We are three months into 2022 and there is simply so much to look forward to when it comes to fighting games. A little over a month ago we had a big release with The King of Fighters XV, which I’m still trying to play when I can. Meanwhile, last week alone there was a niche release that a community has been waiting nearly a decade for in Phantom Breaker: Omnia. Over the weekend we had the third Japan Fighting Game Publishers Roundtable that revealed a slew of information and updates about various fighting game series.

Nestled between those last two and arguably what most were looking forward to was the port of Persona 4 Arena Ultimax. Originally released in 2014 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, this port is a complete package with all of the DLC, based on the arcade version that had more updates than the console versions. As someone who never got to play the game when it came out eight years ago, has never played a Persona game, and does enjoy Arc System Works fighters, I was excited to see if the game would appeal to me.

Right off the bat, I did run into some problems. Each time I tried to open the game I would be greeted with an InitRenderer error box that kept me from starting. Some googling and Twitter searching led me to the understanding that the game can’t run fullscreen on monitors with a higher resolution than 1080p, and the game runs fullscreen by default. I had to create a .ini file to override these default settings and have been running it in windows borderless mode since.

When I finally got into the game, I noticed that the sound was all over the place. I was able to strike a bit of a balance through the sound settings. However, there seems to be a large range between some aspects (like the opening movie) being loud and others sounding so quiet I have to increase my volume. I’ve seen a fix for this involving a hex editor and that’s just a bit more work and time than I’m willing to give when I could be playing the game. Both of these are common problems that I hope will be solved with updates.

The game itself feels like an Arc System Works title through and through. Fantastic visuals, an abundance of mechanics, and a quick pace ensure that there’s a lot you can do and it all looks great while you do it. What separates it from others gameplay-wise is the usage of personas by most of the cast. Characters generally follow a control scheme of having weak attacks, strong attacks, weak persona attacks, and strong persona attacks.

How the personas are used and how much a character depends on them varies across the roster. Characters have to pause a bit to summon them for an attack, but they can provide great range options for the most part. If a character’s persona is hit a specific number of times it can break, after which it will take some time before they can be called out again.

It seems simple enough and the game does use merely four buttons (one for each attack) along with movement. However, some additional mechanics make use of those four buttons very well. For example, pressing the weak and weak persona buttons let you perform an evasive action, while a furious action comes out when you press the strong and strong persona buttons. Pressing both persona buttons lets you throw, while the opposite pair is for launching the universal overhead all-out attack.

That’s not the end of it though. If you press all buttons except for the strong button your character will perform a burst. Doing the same sans the strong persona button will let you cancel the recovery of an attack with one more cancel. Four of these can be set to be used by the bumpers and triggers of your controller, but two of them will likely have to remain as a set of buttons you use. Each is an important skill to remember and nearly every one of them has different properties or versions depending on what situation they’re used in.

Outside of these general mechanics, there are also the various status effects/ailments, instant kills, and most characters having a shadow type that plays differently and has separate mechanics.  Thankfully, all of this can be learned in the very helpful tutorial mode. There are a ton of options and mechanics available here and the tutorial mode made it all a bit less daunting.

When you want to learn the specifics of a character, the training mode will be your best friend. All of the characters stand out with different playstyles and attacks, but a lot of them have their own unique systems such as Yukiko’s fire boost leveling, Teddie’s cycle of thrown items, and Naoto’s fate counter. The challenge mode features 3o combo trials for each character, but I would recommend checking them out after getting used to the character in the training mode and maybe after fighting against the CPU a bit.

This brings us to the various battle modes. There’s the typical versus and score attack modes, as well as an arcade mode that features a condensed version of the story mode (more on that later). A unique mode that aims to satisfy Persona fans and other RPG lovers is the Golden Arena mode. It challenges the player in tackling dungeons that consist of one-round fights alongside a navigator/partner character that cheers you on. Experience is gained from each victory and after accumulating enough you’ll be able to level up and distribute points into different stats such as strength or HP.

Each navigator also provides a unique partner skill for you to take advantage of. Additional skills can be discovered as you beat dungeon bosses and level up in general. There’s a huge variety of buffs and effects for all of the skills and the limit of four skills plus the partner skill adds another layer of strategy to what skills you want to keep or discard. For those who want to have a less tedious grind, there’s also an auto mode that will let the AI take over.

Further appealing to Persona fans is the story mode. Persona 4 Arena Ultimax has a set of story episodes, including unlockable campaigns and the story from its predecessor game, Persona 4 Arena. It’s presented through visual novel scenes, the occasional animated scene, and easy one-round fights. The ratio of reading to fighting is heavily skewed towards the former as one character’s story episode took me over an hour and a half and featured a handful of fights that took 20-40 seconds each.

Regarding the content of the story mode, even without deep knowledge of the series I really enjoyed it! All of the characters are fun and the story isn’t too complicated to understand. That being said, it does take place after the events of Persona 4 and Persona 3 and features characters from both games, so plot points from both will be spoiled.

My general intrigue in the series increased tenfold from the music alone. There is a great mix of original tracks and tracks from both Persona games represented here, which in turn means there is some wonderful hip-hop, rap, rock, and pop music to vibe with. I was aware that the music in these games is beloved, but it was genuinely difficult to choose the main menu song when so many of them sound so great!

I also became enamored by the tremendous style the game exudes. Every aspect of the game is just so fun and cool. The main menu is flashy, the victory screens take wonderful advantage of the TV world aesthetic, and it blows my mind how something as simple as having a tilted character select screen adds so much personality. Being able to choose separate colors for a character and their persona is also a wonderful customization option that lets players stand out from one another and play with color schemes that match their own style.

Although there is a decent offering of single-player modes to sink time into, many are going to want to sink their time into the online mode. If you’ve played the original game or any recent Arc System Works game, you’ll likely be happy to hear that their chibi-lobby menu is absent in all versions of this port except the PlayStation 4 version. Nice and simple menus allow you to search for opponents and create rooms.

On to the actual online experience, it felt pretty lacking before I could play. Most of the time I couldn’t connect to people’s rooms and when I could, the other player(s) would have a level 2 connection at best. Annoyingly enough, I wound up leaving some rooms I did connect with because the connection speed isn’t listed until about a few seconds after you join. Ranked matches thankfully do let you search with a set preference for connection speed, but there isn’t a way to filter out connection speed when searching for casual player matches unless you create a room.

A couple of matches I got to play with a decent connection felt alright, but they did feel like a minority experience. There’s just no changing the fact that a game that’s as quick and features as many options as this one feels terrible most of the time on delay-based netcode. The strange issues I had just trying to connect with people were just the cherry on top of an unsatisfying online experience.

There is some hope to hold onto though. An announcement from the game’s producer last month relayed the news that the Steam and PlayStation 4 versions of the game will be updated with rollback netcode in the summer. That’s not to guarantee the online experience will be perfect but given Arc System Works’ track record, it will likely be a whole lot better.

I can’t necessarily review the potential of a game though. As it currently stands, once you get past and maybe ignore some technical issues, there’s a fun anime-fighter that’s brimming with style and substance to match. Casual players can certainly enjoy the single-player modes, but the online experience as a whole leaves much to be desired.

If you’re curious or if the elements it excels at are what’s important to you, it’s worth a look. If playing online is all you’re looking for, it might be better to wait until the game is updated later this year. I’m sure the game will have a heavier presence in my rotation once the netcode is updated. In the meantime though, I think I might have convinced myself to take some time to check out the original Persona series.

A PC Review Copy of Persona 4 Arena: Ultimax was provided by Atlus for this review

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Persona 4 Arena Ultimax

29.99

7.9

Score

7.9/10

Pros

• Diverse Gameplay
• Oozes Style In Every Aspect
• Fun Single-Player Modes
• Challenge Combos

Cons

• Delay-Based Netcode
• Searching for Online Matches
• Technical Problems/Errors