Persona 4 Arena Review

 

Persona 4 Arena is a fighting game developed by the people who brought us the BlazBlue series. To some it may seem like a simple cache grab to get persona fans to pull more money out of the wallet, but P4A is actually a very good game and is even part of the Persona canon. Your adventure starts when the M.C of Persona 4(now called Yu Narukami) returns to Inaba for the summer only for him and his friends to find the Midnight Channel is airing again, and had shown a trailer if you will for the P-1 Grand Prix fighting tournament featuring all of our heroes. Most disturbing about this trailer is that Teddie appears to behind all of this as he was seen as head of the P-1 Grand Prix in said trailer. Our heroes assume it was just a prank pulled off by Teddy some how, until they realize he went missing leading them to investigating the T.V world once more. Once they enter the T.V wolrd though, they find themselves separeted and falling under hallucinations making them want to fight eachother. The story may not be as engaging as Persona 4s but It still works none the less, and I'm glad most of the original voice actors could work on this project although some characters had to get a new voice actor like Teddy for example.

 

The fighting mechanics in this game are very original and fit the idea of fighting with personas perectly. When in battle two of the buttons on your controller are assigned to your persona which you can use to attack your foes or pull of a powerful skill that will drain some of your SP as seen on the meter at the bottom of the screen. The game is also very friendly to casual and advanced fighting game players alike giving you the ability to do auto combos easily at the cost of some of your health, or going for a much more powerful manual combo if you have the skill to pull it off. This is a great game to use if you want to intoduce somebody to the Persona franchise or if you just want to keep following the story of Persona 3 and 4. Yes there are few Persona 3 characters in the game too, so that should satisfy anybody who wanted to see what happened to the beloved cast of Persona 3, though only 3 characters from 3 are included nfortunately. 

 

Persona 4 Arena is a fantastic game with a unique style, beautiful presentation, a great story, and amazing fighting mechanics making it an enthralling expierence for casual and advanced fighting players. I think this game deserves a solid 8/10. Review written by MokouWist