Persona: The Ultimax Odyssey of a Slave to Dancing

When Persona series and Catherine director Katsura Hoshino said Atlus was planning a variety of Persona-related announcements, he wasn’t kidding. The floodgates opened on the stream the company ran last night, where they announced four, four Persona titles coming soon. The teaser site uploaded in September, it turns out, actually was teasing three new titles, so that part wasn’t a red herring.

No, the trolling part came with the order they announced them. When a bunch of spin-offs were announced before the main course, some fans across the internet raged so hard that it might have awoken a few unsuspecting people in the middle of the night. Atlus knew what they were doing.

Most of that came when they announced Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth for 3DS. Gee, what do you know, that “Shin Megami Tensei: Persona” name from that old list released during the 3DS’s reveal three-and-a-half ago was accurate after all, though no one expected this. Atlus has toyed with the hearts of fans for a good while, so they had a fun time when they announced this one first. It made them think this was the main announcement they were teasing, though there were more.

Now that everyone’s calmed down, plenty of details have surfaced. PQ may be produced by Katsura Hashino, have character designs from Shigenori Soejima, and may have music from Shoji Meguro, but the biggest name here is director Daisuke Kanada. Kanada last directed Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan, which released earlier this year in America, but way back in July 2012 in Japan. And now we know what that team has been doing since that released. The name is also a dead giveaway as to what it’s supposed to be, provided you’re aware of EO’s name in Japan. It’s stylized as Sekaiju no MeiQ, shortened as SQ. Fans knew what it was immediately.

Basically, it’s Etrian Odyssey in a Persona skin, starring characters from Persona 3 and Persona 4 in chibi forms. It takes place in Yasogami High School, and the aforementioned characters are summoned when they hear of a mysterious tower that’s suddenly appeared. The game’s dungeons will exist in this tower, though there’s no way to currently tell how many there will be, or, more importantly, whether they’ll be randomized or not. We do know from the footage shown on the stream that exploration is in first-person, with a battle indicator similar to the EO titles. In addition to the dungeon crawling, the game will have school events where the characters can interact, so it’s not all EO. In battles, the view is first-person while choosing commands (looking just like EOIV and the recently released Etrian Odyssey Untold), but switches to a dramatic third-person view while the characters attack. That’s similar to the 7th Dragon 2020 games on PSP, published by…Sega. Huh, what a coincidence.

As for the characters themselves, almost everyone you’d expect to see from P3 and P4 is in, and Marie from P4G also appears. There are also two new characters who have yet to be identified, one of which is carrying a corndog, of all things. But Persona 3 Portable’s female protagonist is curious in her absence in the trailer, especially since Theodore appears. Maybe they’re saving her for later.

I’m interested in seeing precisely how many holdovers there will be from the EO series, but now I’m also wondering what the future holds for that series. Giving it a little break is a smart idea, especially with America getting two EO games within seven months of each other (and Europe will receive the same). But here’s hoping they plan on continuing the series at all. Whether Untold director Shigeo Komori is actually working on Etrian Odyssey V, or something similar to that, remains to be seen.

Persona Q releases in Japan on June 5th, 2014. Cross your fingers for a localization as quick as Shin Megami Tensei IV’s and Untold’s from Atlus USA.

The second game is…interesting. If no one predicted what the first game could be, they certainly didn’t expect this. Apparently Atlus realized a lot of people liked the intro for Persona 4 Golden, and decided to make an entire game around it. And thus, Persona 4: Dancing All Night for Vita was born.

In a stunning twist, the game looks similar to another Sega game: Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F (or f). It’s actually being developed by Dingo, who Sega previously used to develop the Project Diva titles before moving development to their internal studio. No wonder Sega purchased Atlus.

The game will have a story that takes place after Persona 4, a time where Rise has returned to being an idol. Members of Rise’s group begin disappearing after watching a mysterious video on a website at midnight, and their only way of escaping is to dance their way out on the Midnight Stage. The trailer shows Rise, Yu (or whatever you named your P4 protagonist), and a new character named Kanami Mashita dancing to the beats, with the player hitting all of the right notes. It also confirms that Chie, Yosuke, and Kanji will join them, and that won’t be all. If someone asks you how the game plays, just tell them it’s Project Diva crossed with Persona. They’ll know what those are, right? Right.

This is releasing in Japan in fall 2014, and hopefully outside that territory soon afterward. Look forward to it?

Third is…well, you probably predicted this one. It’s a home console version of Persona 4: The Ultimax Ultra Suplex Hold. Interestingly, it’s only coming to PS3, despite the previous game being released for 360 too. There’s speculation suggesting that a port could happen when it’s localized, but people said the same thing about Blazblue: Chronophantasma, which will remain a PS3-exclusive here when it releases in March.

For those of you who missed the news earlier this year, this is the sequel to Persona 4 Arena, adding Yukari and Junpei from Persona 3, and a new character named Sho Minazuki, who we finally get to see in motion. And…is that Adachi? Golly, I wonder what that means. This releases in Japan sometime next summer, and will hopefully land in western markets around the same time. Maybe it won’t be region-locked this time.

Meanwhile, the game hits Japanese arcades on Thursday, so look forward to arcade footage and a detailed change log soon.

The last game they announced was something called Persona 5 for PS3. Not that you care, right? Let’s move on.

Yeah, this is the game everyone wanted to see. It’s nice that they finally announced it after years of hints, but Atlus doesn’t want to show it off yet. What’s in the trailer is intriguing though, and I’m not talking about the hilarious Engrish. It hints at themes of slavery and emancipation, and the dark red color theme implies that this will mark a return to a darker style a la Persona 3, a stark contrast to the lighter and softer Persona 4.

The game isn’t planned for release until “winter 2014,” which for Japanese games is code for December 2014. This might be following the Shin Megami Tensei IV hype cycle, so hopefully it doesn’t take them three months to show the game. There are also people surprised Atlus wants to release a PS3 game when the PS4 is out, who apparently forgot Persona 4 released for PS2 in Japan nearly two years after the PS3 launched. It’s possible they’ll do a PS4 port to make it a cross-generation title, but you shouldn’t expect it.

Persona is Atlus’ biggest franchise, and man do they know it. They weren’t milking the franchise too hard, but releasing four games in one year is a tad overboard. It’s not like they all won’t be enjoyable titles, but hopefully they have more non-Persona games coming along with them in 2014 and 2015, outside of the strangely M.I.A. Devil Survivor 2: Break Record.

Meanwhile, the complete, ultimate version of Persona 3 that many expected wasn’t announced, but you shouldn’t rule that out yet. The second movie was confirmed for a summer 2014 release, meaning they’ll be releasing these until 2015. That leaves plenty of time for this to happen. It would be a surprise if they didn’t go through with that.