing around in a bikini. I still had a fantastic time with them, and fell so far back into my old OMG Persona All the Time fanhood that I’ve been motivated to re-pick up the old 90-hour RPGs yet again.   For a love letter game like this one, driving me to commit to replaying the originals means that it’s probably hitting right where it needs to.

I am Thou… The Persona Retrospective: Introduction

So you remember last time we did this whole retrospective thing, when we were writing essays on each game of the Saints Row series and then all of a sudden they decided to release the fourth game about the time we would have finished up?  Most people would probably just write that off as coincidence.  But if you’ve been reading my blog, you know that I am far from being most people.  After much consideration, I’ve been forced to come to the conclusion that I have magic powers.  If I write enough words about a series, it will put the arcane forces into motion and summon the next game into being.  It’s a heavy responsibility, but I’m going to use these powers for the good of everyone.  See, there’s one series that is truly among the best of its peers, yet hasn’t had a real sequel for half a decade.  I speak, of course, of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona.

You’ve probably heard of Japan.  If you haven’t, it’s that place where approximately 28% of weird on the internet comes from.  They’re very committed to their craft of making everything weird, and very little passes through their hands unscathed.  Give them pillows, they turn those into girlfriends.  Mention Mein Kampf to them, they’ll make it a manga.  Try to teach them about Jesus, they’ll turn him into a busty, scantily clad blonde woman who’s constantly the victim of sexual aggression.

You thought I was joking.

So I guess we should be glad that when introduced to the basics of Jungian psychology, they just ended up making a series of JRPGs out of them.

The Megami Tensei series is one of the longest running JRPG series there is, with the first game actually coming out a couple of months before the original Final Fantasy.  The series is known for several things, including its high degree of complexity and challenge, its heavy use of mythology and religion, and its high degree of focus on spin-offs in comparison to other series.

And it’s the last of those points that brings us to the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series.  One of Megaten’s first spinoffs, the series launched on the PS1 in 1996 and has been going strong since.  Probably intended as a more accessible gateway to the famously opaque main series, the Persona games certainly dial the challenge and complexity the series is famous for back quite a bit, ending up being merely really hard rather than Megaten’s standard controller-crunching difficulty.  In exchange, the Persona games are among the most character-driven and plot-focused of Megami Tensei’s offerings.  As the series go on, they only get better at this aspect, building up sprawling epics that absolutely will make you care about at least some of the characters on offer.

Both the gameplay and plots centers around the titular personas, the characteristics a person adopts to deal with others made manifest in the physical realm.  Every character in your party has formed their personas into some sort of god or mythical creature, and draws strength from them in addition to being able to summon them to deal with their enemies.  These personas are obtained through various means across the games, but they are the central pivot holding everything together.  Other bits of Jungian psychology, such as shadows and the collective unconscious, also get a fair bit of play throughout the series, but it is always the persona at front and center.

Battles are turn-based and often require quite a bit more thought than your standard JRPG.  Just hammering on the ‘fight’ button indiscriminately will get you nowhere.  Instead, you have to take advantage of the various strengths and weaknesses of yourself and your enemies to truly succeed.  The series has a heavy emphasis on dungeon crawling as well, with buildings twisting themselves into maze-like structures the likes of which would drive any engineer mad.  Resource management is also a central point of gameplay, moreso than most other JRPGs.

For the first three games, the Persona series is extremely experimental.  They’re constantly trying new things, including several that you’d be crazy to try to put into any serious game.  The experiments don’t always work out, but when they do, they work wonderfully.  In any case, playing these games gives you an experience that’s certainly unlike any other, and it’s honestly interesting to watch the series progress from being just a few alterations away from Shin Megami Tensei If… to being something so stridently different from any of the series’ other offerings.

The tone of the Persona games is a little more varied than the main series’ usual dour resolution.  In fact, this is one of the more optimistic series in Shin Megami Tensei canon, with your characters actively averting apocalypse rather than simply surviving and dealing with its aftermath.  That said, the series does take some really dark turns, moreso than many other JRPGs would dare.  Serious danger and death are always lurking in these games, but that does not mean there’s never any bits of levity.  In fact, some of the more memorable scenes from the series come from the characters just forgetting about the everpresent threats and just enjoying themselves for a while.

Just like last time around, we’ll be putting up a separate entry for each game.  These entries will contain a lot of words.  Hopefully, they’ll be good words, though.  We’ll be taking a look at every aspect of these games that my meager little brain can come up with.  And hopefully, I’ll develop a better understanding of them myself.  You can try to, reading over what I have to say about them.  Given the size of the series and the time it takes me to do these, it’ll likely take me a while to be complete, but I’m sure it’ll be a worthwhile journey.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some games to play.