A Truly Persona Rhythm Game
If you like Persona 4 and own a vita, you owe it to yourself to play this game.
After finishing P4 Dancing All Night I was left feeling satisfied with the experience that I had with the game. An entirely decent rhythm game in its own right Dancing All Night truly shines because of the personality it brings to the table. It goes all in on its premise and never apologizes for existing entirely as an excuse to go on another adventure with the good ol' Investigation Team. That said it isn't for someone whose just looking for dancing game and isn't coming to the table for Persona 4 section of the games title.
Much to my surprise Dancing All Night's story is the best part of the game. It generally assumes that you know all of the major characters from Persona 4 giving you only the briefest of refreshers as everyone is reintroduced throughout the introduction. The basic premise of the game is that as part of Rise's agreement with her talent agency she's agreed to make her comeback appearance at the "Love Meets Bonds Festival," but only if she can bring in her friends from Inaba as her back up dancers. By some stroke of luck (or convenient lapse in judgement) the deal has gone through and everyone on the team has agreed to help her, and we open with Yu and Naoto practicing with Rise in the final lead up to the festival. From there the game finds a way to bring the entire game to a mysterious shadow filled world (The Midnight Stage) where they are called upon to rescue the background members of popular idol group by expressing themselves through dance. This is all very rote and basically what you'd expect the premise of the Persona 4 dancing game, but by the end of the game it certainly earns the Persona title in its name for the themes it decides to explore. It's not as deep or fleshed out as a full Persona game in that respect, but its much darker and personal that I would have expected a dancing game's story to be. If you don't care about the story after the fourth chapter where Dojima and Nanako are brought into the mix I declare you to be a soulless individual.
Do be warned though, this game has some really awkward imagery at times that's oddly reminiscent of bondage porn during a couple of points during the story, and when you hear the various members of the idol group Kanamin Kitchen introduce themselves you'll wonder if they're talking about their idol persona or a character in an ongoing fast-food porno. I struggle to know if it's just the persona writing team making a pointed criticism about the culture idols in Japan (which I know nothing about), but those moments were still really awkward for me when my wife inevitably overhears me playing the game.
This bring us to the actual dancing portion of the game. It's good, but not something I'd play on its own with a different soundtrack or setting. The Quick Look does a decent job showing off the basics of the game, and it in the Free Dance mode you can make it about as hard/easy as you want it to be without going to a different difficulty tier with the use of gameplay modifier "items" you can buy in the game's shop that will modify your score and Persona $ at the end of the song. As someone who enjoys rhythm games, but not a follower of them, I found myself most comfortable playing the game on Normal difficulty with modifiers on that would cause the note to fade out before hitting the yellow ring and pulse out of the center. It certainly gets hard and can be basically unreadable on it's hardest "All Night" difficulty which is unlocked after you buy all of the gameplay modifiers.
The reason why kept on playing was because I really couldn't get enough of the soundtrack, and the costume options were a ton of fun to unlock. My main complaint with the game comes from the fact that the soundtrack has way too many remixes. Yes I like listening to "Shadow World", but do I really need three versions of the song to play? Beyond that the songs are still a ton of fun to listen to. It's a shame that the game play covers up so much of what's going on in the background because the dancing and visual treatment going on is a ton of fun, and dressing up everyone in golden Tanaka masks and butler uniforms never gets old... if a little nightmare inducing. I just wish there were more options to dress up side characters in. Kanamin doesn't have anything I like dressing her up in, and Margret, who is unlockable at the end of the game, only has one costume.
It would also been nice if there was some option for alternate dancers in the songs. Which brings me to the DLC. While it's nice to have new costumes and songs, it's not worth the $5 to get a song with Margret that doesn't let me use her character model anywhere else. So YMMV when it comes to the majority of the aesthetic DLC the "new character" DLC typically ends up being quite underwhelming.
I would recommend against playing the game on the PS TV since there are no options to compensate for the input lag even though the rest of the game functions just fine on the system. The couple of times I tried to play it on my PS TV ended up feeling really frustrating even though the visuals transfer really well to a TV screen. It's a pretty easy Platinum for those who care, but the extra challenges don't really bring anything extra to the table.
In the end Persona 4: Dancing All Night is a wonderful, entirely unexpected game for Persona 4 fans that gives P4G players an excellent excuse to pull out their vita. I liked it enough to play through the entire game and get the Platinum... on both the English and Japanese version, but I wouldn't recommend that to everyone. If you own a vita and like P4G, Persona 4: Dancing All Night is an excellent excuse to bring the band back together again.
