The visual novel fighting game

Day 411

Persona 4 Arena is without a doubt the most plot-heavy fighting game I've played--which is saying something considering the fact I just recently played through Dissidia 012. That was a game in which plot featured heavily, but it is at its heart a crossover fighter mixing characters from different games (within the same series) and featuring plot elements from each of those games. None of the events of those games were meant to fit into anything but an alternate universe canon. I get the impression that Persona 4 Arena is entirely canonical to the Persona timeline--which evidentlly contains Persona 3 as well. It's difficult to say if the first two (three?) games of the series fit into that storyline at all.

In Arena, Yu Narukami comes back to visit Inaba two months after the events of Persona 4. Right before he returns, the Midnight Channel starts broadcasting once again, but this time things are different. The broadcast features all of the members of the Investigation Squad and in perfect clarity--although none of them are inside the TV world as of yet. A heretofore unknown individual is behind it this time, although you're led to believe that Teddie himself has orchestrated some kind of fighting tournament and is manipulating and/or brainwashing the members of the Investigation Squad to fight each other.

I've played through the storylines of Yu himself as well as Yosuke Hanamura because it seemed to make the most sense to play the storylines in the order the characters were recruited in Persona 4. Even though I've only played two characters so far, I've probably spent over two hours on the game--and only about 10 or 11 actual matches. There is a lot of text in this game and a lot of dialogue, all of which is fully voiced. I find the plot interesting, but the balance between story and gameplay is significantly different from what I was expecting. I would have at least preferred for the story battles themselves to take more time. They're all one-round fights that take thirty seconds or less. The mechanics of the game are much more traditional than something like Dissidia, but the controls seem reasonably fluid and although I'm not great at fighting games, I feel I'm getting the hang of it and I enjoy it. The story mode doesn't give you a lot of time to practice, though.

I guess from now on I'll attempt to play a character a little bit in the practice mode to get a hang of their style before tackling their story mode. The characters in Arena don't have pages and pages of moves like in some fighters but the mechanics are still a little more complicated than what I'm used to. On the surface, the gameplay is fairly simple. You have a light attack and heavy attack and so too does the character's Persona. These attacks can be weaved together in combos--in ways that require experimentation on the part of the player. Other mechanics are more difficult for me to understand, like One More Cancels and Furious Actions. Pressing multiple buttons simultaneously on the PS3 controller seems a lot more difficult than it should be--and far more suitable for an arcade stick, something I'm certainly not willing to buy.