Halo did rather well as a real-time strategy in Halo Wars after beginning as a killer first-person shooter. WarCraft took a wildly successful real-time strategy and turned it into the biggest massively multiplayer online role-playing game ever. For the Persona franchise, the leap was role-playing game to fighter, in Persona 4 Arena, released in 2012. Following that success, 2014 brought a refined sequel, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax.
As a true follow-up, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax continues the story arc of its predecessor, with the P-1 Climax fighting tourney central to the plot. But instead of placing itself only in the TV Land of Persona 4 Arena, it navigates through the real world, too, albeit in the fictional Japanese town of Inaba. Events revolve around the P-1 Grand Prix, including a hijacking and red shrouding of the town by the enemy forces, which eventually once again lands gamers in the bizarre TV Land.
While certainly this detailed level of storytelling is welcome in a role-playing game where Persona 4 Arena Ultimax originated, in a fighting game it is just too much, especially since there isn't any fighting going on throughout the story. Just lots of boring reading of text and listening to characters discuss what's happening. It's excellent as a compendium to explain a lot of why there's conflict surrounding Inaba, but offers no real gameplay elements at all.
But when it comes to getting to the fighting gameplay, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax excels. With an expanded roster of 21 characters – 13 returnees and eight newcomers (from both Persona 3 and Persona 4, including those with Shadow Types), the choices are many as to how to advance through the battling, particularly in the Golden Arena. That is where gamers will be able to "level up" fighters – obviously never straying far from Persona's RPG ancestry – by pitting them against enemy after enemy, learning individual character's fighting strengths and weaknesses and hones arena fighting skills for the game's other modes, including online.
On the Xbox 360 version, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax runs sinuously swift, considering the amount of graphically intense animated fighting activity exploding in an overwhelmingly awesome array of colors, especially when a character's Persona jumps into the fray at hand. No lag, no freeze framing. Just smooth and fast fighting. While the fighting aspect is exceptional, the story mode is forgettable, serving as only a text-reading excursion to explain the story. The voice-acting accompanying the texting chore is rather laughable in a Pokémon kind of way, but perfectly suits the anime style visuals and narrative, as does the funky background music.
Superbly fluid and fast fighting gameplay within a vibrantly colorful arena highlights Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, which nicely redefines the prequel's offerings and carries on the well-established tradition of fine Japanime fighting games.
- Lee Cieniawa
The Good:
- The excellent transition from role-playing game to fighter evolves even further along than the first title
The Bad:
- Excessive reading of text to "progress" through the story mode may be a descriptive homage to the original RPG Personas, but not much of a fit in a fighting game
