PERSONA 4 ARENA ULTIMAX PS5 TV

As your character builds stats in strength, magic, endurance, and agility, and acquires an arsenal of buff, debuff, and healing abilities, you'll progress deeper and deeper down the four courses that range from Normal to Ultimate difficulty, with progressively higher total floors and more higher-level enemies but also with the chance of earning better abilities. The challenge is to defeat a sequence of enemies in survival-mode fashion, all while gaining experience points and battle skills from boss characters, similar to how Persona RPGs work with character progression. Rounding out the standard spread of Arcade, Versus, Score Attack, and multiplayer offerings is an RPG-oriented Golden Arena mode which Blazblue fans will recognize as an Abyss Mode variant. However, due to the inclusion of every character's point of view, much of the same information is told over and over again at a belaboring pace. As a pair, 'Episode P4' and the unlockable 'Episode P3' essentially tell the same story but with a slightly different arrangement, particularly when it comes to the ending. Belying the card layout of the plot, it follows in fairly linear fashion and delves into each character's point of view for at least twenty minutes apiece, extending to over 8-10 hours of dialogue, voice-acted cut-scenes, and not much actual fighting in between. Typically in a review, especially for a fighting game, I wouldn't spend more than several paragraphs detailing the story since the genre isn't known for caring about it, but Ultimax treats its story as if it's an RPG. This prompts the remaining Persona 3 characters to be called into action and gives the Persona 4 crew (apart from the ever-sharp detective Naoto) no explanation of the Dark Hour and Tartarus until they arrive. Someone is clearly toying with the cast, a point that becomes immediately apparent when the Inaba group sees what's on the Midnight Channel: an image of several key Shadow Operatives including Mitsuru, Fuuka, and Akihiko tied unconscious and crucified on slate-grey T-shaped crosses.

PERSONA 4 ARENA ULTIMAX PS5 TV

Ultimax answers several looming questions from its predecessor, chiefly the identity of the culprit who threw Labrys into the TV World in the first place and how the entire situation seemed to coincide with Yu Narakami's return to Inaba far too coincidentally. The characters must still fight one-on-one against each other in the P-1 Climax fighting tournament as hosted by General Teddie, except this time the opponents are shadow forms of other characters and they're curiously not even trying to hide the fact that they're dopplegangers. But please know that as ridiculous as this all sounds, it all makes sense from the events in the last three Persona games. If you haven't played any of the modern Persona titles, you're likely be bewildered by those two previous sentences, and Ultimax only covers the events of Persona 4 Arena with several brief cut-scenes. Where P3's characters were confused by P4's TV World, P4's cast in Inaba has now been blindsided by P3's Dark Hour and their school's transformation into another Tartarus, a malefic, multi-floored tower molded for the purpose of calling down the apocalypse. The boosted defensive and magical stats may be worth sacrificing damage and combo interruption if it suits your playstyle.Ĭontinuing only a few days after the ending of Persona 4 Arena, in which the motley crews from Persona 3 and Persona 4freed the Anti-Shadow Suppression Weapon Labrys from TV World, Ultimax flips the setup of the story on its head. Shadow forms deal less damage, can't use Bursts, and can't Awaken, but they have higher HP and SP generation, can carry SP from prior rounds, can use Awakened SP Skills anytime, and can enter Shadow Frenzy mode where SP skill cost is reduced. The only significant changes are the introduction of the belligerant dual-sword newcomer Sho Minazuki, several characters from Persona 3-the archer Yukari, the spear-wielding Ken & swift shiba inu Koromaru as a team, and the baseball star wannabe Stupei Junpei-and various shadow variants who you can select at the character selection screen.

Persona 4 arena ultimax ps5