VideoGame A Dance Game Whose Problems All Flow From Dance
First, in the interest of transparency. I will openly and freely admit that I went into this game not fond of the genre. I'm terrible at rhythm games, and I can't think of one I've enjoyed too much.
I love the story here, particularly the kind of bare-knuckle social criticism and takedowns of celebrity culture in general and the Japanese idol industry in particular. (The bit where the girls compare themselves to meat was particularly delightfully cringeworthy.) And the overall theme has appreciable parallels to P4. Furthermore, unlike some spinoffs I could mention, everyone's mostly in character, with the same sorts of humor and character depth intact from the original. It's not particularly welcoming to newcomers, but the focus of the story is still on new characters and situations rather than just the old. The biggest weakness is that most of these characters needed more time to be established before we get to see their deepest problems and insecurities, but it was still well handled.
Unfortunately, the worst element of the story is the flimsy justifications given for why everyone has to dance their problems away, and it's here that my complaints begin. Before that, though, I must note that the mo-cap dancing animations are beautiful, smooth, and excellently done.
Here is the core of the problem: the dance game is just not very good. The UI is designed in such a way that most relevant information is away from the center of the screen, where the eye is drawn, and out towards the edges. Furthermore, it also means that looking at those animations is mutually exclusive to playing the game properly. And because the dance's animations are mostly pre-baked, they can't offer direct feedback when the player misses notes or starts to struggle.
Free Dance mode is just an unpleasant, unfun grind. (No pun intended.) I find Easy to be an unengaging slog, Normal to be just plain too hard to beat. And the drip-feed of money Easy songs give the player aren't nearly enough to scratch the surface of the shop's stock of costumes and powerups. At least they aren't nickle and diming us for the money via microtransactions... right?
For all I know, the things I'm complaining about are things dance game fans will like. But I can't help but feel that this game might've worked better in another genre or medium.
VideoGame Good story, hit-or-miss gameplay
You might be wondering why an RPG series like Persona would branch out into the rhythm genre, when many of its fans (myself included) have relatively little interest in it. Persona 4: Dancing All Night is the result, and it works better than you might think, but more as a story than as a game.
At first glance, the plot- members of Rise's rival idol group are going missing, and dancing is the only way to defeat the Shadows and save them- seems completely ridiculous, not to mention divorced from Persona 4, much less the rest of the series. In execution, though, it nicely touches on many of Persona 4's themes- friendship, being true to yourself and finding the truth, among others- and hits all the right emotional notes.
That said, it does feel a bit odd that this is apparently the last P4 spinoff, since there's no epic conclusion to series-wide plot threads, and it seems the most self-contained. The newcomers are nicely fleshed out (although some of the other Kanamin Kitchen members could have been developed more before their disappearance), and the bit players are fairly memorable, but while the Investigation Team is used well (particularly when their personal struggles complement those of a new character), they don't get all that much Character Development.
The gameplay is standard rhythm game fare, albeit with a fairly inconvenient user interface, in which the notes go outwards from the center of the screen (although I did eventually get used to it). One frustrating aspect, though, is that the supposedly "Good" notes, the easiest to get, tend to break your combos and disqualify you from the highest ratings. This isn't that much of a problem in story mode, since even beginners can get through on the easiest settings, but it can get frustrating when trying for achievements. After enough practice, I find that the game's most enjoyable on Normal with several of the difficulty-reducing items enabled, so I don't have to worry about getting through the song.
The item system has quite a few positives and negatives. On the one hand, it's nice to be able to change you characters' costumes, and the addition of items to increase or decrease the difficulty does add depth (although I think that the Olympic Tape, which prevents Good notes from breaking combos, should have been in place by default, as should the money-increasing Tatsuhime Charm). On the other, it's quite tedious to grind all the money, since lower difficulties give very little, and it's difficult to succeed at higher ones. There is a trick to expedite the process, but it requires many item purchases and a fair amount of practice to pull off, and the game's relatively short without the grinding.
Essentially, if you're open-minded and patient, you might enjoy Dancing All Night, but don't expect a great game, or one that will win you over to rhythm games.