Persona 4 Arena Ultimax Review

The follow up to the hit fighting game P4 Arena, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax is actually a sequel with a follow up story line to the cliffhanger of the last game. It was again published by Atlus and developed by Arc Systems and then released in September of 2014. Given that the game play and presentation is very similar to the last game I won’t be diving very deeply into those areas and if you’re looking for more on those my previous review is a nice starting place to jump off from into this review as well. Oh and there will of course be spoilers for the first game, P3, P4, and of course this game here but if you’ve followed me for any amount of time you’ve likely been privy to those anyway.

In terms of story, the continuation is good, adding this time Rise, Junpei, a new character Sho, the Shadows make a return, and even Adachi and Marie make appearances now. The streamlined nature of the way the story is told is this game’s biggest fix of all. If you’ve read my last review, you’ll recall a system to where the player tediously trudges through a variation on the same story upwards of 12 times and a few more with a different story for the P3 characters. This was clunky, uninteresting at times, felt very sloppy, and caused for a lot of confusion. Here, the story is set on one path with branching narratives and two separate stories for P3 and P4, an exceptionally better system as to only make the player slog through a different enough story line for a second time and a small bit for a true ending. This vast improvement fixes nearly everything broken about the previous game’s story telling mechanism.

Since this game is essentially a visual novel with a fighting game sprinkled in, story is very important. The cliffhanger from the first game of who was controlling Labyrs is solved in Sho who is an experiment with the Plumes of Dusk both Aigis and Labyrs posses on a human who then gains a malicious second personality. These experiments were being carried out by Ikustski, the main villain in Persona 3. Sho was thrown out as a child and developed a mistrust towards humans, the only way he knows to communicate being through… fighting. Ok really? It’s kind of silly and video gamey sometimes but overall the plot becomes that Sho makes fake shadows of everyone to fight their Personas for… Persona fragments which are apparently something that his shadows can fight out of everyone’s Personas. The shadows aren’t very well implemented story wise and it seems like a missed opportunity given what they were in the original Persona 4. After basically resurrecting a Tarturus-esque tower atop Yasogami High of Inaba, he then uses it to bring a variation on the Dark Hour which covers Inaba in a red fog and will bring about the end of the world if not stopped in a few hours. Now we have our fighting game I guess… 

Much like in the previous game this leads to a lot of sections of fighting random characters and seeing random groupings of characters and while it generally felt fine there was a lot “humorous” scenes I just kind of blazed though or if a character was explaining something I already knew. This is here in a far less extent thanks to only two or three plotlines happening at once but it could get grating at times. A lot of dialogue with the shadows was really pointless too. So while the execution still leaves a lot to be desired it’s really not that bad. In the end Adachi and Yu, or Labyrs in the P3 story, end up slaying the beast Sho turns into to save the day as always. The final boss itself is a large beast to the right of the screen that shoots fireballs and beams etc. which is a good idea on paper but having to run or jump to him feels clunky and he does a lot of damage which sucks. Also, he has no life bar to indicate all you need to do is dodge his attack and perform a few combos to win. Other than that he’s pretty easy and not that great but I give them points for trying something different. It ends up that Sho got his start from the final boss in Persona 4 so it’s nice to see her threat wasn’t an empty promise. 

Over all the story is a mess but the characters do save it so much. Their interactions and stories are what make everything interesting and some of their resolves were kind of admittedly emotional for me though I am surprised we’ll possibly never see the P4 characters graduate high school or any of that as there is supposedly only one more game in Persona 4: Dancing All Night… Hopefully since Sho got away their actually setting up for him to become the villain of that game? It better be or this plot point is going to be a seriously lame cliffhanger. 

I know I’ve sounded pretty harsh on this game but I did like a lot of the same stuff that inherently comes with this being the sequel to P4 Arena. Basically the things I liked there (characters, storyline, music animation, gamplay) are all present here. My main problem is in Sho though and while he is essentially the literal foil to the bonds and friendship our characters share, he’s just not as interesting as Labyrs and her incredibly emotional, amazingly crafted, and just all around epic storyline from the first game. So that’s actually the downfall here is that it’s a typical sequel story where in it’s just not as memorable as the first but this isn’t a bad thing, what’s here is fine and solid enough for what it is.

Bottom line is this, if you liked the first game, you’re going to enjoy what’s here. It’s more of the same and is a step up in multiplayer as you have more characters and the shadow dynamic wherein you can choose between shadow or normal for each character for a high attack or defense build that also lowers the other stat. The story is just about on par with the previous regardless of its flawed nature because of the characters and their interactions. If you’re a fan of the series, this’ll be pretty good for you. 

I’m giving it a 7.4/10 for being a pretty solid all around experience for fans of these game.

The funniest part about this game for me is actually how I got it though. I was looking for the original P4 Arena and at the time this game was still brand new at $60 as it had come out only a month or so before. I had seen the original at Disc Replay for $20 no manual with a weird sticker on the front and passed on it. Later at the Moline VGE I found it for $12 with manual, my lucky day! Unfortunately they informed me the “disc wasn’t there” (likely story) but then he offered me a disc of P4 Arena Ultimax instead for $12. Of course I couldn’t pass that up but now I’ve got two of the same case as I purchased the original I mentioned earlier when it got down to $16.