America Will Dance Crazy to Persona

Anyone who pays attention to Atlus’ Persona series shouldn’t be surprised to upon hearing they’ve all been confirmed for North America, even after Sega purchased them. Persona is Atlus’ biggest brand, even outside Japan, and they weren’t going to drop that now. And anyone who was concerned about what Sega would do to Atlus can feel relaxed with the business statement released last week, uploaded to Atlus website in Japanese and English. The company is certainly in better hands than it was at Index Corporation.

The real surprise is that all of these games are being announced now. When they were announced in Japan on a stream in November, even the optimists among us figured Atlus USA wouldn’t even start mentioning them until around May or June, depending on the game. They picked an interesting day to announce all of them.

Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth for 3DS will be the first game to release in Japan, and that might be the case for America too. It’s a dungeon crawler from a good portion of the Etrian Odyssey team, with a number of added Persona-style features. The focus on story will be heavier than in Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl, for instance, even though it will rely on blatant fanservice. The trailers provided examples of cutscenes using the character models and anime cutscenes. Since it’s part of the Persona series, the developers have been given a higher budget to work with.

Me? Oh, I’m just surprised they’re keeping the Japanese name. I would have bet money on them changing the name to “Persona Odyssey,” and now you understand why I don’t bet.

Atlus hasn’t revealed many gameplay details, but some showed up in last week’s Famitsu magazine. The “BURST” meter from the EO games is back, but it works differently. The meter increases when a character hits an enemy’s weakness, and when the bar is full, they’ll have the opportunity to attack without expending MP. Also, All-Out Attacks are no longer triggered after all enemies are knocked down. Instead, they happen randomly, but will occur more often when multiple characters have full “BURST” meters. Also, unlike Persona 3 and 4, each character can change Personas in Q. It’s a nice nod to the old Persona games. Whether certain Personas work better with others is currently unknown, but it’s tough to imagine that not being the case.

Atlus USA uploaded a trailer that’s similar to the Japanese one from last year, albeit bereft of the voice acting. They plan to release the game sometime this fall, and hopefully that’s more late-September/October than November/December.

Disappointingly, Atlus USA isn’t keeping the hilariously ridiculous Japanese name for Persona 4 Arena’s sequel, Persona 4: The Ultimax Ultra Suplex Hold. Instead, they’re shortening it to Persona 4 Arena Ultimax. But everything else should be intact when it makes its way over here, along with something extra. It’s PS3 only in Japan, but a 360 version is being made for the western market.

This version of the game adds some new stages, Yukari and Junpei from Persona 3, and a new character named Sho Minazuki. It’s been available in Japanese arcades for a while, so there are plenty of match videos on Youtube. This game is also coming in the fall, and hopefully not region-locked this time. Here, have a trailer.

Sega’s receiving competition from Atlus in the form of Persona 4: Dancing All Night for Vita. It’s a, well, dancing game featuring Persona 4’s characters that happens place after the original game. The Investigation Team reunites on the Midnight Stage to locate the whereabouts of missing idols, some of which are from Rise’s group Kanamin Kitchen. In addition to characters you already know of, P4D will also include a new character named Kanami Mashita, also of Rise’s group. The game is developed by Dingo, who developed the Hatsune Miku: Project Diva games for Sega prior to the latter moving development to their internal studios, and will feature around 30 tracks. Despite it being planned for a fall release in Japan, it’s not coming until early 2015 in America. Someone at Atlus USA knew they had to keep the original trailer to post on their Youtube account.

Persona 5 is coming to America next year! What? No, that’s all the news they had to share, unless fixing the “You are slave” Engrish in the teaser counts. Anyone who was hoping the company would reveal a Playstation 4 version out of the blue was out of luck, and they shouldn’t be surprised. We’re talking about the company that released two games on PS2 years after the PS3 released. (That’s Persona 4 and Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abbadon, the former game being the more noteworthy one here.) This is how the company works.

There’s also a contingent of people saying the game’s been delayed, because of the American version was dated for 2015. The Japanese version’s date remains the same. Man, some of ya’ll are nuts.

The localization of these four projects were more of a “when” case rather than an “if” one, though no one expected them to be announced so soon. But it’s a welcome change of pace from the way Atlus USA used to do things. Don’t expect a near-simultaneous release for any of these, like Dragon’s Crown and Persona 4 Arena, but they should be as close as Shin Megami Tensei IV and Etrian Odyssey Untold.

Meanwhile, the five people still concerned about the whereabouts of Devil Survivor 2: Break Record are still left with a puzzled look on their face.