Persona 4 Dancing All Night Preview - Persona Jams

persona-4-dancing-feature

Like the “Christopher Walken effect,” where he is in almost every movie made, it seems like Persona 4 has its hands on every game genre you could imagine. I’m still waiting for Persona 4: Golfing Greatness, or Persona 4: Fishing Frenzy, but for now, we will stick with what Atlus actually brought to E3 and that was Persona 4: Dancing All Night.

My hands-on with the game was extremely short, but that didn’t stop the fun factor from reaching ridiculous heights. This game is a rhythm dancing game as you might expect from the name but it feels really different from some of the other ones I’ve played, which could have to do with the control scheme.

Finger Dancing

There are basically seven different button choices you’ll be able to use during your playthrough. Three d-pad buttons and three of your face buttons. It takes a little getting used to, as you have little star bubbles going both left and right, and you’re frantically trying to find the correct button in time. It was a little off putting though to have to push the analog stick every so often when a certain prompt came up, but all together, it controlled extremely well.

The demo build only had about five songs, with it being a mixture of classics and brand new songs made just for this game. It was really great to grab a character and dance to Pursuing My True Self, which is such an awesome song. So awesome in fact that I found myself wanting to dance along with my character.

At the completion of each level, if you score high enough, you will summon your Persona, notating a great score. I was also told that to progress to the next stage in the story, you will have to achieve a certain score on the level, otherwise you will have to retry it until you do. The story itself was not viewable in the build I had, but I was told it’s told similar to how Persona 4: Arena Ultimax was done. When you progress through the story, I was told you would then unlock new levels and characters to play.

Dance, Dance!

I was a bit bummed when I had to leave my appointment, because even though I don’t usually like rhythm games, I found myself wanting to dance out to just a few more Persona jams. It might not be for everyone, but if you love Persona or you like rhythm games, then this will be right up your alley. Look for Persona 4: Dancing All Night on the PlayStation Vita later this year.