Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight Review

I was very late to play Persona 4: Dancing All Night.  I remember the hype back when it came out, but I didn’t pay it much mind.  Compared to the likes of The Rhythm of Fighters and especially Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call, Dancing All Night’s song list looks really paltry.  It limits itself to one game and its spin-offs and a good fraction of the songs are remixes, limiting its actual track list even further.  I knew there was a story to it, but I didn’t think it could be anything more than a joke scenario or half-baked excuse to get everyone dancing, like Senran Kagura Dekamori.

Once I actually got around to playing it, I loved it.  The whole game radiated energy and fun.  The dancing, music and accompanying visuals made for an explosion of color and lights like it was party time all the time, right down to the menus.  Simply buying stuff had Tanaka’s notoriously catchy and in-your-face theme play while Patrick Seitz yells at you and the menu music was always on point.  You could dress up everyone in all sorts of outfits for added flair and all the songs had a variety of partners with their own little duo dances during the mid-sections.

The story was better than I expected too.  The dancing was worked into an established theme that fit with the Persona universe and it had a lot of detail put into what was happening.  It was great seeing returning characters like Nanako and Kojima contribute to the plot and the new characters were very sweet and endearing.  It was a solid and highly polished package and I wish I played it sooner.

As you can expect, that got me excited for the new dancing games based on Persona 3 and 5, but mostly 3 because I played it many years ago and in recent years have come off the arena games and Persona Q, familiarizing myself with the cast even more.  I’m currently in the process of playing every Persona game in order and I’m still on 2: Innocent Sin so I haven’t played Persona 5.  As far as I’m aware, the main character has a bunch of crystal skulls and fights Batman, Viewtiful Joe, Klonoa and Hitler.

My excitement took a hit after it was announced that the Playstation Vita version of the game would not be available for retail and would only be available for download.  We all know what I think about that.

I would get more mad, but Atlus has been in my good graces, unlike Bandai Namco.  Atlus has always been very good about releasing Vita games physically.  The Vanillaware trilogy, all the Persona games and even lesser games like Conception 2 have all been on cartridges.  Atlus is like Bandai Namco’s good counterpart that actually cares and doesn’t want to be garbage.  I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that this is an honest mistake on somebody’s part there.  With Vita cartridges ending production in 2019, someone may have missed a deadline or something.

They try to offset this major shortcoming with bonuses and pricing.  Vita owners buying it on the first week get Vita-exclusive costumes, but those costumes were available on the physical version in Japan so that’s not really a bonus.  It’s just implementing something to patch up their mistake.  Early purchases also give both versions of each game one of the DLC songs with their own dancer, both of which were not pre-order bonuses in Japan and are a $5 value.  Added onto that is the Vita version being $40 instead of the usual 50 for physical Vita games.  With all of that, there’s a bit more value in these games than other new Vita games.  Whether it makes up for not being able to own a copy depends on the overall value of the game and that’s what we’re here to look at.

Since I haven’t played Persona 5 and know barely anything about it, I’m sticking to Dancing in Moonlight for this review so I know more than half of what I’m writing about.

Reasons to Play the First Persona

Nobody seems to pay much mind to the original Persona.  For most people the Persona games started with Persona 3.  That’s the game that gets the crossovers with Persona 4, its own dancing game and constant merchandise.  Occasionally someone might mention Persona 2, if only to bring up Trump being in it, but it’s a true rarity that someone brings up the game that started it all and when it is it’s usually to complain or compare it to how much better the other games are.  With a reputation like that it’s perfectly reasonable to assume the first Persona is total shite on a bike, but to my surprise, I very much enjoyed it and am baffled as to how it gets such a bad reputation.  There are a lot of reasons to play the original Persona even with the later, better games available.

To be clear, I am referring to the PSP remake of the game because that is the one you’ll play unless you go out of your way to prove that statement wrong, but you’ll be cutting yourself down a few hundred dollars.  Not only is the original PS1 version rare, but not even Atlus wants people to play that version.  The original game is notorious for its localization trying to change characters and settings to be American, resulting in some pretty ugly aesthetics on top of already very dated FMV sequences and poor voice acting (what little there was).  It also cut out an entirely separate chapter from the original Japanese version so it’s about on the level of Devil Kings with how embarassing it is.  Unlike Devil Kings, however, the translated script is mostly accurate aside from name changes so it wasn’t a total bust, but Atlus is not proud of it and thus has not released the original PS1 version on PSN.

Some dialogue came off a little unnatural, however.

The PSP remake, on the other hand, is on PSN for 20 dollars for your Vita and PSP.  The remake cleans up the graphics a bit, has a new interface, tweaks some of the worse combat faults (like debuff stacking), adds a brand new soundtrack more in line with the later games, adds new FMV scenes that actually look good and, most prominently, completely redoes the sloppy localization and keeps in all the content.  That is the version you will play.  As for why you would want to play it, I can count the ways.

Introduction to Top 10 Final Battles

A climax is defined as "the point of greatest intensity or force in an ascending series or progression."  In any story in any medium, it's the point where the plot goes all-out and the ultimate conflict plays out before the final resolution.  It's what you likely remember the most when you walk out of a movie or finish reading a book, assuming there weren't any awkward moments that eventually became more remembered than anything else in the story it came from.

They can be done through a grand battle like the destruction of the Death Star in Star Wars or can even be a conflict of wits and unfolding plans like in Death Note or A Most Wanted Man.
But game stories have always had a preference for combat to keep the player interested, involved and empowered.  In fact it's rather hard to think of many games with stories to tell that don't have combat of some sort in them.