Persona 4 Dancing All Night Review (PS Vita)
Here it is. My most anticipated game of the year and a sequel to my all-time favourite game, Persona 4 Golden, and so it’s with excitement that I sit down to play Persona 4 Dancing All Night.
I’ve had to tear myself away from the game, which I’ve clocked about 30 hours in so far and have gotten the Platinum trophy, to write this review and so I’ve left some of the videos playing in the background because I’m addicted. Dancing All Night takes place 6 months after the end of Persona 4 where Rise is making a comeback as an idol and, as her comeback festival is called Love Meets Bonds, she’s insisted that her friends join her as backup dancers as they share immensely strong bonds between them. Cue the Investigation Team training but when other idols go missing, they decide to look into it.
It’s heartwarming to see the Investigation Team return and although the premise itself is outlandish, it’s written in a way that perfectly fits into the universe and feels entirely feasible. I finished the story in about 13 hours which is far longer than I expected for a rhythm game but most of this is due to the abundance of dialogue which never gets old. We all know the characters by now but the new idols of Kanamin Kitchen, including Kanami herself who’s been briefly mentioned and seen in previous games and the anime, makes her first full appearance here and doesn’t disappoint – she’s clumsy but lively and does what she can to help her friends along with the help of Dojima and Nanako!
I’m happy with the story – which took me roughly 13 hours to complete – and how it stays true to the themes of Persona 4, but how does it perform as a rhythm game? With Hatsune Miku Project Diva F developer Dingo having left the project, it was left for in-house Atlus to develop it but thankfully they’ve pulled it off yet again! Atlus understand so well what Persona 4 fans enjoy and, considering it’s my favourite game, I’m glad to see the cast stretch across so many of my favourite genres. Dancing All Night is challenging, addictive and bursting with content and I just can’t get enough of it.
If you’re only in it for the story then it’s easily accessible enough with story only being available on Easy and Normal difficulties, and Free Dance goes on to include Hard and All Night difficulties. Free Dance is likely where you’ll spend most of your time as that’s where you’re able to play all the songs (you don’t play them all in the story) and of course there are outfits and different partners to play with in Free Dance. All Night mode is a great challenge and I’ve yet to complete many songs on that difficulty and even Hard trips me up sometimes, but I love that it pulls me back in as I was worried that it might be too easy at first.
Dancing All Night makes uses of all the face buttons and the D-Pad bar square and right, and uses the analog stick for the scratch note rings. It might sound weird that it doesn’t use every button available but it works very well and you’ll find yourself not clearing stages plenty of times even without all of the buttons being in play. Obviously your goal is to hit the notes as they match up with the outer rings with a score given based on your timing and how long your combos are – Perfect and Good notes keep the combo going but Cool and Miss notes are going to reflect poorly. Dancing All Night is simple to learn but hard to master.
Dancing All Night proves to be one of the Vita’s most visually impressive games too! It’s fluidity and detail puts even some PS4 remasters to shame and Atlus have updated the character models so well that it’ll be a shame if we don’t see them used in a future title. I understand that due to not actually playing as the characters means all their actions are pre-determined, but I think Atlus would pull it off on a grander scale if they wished too. There’s a lot happening on screen but it’s easy to keep track of the notes as long as you don’t focus too much on the dancing, but you can watch the videos whenever you like via the Perfect Play mode – yes, you can remove the UI and everything for a clean experience.
There’re plenty of costumes and accessories to unlock, most of which can be found in Persona 4 Golden, which will keep you busy for a long time and give you reason to revisit songs (if you ever needed a reason, that is), as well as unlocking different partners for songs to see new moves. Every character has a few songs dedicated to them and you can’t change the lead dancer, but it’s a lot of fun changing what they wear, especially as you can wear Tanaka’s head, gag glasses and Igor masks. There’s a magnitude of content in-game and it’s being further supported by DLC songs and outfits, including Hatsune Miku, and I’m excited to have even more to do!
Persona is known for having breathtaking music to the point that it has its own concerts, and Dancing All Night continues this streak with its mix of original and remixed tunes. Some of the remixes took a while to grow on me but I ended up loving and enjoying them all, and original tunes Dance! and Calysteygia are both superb. Whilst most of the voice-actors return for the English dub, the big omission is Laura Bailey who’s voiced Rise since Persona 4’s original release on PS2 in 2008. Sadly, due to scheduling commitments, she couldn’t reprise the role and whilst I greatly missed her presence, I think they re-casted Rise well with Ashly Burch who many will recognise as Rei from Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth. It’s lovely to hear from everyone again, and NIS America struck gold when they were casting the characters. Like other Persona titles before it, Dancing All Night features one of the best English Dubs around.
I might not have made it entirely apparent but I love Persona 4 Dancing All Night, and Atlus can make as many Persona 4 related games as they want as long as they remain at the high quality that they have done. With such an outstanding soundtrack, an idea for a rhythm game had probably been thrown about often and I’m ecstatic that it got made. It’s something I’ll constantly find myself returning to and it definitely has a spot in my top ten of the year and, you guessed it, it’s sitting comfortably in its thrown in first place. If you’re a Persona 4 fan, even if you’re not a big rhythm fan, you won’t want to miss this.
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