I love Persona. It’s one of my four most favorite gaming franchises of all time along with Pokmeon, Monster Hunter, and Fire Emblem. But I never had a chance to play any of the Persona 4 Arena games because I never had a console that could play them. So when I heard that the game was going to be making its way to the Switch and would be an enhanced version that included all the DLC and the 1st Persona 4 Arena, I was beyond excited to get my hands on a copy. I was also really surprised that the game was so cheap for the amount of content that it had, which made me want to play it even more. But what’s so good about Persona 4 Arena Ultimax?

GRAPHICS: 9/10

If there’s one thing that really stands out when it comes to the graphics of P4AU, it’s the amount of effort that’s been put into all the different backgrounds. In any fight, the stage is going to have so much life and color. You’re going to see a beautifully drawn setting that’s also dynamic with lots of parts moving or changing color and each stage has its own flair because of this. While you’re in a fight, you also get the amazing comic book aesthetics and when you pair that with really cool looking character models and animations, fights will look really good almost all the time.

There were a few FPS issues here and there when fights became a little too chaotic but those usually fixed themselves really quickly and didn’t affect the game too much. Also when I was playing in handheld mode on an OLED, the fights looked even better with the backgrounds popping out even more. I genuinely think that it’s one of the best looking fighting games ever because of the color palette and the amount of detail put into everything. The game wants to be very vibrant and fun looking and it pulls it off nicely.

SOUND: 10/10

There’s so much going on with this game when it comes to sound. There’s a ton of great music, lots of great voice acting, and a bunch of really good editing with its sound design.

It wouldn’t be a really be a Persona 4 game if it didn’t have an epic Persona 4 soundtrack, and the soundtrack here is the perfect blend of original Persona 4 music, remasters, and new tracks. It’s a big soundtrack with the base game having more than two dozen songs and the original version of the game had another 30 or so released as DLC and it’s all included with this version of the game. This includes songs from Persona 3 and Persona Q, which allow for an amazing Persona music experience. A handful of my personal favorite songs from Persona 4 are in the game and they sound great.

I love the music, but I love the voice acting even more. The Persona games have some amazing voice acting and this one brought back all of the original Persona 4 actors and through the use of the original DLC, there are even more voices. All the characters have a ton of voice lines and then the DLC went and added even more for different scenarios or when paired with different characters. You also get to choose between English and Japanese voices, which is a huge bonus. The game is as good as it can get when it comes to sound, especially within this genre.

ADDICTIEVENESS: 7/10

I guess I have to split the difference here when I talk about how fun the game is and whether or not you’ll keep coming back for more. If you’re a big fan of fighting games, then you’re going to get so much enjoyment out of all the different game modes and features that P4AU has to offer. But if you aren’t a big fan of the genre and you’re only interested in it because Persona is in the title, it will still be enjoyable but you won’t be as immersed when it comes to the gameplay.

I’m one of those people. I don’t care too much for fighting games outside of this and SSB, but since it’s Persona, I had to play it. It’s still lots of fun though, especially with it’s assortment of different game modes. I quickly gave up on many of the game modes and simple battles and I ended up spending most of my time playing the Golden Arena mode, which became my favorite right near the start.

Golden Arena is a fighting game but with an RPG twist where you pick a character and difficulty, and then you go through a bunch of different floors fighting your way to the top. With each battle, you get experience and start to level up. With each level up, you can add points to different stats including strength, magic, endurance, agility, and luck. I really liked this because it was less like your average button mashing experience and more strategy based, allowing for you to chape your character the way you want with how you assign points to your stats.

In my case, I basically put everything into strength and endurance, and I became a super solider who could tear through the early floors easily. But even with that, I still lost and had to reset to floor 1 many times. It took me many hours to beat the entire mode and afterwards, I played it again and again. I played it three times in total because I wanted to test out another character and I wanted to increase the difficulty to see how much of an effect stats had.

For me, this mode was super addicting, but I had no interest at all in any of the other game modes, and you might end up being the same. Maybe you will love this mode, maybe you will love playing with other people, maybe you will love one of the boring game modes. If you love persona AND you love fighting games, the game will be as addicting as SSB, but if you don’t care for fighting and only love the Persona aspect, addictiveness will be more like a five, so it’s averaged out to a 7 for me.

STORY: 8/10

It’s a fighting game at its core, but has a well made story mode that’s fully voiced with hundreds of pages worth of written content. The base game has two story modes, one for Persona 3 and one for Persona 4 and another two smaller modes were added as part of the DLC. Because the game is a direct sequel to Persona 4 Arena, the story continues off from where that story ends and becomes its own massive adventure. The cool thing about this game is that this complete edition also includes the story for the original game. So if you never played the first game, you can do the entire story for that game before you start the story for this game.

I think the story is great, but as someone who doesn’t really like fighting games, I was having a blast reading and hearing all the dialogue during the visual novel portions and then forcing myself to complete the fights and there’s a lot of fights because there’s a ton of chapters between all the different story modes. There’s a lot to unpack with all the story but at times, the fights can drag it down a bit.


DEPTH: 10/10

P4AU has so much to offer. The base game has a ton of stuff with its assortment of characters, stages, game modes, and music. Then the massive amount of DLC went and added even more. Between regular and shadow characters, you’re looking at more than two dozen to choose from along with a nice assortment of stages. In terms of game modes, you have the aforementioned Golden Arena along with Arcade, Score Attack, and Versus, plus a story mode and online battles. You can get a ton of gameplay out of Golden Arena, Story mode, and online alone. The story mode itself is pretty massive with a ton of battles and lots of visual novel stuff.

The game also has a really cool gallery that includes almost more than 200 illustrations, videos, and songs, and literally more than 25,000 sound and voice clips. This basically serves as a complimentary soundtrack and massive art book.

If you like fighting games and Persona, and you really invest in one of those game modes or you love playing online with other players, it will be easy for you to sink a hundred hours or more into it, even if you played the game in the past. The game has a ton of content and it’s at a great price too.

DIFFICULTY: 6

I have to admit that I’m pretty bad at fighting games. I can play against the CPU and I’ll die a lot. I can play against real people, and I’ll die even more. Fighting games can be hard and this is no exception. If you’re already a skilled gamer within this genre, then you won’t have any troubles but if you’re a newcomer, there are going to be some challenges, especially if you play online.

FINAL THOUGHTS: 8.9/10

If you love fighting games and you love Persona, this is going to be the perfect game to add to your collection. Even if you don’t care for the genre but you love Persona, then it’s still going to be worth the add and you’ll get a good amount of enjoyment out of it. The game has so much to offer between some of its biggest game modes, the cast of characters and stages, and the beautiful graphics. The retail price for the game in the eshop is $30 and it constantly goes on sale for under $25 and if you ask me, $30 is more than a fair price for just the base game alone because of the amount of content you get and the number of hours you’ll end up wasting.

You add in all of the extra DLC stuff that the game comes with and the enchantments that have been made for this version and you’re definitely looking at a game that has $60 game value. If you’re a fan of either fighting games or Persona and you can get this game when it’s on sale, you should definitely give it a shot. If it’s not on sale, you should still try it out because it’s lots of fun, even if you tend to dislike the genre. My overall grade for the game is going to be an 8.9 out of 10.