Persona 4 Arena Ultimax

 Warning: This blog is 98% whining

Okay, which one of you lot cursed me? Out with it, I wanna hear it straight. Which one of you sick people thought it would be funny to imbue me with an unrequited love for a video game series that just seems to hate me for some insane reason? And while we're at it, who tasked ATLUS with porting out every bloody game in their back catalogue apart from Persona 5 Royals? Why does this Japanese company want to conspire against me and exactly me? What have I done to them? ATLUS have been toying around in what feels like a personal slap in the face competition against just me for actual years now and I can't wrap my head around it. No one can come up with a good explanation for why we're being strung along, only die hard Playstationites seem happy with the idea of Persona 5 being a console exclusive until the seven rings of Hell collapse and reality comes to an end, Persona 4 Golden actually sold pretty well on Steam, what could possibly be the hold-up next?

I know this is a story that I've told before, but it honestly bears repeating, because I was actually there when this new Persona game was announced. I was watching the game awards Pre-show, if you consider the act of 'watching' to consist of allowing it to play in the background whilst I was playing Hollow Knight. Thus I was hardly paying attention when the presenter claimed that the next reveal was one we 'didn't see coming', and just off-handily joked that it was Persona 5 Royals for PC. And then the ATLUS logo dropped. When I say you've never seen a controller dropped faster in your life I mean that the final ravens in the London Tower were finally scared off by the force of the impact. London is currently undergoing it's apocalypse consequentially. (Which is either a zombie invasion or an infestation of Edo Period Japanese spirits, depending on which historical document you prefer out of ZombiU or Nioh.) And the payoff? Persona 4 Arena Ultimax. Good god- the song that announcer was referencing 'Last Surprise' wasn't even in existence at that point, it was created specifically to be the title for Persona 5. Someone delights in jerking me around and I can't take it anymore!

So then what is this game that is coming our way if not a PC adaptation of one of the finest RPGs of all time? (Or at least that's what I'm told. I'd be able to back that up if I could actually play it.) Well, Persona is never the sort of series to keep things constrained to a single box when they can multitask and try to be every genre at once, or at least that's what I think the reasoning behind the spin-off games in the series is. Think the kind of stuff that Yakuza always sticks into their gameworld, just cut off the main game and fleshed out into their own fully fledged title. (Actually, I guess there's a lot of Japanese series' that do that, huh? Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball comes to mind) This iteration is a fighting game in the traditionalist sense, with a flat 2D arena space, combo moves and summonable Persona's to make the Jojo comparisons simply unavoidable. (This port will make for a good place to store all those ripped Eyes of Heaven models that people seem to love so much, if nothing else.)

Now I'm not much of one for fighting games, the only one I've ever really given the time of day was Killer Instinct, and that's only because that game has a special mode which allowed me to do combos without having to move. (Seriously, someone explain to me how you're supposed to move and keep the target infront of you if that deviation instantly breaks the combo: it makes no sense!) Visually I will admit that what I'm seeing is actually pretty cool, characters seem to have an almost cellish look to them that faintly reminds me of the guilty gear games, so I already want to see more of the game at the very least. As for whether or not I'm going to like the controls, well that remains to be seen but these sorts of games tend to be decently well received by fighting games fans which bodes mildly well. (If they love it then it means the skill ceiling is too high and I'll never get into it.)

So I'll be honest then; as a fan of Golden, there's a little bit of cognitive dissonance when I glance upon this mere concept for a game. As you've likely picked up from the many thousand times I've droned on and on about Persona and what I love about it, the key is the laid back atmosphere and the juxtaposition between RPG death battles and figuring out what you want to do at school for that day. I find all of that super laid back depth to be relaxing yet somehow invigorating to balance, so a part of me feels like there's an essential missing piece of DNA in the Persona formula with a straight arena game, but then I suppose that's just what spin-off games are for, isn't it? Changing things up so drastically you find yourself wondering if this was a good idea at all. Also, the Boxart of the protagonist ripping his shirt off like a Yakuza protagonist is just weird, it has to be said.

At the very least is can be said that the Persona library is making it's way to the PC, albeit slowly. At this rate ATLUS will literally have no choice by to get to Persona 5. Except there's the dancing game inbetween. And then they'll probably go back to 3, first. Let's be honest, the only point at which they'll port 5 to PC is going to be the sameday that they announce Persona 6 to the world so that they can ride that hype. I've tired to convince myself that won't be the case, but it's basic logic. So that's, what, an entire year away probably? Is this fighting game really going to keep people satiated in the mean time, knowing that we're gnawing off limbs for an RPG? Hell, are fighting game fans even going to be satisfied considering the sheer amount of other fighting games out there in the world? Am I going to buy it anyway? Probably. But I'm a rube, of course I'll buy anything with Teddy on the box.

But I'm having a hard time reconciling all of this... I wonder why- oh, maybe it's because Persona 5 Strikers was released on PC months ago. Strikers. The sequel to 5. Comes out before 5 does. It hurts me to have to ask this, but is everyone over at ATLUS okay? Like- they haven't all had suffered a simultaneous psychosis and are trapped in a hellish upside down world of insanity, are they? Because I feel like I'm inside of that world right now, and it's making me queasy. I'm half waiting for the NFT series of the 5 cast to drop around the corner, just to really drive that shank into the ribcage, you know? I may scour the ends of the earth, down it's deepest recess and up it's shimmering peaks, through the veil of reality and atop those waving golden shores of dreams, and some super-deity might meet me and grant the world's wisdom in the pinprick of a needle, and the ATLUS PC port release schedule will still remain life's tormenting mystery.

And you know at this point I don't even care about Persona 6. Seriously, I don't. They could announce the game tomorrow and my response would still be "Cool- where's my 5 port?" Because here's the thing, I've been kicking around this block long enough to know that in this industry, it doesn't matter how big you are, how many hits you've made, how stellar that game record is, one day you're going to take the biggest turd in your career and it'll stink worse than most of your successes. The way I see it, the more great games you make, the more you're just building up bulk and that almighty, world-ending, dump is somewhere along the way. That Doom Clock ticks ever closer to midnight. And the Persona games have had 3,4 and 5 be labelled as classics, so as far as I'm concerned 6 is radioactive material to me. Once more ATLUS, in as much energy as I can still generate in this flabby failing frame: just give us that port we want to pay you money for: Please.