Review: Persona 4 Arena
Release Date: Out Now
Developer: Arc System Works
Manufacture Publisher:
Atlus USA
Platform(s): PS3 [reviewed] /Xbox 360
Format: Physical Media
ESRB rating: T
Price: $60.00

Persona 4 Arena is the newest fighting game from developer Arc System Works (of Hard Corps: Uprising and Blazblue fame) and publisher, Atlus USA. Will P4 Arena be a top-tier fighting game? “Reach Out to the Truth” in this review below.

Set about two months after the events of Persona 4, the Midnight Channel has returned and is showing a fighting tournament called the P-1 Grand Prix.

Yu Narukami (the gray-haired protagonist of Persona 4) and friends decide to get to the bottom of this. Even some of the characters from Persona 3 are involved in the P-1 Grand Prix.

For those who never played Persona 4, P4 Arena’s Story mode does a very good job getting players up to speed about the basics (Personas, Shadow, etc.) and summing the events of Persona 4 without slowing down the pace. If you’re interested in what happened before the events of P4 Arena and don’t own a PS2, there is Persona 4 Golden for PS Vita and an anime adaptation that will be coming out later this year.

The Story mode is presented in a “visual novel” sort of format (think of it as a story you read a child with voice acting). Speaking of the Story mode, each character has his or her fleshed-out story on their involvement in the tournament.

Unfortunately, the pacing of the story will sometimes slow down to a crawl. For example character A may be conversing with someone, then said character may have up to three paragraphs of text of his or her inner thoughts. The visual novel-style presentation of the story will put off a lot of players due to how they present the story (at least the art is pretty for this mode).
Thankfully, the game gives you an option to skip through the dialog, even skipping the unread text, but you’ll have to turn that option on in the Story mode menu.

P4 Arena also has Arcade mode (which is a much abbreviated version of the Story mode), Lesson mode (which teaches the player most of the mechanics of P3 Arena), Training mode, an online mode, and Versus mode.

P4 Arena is a four-button fighter, with two for normal attacks, and two for Persona attacks-which summons your Persona to briefly attack. The game’s Persona gauge where when your Persona gets hit a certain number of times; you won’t be able to use Persona attacks or most special attacks for awhile.

In an attempt to make the game more accessible, P4 Arena has something called an Auto Combo that is done by mashing on the weak attack button, which depending on how much you have in your SP gauge (which allows you to do big, flashy, special attack), will automatically combo into doing a big, flashy, special attack.

There is a bit of a risk when Auto Combo-ing to a special attack, which your character will lose some HP that will regenerate unless that character gets hit. Since this is a fighting game sequel to an RPG, some of the special attacks can inflict various status aliments, such as poison or mute (which prevents the player from summoning his or her Persona).
Most special attacks are activated through quarter-circle, or “fire ball”, rotations while your finisher attack can be activated by triple pressing down and pressing both Persona attack buttons.
Graphically P4 Arena looks good with its 2D spites and backgrounds, but it should be mentioned that the special attacks are much flashier (and more of an assault on the eyes) than most fighting games.

In the audio department, P4 Arena mostly has music from Persona 3 & 4 with a few new tunes from Shoji Meguro, the guy who composed music for many of the SMT titles including Digital Devil Saga 1& 2, Devil Summoner, Persona 3, and Persona 4. Even though the English voice acting is pretty good, the game also has the original Japanese voice track for those who prefer that option.

Some fighting games have laggy online play, but Persona 4 Arena isn’t one of them. Other than some character intro animations and one match that lagged for a split second, every match I had was silky smooth without any lag. And while P4 Arena may seem like it has a bare-bones online mode, said mode has a number of modifiers such as Winners Stays, Loser Stays, and Auto Switch (this switches out players who were in multiple matches in a row).
Overall, I would recommend Persona 4 Arena to players of both novice and experienced levels.

4. 5/5.0 (GREAT)
+    Smooth online play

+    Good story telling
       (mostly)

+    Accessible but deep
       fighting mechanics

−    Might be too button
       mashy for some
       players, usable in all
       levels

−    Certain DLC costumes
            are only available if
            the game was
            pre-ordered

−     Lackluster
        presentation and
        (sometimes) sluggish
        pacing for Story
        mode