Dancing All... Morning? - Persona 4: Dancing All Night

Hello beautiful people of the Internet! And not so beautiful ones... hehe. Put on your dancing shoes because it's time to- Wait a second Ren! What the hell is this!? Huh? Uhm... It's our blog Sin... you know, the one where we review games on a Friday... No no no no no Ren not that! I mean why the hell are we doing P4D AGAIN!? We already covered it once! Yes Sin, but just one thing... What are the two games we've been playing this week called again? ...P4D and Tales of Zestiria... Games we briefly covered in that previews post... Yayyy that's right, good girl you can have a treat later. Wait WHAT!? Okay so it's finally time to take a more in depth look at the PSVita rhythm game Persona 4: Dancing All Night! (Ren you are SUCH an asshole.)

P4D is yet another spinoff title from the increasingly popular Persona franchise by Atlus. Set after the events of Persona 4 it sees the Investigation team get dragged into a new case where a 'cursed' video that plays on a certain website at midnight is taking people to the 'other side'. It's a very Persona-esque plot, filled with themes of bonds and relationships. While the plot at it's heart is a good concept, it has a disproportionately long build up into a series of 4 sections taking place in the 'other side' (The Midnight Stage) which all feel extremely repetitive as they take the same structure with all of the kidnapped victims. There's a story that runs alongside the Midnight Stage segments that is a breath of fresh air to the story, showing the perspective of the outside investigation. That's all well and good but at the end of the day, there's always a kind of deja-vu about the story, as similar things are said and obvious points are raised throughout a very simple and linear storyline.

Featuring brand new and totally not extremely steriotypical and predictable new characters!

P4D is a very short game, reading all the dialogue and completing the songs first time will take no more than ten hours, and with a total song list of 29 songs (excluding paid DLC), a number of which are just remixes of the same song, leaving a track list that is disappointingly small compared to most rhythm titles, and is only barely if at all made up for by the quality of the music. Rest assured though, the music is quality, and the notes fit perfectly with the tunes as you would expect from a good rhythm game.

The storyline may not be anything special, but the fact there is a story is more of a bonus than anything, as it's not a common feature of the rhythm genre. We should be focusing on the actual rhythm game parts, which is a lot better than we initially thought through our breif encounter with the game way back when. Though the areas to hit the notes are still ways apart on the screen, they rotate round in a logical order so you can always look to see where the next note is coming from, it makes the game a lot easier to follow than before. If you're a real sadist like Sin (Hey.) though, you can get various challenge items that will increase your score, such as one that makes notes appear from random directions, and one that slows them down so much it's literally painful painful to play. The challenge items aren't anything new for a rhythm game but they still turn out pretty unique which is a plus.

The level of cute added by Nanako's dances is a really neat addition to the game
Oh what, so you're a pedophile as well as a pervert?
Uhm... I'm neither???

Something we didn't realize last time is that aside from the regular press button notes that fly out from the center of the screen, there are also ring notes (or 'scratches') which you hit by moving one of the analogue sticks as it hits the outer ring. The rings are deceptively hard to hit, while they may be very lenient on timings, moving from the buttons to the stick in a short enough space of time to keep a combo going is surprisingly tough when notes are closer together. But hey, you know even the game's developers thought they were too tough, since missing the ring notes won't break your combo, or deduct from the horrendous way the game determines whether you've beaten a song.

In case you missed our last coverage of this title, the game uses a scale representing the moods of the 'audience' you're performing to. Ranging from red, to yellow to white to green to rainbow, anything below the latter two levels will be a failed song. While generally something like that isn't an issue the way you have to climb back up levels is very unforgiving (at least on later difficulties) and for every note missed you'll find yourself needing to hit 25 or even 50 to get back up there. Don't get us wrong, these songs have a deceptively high number of notes, but when you miss a string of notes right at the end of a flawless song to not only lose that full combo, but fail the song too, it feels more than a little harsh.

When you clear a song, the dancer's persona comes out and plays an instrument into a really awesome finale
I get shivers every time
I'm pretty sure that's just you trembling with joy from actually clearing a song for once.
... C-Climbing that scale is hard Sin...

Speaking from experience there Ren?
... Yeah... God damned hard songs freaking (unintelligible gibberish)
Ahaha... Anyway. This game is all about being yourself, and not what people want you to be. It's kinda ironic really. This is basically just a simple rhythm game with the Persona logo strapped on for a bit of extra luck. It is simple in both story and gameplay and is exactly what it is: just a rhythm game.
Ultimately there's a bit of a disappointment here. Sure, the game is still good... But it's really not everything we wanted it to be.

Say Sin, why don't you try being the you everyone wants you to be? It would be cool to see you being nice for a change.
Wha- speak for yourself you jerk!
Oh relax, you're the bitchy one, that's what everyone wants anyway...
Reeeeennnnnnnnnnnnn!!!
Ahahah... ha.... Uhm... Until next time friends! We love you a- AAAAAHHHH!

Ren Score: 7/10
Sin Score: 4/10