On November 6th he will finally make his European debut 4 Person: Dancing All Night, a title that created a lot of excitement in the community worshiping the games of the Shin Megami Tensei series and a third title dedicated to the fourth chapter of the Persona series. After last week's preview we spent more and more time dancing on the Midnight Stage and can give you our in-depth judgments on 4 Person: Dancing All Night.
Midnight What?
Persona 4: Dancing All Night is the third, and probably last, title on the fourth installment of the Persona saga that also gave birth to a fighting game (Persona 4 Arena) in addition to the main title. Dancing All Night takes place immediately after the finale of the true ending of Persona 4 Golden, remake for Playstation Vita, and sees Rise ask Yu and his companions to give her a hand to make her return to the stage (for those who don't know Rise is a idol who in Persona 4 has retired from the scene to go to the apparently quiet Inaba and has been a victim of the Midnight Channel) at the Love Meets Bond Festival where their “dance” performance is scheduled. At the studio Yu meets Kanami Mashita and Kanamin Kitchen, a group that took over from Rise during his absence, who were supposed to prepare a new song in a few days. Meanwhile, a new rumor is spreading in the city: if you look at a certain website at midnight you will be transported "to the other side" and you will never wake up again. During a rehearsal for the show Yu, Naoto and Rise are transported by a mysterious light into a place, which will later be called the Midnight Stage, with a stage only for Rise and full of Shadows that cannot be fought in the traditional way, but only with the dance. After escaping from the Midnight Stage, the three decide to also notify their former mates of the Investigation Team after the discovery of the disappearance of Kanami Mashita's companions and start investigating. Once Kanji, Yosuke, Chie, Yukiko and Teddie also arrive, the mystery deepens when during a shooting Kanami is also about to be kidnapped and the 8 decide to follow their producer, sacrificed to avoid kidnapping, in the Midnight Stage to look for the Kanamins. Kitchen and uncover the mystery surrounding these disappearances.
The story will be told from three points of view: that of Yu, that of Rise and that of Kanami who will investigate the disappearance of her companions and the group of protagonists along with Nanako and Dojima (Yu's cousin and uncle). The story mode will be divided into 8 chapters (plus an unlockable extra by completing the last song that will be unlocked after the credits) spread in about 10/11 hours of play, with most of the time that will be spent reading the dialogue (fully voiced in English and with no option for dual audio) rather than dancing.
Pimp my Persona
We mentioned in the preview the possibility of being able to change the clothing of the various characters through Tanaka's Amazing Commodities. Once logged in to the shop it will be possible to buy costumes for our characters with some reminiscent of particular clothes seen in previous chapters dedicated to Persona 4 while others, especially for the female cast, are dedicated to fanservice (in short, those who would not like to see Rise dressed as a Diavolessa or Yukiko as a Witch?) While as regards the accessories we go from the glasses created by Teddie for the Midnight Channel to the Tanaka mask to be worn by the dancer on duty during the dance sessions in the Free Dance mode.
In addition to costumes and accessories, it will also be possible to buy objects to increase or decrease the difficulty of the songs in Free Dance mode such as the Revival Bead which serves to resume dancing despite the failure of the stage or theOmnotepotent Orb which serves to remove the limitation of the keys and thus allow you to use any button for the various notes instead of the preset one. These items can only be used during the free mode and will negatively affect the score and money obtained at the end of the song. Also in the game there is a mode called Collection that allows the player to see the character models with all the costumes unlocked, to listen to the songs of the soundtrack, to observe all the drawings shown during the story mode and above all to see and collect some medals. They are obtained through some objectives such as completing all the tracks in normal, completing the events of the Fever Time, doing more than 400 combos and many others.
Time to reach the truth
As highlighted in last week's preview, the Persona 4: Dancing All Night soundtrack consists of about thirty songs, almost all of which can be unlocked by playing the mode Free Dance, or even advancing with the story mode, except for two songs (one obtainable through the completion of the story and the other through the purchase of an item that also unlocks a playable character). Among the most famous we can mention: Time to make history (present with two remixes), Reach out to the truth (also with two remixes) and Shadow World (with three remixes) while for the complete list you can refer to this news . These songs are linked to very specific characters for history reasons and it is not possible to change the dancer even in the Free Dance mode, the only change we can make besides the costume concerns the partner who will accompany us during the Fever Time (period during which the satisfaction of the shadows, who will be our spectators, rises easily by taking high votes and we will have increased points, for more information you can read our preview) and her clothing. In addition to the songs featured in the game, some DLCs will be released as new songs, with some taken from the Persona 4 Golden anime, costumes and new characters such as Marie and Adachi.
Dancing All Night
Persona 4: Dancing All Night runs on Playstation Vita almost without problems, small frame drops can be noticed before the start of some particularly elaborate songs such as some DLC. We talked about the commands in our preview and after other hours spent with the title we started to find problems using the analog sticks for scratching especially during the advanced songs of the Hard mode. To overcome this problem, a patch has been released in Japan that allows you to use L and R instead of analogs, unfortunately the copy in our possession did not have this patch and has not yet been released, but it will certainly facilitate the task for those who they want to platinum the title.
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Verdict 8/10 #RiseBestGirl Comment Persona 4: Dancing All Night is an excellent rhythm game dedicated to Persona 4, the few doubts we had left have cleared despite a not-so-exciting story mode and some gameplay difficulties due to the controls. The soundtrack is really great and will make the happiness of those who have enjoyed all the songs of the Persona 4 OST even if the songs are only danceable by one character and there is no possibility to change it. Surely we come to recommend it to both fans of the series and those of the genre. Pros and cons ✓ Very high replayability✓ Gameplay almost entirely console-friendly
✓ Great variety of songs of the highest quality ... x ... unfortunately linked to individual characters
x Not an exciting story
