The Verdict
Persona 4: Dancing All Night might be a tough sell, even for Persona fans, given the wild choice of genre. However, thanks to the original game's strong narrative, it certainly helps knowing that Dancing All Night has a good story to tell as well. It also helps that the original game's soundtrack was so strong, making this remixed one even better. Not all remixes are created equal, but for the most part they're all absolutely stellar.
However, the main reason to give Dancing All Night a chance is because it gives us one last time for the Investigation Team to get together, before Persona 5 steals the spotlight in late 2015 mid 2016, and given how absolutely fantastic the characters are in Persona 4, it's almost as you're reuniting with friends you haven't seen for quite some time.
Now, if you fall into the same venn diagram that I do, and love Persona and rhythm games, then Dancing All Night is an absolute no brainer.
The Positives
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Persona 4: Dancing All Night is a gorgeous Vita game. Everything from the extremely detailed character models to the way they dance, it all looks spectacular.
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The rhythm gameplay is fun and certainly challenging. At first, it was going to be more or less a clone of the Project Diva games, but somewhere along the development cycle, the gameplay changed. Now, buttons must be pressed as stars fly out of the center of the screen, and enter any of the button icons on the outside of the screen, as well as swipe the screen or flick the analog stick. It's deceptively difficult, because watching gameplay makes it look really easy, but once you get your hands on it, it can definitely be difficult.
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Speaking of difficulty, I generally skip Easy and Normal in rhythm games and go straight to Hard, but Dancing All Night kicked my ass so hard on Hard, that playing on Normal was a necessity just to get used to all of its mechanics.
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The story might not be as engrossing as the original Persona 4, but I'd say the characterization is once again on point. Characters are no longer reduced to singular traits, as they were in the Arena games and Persona Q. What I mean by that is Chie, for example, isn't constantly talking about her obsession with meat gum.
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On the flip side, if you don't care to play the story (although I wish you would) you can hop directly into Free Play mode, where you can unlock nearly all of the game's songs just by playing.
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Each character is given even more personalization by their unique dance style. Yukiko's dance style involves a lot of ballet moves, while Yosuke is straight up Hip Hop.
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The character dance team-ups look awesome. Assuming you nail certain sections of the song, a guest character will hop in and perform a choreographed section with whatever character you're currently dancing with. My personal favorite? Yu and Yosuke. Bromance forever!
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The story itself is fairly long, especially for a rhythm game. It's presented as a visual novel with a few multiple choice answers, but none that really offer any sort of drastic gameplay change.
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The soundtrack includes nearly all of the hits from Persona 4, but this time completely remixed, breathing a whole new life into an already stellar soundtrack.
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The gameplay is quite customizable to suit your playstyle. You can alter the various sounds each button press makes, as well as alter the speed at which the notes fill the screen. Pro tip: If you're finding it hard to see all the notes as they pop up during a song, lower the speed. This will get you adjusted to how the game plays and eventually you'll get used this, and find that you'll do better at higher speeds.
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There are a bunch of unlockables in the game, many of which are costumes and accessories that will directly affect each character's look. That's right, even Speedo Kanji!
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Persona 4: Dancing All Night is playable on the PlayStation TV!
The Negatives
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The color of the star icons sometimes blends in too much with what's happening in the background. Given that the Persona games have always had a constant theme of yellow, that same color scheme often translates into the environments. The yellow stars on yellow environments make it often hard to keep up with them. It would have been nice to be able to change the colors of the star icons.
Back in July, I had the privilege of getting an early glimpse at Persona 4: Dancing All Night, courtesy of a friend who lives in Japan. While I can't say it was an entirely in-depth review, it was a pretty good look at the core mechanics of the game.
So what exactly is Persona 4: Dancing All Night? Why is there another Persona 4 game? Why is there dancing? I play Persona games for the story, why play this?! All this and more will be covered here.
Persona 4: Dancing All Night is certainly a strange title. Sure, Persona isn't new to spin-off genres, after all, the fourth game already had two kickass fighting games courtesy of Arc System Works, as well as a dungeon crawler on the 3DS. However, this is a drastic genre departure even for Persona. Dancing All Night, as the name implies, is a rhythm game, very similar to games like Project Diva. Unlike those games, however, there is in fact a narrative woven through the rhythm based gameplay. Anyone who's played either of the Arena games will be familiar with how the narrative progresses.
And the story itself is nothing to scoff at. Atlus has proved, once again, that they cherish this series, and give fans a reason to take the plunge into what might be an entirely new genre for them.
This time the story revolves around Kanami Mashita, an idol who is only referenced in the original Persona 4 game. Of course, as per status quo, weird stuff starts happening and the Investigation Team is called upon once again, but this time, they must use their dance moves to defeat the Shadows. Strange? Yeah. Awesome? Definitely.
