#Persona 4 we are one and all Ps4

Story is normally not what you play a fighting game for, but itвЂ™s a central focus in P4UA outside of the arcade modes. Persona 4 Arena UltimaxвЂ™s story is an odd blend of вЂњhereвЂ™s where they are nowвЂќ and an interesting, if underdeveloped, narrative around a new and complex villain.

If the narrative setup sounds a bit stretched, thatвЂ™s because it is. Auto Battle did exist in the original Ultimax, but still seeing it feels right with this franchise.ThereвЂ™s a vast gulf between the ideal and the real in Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, though, and there is indeed a crazed bear broadcasting fistfights between your friendsвЂ™ inner selves while giving them embarrassing titles. This allows many players to treat this game strictly as a visual novel. On the topic of accessibility, the entire story mode features an Auto Battle option, simulating all fights on your behalf. Just donвЂ™t expect to succeed online with these techniques, because players use every skill at their disposal. More often than not, I spammed the same five-hit square button combo to dispatch every enemy I encountered. While the accessibility allows more people to play it, the challenge of fighting games rarely rears its head here. The ease of combat becomes a bit of a catch-22. These shortcuts get you through most of the story fights if needed, making this entire game quite user friendly. On that note, the game includes a built-in option to long press a face button to make your character chain a specific combo. Fortunately, I got lucky enough to end up in a lobby with another person to try it out a couple times.Д¬ombat itself feels good, even when you donвЂ™t quite know what youвЂ™re doing. Once you start the fight, the servers do not get in your way.ДЄs you can see, though, I didnвЂ™t get much time to interact with filled servers by any means. At the same time, seeing people waiting at a station for a competitor feels oh so motivating to play them.Д¬laiming your station takes a few seconds before the server registers your input, and confirming the match takes a similar amount of time before it starts loading. Really, this acts just as a lobby to meet other players and compete.

#Persona 4 we are one and all Ps4

One of the coolest features from the original Ultimax returns to the PS4 version in the online arcade.

This is a nitpick, and it doesnвЂ™t make or break the experience, but either way it took a couple hours of playing before I stopped noticing it. Graphic novels tend to take backdrops out of focus a bit to accentuate the foreground, which makes the background pixelation here look more pronounced. Character models receive polished visuals, but the backdrops appear pixelated as well. The lesser visual discrepancy comes from backdrops. Combine those two elements, and many attacks blend together and can be hard to follow. This on its own wouldnвЂ™t be worth mentioning, but many attack animations use blur effects. The aesthetic still looks great, but the age spreads out a bit more liberally on larger screens. The biggest visual reminder that this game released almost ten years ago is just how pixelated the characters look. Most of this presentation ages well enough, but aspects of the game lack the visual refinement that others received. That holds true with Persona 4 Arena, especially since the Persona franchise evokes such a stylized presentation. Nobody releases fighting games at the frequency Arc System Works does, and most of the other developers canвЂ™t create fighters with Arc SystemвЂ™s attention to detail. Thankfully, the Persona energy flows through the entire game, keeping the experience intended for Persona fans by design, even if the stakes donвЂ™t quite live up to their potential. And like most spinoffs, they favor catering to fans with light callbacks and short scenarios to keep those interactions coming.

Like all Persona spinoffs, Arena plays to the strengths of the franchise, leaning on interactions between the gang members.