Review: Persona 4 Dancing All Night (Reviewed on PS4 via the Endless Night bundle, also on PS Vita)

When Persona 4 Dancing All Night was announced back in 2015, I was so excited. That excitement led me to buy it in Japanese right when it came out because I was worried if we’d see a localisation announcement and while I couldn’t understand the story parts much as I was a total beginner at Japanese at the time, I played all of the songs and unlocked everything enough to get the Platinum trophy, despite pretty much not knowing any of its story and just enjoy its dancing fun in the Vita version.

With the recent Endless Night collection including the Persona Dance games for Persona 3, 4 and 5, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to get to know the wonderful remixes of the songs I loved from Persona 4 and the Vita version all over again while finally getting to know its story too and after spending almost 15 hours with it, I’m glad I did. The twist on Persona 4’s world and story with an Idol mystery was a great way to see the charming characters from the original paired with some new favourites, and seeing the high quality visuals on PS4 with snappy load times and sharp visuals in its rhythm game moments made the quality of this Persona Dance game feel not far behind the newer releases. If you’re looking to experience a different mystery with the Investigation Team alongside fun new characters and involved dance mechanics that feel just as good as its more recent editions, Persona 4 Dancing All Night is well worth it for fans of Persona 4 and rhythm games, and with it being such good value in the Endless Night collection on PS4, it’s an experience that Persona fans who like more story mixed in with their rhythm mechanics can enjoy experiencing in its best form yet.

Platinum Trophy Experience: Persona 4 Dancing All Night

I played the Japanese version of Persona 4 Dancing All Night a few years ago out of impatience for a localised release announcement and found myself unintentionally raking in the trophies. At the start of this year, I made it my resolution to platinum at least one JRPG and as I was checking what seemed achievable, my over 90% completion of Dancing All Night made it feel silly not to get the platinum for, even if it’s more rhythm spinoff game than JRPG. As a fan of rhythm games outside of my JRPG life, I really enjoyed aiming for high scores and dance fever combined with one of my favourite JRPG series ever. As for the platinum trophy experience, aside from a couple of minor time-consuming trophies, compared to Persona 4 Golden’s platinum trophy’s multiple playthrough extravaganza, Persona 4 Dancing All Night’s trophy is a piece of cake that a majority of people can probably get easily with a little bit of time.

Feel free to watch the video version here!

Facts

Persona 4 Dancing All Night has 40 trophies that break down into 21 Bronze, 15 Silver, 3 Gold and the Platinum. At the time of making this, no trophies on the list seem to go above a ‘rare’ in the PSN rating system and most of the trophies are based on just experiencing different aspects of Persona 4 Dancing All Night. The length of this trophy will depend on your skills and since I played it over a spread out period of time, I don’t have a solid grasp on how long it took me. However, since Dancing All Night’s story is in visual novel form and most of the trophies can be done in Free Dance, I imagine it can take much less time than the average JRPG Platinum Trophy.

Spoiler note: I have included Hidden trophies names in this post, but not descriptions to avoid spoilers as much as possible while still describing my Platinum Trophy journey. I don’t think there are any major story or event spoilers in this post, but proceed at your own risk!

The Easy

~9 Story Trophies

Time to Party Harder (Hidden)

To Greater Heights - Unlocked highest difficulty (ALL NIGHT)

Appearance Matters - Bought a costume for the first time

Best Dressed - Bought half of the costumes

Closet Full of Dreams - Bought all costumes

Lapidary - Obtained all accessories

Hooked on Shopping - Bought all items in Shopping

Regular Customer - Used a total of P$500,000 in Shopping

That Familiar Rush - Watched replay data from Score

I Am Thou, Thou Art I - Completed the Database

Empty Seats - A performance ended prematurely

Hit the Dance Floor - Clear 1 in Free Dance

The Party Never Ends - Cleared all tracks in Free Dance

What’s a “Miss”? - Cleared a track with no MISSes

New Personal Best - Beat your own high score

Fashion Police - Changed costume and began dancing

The Final Touch - Equipped accessory and began dancing

Costume Coordinator - Cleared a track with each character in changed costumes

Dream Team - Paired Rise and Kanami in Free Dance

= 28 trophies

In my opinion, a vast majority of Persona 4 Dancing All Night’s trophies can be classified as easy, as most of them can be done just by completing a basic task. There are trophies for trying on a costume for the first time or for pairing certain characters together, which can be done really quickly just by changing settings before you enter a Free Dance song. Even the story trophies are very easy, as the visual novel format allows you to skip through the story while still getting all of the trophies, which is what I did with the Japanese version. What makes these trophies and Persona 4 Dancing All Night’s platinum trophy so easy is that a good majority of them aren't based on skill, you just need to play a little bit to amass money, use items to boost your rewards and you're pretty set. If you're looking for a quick way to boost your trophy total, these ones will get you up 30 in no time.

The Challenging

Born Entertainer - Obtained top rank (King Crazy) on a track

Star Dancer - Danced using 2 or more items to raise difficulty

= 2 trophies

I put these trophies in the Challenging section of this post, but in reality you can just play Easy Mode and get these trophies very easily, which is what I did to be honest. I got the Born Entertainer trophy unintentionally while challenging myself for fun to try and get a perfect score in one of Persona 4 Dance’s songs and I don’t remember it taking very long at all. Star Dancer also wasn't that difficult to get after I chose the right song. This is because there's a secret to conquering most of Persona 4 Dance’s skill-based challenges and that’s using the super easy tutorial song ‘Specialist’ on easy when in doubt. This song is not difficult on most difficulty modes, so it made raising the difficulty of a that song feel only slightly harder and I was able to get it after only a few tries if that.

Everything Else

Love Connections - Performed a full combo on a track

Perfectionist - 50%+ Perfect clear on HARD track or higher

Working Together - Triggered a Bond Fever at least once

Inseparable - Triggered 30 types of Bond Fevers

Nanako Forever! - Triggered all dances/Bond Fevers with Nanako

Senpai, You're So Cool! - Seen all Bond Fevers between Yu and Rise

Red and Green - Seen all Bond Fevers between Yukiko and Chie

The Junes Special - Seen all Bond Fevers between Yosuke and Teddie

Beauty and the Beast - Seen all Bond Fevers between Naoto and Kanji

= 9 Trophies

I put these trophies here because they require a small amount of skill, but almost all can be done using the easiest song and/or difficulty to win. The only thing with these trophies is that they may take a little bit of time and playing, but if you enjoy rhythm games and the Persona 4 soundtrack as much as I do, this probably won’t be much of a problem.

The Persona 4 Dancing All Night Platinum trophy is definitely the easiest one I’ve gotten, especially once I realised most of the trophies could be done on easy mode. In saying that, it did take a little bit of time and since I was playing in Japanese I had to Google some stuff so I could understand the trophy requirements. Because of that, I still feel like I went to a small amount of effort to get this trophy, so my Platinum achievement was a small triumph to me, but a triumph nonetheless. Now that I have the Japanese platinum trophy, I’m going to look into getting Persona 4 Dancing All Night in English so I can understand the story and maybe if I have time, I might double platinum it for fun. And I say all this with the hope that Atlus will give us a Persona 5 Dancing All Night that I’ll be able to look forward to platinuming too because this Platinum reminded me just how fun a rhythm game with Persona and its great music can be.

You can pick up Persona 4 Dancing All Night at Play-Asia.com!

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Have you platinumed a JRPG recently? What's your favourite JRPG spinoff game?

Leave a comment below, send me a tweet at @JRPGJungle, hit me up on Facebook, Youtube or Instagram and let's talk!

Thanks so much for stopping by!
Make sure to follow @JRPGJungle on Twitter and Instagram, like JRPG Jungle on Facebook and Subscribe to the mailing list and Youtube Channel for updates on content and random musings on JRPG news and games. You're awesome! <3

JRPGs I Played in Winter 2017

For those who don't know, I'm currently living in Japan and I'm from Australia. Australia is generally warmer than Japan and allow me to let my Australian out when I say this: Japanese Winters are freezing! On the plus side, cold winters mean wanting to stay inside and play JRPGs, which means I was able to play quite a bit this season. I mostly mean hours-wise, because I may have gotten a very big Final Fantasy XV addiction, which meant I only tried so many new games while continuing to run around in Recipeh Final Fantasy XV.

Looking back on my JRPG time in Winter, outside of my Final Fantasy XV time I'm really happy with the variety of JRPGs I played. I fell in love two Final Fantasy games, added a fun new mobile game to my regular rotation, played some really great Indie JRPGs from outside of Japan and got started on my JRPG New Year Resolutions. It was a fulfilling Winter of JRPGs, so I hope you enjoy reading about the JRPGs I played.

My Favourite Game of Winter 2017: Final Fantasy XV (PS4)

If it wasn't obvious from the amount of articles and tweets I've made about it, I really like Final Fantasy XV. I like it to the point where I limit how long I play it because it's the kind of game where I could do like I did with Persona 4 Golden and play it and nothing else for nine months straight. I love running around with the group of four so much finding quests, recipes and weird things to fight and having the (sadly now gone) Moogle Chocobo Carnival come out recently to give even more content was pretty much the icing on the cake. I reviewed it properly in another post, but I'm still having a ball with XV and am completely hyped to keep playing it into Spring with the new update just out and Episode Gladio coming soon.

You can pick up Final Fantasy XV for PS4 and Xbox One at Play-Asia.com!*

Fire Emblem Heroes (iOS)

This isn't a ranked post, but I'd probably call Fire Emblem Heroes my second favourite JRPG of this Winter as it's taken over my mobile gaming time pretty much completely (and I may have my characters training on Auto-Battle as I write this). Fire Emblem Awakening has probably been my favourite tactical JRPG experience so far, so having a pocket-sized version of the Fire Emblem games constantly by my side is pretty awesome. Since writing my review of Fire Emblem Heroes, there have been a few updates to it, including events giving orbs and new story, which was exactly what I said I wanted in my review. I hope Fire Emblem Heroes keeps up the good thing it has going because so far, it's a really solid smartphone game.

You can pick up Fire Emblem Heroes in the App Store or the Google Play Store.

Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix (PS3)

When Kingdom Hearts 2.8 was looming last month, I had the sudden realisation that I'm very behind on certain parts of Kingdom Hearts' story. I've played 1 and 2 back on PS2, an insignificant chunk of Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories and not much else. I barely know who Aqua is and she looks cool and important enough in the 2.8 trailer that I decided (with some helpful nudges from lovely people on Twitter) it's time to catch up and if I start now, I might be ready before Kingdom Hearts 3.

I'm starting my Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix journey by playing through the first Kingdom Hearts again because it's been awhile. It holds up really well for a game released 15 years ago and I'm having a lot of fun playing it again because, well, it's still a good game. I am rushing through a little on Easy mode to get to the new stuff faster, but even on easy the combat is still active and rewarding. I'm playing at my own pace but it's a fun world to revisit and I'm looking forward to finally understanding it better.

You can pick up Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix for PS3 and 1.5 and 2.5 together for PS4 at Play-Asia.com!*

God Wars: Future Past (Japanese Demo, PS4)

Despite the fact I don't write my JRPG-specific PSN summaries anymore, I do still lurk the Australian and Japanese PSN every week when they're updated. I discovered very recently God Wars: Toki wo Koete (known in English as God Wars: Future Past) in the demo section of the Japanese PSN and was curious as I didn't know a lot about it. Turns out it's being localised and is scheduled for release around late March, so I plan to do a proper post on it at some point. It had a really nice traditional Japanese feeling in the story and art and the tactical system used some interesting mechanics. I wasn't swayed enough to add it to my must-buy list (which honestly may just be due to my low level Japanese preventing me from understanding the story well) but the demo is over an hour long and interesting enough for those curious.

You can pre-order God Wars - Future Past at Play-Asia.com!*

Tales of Berseria (Demo, PS4)

I had a phase where every time I saw Tales of Berseria, I wanted it more. Because of that, I was pretty surprised when the demo didn't have me throwing my money at it immediately. I think the problem with this demo was that it was too short and tried to show too much. I started off feeling like the combat was cool, then a few tutorials later, it was confusing as ever. I enjoyed the lengthy skits included, but there wasn't a lot of context given so some of the jokes were probably lost on me. Even though the demo didn't have me jumping for joy, I give Berseria the benefit of the doubt as the demo was rather short. The art, characters and story concept still seem interesting, so when I eventually play it I hope it's good.

You can pick up Tales of Berseria for PS4 and PS3 at Play-Asia.com!*

Nier Automata (Demo, PS4)

NieR Automata has been slowly selling itself to me and this demo where I started to truly need it. The gameplay in the NieR Automata demo was much more epic than I expected. Its atmosphere was very unique and the action combat was even more fun than imagined. This demo helped put it into my March must-have JRPGs and I may make an article about how excited I am about it soon.

You can pre-order NieR Automata from Play-Asia.com!*

Kingdom Hearts Unchained X (iOS)

If I'm being honest, I very briefly logged into Kingdom Hearts Unchained X for a special login bonus and haven't played much else since. It's not a bad mobile game by any stretch, it's just the story moves so slowly and there are other stories I'd like to get ahead in more. But hey, it's not leaving my smartphone game collection anytime soon!

You can download Kingdom Hearts Unchained X for free from the App Store for iOS or the Google Play store for Android!

Persona 2: Innocent Sin (PS Vita)

I've had Persona 2: Innocent Sin sitting in my PSN downloads for a year or two so when I finished World of Final Fantasy, after hearing some of my Twitter and Instagram friends suggest it I decided it was time to finally play it. Persona 2 is a very interesting game to play as someone who jumped into the series at Persona 4 Golden - there are no social links and the graphics are pretty dated, but the demon negotiation system I enjoyed when I played Persona 5 in Japanese is there. It's a really cool system to explore in English for the first time and outside of battle, there are some characters I'm interested in learning more about. I'm only about 7 hours in but it's certainly an interesting look into the Persona series' history.

Persona 4 Dancing All Night (PS Vita, Japanese)

This is a random one but when I decided I wanted to platinum something this year, I looked in my trophies and saw I was really close to platinuming Persona 4 Dancing All Night. So now it's back inside my Vita and I did get one more trophy for it, but I'm so close to platinuming Final Fantasy XV that I'm in no rush to get the one in Persona 4 Dancing All Night. It's still a really fun rhythm game though and putting Chie in her special yellow body suit, putting on the ‘Best Friends’ Banvox Remix and making her dance is never a bad time.

You can pick up Persona 4 Dancing All Night at Play-Asia.com!*

Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius (iOS)

Before Fire Emblem Heroes whisked me away from all my mobile games, I was actively planning to complete Final Fantasy Brave Exvius’ story - I even unlocked a new island in January. I don't know when I'll get back to Brave Exvius at this point but forgetting things like the weird Ariana Grande event, it's a good game that will remain on my phone for awhile.

You can download Final Fantasy Brave Exvius from the App Store for iOS or the Google Play Store for Android.

World of Final Fantasy (PS Vita)

I expressed how much I adored World of Final Fantasy in my review and I still look back on my monster hunting journey very fondly. But for the most part I've left it alone since I'm satisfied with the ending. You see, World of Final Fantasy’s ‘ending’ gave me some of the biggest JRPG-story feels I've had in a long time and now that I got the closure I needed in World of Final Fantasy, I want to leave it alone....Except I want Square Enix to make a sequel because collecting and battling with Final Fantasy monsters was freaking awesome and I'd like more of that in my life......Please.

You can pick up World of Final Fantasy for PS4 and PS Vita at Play-Asia.com!*

Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan (PC)

I'm really glad I played Aurion. It may not have been a perfect game, but it had a lot of heart and really great ideas in it. A small piece of me misses having new Aurions to find and learning a little about African mythology through the story. I enjoyed my Aurionic journey with the King and Queen of Zama and recommend it to those looking for a different kind of JRPG.

You can pick up Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan on Steam!

X-Tactics (iOS)

I'm pretty sure I logged into X-Tactics a few times for login bonuses and to try get X-Coins this month. I was considering completing all of the missions in X-Tactics before Final Fantasy Brave Exvius', but I seemed to be a little further into Brave Exvius. X-Tactics is next on my list though, so I hopefully I'll get some time to play it soon.

You can download X-Tactics free at the App Store for iOS or the Google Play Store for Android!

Legrand Legacy (Pre-Alpha Demo, PC)

Legrand Legacy is one of the best indie demos I've ever played. I really enjoyed the timing-based battle system shown off in the demo and the interesting characters that hooked me in early on and the art and ideas all make it feel really high quality. I will patiently wait for the full version of Legrand Legacy to be released and I'm really looking forward to exploring its world and story more. (Also can we all just take a moment to celebrate that Legrand got funded on Kickstarter?!?!)

You can help Legrand Legacy reach its stretch goals by supporting it on Kickstarter!
Also check out the demo on Steam!

March Gaming Plans

My Final Fantasy XV addiction shows no sign of stopping with the update being out by the time this goes up and Episode Gladiolus being released in late March. My season pass and I are very ready for this. Also, NieR Automata looks fantastic and I pretty much need it. And Persona 5's English release is slowly creeping up and while there's no chance of me completing the Japanese version before the English one comes out at this point, I hope to at least spend a little more time with it before playing it in English in April. I'll also definitely be continuing with Persona 2 on my Vita when I'm not home and probably Fire Emblem Heroes. I'm really excited for NieR and Episode Gladio next month though, so I hope they live up to my excitement levels!

Quick note: The next ‘JRPGs I Played’ post will be for March. Usually I've done these seasonally and this was appropriate when I was playing less games and making less articles, but as I'm starting to try keep up with new releases a bit better and get reviews done faster, I want to try doing these monthly to make it much easier for everyone to digest. If you have thoughts about this, please let me know by commenting or talking to me on social media!

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What did you play in Winter 2017? What games are you looking forward to playing next month (NieR Automata hype!)?
Leave a comment below, send me a tweet at @JRPGJungle, hit me up on Facebook, Youtube or Instagram and let's talk!

Thanks so much for stopping by!
Make sure to follow the blog here, follow @JRPGJungle on Twitter and Instagram, like JRPG Jungle on Facebook and Subscribe to the mailing list and Youtube Channel for updates on content and random musings on JRPG news and games. You're awesome! <3

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All four new Persona games will be localised for 2014 and 2015!

Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, Persona 4 Dancing All Night and Persona 5 have been announced for an English release on AtlusUSA's official YouTube.

For Fall 2014 (which is Australia's Spring) we will see Persona 4 Arena Ultimax on PS3 and XBox360 and Persona Q on 3DS (and you bet I'll be buying a 3DS for this). Persona 5 for PS3 and Persona 4 Dancing All Night for PS Vita are scheduled for 2015.

Applause to Atlus for doing localisation for all four new titles! Also, I highly enjoy the way they're releasing these. A console game and a portable game. One for home, one for the train. This probably wasn't their intention at all....but it's genius.

Here are the links for the trailers: (will insert them in this post when I'm home)

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax

Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth

Persona 5

Persona 4: Dancing All Night

There are no words for how excited I am. I'm going to have to save a lot of money to afford these, but it will be worth it. I'm most excited for Persona 5 as the theme looks very interesting and is meant to be an 'empowering' game so I'm curious to see what Atlus has in store for us! (Want to read a translated article from pepsimangb's Tumblr on Persona 5? Click here!)

What Persona game are you most keen for? Will you buy them all or only a few or none at all? Comment below.

Have a great day all! I'm off to work (blergh)

-Tara

PSN: guittaraxx