Persona 4: Dancing All Night

I'm continuously surprised by the ways Atlus can come up with for an excuse to revisit Persona 4. I mean in addition to the first game we've had an animated series, a fighting game, a golden re-release of the original game, a Persona 3 crossover, another animated series based on the golden version of the game, a sequel to the fighting game, and now a dancing game. If I didn't now any better, I'd almost be tempted to say that Atlus has a bit of an obsession with an over saturating of Persona 4. And this is a fact I would be far more upset with...were these new additions not consistently good.

PRESENTATION

Now I'm going to make the assumption that anyone who actually bothered to watch a review for a Persona dancing spin-off game actually Persona 4 is and have probably even played it. However just in case, here's the jist.

Dancing all night is a dancing-themes rhythm game set in a modern day 2012 Japanese. It follows the story of Yu Narukami and his friends from the Investigation Team as they practice with teen idol and fellow team member Rise Kujikawa to take part in the upcoming Love Meets Bond festival. However, it is during their practice that they hear of a rumor stating that if you are to stare at the Festival website at midnight on any given night, a video will start playing, featuring a dead idol dancing to a mysterious song. And if you are two watch this video to the end, you are taken to the “other side”, never to awaken. Unfortunately rumor starts to become reality when the girls of another idol group, Kanamin Kitchen vanish seemingly into thin air. Our heroes take it upon themselves to travel to the other side in order to rescue them, only to discover that a eerie voice is holding these girls hostage, intending to forcibly “bond” with them, and the only way to free an individual from said bond, is to dance.

If this sounds incredibly stupid to you, it's because...it really is. To be fair, that isn't too far fetched for Persona standards. I mean we've already have a High-School that transforms into a demonic-tower at midnight, and a inter dimensional travel between a world within television...so this is pretty par for the course. See, the reason persona is able to get away with this is because ultimately the setting is just a tool which to explore it's characters and themes. And it's no exception.

The bold choice made is that while the members of the Investigation team are the characters through which we see the story unfold and are given a fair amount of screen time, they are ultimately not the focus. The focus is instead placed on the members of Kanamin Kitchen. In fact for all intents and purposes the real protagonist of the story is the idol groups leader Kanami. And you know, I think this works well. I mean we've already have 3 games and a manga dissecting the original cast, so there's no reason to retread old ground. Instead, Dancing all night takes these new characters and essentially puts them through essentially exactly what the investigation team went through in the first game, and allowing the audience to see their true self that lies beyond their idol persona.

And this is ultimately why I like this story. Even with the vastly smaller scale, Dancing All Night still manages to capture the core themes of Persona 4. And though the plot may be a bit more simply and seemingly inconsequential at its core, but it is still great formula for simple well written characters symbolism and themes.Which when you get down to it, is what Persona is all bout.

GAMEPLAY

The funny thing that needs to be mentioned in regards to gameplay is how little there actually is in the story. Similarly to Arena and Arena Ultimax, the core gameplay mechanics seem like just a framework to tell the story that they want to tell, with the actual plot unfolding like a your typical visual novel. The dance sequences themselves are not that frequent, and only come up when the plot calls for it. Again like the Arena game though, this is hardly an issue considering that the game features a Free-Dance mode outside of the main story, where you are free to dance your heart away.

As said before, dancing all night is in fact a Rhythm game, where you use well timed button prompts in order to keep rhythm with any given song, and in the process. In that frame of mind, this plays like any standard rhythm game, and the amount of enjoyment you'll find here is dependent on whether or not that sounds appealing. Personally I think that seeing the Investigation Team bust some moves is worth the price of admission alone, and I happen to be a pretty decent rhythm keep as well, so I really found myself getting into this game.

Although getting an “Brilliant” rank did seem a bit easy to me. Maybe I'm just that good.

As far as major issues, the only thing that really disappointed me was the fact that you are unable to pick your specific dancer or stage for any given track. I know that this is tied to the story, but still can't imagine it would be too difficult to allow for a model swap of some kind. I also don't like being required to beat certain songs on hard to unlock Naoto on the tracks with Yu as the main dancer.

Honestly though, even if you aren't into rhythm games, I'd still recommend this game if your a persona 4 fan, just to see these characters showing off their moves. Seriously watching Yu and Nanako dance together is the most adorable thing probably ever.

VISUALS/AUDIO

In terms of the visuals, the art direction is virtually identical to Persona 4, and since the game runs on the same engine as the upcoming Persona 5, it could go without saying the in game models look great when in force.

I the sound department, in addition to the new voices, the entire cast or Persona 4 Golden reprises their roles and obviously do a bang up job bringing these characters to life...with one exception. I find it strange and ironic that in a game that essentially stars Rise Kujikawa, Atlus wasn't even able to get her original voice actress back. Understandably, many fans, myself included, were upset when it was revealed that Laura Bailey would not be playing Rise in Dancing All Night due to conflicting schedules and that Ashly Burch, who played Rei in Persona Q would be filling the role. Now I will give Ashly credit in that she does an admirable job in trying to replicate Laura's voice...it just isn't the same. I don't know, maybe this is payback for me claiming the Golden Chie is better than original Chie. Again, though the rest of the cast does their job in spades.

And now for the true star of Dancing All Night, the music...and this is actually where I find myself most disappointed. Now to be clear the actual songs themselves are really well done. Shoji Meguro returns as musical director with over 30 songs and remixes being performed by a number of well known Japaneses musicals. And most of these remixes are a joy to listen too. The problem is that there are SO MANY OF THEM. And to be honest, I don't even feel that some of these songs are really dance worthy. I don't know may it's just me, but I never considered songs like Snowflakes exacctly foot tapping material. That and the lack of certain tracks like I'll Face Myself, New World Fool, and The Almighty was rather surprising. And also, why is Never More DLC?

FINAL THOUGHTS

Dancing All Night doesn't have nearly the depth of the original game or the epic scale of the arena games. What it has instead is solid rhythm-based game featuring Yu Narukami and the Investigation Team. The fact that it has on of the best story of any rhythm game is just a bonus. Now it does have it's flaws with the overuse of remixes, and the somewhat repetitive narrative structure. And honestly, as a final send of to the Investigation Team crew, I actually though it was a bit underwhelming, especially when compared to ultimax. But the flaws ultimately are negligibly due to the sheer style and passion that oozes from this game. It's nice to know that in this world of endless sequels and mediocre spin-offs, it's nice to see Persona 4's actually getting loving effort put into them.

While not something I would recommend to anyone not already a Persona 4 fan, dancing all night is by far the best Vita game to be released this year...which may not being saying much considering the most barren Vita release landscape, BUT it's still a must own for Persona 4 fans and honestly it's just a great musical game regardless. Whether it's worth a $50 asking price though, is something i'll have to leave up to you, but definitely pick it up when it gets an eventual price drop at least.