Persona 4 Arena

So how is the latest fighting game by Arc System works? It's a lot like any other game by Arc System Works but quite different.

Right, there never was any doubt I was going to get this game, considering it combined Fighting Games and Persona, two things I'm interested in. And I managed to get it for the XBOX360. 

So how is it? Well, if you've ever played any Arc System Works games, chances are you'll know how to play this as well. It has a lot of similar elements to other games by the company such as bursting, as well as button configs and combos. However, it has one element that also makes it very very different well as well. And that is the Persona. 

Now what is a Persona; for those of you who've never played the games. Think of a Persona as a stand from Jojo's bizarre adventure or an assist from KOF/MVC3. Except these personas are more like light slash and heavy slash from guilty gear. You can do special moves with them and they come out on screen like an assist to perform the moves while you can continue on with a combo, potentially hitting the opponent twice. However, unlike MVC3 or KOF, these assists can be broken. If your persona is hit 4 times, it breaks, which means you can't use it for a while. That means no special moves that require the persona or even super moves. This can screw over quite a few characters who are very heavily persona dependent coughyukikocough. It's less of an issue for other characters though. However, the persona will regenerate after some time, so all you have to do is run and hide for that period of time. 

One of the things I found very annoying in Persona4 is the autocombo system. It's where if you just press a,a,a,a , your character will perform a combo by himself without you needing to input any other commands. It is the most annoying thing to ever happen in fighting games, especially when you have friends who end up spamming it. And there is no way to turn it off, which is the most WTF thing ever. I can understand arcade machines not having the ability to turn it off, but console games?? Why?!!??!  Otoh, it does make it easier for newbies to jump into the pool as evidenced when I had a few friends over who didn't really play fighting games, they were still able to jump into the game by abusing the autocombo system. 

With regards to the storyline mode, they have some of the wackiest possible scenarios ever. Note, following text will have spoilers.

While the main characters storyline is fairly serious most of the time, the rest have...issues. Yukiko can go down a route where she ends up forcefeeding her home-made bento to everyone and KOing them that way. Kanji keeps thinking he's in a dream, while Chie goes around searching for steaks. Seriously wth? It's funny though. I've only completed a few routes because ye gads, there is so much frigging text in the storyline mode. I've spent more time reading text than fighting. Way more time. Also, regarding the new character Labrys....

Seriously, why do scientists NEVER EVER learn not to piss off sentient robots? Is it some requirement that whenever it comes to cyborgs/robots in anime, there must be some scientists who always always never considers that it might POSSIBLY be a bad idea to make a super powerful sentient robot and then treat it like crap? 

Overall, pretty decent fighting game. Has way more depth than UMVC3 in my opinion but needs to have a function to turn off the damn autocombo system.