I'd like to see a successful Yosuke. Making Junpei into a joke is fine by me, but not all of the doofus characters you start with need to end up that way.
To be fair to Daisuke, he didn’t write the story for +R as that was handled by an external porting company, so the weird stud master shit isn’t his fault lol
+R's story isn't awful either, it's just weird. Overall when Daisuke is involved the story of Guilty Gear is pretty good, espically for a fighting game.
P4A was my first anime game back in 2012 and also my first persona game ever, I owe alot to that and the second one. If it weren't for that I wouldn't be taking my art seriously and wanting to work at Atlus.
Damn that part about the hopelessness hit hard. I remember playing some persona 4 in HS and the game made me feel like life was easy to conquer if you put yourself out there and apply yourself. I never finished it but I almost don't want to now because of how much I wasted my HS and college years.
nothing in life is wasted, every experience leads up to the totality of your personhood and will define who you are and the legacy you leave behind. all of life--even the parts where you're just sitting around watching netflix, not having showered yet, eating a tub of ice cream all alone, were worth it to make you, you.
@@malum9478 That's nice and all, but I think I'd still have liked to be a little more active in extra curriculars. There's lots to experience in life outside of visual entertainment. Of course it's never too late and I do plan on taking some hobby classes for things I care about, but these things don't cost money in school and you have more time. So yeah anybody still in school definitely try some shit out.
I feel like I did the same thing (graduated 3 years ago, and fighting off the feeling of being Too Old at 24) but still try to keep that spirit alive. Often feel like I'm living a delayed adolescence, but I don't care. You kind of have to choose not to care and to do whatever the fuck you want/is fun.
P4A was literally the first Persona game I ever played, so I gotta say I was the literal embodiment of the pikachu face meme whe I picked up P5R and saw it was a turned based RPG. Weird way to get into a series but somehow it did the job
I did the same with the Final Fantasy series and Dissidia Final Fantasy. And before that it was Kingdom Hearts. So yeah, was a hell of a way to get introduced to a franchise, but damn, if it wasn't effective lol
I actually started my experience with Persona with Arena, liking fighters. Ended up getting good enough for tournaments and THEN between the first Arena and the anime, I ended up diving into the RPG series, and gained a new favorite franchise. I guess I'm in the minority?
I've always loved fighting games but never really got good at them. I picked up Ultimax as it was a spinoff to my new favorite video game in college. I liked messing around with my more adept friend, but I always kinda wanted to be really good at this one, just never got around to it. Fast forward to now, and I've gotten really into Tekken 7, Street Fighter 5, KOF XV and GG Strive. So having another go at actually learning this game once rollback comes around in summer is a dream come true.
Im one of those hybrid fans- always been a fighter and rpg hoe so if ya ask me this game was made for me- now honestly I would love to give that love to others but skill games just arent very attractive to everyone- I like competetive shooters as well and my best friend likes casual shooters instead. sometimes- a game just isnt for you. and Theres no shame for that. Im glad ultimax exists my library would feel less full without it.
Hmm, I don't think modes in a fighter need to exist to make you better at playing against people competitively online. Injustice2, Mk11, Blazblue Central Fiction, and even Tekken 7 have modes for players who prefer to be offline. It's good for a fighter to offer an experience to another type of player. It helps sustain the game as well.
The upcoming version of Ultimax isn’t really a remaster. It’s just a port of the most recent arcade version which was basically just a balance patch for Ultimax. 🤔
I'm one of those hybrid fans. Always loved JRPGs and started playing fighting games a little better around the time that BlazBlue came out. This game was made for me, and it's still my favorite fighter of all time. I think your criticism of Golden Arena (that it doesn't make you play better) is a misunderstanding of what the mode set out to achieve; it's not there to bridge the gap between hardcore and casual, it exists to provide more PvE content with an RPG flavor for a casual audience that's entirely disinterested in the PvP portion of the game and getting better. You CAN'T bridge that gap, because they have different goals and motivations in the first place. That's actually one of the things that a lot of modern fighters lack: content for players that aren't interested in "getting good." And the wealth of that kind of content is a big part of why Smash Bros. is the most popular fighting game series of all time.
This, wholeheartedly! As someone with Dyspraxia, which impairs my fine motor functions, I can practice to hell and back and never "get good" at games that require a certain degree of dexterity- it is simply physically impossible for me to bridge that gap. Modes like Golden Arena add content that is more accessible to anyone who either can't or aren't interested in getting into the competitive scene.
I can understand not liking the RPG type modes, because in a lot of respects, it does run counter to the main point of the game. But think of it as being like a rouguelike. It can be very fun if you want to mess around with higher character power, for experienced players and not, and it's definitely a godsend for games that are dead or have bad netcode that you just like playing.
I love Ultimax/Arena but the only thing I dislike is that story arcs are tired to the game. So Elizabeth unlocks the wild card and if you wanna know how she is and what she does with that....too bad! What about Labrys and what she does with her P3 friends and how she interacts with them? Nope. Or that loser sho...god knows why anyone would like sho. Oh um him too! Tying things to a fighting game that might not get a continuation is well ...disappointing, I don't expect Liz to get her own persona game but I just wish there was an in canon manga or animations or whatever.
I like Sho a lot, he’s a reversal of Minato and Ryoji, where the exitable one is the human and the low key one the entity created by Nyx. As well that the puns he exhibits show that no matter how much he hates his dad, he still has so much influence on him as a person as the only one who he ever knew
@@StarryOak76 Good for you I guess? I just didn't care for his character or lack there of, he's loud and makes puns and it's like there's building blocks to *make* a character but then they forgot to write the rest. And his whole "I'm gonna be the one to kill you yu." thing is so cliché. and if that was the point of his character, like he was stuck in the facility and read like anime manga or super hero stuff and took that in as a persona (ha ha) then that would slap, but he's just cliché tropes the character.
@@sokumotanaka9271 I mean, I think that’s all fair criticism, but that they don’t explicitly point out that he’s obviously imitating his father doesn’t make that not the case, you know? I think, given that the game’s is like, 12 hours long in total split over two modes where they have to introduce him twice, and the average Persona game has 30+ hours of cutscenes (Golden’s runtime) even without factoring in social links, it was honestly expected for me that they wouldn’t have fleshed him out as well as they could. Given his screen time, I think they did an ok job, all things considered. It’s ok that you don’t, obviously, I’m just offering my opinion. I think the potential he has given by those building blocks is well worth exploring.
At 18:01, you said that "the end goal, to me, should be getting players online", but I love playing single player games only, and so do a lot of other people, so I 100% disagree with your premise. Adding the RPG elements makes the game more enjoyable to play all by myself. The end.
As much as Labrys' story managed to hit me maybe harder than it deserved, pretty much in whole agreement with your assessment. Even being mostly the exact target audience for this game, an intersection of FGC and SMT fan, I can accept that these games didn't do much of a good job of being anything but a bit of a fan-service machine with a pretty good Mitsuru Kirijo fighting game attached to it. Even back when this came out, and I was pretty quick to defend a majority of the Golden-only plot, I was pretty bored with the story since it was incredibly clear that it had no intentions of actually expanding on anything in a meaningful way. In that regard it feels a lot like pretty much every other P4 spin off at this point, with the Persona Qs and Dancing games feeling pretty much identical despite all being solid games in their own right. The "canonicity" of it at the time was something I had been excited for, but ultimately have reconsidered due to just how little it even amounted to in the grand scheme of things. Your point about the RPG mode being bad at teaching the game made me think of the kinds of ways fighting games could start actually making modes designed to teach the game rather than just tacky gimmicks. It's something I've become pretty passionate about solving because the fact that fighting games seem to be unapproachable to a wider audience, and tend to have a very low retention time for anyone who isn't dedicated, is something I wholeheartedly think can be solved. It is frustrating though seeing how far we've come with only the smallest of steps to get to that point. It definitely isn't impossible though, I envision a day where we can get single player modes that find fun and unique ways to teach advanced concepts in a less dry and impractical way. Fingers are crossed that we get something like that soon.
Arena and Ultimax got me into fighting games, and made me learn reaction time and hand eye coordination, and literally action games in general. Now I'm a diehard Guilty Gear fan who mains Ky in XX and Strive. I'm not AMAZING at either game, but I feel competent enough to enjoy playing with plenty of mindgames and execution. So this game literally taught me how to enjoy fighting games lol
In retrospect it would've been wiser of atlus to make some sort of p4 the answer instead of p4 arena. Jrpgs and Fighters are literally the oposite ends of any sort of gameplay.
Literally just discovered your channel and your sense of humour is by far one of the best I’ve ever seen on a RU-vid channel: I greatly thank thee for covering a game I am most excited to finally play!
I've actually spent 2 months with Tekken 5 And Tekken 6 but never figured out the game and kept mashing until it's not fun anymore The same with street fighter 3 and 4 But the first fighting game that I mastered was guilty gear Accent core plus on the f. PSP and with a month I was playing 7 characters and when it got rollback I never stopped playing and improved significantly I think nobody well be the best in every single fighting game or even find enjoyment in all of them because once You're used to a certain kind of fighting game you might not be on edge with other kinds I like fast high mobility 2d fighting games I don't like 3d fighting games or low mobility or footsie based games like mortal Kombat street fighter or even soul calibre (sorry if I have mispronounced that)😅 I wish I was born in the 90s so I could have experienced Marvel vs Capcom and mastered it to come face to face with Justin Wong
18:00 I don't agree with "the story mode should just be prepping you for online" concept. I primarily play single player games. If I play COD for the story campaign, it's not because I want to get to the multiplayer. I have no interest in the multiplayer aspect. Having a single player mode that has different mechanics just for those people that want to stick to single player is a good thing.
Fighting game simply aren't for casuals. It's a pvp genre that needs to be balanced for it, and reward higher skilled players. Treating fighting games from a casual pov is a disservice.
OH maan, don't get me started on Daisuke's writing. When he gets into it, it gets NUTS. Blazblue is just . . . man, and Guilty Gear is only moderately better.
Still wish P5S was somewhere in this. Either way, thanks for convincing me that I need to buy P4AU again. Hot DAMN I've missed that game! All of this just reminds me of the amazing time I had with a game where most of my skills came from watching one Evo tournament.
Buddy, I think the entirety of Arc System Works has been living in perpetual fear of the sheer power of what they created with Bridget for the past 20 years
I’m probably in a weird position because my persona path was watching PQ trailers, then playing Ultimax and buying the Arena story DLC, then the RPG. There is a lot of flanderization for some of these characters, but with the Arena story, it did feel more “genuine” to me with some of the stories and story moments. It did feel like a bunch of friends meeting up again, and some characters did have stories I enjoyed following, namely Yosuke, Aegis, Elizabeth, and Labrys. Also it was nice seeing both P3 and P4 in the same place and how P3 fit in this already existing world (and while I do get that Akihiko may be different, I can’t deny that it looks good and like it so it should stay because I said so). Though the part about how this game refuses to actually teach you anything that’ll help you learn the game? That I can’t defend the game on. Sure, be zany and bullshit all you want. That makes for fun watching, but if you’re using your most mainstream RPG series and making it so complicated you need a degree to even see it all, then you’ve failed to capture those fans beyond those too deluded by P4’s name, or just the idiots who saw the box and wanted to understand what an ultimax meant (that’s me!). That being said though, I will defend Golden Arena mode. It’s a Fighting Game Roguelike. That’s different and cool and a nice change of pace from “don’t get touched, lest you lose the round, match, all your money, and will to play”. It’s nice. I like it.
TBF I don't think there's really a good way for ANY competitive fighter to translate offline skills to Online Skills. Sure Single player campaigns in shooters would teach you the basics of the game, but going online with them and ranking the shit out of it would still require external resources, alot of internal willpower to push through losses and learn from them or just people to enjoy the ride of learning with. So even with "GOOD" single player content, which yeah probably is possible, still won't teach you how to be good at the game online. THAT will still require you to go online and lose alot, I do admit its bad and requires a different kinda crackhead to do. Sadly, that's just the truth to most competitive games, moreso 1v1 games, since they have limited ways of padding the hit to one's ego when one losses. Also about the complication of the game: The time it went out, this is actually considered relatively simple. This was in the era coming out of +R and 3s where devs were pushing the genre to its limits and see how much they could do with 2D fighting games. This is in the era where developers are slowly starting to experiment with how to make games simpler and more palatable to a casual audience, while still making sure it has meat and shit for long time FG players to enjoy as well. If they decide to try out the game. It's in the same vein as Blazblue, Guilty Gear Xrd, and SF4. It was considered extremely simple and too easy for the old fans of the series, compared to their older iterations. Doe I do agree if they make P5A they should make it like DNF Duel or Strive like to not alienate primarily RPG fans. ~~just make the cracked out games with their Original IPs or some of their original IPs pls Instakilling someone is some of the funniest and funnest shit I want to do to people. ~~
as one of the two people on the planet that was a Persona fan AND a fighting game fan before I played this game: This is the best video game ever made and Sho is an extremely nuanced and well written character and instantly became my favorite character in any video game ever and I'm NOT kidding.
I have to say it's really disappointing that they wouldn't have gone with a single story mode where you switch up different characters to play out what happens, like in the Neversoft games.
P4AU is interesting because the series was the first real attempt by Arcsys to try and make their games accessible but back then they thought that accessibility was strictly input and execution based rather then being easy to understand and intuitive and not bloated system wise. Legit had friends pick up Guilty Gear and Blazblue easier then P4AU because there is just so many mechanics not all of which are intuitive.
I dont know, a lot of people I know like P4U Story Mode, hell I know a guy who's big a fan of how they handle Adachi in this game where he definitely changed better as a person, but he its not immediate, its slow and calm. I know with a cynical eye it can look meaningless, but to someone it gave meaning and isnt that good?
I know one Yosuke combo, I like Yosuke, it makes me happy. I really like fighting games and ironically I played P4AU before I started P4G. Almost done with P4G then I'll play P4AU since it has both stories. While I definitely will dive more than the normal Persona fan, I'm more of a grounded fighter man at the end of the day.
So for me, P4AU was my first Persona game. A friend came over on my 17th birthday and told me about Persona 4 and this game and I was kinda hooked. So we went down to gamestop and got it for xbox 360 and just played the whole weekend. I'm a fan of both RPG's & Fighting games, so I would've played P4 and then went for AU either way, but I get that that's not the most common pair of genres to like lol
Fun fact, Elizabeth and yukiko are consistently rated as trash in the tier lists competitively even though they seem strong in casual play for being zoners.
20:36 Is it me or Sho has the same voice actor that plays the voice in Kaine's head in the Original Nier games? They sound familiar. 21:17 they have an obligation to put a deity as a final boss, just like Final Fantasy, bcz yes... as well as Modern Sonic for some reason....
Even with how convoluted and weird the game series is, it's sitll one of the best FG series for me, alongside Melty Blood and Guilty Gear Xrd. And, I love the Persona RPG series, so it's a win-win for me. Now, if only the arcade balance that the current port has was better if would be more enjoyable (Shadow KUSOGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE).
Know I'm late, but appreciate your thoughts on the absolute state of single player content for fighting games, through the lens of an old-as-heck jrpg spin-off languishing on the PS3. Maybe one day things will improve, but if we're truly honest with ourselves, this is probably going to be how it is for a long, long time Cheers
While I disagree with a FEW points made here i'll agree I'm one of those guys who's both a fan of 2d fighters AND RPGs. Honestly this along with Street fighter 3: third strike is one of my favorite fighting games of all time. It just FEELS great when you're playing it. Honestly I don't really feel like it's that insane to play either. Especially when put against the more complex arcsys stuff like Guilty Gear (xrd mostly) or.... hell let's be honest tekken. Have you SEEN a move list in tekken?! Let's not even get started on virtua fighter.
I would indefinitely pass out if they made a sequel to ultimax and it had p3, p4, and p5 characters, and if they made the story like PQ's then we would have easily the best persona fighting game. And if they wanted to do dlc (because they have to, it's a fighting game) they could easily make p1 and p2 characters as dlc
I picked this game up last week with a friend I met playing Strive ranked and neither of us have any idea what the fuck we're doing, it's fantastic. Funny Adachi play tennis.
For me it was the other way around . I love fighting games so I got these . Never played the rpgs . Now I want to and I’m thinking of grabbing 4 golden when I rebuy ultamax again
I got into Persona through Arena because I was into Blazblue at the time and was curious enough to try my hands on anything Arcsys-made. Then I heard about this game and watched the anime to bring myself up to speed and I was hooked to the Persona series (and Megaten as a whole) as a result. Now I’m going through Golden on PC, and so far I’m having a good time!
Another great video. I really liked arena but I just sucked and no one to local play so just got boring after a bit. Keep doing a super job , love ya kbash thanks and i hope things are going good and all is well.
I appreciate arena solely for the fact that Rise, arguably one of the strongest non combatant support characters in the franchise, finally gets to role up her sleeves and beat some ass along side the rest of her friends.
I am glad I found your channel, you are actually hilarious and well informed on every video I have seen of yours thus far. May your channel grow and grow, you deserve it!
I think this, Dragon Ball FighterZ and inbirth under light handled being beginner friendly. They have auto combos implemented but had enough mechanics and freedom to allow more advanced combos. Blazblue while great being one of the best anime fighting games, either had a way too technical for a casual player and had a mode that made it too easy for a casual player (F.E Central fiction) or was way too causal/easy like having too many auto combos for advanced players (F.E Cross Tag Battle) (The last also can apply to melty Blood: Type Lumina but that game is in a middle ground, too many auto combos that allow the player to just button mash to win but had enough mechanics in there that if the player tries to go in advance combos, they'll have enough room to do it in their own unique way)
here's a fun thought: it's called a tutorial MODE because a tutorial could be as simple as a diagram saying "hit them, they die" the mode in the title guarantees that it will be more than a book and it will be an interactive experience. or they just wanted more letters on the screen.
If you want to cut down the Story Content for Arena, all you need are Aigis and Yosuke, they don’t contradict each other for the most part (The ending for both are different) provide lots of Depth for Labrys, and the official Manga combines the two.
If it wasn't for the original Persona 4 Arena, I never would've heard of the Persona series aside from a video by RU-vid channel Did You Know Gaming. Sometimes Persona & Pokemon fans get mad at me when it tell them my fave games in those series are Persona 4 Arena Ultimax & Pokken Tournament DX
I'm glad this game exists. I suck big balls at fighting games even though I started my gaming with SF, Tekken, and MK on the ps1. So getting this game on a discount was a treat. I expected more or less a sliver of content of Persona in this game but Labrys' story was a hit for me. Seeing P3 casts all grown up was also a big plus. But yeah, I mashed square all day long and got through the story pretty damn quick. Then I tried the RPG mode and I got kicked forward to back at Hard difficulty. Even so, I love this game to bits.
What is that endscreen picture??? I can just barely tell it's a collage of characters, but I can't make anything specific out... *_Except for Wario laughing_*
I loved the fuck out of this game and I never even played Persona 4, and I never finished Persona 3. In fact, at the time, I had only played Persona 1... (and I didn't really like it). Labrys became my favorite character.
This was a really interesting review! A good amount of good points. I'm one of the hybrid fans that loves rpgs and 2d fighting games so P4U was the perfect game for me since I love the Persona series. The only thing is...I only play the game online/competitively. I've barely touched the story because it was pretty boring (of course with its good moments) but I knew going in that it wouldn't be all that since it's a fighting game, so I just skipped out on basically every game mode that wasn't online or training mode. I just play the game to beat people and get better at Chie and Kanji lol. That's basically it. I play this game for fun and I like using characters I like and are attached to. So even when I lose, I'm still having fun (for the most part).
I didn't know jack shit about fighting games or anime fighters, but Arena and Ultimax got me into anime fighters, came to them as a Persona fan and just stuck playing forever, got into more animu fighters, learned long combos after 3-4 years, now its 7-8 years, im still a filthy casual but i can kick ass and stomp skulls, play animu fighters almost daily, can't get my kicks unless i destroy friends or people online, its a fun life now thanks to Ultimax, couldn't have done it without you.
