Persona 4 Arena

[spatular]

so this is a fighting game based on the characters from persona 3/4, i don't play too many fighting games, although i enjoy the odd fight in the street, but i really like persona 4, so that's why i got it really.

i know very little about the technical aspects of fighting games..i did all the tutorial, there are only 4 buttons but you can press them in a massive variety of different ways, along with guages and other stuff, which has me a bit bewildered, and on normal mode i was doing pretty badly.

the story mode i was looking forward to for more persona based story action...there's massive amounts of text to read, which was half expected, a lot of it is probably to explain to people who haven't played a persona game before what the hell is going on, but its maybe a bit too much, and there's barely any fights - although i havent played much of it yet and i will stick at it.

anyway, ditched story mode for a bit to actually do some fighting in arcade mode and (after changing the difficulty to beginner and finding out that you can do streetfighter style moves) am enjoying it. it's fitting in reasonably well with my button mashing style.

the graphics are really good, the characters are very nicely animated sprites, and there's lots of crazy moves/effects which look cool, and as you'd expect the sound/music is great too. it really fits in well with the persona games too, with attacks/ailments/all out attacks/one more go/personas from the games all worked into the fighting.

anyone else playing this - what think you? it'd be interesting to hear from people who know things about fighting games. i mean i probably couldn't tell a rubbish fighting game from a great one tbh.

[HandsomeDead]

Bump!

I'm surprised there was a thread for this. I actually got this a while back and I've been dipping in and out of it when I felt like it.

Now, I certainly don't know too much about fighters but I think I can determine a good one from a bad one at least (most are pretty good since anyone still making fighters does tend to really care about them these days).

I'd say Persona 4 Arena is good. You have all that mobility that seem to be common with Arc System's fighters... or at least there is as much as there was in BlazBlue, the only other fighter I played from them, and only a little. So there is a lot of dashing, air dashing, moves that have a lot of distance, and all that. So it's a fighter where you don't find yourself stuck in a corner too often because of the amount of options you have.

There s also a useful noob combo where just hammering the square button (or X I suppose) will launch you into a simple but effective combo that ends with a special (which I also think was in BlazBlue).

But other than that it's you're usual quarter circles and combos like most fighters (though the characters do have a moveset quite different and requires a different approach)

There could be quite a few subtle differences but it does have a lot in common with BlazBlue, even to the point where I don't think I'd argue with anyone just saying it's a re-skin with Persona characters.

Usually a fighter's story isn't important, and it kinda isn't here, but being a Persona game does make me expect a bit more and it's both better than I expected and also pretty terrible.

It's bad just in how the story is structured and I was expecting it, due to it being the same with BlazBlue. You pick a character and go through the story from their perspective, then again with someone else and so on. But the problem is a bunch of the characters have some similar routes so go through the same story beats, and on top of that it's drawn out with needlessly long conversations and a lot of needless exposition. It's visual novel length stuff that just isn't required.

But if it was a lot leaner I think I would have genuinely enjoyed it. Not to spoil it (if anyone is that bothered) it's about a new character called Labrys who is an android, like Aigis from Persona 3, who goes through the whole 'am I alive?' thing. It's touched on in Persona 3, and a lot of sci-fi, but mixing that idea with the ideas of character development and personal shadows of Persona 4 (it takes place in the same TV world) it is a good flavoured take on that kind of story. But unfortunately it is far too over written.

And I know it's overwritten! I have over 70% of the story unlocked and two character's full story told (I'd guess that it took me over 30 hours, with maybe 30 minutes of it fighting).

But I guess I liked the characters and I liked how they would bump into some of the characters from Persona 3, even though they interacted in really predictable ways, it was still some fanboy tickling stuff, which is allowed sometimes; just sometimes.

And the worst thing is that the way it ends in the strands I have seen does make me interested in seeing where they go with the next one. I don't think I really want to buy another Arena game but I'm worried I might.

EDIT: whoops, went on much more than I intended.