As someone who hardly ever plays fighting games and quite frankly is expertly terrible at then when he does, I'm a little bit hesitant about picking this up.

So my question is this: Is there enough story in this title to make it worth it for a fan of Persona to play through on the easiest possible difficulty? Assuming there are difficulties.

Please advise.

The autocombo system makes it pretty easy for beginners and there is a pretty significant amount of story in the game.

I would recommend picking up a cheap copy of the first game and see if you like it since this is more of that.

I didn't read or care about the thread, but I have a Persona thought.

I got a tweet about Dancing All Night, and it kind of blew my mind that it still existed. I remember the 3 or 4 P4 games blowout, but I guess I shut it out of my mind.

Story is about 15 hours. Also includes the 20-25 hour (highly repetitive) story from P4A as DLC, which Ultimax is a direct sequel of (and takes place right after).

Story layout is far better than the previous game, though you should probably find out what happened in P4A to not be too lost. Story's good, and it's not like that's the only single player option available in the game. There's Golden Arena Mode, a new mode that resembles an RPG where you can level up, distribute attribute points (Strength, Agility, Luck, Magic, Endurance), gain new abilities and Social Link level up with navigators to unlock new help abilities. There's the standard arcade mode and Score Attack modes as well (the latter of which was reconditioned to be made far easier than it was in P4A).

Hmm, I actually didn't bother researching enough to find out that this is a sequel. I guess that says a little about my interest in fighting games. I thought it was just a re-release with more stuff in it.

Thanks for the reply. Guess I'll check out the previous game and see for myself if it's as impenetrable as I imagine it to be. The Quick Look did nothing to relieve my fears.

If you're just interested in the story you should have no problem. In fact in Ultimax you can set it to auto for the story and let the computer fight for you. You can clear the whole story without ever having to even touch the controller. (Okay, that's a lie. You need to use the controller to select episodes in the story.)

I'd also recommend just checking out some videos or something of the first game's story instead of going out and buying it. It's good to know what happens in that game, but Ultimax has the more important half of the story.

I think for some reason I was thinking Ultimax was just the original game with some new stuff in it. If at some point I had heard/read that it was a sequel with a new story, then I must have forgotten. I was planning on renting Ar Nosurge next week and Shadow of Mordor and Sherlock Holmes the week after, but I might put Sherlock on hold and get Ultimax instead since I have been reminded that it is an actual sequel.

A bit more on topic, I enjoy fighting games from time to time, but I never get all that deep into any of them. So for me, I handle these Persona fighting games the same way I do other fighting games. I rent them from Gamefly and play through the story, then send 'em back. I really, really like Persona, but I just can't purchase a fighting game that I will hardly ever play, at least not at full price.

@metalbaofu: Atlus USA recently put out a story trailer:

They have several other character trailers on their channel showing bits of the story, like Adachi's. Perhaps what you had originally heard was Jeff Gerstmann mistakenly saying that this was a small expansion when it was originally announced. This is a full on sequel, yeah.

I think I'm gonna take the leap and hope I can brute force my way through the actual gameplay. Although I did the same for that MK game but gave up fairly quickly. I'm hoping the Persona part of this game will be a carrot on the stick for me.

Back when it was announced was probably the last time I really heard/saw much about it at all, so that definitely could be what happened.

@ch3burashka: When I went into gamestop to preorder P4AU and Persona Q I literally said "I'd like to preorder those two persona games", completely forgetting that P4DAL and P5 were also announced. When dude asked which two persona games I figured he meant 360 or PS3 version of P4A2, assuming that it was coming out on both again. It wasn't till like 5 hours later that I remembered those other Persona games are also coming.

Persona 4 Arena was my first fighting game and it was pretty easy. I don't remember any of the story fights taking me more than 3 or 4 tries. From a plot perspective it's really good. I seem to remember former Giant Bomb intern Matt Bodega tweeting that he was crying at the certain points. I'm not sure the sequel will be that moving, but at the very least you should play P4A or the P4A story DLC in P4AU.

I recently picked up the first game and I also don't play fighting games. The story stuff is easy to get through and I actually had a lot of fun with the fighting.

@perilator666: I'd never played a fighting game before P4 Arena. But it's pretty approachable for beginners, and there's definitely a ton of story/fan service for any Persona fan. I wound up falling in love with the game. You should definitely give Ultimax a shot. It looks like they improved a game which was incredible to begin with.