Arc System Works is a developer I've grown quite fond of over the years. I first discovered them quite by accident when I picked up Guilty Gear X on a whim. This was back in the Dreamcast days, and I was hypnotized by the cool looking cover art and interested in oddball fighting games. And yeah, Guilty Gear was definitely an oddball fighting game. It had some seriously impressive visuals that reminded me of SNK fighters kicked up several notches. The soundtrack was super heavy and heavy metal theme was interesting. But the game made no sense to me. I just couldn't wrap my head around it.
By the time the 360/PS3 generation rolled around, I was heavy into fighting games. I was in my mid-twenties, and had a bunch of friends who were willing to meet up once a week for an organized fight night. And we played all the heavy hitters of the day – Street Fighter IV, Marvel Vs Capcom 3, Street Fighter X Tekken, Tekken 6, Soulcalibur V, The King Of Fighters XIII, and so on. But there was one game I really championed hard: Blazblue. The first game in the series, Blazblue: Calamity Trigger was ported to the then current gen consoles in 2009, and somehow I kind of became obsessed with it. I begged all my friends to pick up copies. I also convinced them to pick up its sequel, Continuum Shift. And then I kind of went down the rabbit hole of Arc Systems Work and also convinced everyone to get Arcana Heart 3 (good game) and Batte Fantasia (kind of meh game). I bought my house in 2012, and around that time my gaming interests and schedule seemed to change. Weekly fight night fell by the wayside, and so did my dedication to fighting games. That means that I missed out on subsequent Blazblue and Guilty Gear sequels. And it also means I missed out on Persona 4 Arena. Until now, a full decade later as I write this. I think had things stayed the same, Persona 4 Arena would have been a homerun for me at the time. I mean, it was a game that looked and played just like Blazblue. And it was wrapped around a visual novel based on the Persona games. I've been a fan of Shin Megami Tensei for an even longer time than these Arc System fighting games. But here I am, an old man (41) who's just now finally booting up this 360 game on a Series X. And y'know what? Even though a decade has gone by since its release, it still looks absolutely incredible. There's no denying the work that Arc System puts into its animation. This game looks stunning, even now. Sure, compared to some of the fighters we're all used to now the roster feels small. Smash Ultimate is the most obvious example. Although Arc System themselves put out Blazblue: Cross Tag Battle which is a big crossover with Guilty Gear, Arcana Heart, and several of their other games. But P4A is based on a pre-existing property, and has a pretty heavy visual novel story mode, so the roster has to stay true to that. In a way, it's refreshing. A throwback to the 90s fighting games that kept character selection under twenty. First I played through the training mode which made it clear that this game is just as complex as any of Arc System's previous fighters. On its surface, it's a four-button fighter. But there's so many combinations of buttons that my head spins. And you've got dashes and double-jumps and cancels and air blocks and air dashes and, well, whatever else you can imagine can be done with a d-pad and four buttons. This game is easy to learn, but tough to master, folks! But if you want super fast battles, insane move lists, flashy specials, and an insane amount of data to parse, then Arc System has you covered. P4A is unrivaled in this regard. With just the basics in mind, I was able to effectively button-mash my way through like seven or eight matches in the arcae mode But there's so much more if you're willing to dig in. And I am. Kind of. The big gimmick here is the titular personas, which you can think of as demonic partners you can tag in briefly. But the deeper meat and potatoes are the various gauges that fill, and tables that can be turned with them. It's a lot to really wrap your head around. What's really kept me invested though is the sheer impressiveness of the animation, and the fluidity of the controls. Even when I feel like I don't know what I'm doing when experimenting with a new character, I feel like I can still pull something off because the controls are so tight, and the inputs are basic enough that you can give it a good try without total familiarity. I have to be honest, the draw of the console version is the story mode which is a canonical continuation of Persona 4's story. But as of now, I've not actually played through Persona 4 (it only just hit Xbox this year!) so it doesn't mean anything to me yet. With that in mind, I'm perfectly content with the arcade mode, which is how Arc System would have originally meant for this game to be experienced anyway. Having said all that, the roster is unique and interesting, which is par for the course when it comes to Arc System fighters. Certainly it reminds me of my days infatuated with Blazblue. I wasn't great at that game, and I'm not great at this one. But I still like them both. Having now spent some quality time with Persona 4 Arena, these are my favorite characters: Chie Satonaka – she's super fast. Most of her moves revolve around some form of kicks. Because of this, she tends to be a super aggressive and up-close fighter. She's sort of like Cammy, but a thousand times faster. Labrys – she's probably my favorite. She wields a ridiculous axe and her persona is really cool. For the record, I don't like Shadow Labrys, though. Something about her persona and move set just doesn't click with me. Elizabeth – she's so cool. She uses cards and books and lots of projectiles. She's almost the antithesis of Chie's playstyle as she can create a lot of space between opponents. But, honestly the whole roster is interesting and varied. Like, really varied. You've got a dude who fights with a folding chair, another who uses a samurai sword, and another who just straight up brings a gun to the fight. Oh, and you've got Teddie who is just like a big egg or something. I don't know because I haven't played Persona 4 proper yet. But he throws fish and launches missiles. It's crazy. Aigis is another character I think is super cool, but I just can't quite seem to wrap my head around how to play as her yet. But that's the thing about this game. The roster isn't gigantic, but each character feels genuinely different and requires a lot of playing to get the hang of how to use them properly. In that regard, it's in good company with some of my favorite fighters with small but awesome rosters, like Street Fighter III and Garou: Mark Of The Wolves. The reality is that at this point in my life (early 40's) I just don't have the time, dexterity, patience, and whatever else to really commit to getting good at a fighting game. But for some random runs through arcade mode, I must say that Persona 4 Arena is a really great one.
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