Yakuza 6: Song of Life (PS4) - A retrospective on the series as a whole.

It's baffling to me that I have worked on this blog for as long as I have. As I've told before this blog was started actually as part of a masters course project. Seemed easy enough, start a blog and make a post. I play video games, so why not talk about a game I really liked? That game was Yakuza 4.

Since then it's a pretty winding road for the franchise (originally known as Ryu Ga Gotoku) as a whole. After a lukewarm launch and niche audience, interest in western releases waned for Sega and they basically gave up after the very poorly received zombie offshoot, Yazuka: Dead Souls. Thus began the 3 year fight to try to get Yakuza 5 released to the west. Once that battle was won, they tried again by releasing the prequel game Yakuza 0.

THAT was the game really allowed the tires to dig into the western soil and get some tread going. Now people were at the start of the story, and with the release of the Kiwami games, people are getting to experience the full story now. For those like me, this culminates with today's entry and the newest installment of this long running franchise. I've fallen too far behind to give each game a proper review. So instead while covering this one, I will speak on the franchise as a whole. Be warned: There may be spoilers ahead.

YAKUZA 6: SONG OF LIFE(PS4)

Yakuza 6 picks up mere moments after the ending of Yakuza 5 with longtime protagonist Kazama Kiryu bleeding out and injured in the streets after his last over-the-top battles with the Tojo and Omi when he is found by and finally reunited with Haruka. Haruka after winning a contest to become an idol and had just formed a supergroup with rival group T-Set, had just admitted to a live audience her guardian was former Yakuza, and publicly announced she was quitting the entertainment industry before running out of the Tokyo Dome.

While Kiryu was recovering from his injuries, he was approached by the police about his responsibility to the public damage that was caused with his battles with the Tojo and Omi clans. Instead of fighting back or using connections to get out of jail, he instead opts to do his time, and get out with a clean slate. When he does, he can return to the Sunshine Orphanage with Haruka and live as a family with the children there waiting for him.

But when he finally makes it back, he comes to find out that Haruka has left. She wanted the press and reputation of her ties to Yakuza to not hinder the other children's opportunities. Kiryu returns to Kamurocho to try to pick up her trail, only to find she is comatose from a hit an run accident and that she apparently had a son. With only a trace amount of leads, Kiryu takes the child and heads out to search Kamurocho and Hiroshima to find the alleged father of the baby and to find out who hurt Haruka and why?

As you saw in the last year end wrap up, I showered a little praise on both Yakuza 0 & Yakuza Kiwami for being standards of excellence in gaming. I have played nearly all of them available to me at this point, and outside of Yakuza: Dead Souls (a non-cannon offshoot, mind you) almost all of them rank equally in how they are built. Primarily because despite being a long running series, there really isn't a lot that changes in the core formula of a Yakuza game. It's the main reason most of them haven't gotten full reviews.

When you first look at screens and game play footage, you would assume its in that open world vein that you may expect Grand Theft Auto to fall under. And while to a small extent this is true for a basic framework for missions, this really isn't at all how the Yakuza franchise plays. It's more of a blend of sandbox, beat em up, and rpg if I had to narrow it down. As you walk around town you cant just start creating mayhem (because Kiryu is an honorable criminal?) and start smashing people. In this series combat appeared almost like random battles with thugs coming up with laughably obscure reasons to attack you. In Yakuza 6 this was made a bit more seamless by skipping the dialog to make it feel more natural.

The combat of the Yakuza franchise is really the bread and butter and this is why you play. It's a variant of the standard 3rd person action game and typically sticks to a light attack, heavy attack, grab/weapon, dodge convention. It can lend to button mashing if that is your style of play, but it goes to great pains to show you all the various combos and heat moves you can unlock that really can open up your strategy when you play. It's primary selling point is the heat mechanic: As you deal damage to enemies you raise a heat bar, and once it reaches capacity you would be surrounded by a flame like aura. When in the right situation, you will be prompted with a heavy attack prompt that will go into a brief but visceral animation of your character dispatching an enemy in brutal fashion. These are the heat moves and they are hard to watch at first but oh... so satisfying.

And there are TONS of ways to do these moves and they change by what you are standing by, what character you are using, what weapon you are holding, what stance you are in, if your heat gauge is full to certain levels. Its almost like a puzzle game itself to try to find and perform all of them, and its actually rewarded because the Yakuza games tend to be known for 100% completion excess.

Heat move from Yakuza Kiwami

The fighting styles in this game are also generally the same across the board but there are instances in which it does change where it makes sense. Typically the fighting style changes when you are playing different characters, and that works because naturally each character would fight differently. Seijima, a character from Yakuza 4, is a burly beast of a man so naturally his fighting style are big hulking swings and smashing heavy weapons to Kiryu's straight forward aggressive striking style. Akiyama is known for being suave and deceptive, so he uses a fighting style that employs kicks and tricky moves.

The times where this didn't happen for example are in Yakuza 0 & Kiwami respectively. Which almost make sense where this is the beginning of the timeline. Kiryu and Majima are still cutting their teeth in the yakuza so they actually employ 3 fighting styles you can change between as they develop their signature style. Since they are the only characters in those games, this mechanic works because it allows variance to the game play without forcing the game to take the narrative off the primary characters.

Combat suffered a little bit in Yakuza 6 because with the step up to PS4 hardware caused a step up in graphical display and game performance, and I feel to make time for all the rendering the move set was cut back a bit. It was still fun to do and visceral as ever, but it certainly felt lacking in comparison the rest of the series as a whole. The bottom line though is for skill, quick paced combat with a weighty feel to it? The Yakuza franchise nails it on that front.

Another trait that this series is known for is the straight jacket wearing level of distraction this game provides. See, the focus of these games is the primary narrative which sometimes can be a little bit samey. But in between the major story moments of the game, you get explore the streets of Kamurocho. This is actually a fun little recreation of actual Toyko red light district Kabukicho. And it features all the distractions you might expect from a downtown district of Tokyo: streets filled with restaurants, arcade games, gambling parlors, hostess clubs, night clubs, stores and filled with actual Yakuza members.

In this specific series of games, almost all of these are interactable, like an inception of games. Sega has on more than one occasion put in older games within Yakuza.  So I would stop my progress in the game so I can play Taiko Drum Master, Virtua Fighter, or Out run. Sometimes there are side quests with random NPCs involved with these, but 90% of the time they are thrown in there as just extra bullshit to play with while you do. You might think why would you put in there then if it doesn't mean anything, but I can't tell you how easy it is to sunk into other game instead of moving on. The number of distractions only increased with each installment of the game (Yakuza 5 had so much side shit they could be sold as separate games) before finally dialing back some in Yakuza 6.

As mentioned prior there is a fair amount of side questing to do. A lot of the times this will just involve you having to go to a place and beat somebody up, but a lot of these are a way to introduce some of the mini games. Most of these provide experience bonuses to level your character faster, and some of them will unlock item rewards. None of them are required to actually beat the game but the experience helps as bosses will force you to get more skillful in your fighting.

Although some are really fucking out of place. Most egregiously, and I've talked about this before, is the required hostess club missions in Yakuza 4. In a game where I am suplexing someone onto a bike rail and them smashing his friend with the actual bike, being forced to stop so I can play Pretty Pretty Princess THREE TIMES is incredibly jarring and unnecessary. One time made sense for story context, three times was just ridiculous and excessive. But if you wanted to get the completion, you had to do this with like six girls. No thank you.

I'm not kidding. In the midst of the story of crime, betrayal, and honor you
need to take 3 breaks to make sure your hostess fashion is up to snuff.

Or like in Yakuza Kiwami, I'm being constantly hounded and mugged by Majima, but then suddenly he stops because he feels he needs to be better than me at pocket cart racing. What?! Perhaps this is a way of leading horse to water as it were for getting the player to notice and try these mini games, but honestly in the game that lets you go out and explore what there is it see, I can't image there is much a need to make the player try them. A friend I recently turned on to the series told me she couldn't progress with the story because she was enjoying the side questing too much. So yeah, not a big problem on that front.

From a graphics perspective, the Yakuza franchise made some strides when going from the PS2 to the PS3, and from that point on has remained incredibly consistent on that front. Once they had down their design in Yakuza 3, the character appearance never really changed. They just continued to overhaul and tweak it's visual design to where we are now with Yakuza 6 where all the textures have damn near photo realistic skin imperfections and lifelike glisten to sweat and tears. I found myself on more than one occasion marveling at how good the series has come to look.

Actually, looking at it now Yakuza 1's graphics really laid the foundation well.

There has to be a degree of motion capture as well because the most recent iteration of this game featured a number of NJPW wrestlers and Kiryu had busted out more than one pro wrestling move into his new arsenal on more than on occasion. But more so than that is this is the first time I recognized a character as an actual personality as one of the primary characters in Yakuza 6 was famed Japanese actor Takeshi Kintao who you may know from the new Ghost in the Shell movie, The Blind Swordsman, and probably most famously Battle Royale.

Additionally, the Yakuza games are somewhat of a fun time capsule for this depiction of contemporary Tokyo. with Yakuza 0 it starts off in the 80's where outfits are garish, technology is dated, and clubs had very different visual stylings to them. And as you play through the series you always stay in, or wind up coming back to Kamurocho. Kind of like Nier:Automata you could argue that by reusing the same map it feels cut and paste, but really I always feel nostalgic and familiar with the streets, and enjoying finding what stayed and what changed.

Majima's "Breaker Style" from Yakuza 0

This series soundtrack tends to be fairly complimentary as well. 90% of the time you probably wont even notice the OST as much of it shifts from droning overbearing ambiance for it's dramatic moments, and a hard rock bed during fight sequences. You will notice more iconic sounding theme in the bigger moments of the game where you have long drawn out action sequences, and each game usually has some big main theme that goes down during the fight sequences of the game. Yakuza 4's "for faith" for all 4 final boss sequences is still hands down the best. In each game only a few tracks will truly stand out, but all of these OSTs are ones you can toss on a playlist and get lost in while you do stuff around the house.

But most importantly of all for the Yakuza franchise, is that if there is any one selling point above all else is that this game has some truly exceptional story telling. Throughout the series and primarily in the early stages of the franchise, the narrative is based around Kazama Kiryu and Haruka Sawamura. Despite being in and out with the yakuza, Kiryu is still a pretty predominant figure in it's politics and despite his best efforts seems to constantly drawn into the fold be it power struggles, murders, or turf wars.

Much like the setting the game takes place in, I love the dedication to the development times of the games in correlation to the characters. This isn't as notable with most of the cast but is primarily noticed with Haruka. When you first meet her in Yakuza 1/Kiwami is only 9 years old. By the time you see her in Yakuza 6 she is almost 20. When you look at the development times of the games, she is always aged just as old as you saw her from the last game release over the course of the entire franchise. You basically get to see her grow from child to adult through the series. Resident Evil 6 did this with Sherry Birkin, and that is a chronology continuity I have always appreciated seeing when it comes to storytelling.

Haruka: Age 9 as of Yakuza: Kiwami

Haruka: Age 18 as of Yakuza 5

Yakuza 4 set off as a branching point where we started to deviating from Kiryu as the primary focus, introducing us to a wave of new characters and stories to follow before branching back to our stalwart hero. With new characters allowed to take the stage, we are now starting to see a bigger focus on new fan favorites like Akimaya and Seijima in 4 and 5, and Majima in 0, Dead Souls, and the upcoming Kiwami 2 remake. So while Yakuza 6 marks the end of the Kiryu arc, there is plenty of people who could carry the story if need be. But not Tanimura, that character basically vanished after having a lead role in Yakuza 4.

Ultimately though, this series is crime drama through and through. So despite reasonably stable starting off points for the story (usually a murder), there will be so many twists and turns during the course of the story, that you will never really know what to expect by the end of it and some of it can be pretty ridiculous. Well, that's not entirely true. When talking to a friend, I described what I call my "Shirts off, Shit's Serious" rule. You always know when a fight is important contextually, because MAN do the dudes in Yakuza love to rip their shirts off to show off their bitchin' ink jobs on their back.  When you see guys ripping off their shirts and jackets in one seamless transition, you know things are about to go down in a big way (this is extremely hilarious in 4, where 8 people do it in one segment).

There are a small handful of complaints I can make. Like I mentioned before, fights in these games almost have a very Final Fantasy random battle feel about them, as people stop you on the street to make some ridiculous commentary about why they are going to kick your ass before having a fade transition to the battle sequence. This was worked out in the newer games, but it certainly can affect the pacing in some of the earlier ones. Although I have to admit I loved some of the sillier reasons people would fight me.

If you are a player who is obsessed with 100% completion, best of luck to you because this game fucking counts everything. Fighting styles, scores in arcade games, money won in all casino games, eaten every one of the food items in the 100's of restaurants, dated all the hostesses, and on and on and on. My first play through of  Yakuza 4 I want to say ended with just under 90 hours of game play. By the time I was all said and done with it, the game told me I had just under 25% complete. That is literally insane. Its even harder with some like Yakuza 0 where you have to buy properties to complete that quest, but the game or map doesn't actually tell you which you bought or which you own.

I mean if Akiyama was courting me, I'd have full hearts too.
Dat Mauve blazer. *swoon*

It definitely suffers from the tropes of Japanese story telling sometimes. When watching cut-scenes of conversations they tend to repeat a lot of the same things they said to each other while pausing for effect or making confused sound effects. You will always have some low level shouty grunt losing their shit over the smallest perceived slight, and the antagonists in these series are usually so cartoonishly evil you can basically pick them out the moment you see them for the first time.

Also if you are like me and not starting with the actual beginning of the storyline (I started at 4), the beginnings of all these games are going to be confusing as hell because they will make reference to characters, clans, locations, and events that tie to the previous games. While it is confusing, once you learn the major players specific to the title and what the main plot of the game is, the back story isn't as necessary as you can focus on who you do know. It will all eventually tie together.

And this is somewhat of a personal gripe but if you are going to give a me a karaoke minigame to play, why would you only provide two songs? This is something that is consistent in like every one of these games and I have no idea why. The dual layered blu-ray disc is huge. I'm not saying pull a whole tracklist of DDR in there, but I don't think 5 or 10 total songs is asking a lot. You expect me to play them more than once if I'm doing the hostess club dating, some song options would help that.

It also will throw you to the wolves with some more traditional Japanese gambling too. Most of the games you might recognize from a usual casino, some you might recognize but not know how to play like majong or pachinko. But some of these games can be very, very culturally unique and require a lot of re-reading of the rules to go back to even get a loose idea of how to play it. I've played Majong for like 12 hours and I still don't eff'n understand that game.

Was this good? I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING.

Lastly, and my biggest complaint: where the fuck is Yakuza Ishin!? Done in the same mechanics of the traditional series, it is a set period piece where the characters are used in historical japan. Basically the same kind of game only with samurai instead of gangsters and swords instead of fists. I've seen trailers and gameplay and this game looks fucking fun as hell, but because its knee deep in Japanese history they won't localize it because they don't think Americans would understand it. Bitch, we love Kung Fu movies, Anime, and now have a burgeoning K-pop community. How about you let us decide what we do or don't want. Thankfully, with the sudden growing success of the series, the hard no they were giving us about localizing it seems to have changed to a maybe. I have a small hope.

I really don't know what else I can say about this franchise other than its one of the best series I've ever played. None of them are perfect, but I love these characters, I love this universe, I love the music they use, I love the mind numbing amount of distraction, I love the brutally visceral combat, I love the drama, I love the idea of smashing a bicycle over a thugs head before smashing his friend with one of the wheels. I love that you fist fight a fucking bear. I love the Yakuza games.

You can read this review and apply basically everything I've said to any of them. I think they are all great and if slathering this series with praise isn't enough for you to give one a shot, then I don't know what else I can do. With the resurgence this series has been getting, we are getting a Kiwami 2 remake and remasters of the remaining titles on the PS4 so you have no excuse, because they will all be available in one place. Pick any of them, it won't steer you wrong.

Except Yakuza: Dead Souls. Don't pick that one.

Persona 4: Dancing All Night (Vita): That's it. I will apparently buy anything this franchise puts out.

When they announced Persona 5, it came with a handful of other announcements that were coming out, a number of them dealing with Persona 4's  universe. One of them, was a very stupid idea I felt didn't need to exist. My friends hassled me about how great it would be though, and I swore to them that I was not going to buy a Vita for a single rhythm game.

Flash forward a few months, I did cave and get a Vita but not for this game. However, of the purchases I made with the system, one of them was Persona 4, which I had already bought twice as is and the one game for the Vita I bought that I didn't already own I haven't started yet. I am fucking weak. Let's get on with this.

PERSONA 4: DANCING ALL NIGHT(Vita)

The story of P4:DAN takes place after the events of I assume Persona 4: Golden after the Investigation Team solved the Inaba murders (but apparently not before that game's epilogue). Yu Narukami is now in a new school but is still with the old gang because the team's resident starlet and idol, Rise Kujikawa, is on her comeback trail to come back to showbiz. Nervous about her return, she convinced her friends to join her on stage as her backup dancers (because why the fuck not?), and the team has been practicing both in studio with her and back home in Inaba.

They will be participating in the "Love Meets Bonds" festival with friend and rival idol Kanami Mishita and her group Kanami's kitchen. However, its been a bumpy road as the festivals website supposedly shows a video of a dead idol dancing at midnight, and those who view it get taken away and never wake again. Sure enough, the other members of Kanami's Kitchen go missing, and the investigation team checks the site to find out. Naturally, the site indeed does something strange and they ensnared by ribbons and pulled into another world.

This world is referred to as the Midnight Stage, and it functions similar to the TV world in some regards but is different otherwise, most namely you can't resort to violence here. The ribbons in this world drain you of your personality and force you to be something you aren't, but the team figures out you can fight back through expression of yourself and your meaning, so since they have been practicing dance, they use this as their weapon to try to save the taken members of Kanami's Kitchen.

What in the blue goddamn fuck??? OK, I get that this is a franchise that stems from a base of JRPGs so obviously story is kind of an important role to its universe, and its a story I love but that was in a 60+ hour RPG. Even the fighting game that hooked me on this series had some incredibly wordy story to all of it, but it's a fighting game and even those sometimes have a bit of a story. But this is a rhythm game, and sans a few exceptions rhythm games almost never have a plot to them. So much like Persona 4 Arena if you venture into the story mode, expect a substantial amount of (well voice acted) text.

So the inherent problem with the story was this: I powered the game up, got through the initial couple of lines to get the premise and by the first playable portion my first thought to travel through my head is "Oh my god, this is fucking stupid." Now let me be clear here: I love this universe, and I love these characters, but it only took one line of "We can show them how we feel with the power of our Dancing!" to make me shudder in sheer douchechillery and almost turn the game off. It's nearly impossible to take this game seriously.

Ugh, it's so painfully uncomfortable.

But if there is one thing Atlus and the Persona 4 dev team knows how to do, it's weave a good story. As stupid as the idea that a professional idol would insist on group of amateurs without a dance background as her back up on her first show back in show business is, as soon as they transport to an alternate world (as they do in Persona) it didn't take me long to get wrapped back up in the story. Interestingly enough, once I can get past the idea that they are fighting by dancing, the narrative is actually still really good.

They introduce a lot of new characters to series, and a handful of old faces poke their head in as well. Smartly, aside from a handful of a small references, they keep the extensive back history relatively out of the plot for the most part. They make a few references to the TV World from the other games, but ultimately they stick to their own story, which means new players who picked up a rhythm game without no prior Persona experience won't be totally lost. A lot of the new characters are fun, and while the main cast deals with the other world, new protagonist Kanami fits the mystery together with Nanako and Dojima in the real world to keep things interesting both sides.

I will say that though, that this is probably the most "bondagey" Persona since I discovered the series in Persona 2. See, the story mode plays in the Japanese visual novel style of story where character stills talk to each other, much like you have seen in many in this series to come before it, but much like Persona 4 Arena they show you a still image to sort of set the scene.

Well, without getting to in depth as to why it's happening, the captured idols will find themselves bound in ribbons. Some of them are more suggestive than others, and one of the idols is like..... really young. Not that I don't appreciate an out of the blue bondage scene (because who doesn't amirite?), some of them felt really out of place.

The first time it happened, I quirked a brow. This time, it was less subtle and they only
get worse (better?) from there. Although the one of Sumomo is a little rough, she can't be "of age".

The story actually gets really dark as fuck too, this isn't outside the norm for this series but for a game that's focused on lighthearted dancing, it's a very sharp contrast. I mean the story mode starts off with a pretty brutal tragedy, and as Persona 4 likes to do they focus on the characters insecurities and self perception, which is something everyone has to deal with thus making it very relate-able. And that's probably what made the ending that much more satisfying when I finally pushed to the final songs.

And I admit it, the longer the story stretched the more completely enamored I got, pretty much completely forgetting it was a rhythm game until an actual playable section came up. While long winded, if you buy the game, you have to play the story mode. It's a fun followup to end of Persona 4 Golden and lets you catch up with the old gang (and totally affirm where my head canon is taking the story). Honestly they can do this every year and I'll probably love it.

Kanami is mentioned in the other games and the show. but this is the first time we
actually get to see her. I have to say, she wasn't what I was expecting, but still a welcome edition

Christ almighty, 900 words in and I haven't even talked about the game play yet. So looking at the trailers, I was really confused on how the game worked, but once it was in my hands it actually could be simpler. for lack of a better term it is a bit DDRish in nature. you have a series of notes that appear from the middle of the screen and move outwards, when playing you need to use the corresponding directional on that side of the system: Up Left and Down, or Triangle, Circle and Square.

Obviously, hitting notes is easy, so they also have hold notes where you tap at the start and hold it, and then release at the end. No big, like DDR's freeze notes I can handle this. They also have Pair notes where you have to hit two at a time, these are usually marked by a long pink line connecting the two notes. Most of time these aren't too bad but I sometimes get confused if another note is following the same line.

As you can tell, there are a significant number of costumes to unlock.
And yes, I unlocked all the maid costumes first. Eff you. 

The last mechanic is "scratching" where a circle comes outward. if you move an analog it continues your combo and boosts your gauge but they aren't mandatory to do, and thank god because moving the analog while trying to keep the beat was nearly an impossible task for me to do. I would constantly miss other notes trying to move to the analog. Thankfully, you can turn on a feature that allows the shoulder buttons to scratch which felt way more intuitive to me. It's not super comfortable to hold the Vita that way, but I will say that it's pretty much necessary.

While scratching doesn't count against your score if you miss them, it does provide a boost to your gauge at the top of the screen. 5 shadows sit at the top of the screen and if they aren't happy and dancing by the end of the song, you don't clear the stage. Honestly, I have never fully understood where the line is. I've they flashing and jumping around I know I'm doing well, but I've finished stages with all of them white and smiling, which I would consider good. But when the screen fades it says I didn't clear.

This is super frustrating because on easy and normal I am fine, blowing through levels with ease. When I bumped up to hard though is where the game really knuckles down with you, When you miss notes you get big knocks to your not all that clear gauge, and it's very difficult to repair the damage so if your game starts to go south you have to get on a hot streak to bring it back, or restart the level. On the "All Night" difficulty setting missing a small streak of notes can kill you in seconds.

Thankfully, the game has you covered on this front as well. As you play through the game you earn money that you can use in the shop. This can be used on costumes or accessories for your characters, but the real use is the item section where you can get items and books. These affect the game by giving you bigger boosts during parts of the song, let's the off timed "goods" not affect your combo, lets you continue the song if you fail and others. Each of these help, but as you would expect they remove a percentage of the points and money you earn at the end of the stage.

Sorry, Couldn't find any English game play videos.

This is where the books come in, because they add some effects that make it harder and boost your score and money. So I played to the point where I would get Random note orders, Macho speed, and some other effect I can't remember, and even with the helpers set I'm still getting like 275% increase to my earnings. This made clearing out store a breeze. Inside of one power outage in my house and less than a week since its release, I've pretty much all but cleared out the store because you can pull in nearly 100,000 in one go one the All Night setting.

I only have a small number of issues with the game. Some of them are minor, one is major. First off aside from the goofy premise for the story, one of the hardest adjustments when I started the game was that Laura Bailey didn't voice Rise Kujikawa in this one, so there was a bit of shock in adapting to the new voice. At this point the characters are sacred to me so when you change a voice, like every other douchebag probably did I got really upset about it..... for about 2 hours, and by that point I barely noticed the difference anymore. Pretty much the same thing happened when Matt Mercer started voicing Kanji over Troy Baker.

When Naoto "girls" it up, she's actually super cute. No wonder people love her.

The aforementioned scratching issue persistently bugs me. because there is no real fix to this solution. Holding my vita with my fingers on the shoulder buttons is an awkward hold, and it's not very comfortable. But the only other alternative is to use the analog sticks which make sense for the motion of "scratching" but I feel my performance in the game is significantly weaker by trying to shift to the analogs. I don't think I could do it from the hard mode and up.

Something that surprised me was a complete lack of Multiplayer mode. Even if there wasn't some kind of cooperative play, they could have easily put in some kind of vs mode where you could compare the scores. Hell, in the fever times of the songs two of the characters dance on screen at once, so they could have whipped up something to that effect to help in co-op or something. I don't know. It was just surprising to me that the game was totally devoid of multiplayer. Even something like Final Fantasy:Theaterrhythm's battle mode would have been appreciated here.

Don't know when it's happening in the timeline, but I'm calling it right here:
Chie and Yousuke will get married at some point in the Persona Universe.

And despite this series having a fantastic set of music to it, the music selection in the game could be better. The game itself features 29 tracks, but 9 of them are remixes of other songs and some of them have 2 different remixes. Yeah it's cool that Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka remixed a song for this game, but I've already played two different versions of this song already. The game had a very deep soundtrack so it surprised me that more of it wasn't used.

Not only that, but they used "Maze of Life" which was one of my favorite songs from Persona Q. If you were going to borrow songs from other games, why was there not more representation from that? "Light the Fire up in the Night" or "Laser Beam" would have been fantastic additions to this soundtrack and would have given us some different songs to play instead of remixes of ones I've already done. Or to go even further why not grab tracks from other Persona games? This probably won't be a long running spin off, so I would have loved to hear "Mass Destruction" or "Burn My Dread" in the track listing.

I found it odd that although Rise is the only professional idol in the group,
she seemed to take the stage the least out of the whole story mode...

But we know why they aren't in there, don't we? Of course we do. Because if you put the full version of the game out there, you can't land that sweet sweet DLC money now can you? Fuck you, Atlus. Looking on their very own website, By the end of October (remembering this came out on Sept 29th), there will be over SEVENTY FUCKING DOLLARS of DLC content ranging from songs, costumes, characters and accessories. This is completely unacceptable and shame on you for it. You used to be one of the good guys.

Let me ask you something: Say the game came full of all of the content that they were promising but they then slapped the full price of the game on the label, how well do you think this game would do? "Persona 4: Dancing All Night available now for only 120$!!" Maybe, MAYBE a handful of the die-hards would buy a copy but ultimately the sales would be crushed because nobody wants to pay 120 dollars for a game. So why do they feel it's OK to gut the content and charge me more later? It's absolutely insane, and I can't believe that after the Streetfighter X Tekken and Mass Effect debacles that this is still fucking happening, and people keep letting it. It's fucking insane to me.

It's barely been a week and there is already enough DLC for a 3rd of the price
of the full game. Fuck you. I hate this money grabbing bullshit.

When this game was first announced, I thought it was a stupid idea. Shifting a JRPG to a 1v1 fighter didn't feel like much of a stretch to me and I ended up loving it so much that it made me go back to the RPG. But a rhythm game? Why a rhythm game? Well, in retrospect I hold Shoji Meguro on the same tier of  amazing video game composers like Akira Yamaoka, Nobuo Uematsu, and Daiskue Ishiwatari. So once I realized that the soundtracks are really one of the strongest aspects of the series, making a game focused on them didn't seem all that far fetched to me.

And despite the fact that I felt it was a stupid premise for a story and found it unbelievably difficult to swallow the image of some of my all time favorite characters goofily dancing around, Persona 4: Dancing all Night delivered pretty much exactly what I expected it in a rhythm game experience for me. Is it a system seller? Probably not, but it certainly was entertaining and it feels like a game that I will be playing for a while until get a let a level of mastery on the top difficulties. If you are a fan of the Persona series or just rhythm games, this one absolutely satisfies.

I guess it is what it is, I'm sure I will do this dance again when they come out with Persona 4: Cooking Battle, Persona 4: Kart Racing, or Puzlsona 4.....  For the love of god, when will you people realize I NEED HELP? *sob*

I might be the only person in the world who is lukewarm to Nanako.

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: A score of high notes.

So since February, I had paid for and been planning for a trip to RTX in Austin Texas. I had a lot of things I would like to do and places I wanted to visit, but having been to multiple Ohayocons and a PAX East, I feel I was somewhat prepared for what to expect. So despite the fun I was expecting, I knew there would be waiting in lines, and I knew there would be waiting at airports.

I have been eyeing Bravely Default for a while, and wanted to play it greatly, but I didn't want to start it before my trip. So I had this new 3DS XL and needed something to play on it. And then I remembered that trip to PAX east, I tried out an unreleased game by Square Enix. It mixed two things I liked, and seemed to be a good fit. But would it hold over? We shall see. 

THEATRHYTHM: FINAL FANTASY(3DS)

So yeah, story. This is a rhythm game so there really isn't one per say.  It would akin it sort of to Final Fantasy Dissidia: The world is in balance because of the two gods Cosmos and Chaos, and between them is rhythm, a crystal essence that controls music. Chaos as dispersed its power so Cosmos assembles heroes from the various Final Fantasy universes to collect Rhythmia to restore the crystals power.

And that's it. That is literally the entire extent of the story. And I suppose for a rhythm game that is all I can really expect. Dance Dance Revolution isn't exactly known for its stirring narrative. Bust a Groove never weaved an epic tale within the lyrics of the songs. Guitar Hero had a handful of cutscenes that were forgotten after about as long as it took to view them. So really, from a story perspective I got about what I expected out of this.

Not the cute chibi versions. Couldn't find a decent picture to use. Sue me.

No, Theatrhythm is about the celebration that is the Final Fantasy (FF) music catalog. And honesty I can't think of a better selection of soundtracks to make a rhythm game. I have spent many a workday at the various libraries I've worked at listening to Final Fantasy radio stations, as there practically isn't a bad song. I was very eager to jump headfirst into this one.

So the game starts off with a brief little prologue basically explaining the story as I just have, then it takes you to a screen where you assemble your FF dream team from a selection of one hero from each FF game. So naturally My team leader was quickly locked in as Terra from Final Fantasy VI (because 6 is best and if you disagree you are wrong, fuck you). I balanced out the rest of the team with a combination of Cloud, Tidus, and ugh... Lightning, because it provided me the most solid balance of stats across the board. Felt this was the best way to go because I really didn't know what to expect.

There are a few different game modes, but talking about one of them will really give you the biggest gist of the game. When you fire the game up, you can go to Series mode and how this works is you scroll through the list of the Final Fantasy Anthology going from one to thirteen. In it, you will play a simple prelude and epilogue song. These are optional but if you tap along with the beat you earn Rhythmia which is used to unlock things. Once done with that, you take on the 3 game types for that FF in no particular order.

Now the play is the same for all three, its just how they are delivered is what changes. So lets say I play Final Fantasy IV. I might start off with a Field Music Stage (FMS) and play "Terra's Theme", which is usually the overworld song. There is a circle which indicates where I hit the notes, and note icon's can be tapped, held, or swiped based on the direction of the arrow. It is pretty straight forward, but in FMS mode when you are holding a note, you might need to drag the circle up and down the line to maintain the critical rating (perfect). Sometimes you might have to swipe a direction at the end of a hold, but generally it follows a singular path. Of the three play styles, I find this one easiest.

Then you might move into "The Decisive Battle" in the Battle Music Stage (BMS). These are are the most fun to play because its where you are going to find all the fast, upbeat, and fun battle music from the FF universe. In this game mode, the note lines are broken up between the 4 heroes you have selected. the notes each fly at the hero and you need to tap, hold and swipe as they arrive. Essentially the same thing as the FMS but your eyes need to jump around the screen a bit more to keep up. These are my favorite songs to play.

Then we have the Event Music Stage (EMS) where you will be treated to a cinematic of CG animation or moments from the game while you try to play "Celes' Theme". I find this one to be tricky because besides things moving around in the background, instead of having the single line, the timing circle actually moves around the the screen along a singular path and you need to tap, hold, and swipe as it crosses the notes, and not vice versa. I find this to be the trickiest of the 3 game types because I never, EVER, can get the timing of the swipes down correctly and it only seems to get harder as the game gets faster.

I botch the arrows every time.

Once completed, you are treated to the game's ending theme where you can tap along as you did at the start. once you complete all five you total rythmia is tallied and added to your running total. In between the 3 major stages of the game you earn experience like you would a traditional final fantasy game and your characters level up and get increased stats and abilities. But what for? I'm glad you asked.

For the most part, the XP system seems to be fairly set with the exception of the BMS stages. In this mode, defeating monsters by performing the song well get you a pretty substantial boost of experience at the end of the level. As your characters grow stronger, they gain more HP to allow you to mess up more times during the song. Your increased stats also allow you to hit harder, which allows you to dispatch more enemies, thus allowing more experience to be earned.

And as you level, you unlock more abilities. Some of these are passive and take place within certain game modes, such as during the FMSs. Others are active, and are only triggered when certain stipulations take place such as hitting 20 goods on the tap icons, or when the 2nd monster comes out, or when you encounter a boss type monster. As you level up you get more Battle Points to allow you to equip better version of the abilities or more of them which eventually allows you dispatch even more. So naturally you want to use them, right?

Not so fast. Unfortunately using these items or abilities come at a cost, and if you are playing a music game, you will inevitably be a stickler for perfection. If you refuse to equip any items or abilities and go in equipped with nothing, this gives you a special stoic bonus at the end of each stage of like 200,000 points. You NEED these points if you intend to get an SS or SSS rank at the end of any stage you play. It is impossible to get higher than an S with items equipped, so equip or unequip accordingly for what it is you are trying finish.

Once you go through a round of those modes, you can play the songs again individually in the games challenge mode. This is typically where you will grind and play your favorite songs. But there is also a mode called Chaos Shrine, where you will play "dark notes" of the songs in the game. These are usually 2 different types of stages and the notes in the songs are switched up. They are usually harder, and the bosses in these areas drop better rewards, such as crystal shards. By collecting these you can unlock new characters from the various games, (I'm gunning for you Rydia). There is also a multiplayer mode but as we established: I have no friends and thus, didn't play that mode.

There are also songs to unlock as you play through, such as the "Blinded by the Light" from FF13 or "Dancing Mad" from FF6. This gives me a reason to keep playing so I am happy about that. There is also a large myriad of DLC songs to download for a buck a piece, but I intend to hold off on that since an updated release of this game will be coming out in September in Curtain Call.

The entire game is presented in this kind of cutesy chibi style of itself where all of the characters sort of resemble doll versions of themselves, or perhaps like the Tarutaru from Final Fantasy 11. It is a cutesy design and obviously because of the whole tone and theme of the game not meant to be taken seriously so it fits well. And it was cool to see some of the more notable baddies from the various universes all get a cartoony appearance in the BMS stages.

There really isn't a whole lot more that I can say about this. Its a music game that is functional, fun, and effective. It throws in some interesting RPG nuances that hearken back to the genre it draws from, it borrows hits from the incredible score from this timeless set of games with soon to be much more in the coming months. It's really turned out to be pretty much everything in wanted for a game of this kind.

Rydia would whip your fucking ass, Cloud. She didn't pussy ache about her
village getting destroyed nearly as long as you did. 

If I had to come up with complaints for it, I can only think of a few. One, the menus are kind of clunky an annoying. The entire game is navigated from the touch screen and nowhere else. which I guess is fine for play control, but when I am navigating the menus there should be no reason I couldn't move things along with the D-pad and the A buttons, that has been effective since video games. So I don't know why every time someone designs a new controller they need to fuck with what already works. Knock it off.

In addition to that, and I am not sure if this is a problem with my 3DS or the system as a whole, but the touch screen doesn't appear to be a sensitive as my original DS Lite was. I have only recently noticed it but if I barely tap the screen it doesn't seem like it registers as much as if I give it a more pressured tap. Not sure on that one. It might just be my system or something I just noticed but it hasn't really played a big factor until just recently.

And as I vented, DLC is like a buck a song and there is WELL over 50 different DLC songs that have come out, and additional characters as well. It sucks for the people who purchased this game at launch, I am fortunate because the better version will be coming out in a few months, just about after I start to complete this one so that is a pretty limited complaint to me.

As I have said previously before, when it comes to a new system I try to come up with at least 7 games that I know I would like to play before I buy them. And if I get a long play through out of them, then so much the better. When I was considered getting myself a 3DS, this was one of the first games that came to mind as a must have, if not top 3.

I am very happy to say that the game delivered on pretty much every front that I'm asking for. It may not have had every song I was looking to play but I haven't unlocked everything and I know I have about 100 more songs upcoming in the Theatrhythm: Curtain Call is sure to re-spark my interest in the game. But really? It was hard for me hate anything about this. It's Final Fantasy, it's a rhythm game, its pick up and play, its got great song selection, and its fun. I am doing a great job of raging on these blogs. >:|

6, 10, 4, 7, 9, Tactics, 1, 5, 10-2, 13-3, 8, Tactics advance, Mystic quest, 12, 13-2, 13, 3, and 2.

(of the ones I played, In that order.)