P4U2 Remaster is good, but I want to play P5U now

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After Persona 4: Invincible Ultimate Backschool Back Fall Remaster Edition (hereinafter referred to as P4U2) landed on PS4, Switch, and PC, I played the game again with PS5. It's been many years since you last played the original P4U2, but in many ways, this Persona spin-off fighting game isn't outdated. While some game balance issues haven't changed in almost a decade, some of the ease of use design is clumsy, and the rollback network code isn't very good (this is said to be being fixed, I heard that it was updated in the summer), arc system's fighting games based on Persona characters and mechanics are still excellent.

But many of the P4U2's problems are exactly the same as when the original was released in 2014, as if time had stopped passing here. It's good to be able to play on new consoles, but over the past 8 years, both the Persona series and Arc System's fighting games have improved considerably, and the P4U2 is still stuck in the past. While it still makes me happy to play P4U2 again, I'd rather play a brand new game, like Persona 5: Arena (P5U) – a fighting game based on Persona 5 (P5).

P5 already has a number of spin-offs, such as Persona 5: Starry Night Dance (P5D) to give the Heart Monster Bandits a sound game, Persona Q2: New Theater Maze (PQ2) to let the P series characters into the labyrinth adventure game, And Persona 5 Chaos: Phantom Attacker (P5S) is the first peerless action game in the P series.

But P5 has never produced a fighting game like P4U (Joker, they did make it to Nintendo All-Star Smash Bros. Brawl Special Edition, but that doesn't count). Although I especially like to educate rookies with Sanada Akihiko and Iori Shunpei, I still feel empty when I see that there are no P5 characters in the P4U2 lineup.

P5 is the most successful part of the entire P series, so while P3 and P4 are also loved by players, Persona is still unaccustomed to people without the Strangers of Hearts. Like other P-series titles, the P5 protagonists' fighting style is very different from past characters, so they not only provide the unique rogue aesthetic of P5, but also make the fighting style more diverse. When I played P5S, I was a professional at Ryuji Sakamoto, and if there was a P5U, I would love to have him and Sanada Akihiko and Iori Shunpei become my usual characters.

P4U2 now has 21 participating characters, not too many, some of which are P3 characters, some of which are P4 characters (most of which have a slightly different mechanism of shadow versions), plus P5 characters, the number of participating characters can easily exceed 30 (this is not counting the shadow version). The number of additional characters is not small, but it is still similar to the number of characters in most fighting games (including Arc System's games) and does not appear bloated.

In addition to joining the P5 character, the P5U can also serve as a tandem P-series — just as the P4U and P4U2 linked P3's Shadow Ranger to P4's self-proclaimed Special Search Team. The three protagonists have met in PQ2, but the game uses time travel and amnesia Dafa, which can be treated as an outsider.

But the "arena" is not that positioning. Dramatically, they are canonical "follow-up stories", and both protagonist groups have grown. Both games take place many years after P3, and the protagonists have grown up. Although the members of the Shadow Rangers are still as close as ever, there are new developments in everyone's life.

Iori Became a Coach for junior baseball leagues, incorporating baseball skills into his fighting style. Yue Yu became a model and actress by Carrie, but was still able to pick up her bow when needed. Amada Kan, who is still a child in P3, also returns as a teenager. While each character brings a new style to the game, fans of the series are given the opportunity to visit long-time friends.

If the P5U is set after the P5 and allows the Shadow Rangers and Special Search Teams to return, this is a good opportunity for them to continue to grow. For P4 characters, this will be their first appearance since P4D. Although Persona 4: Gold Edition (P4G) gave them a new look and a school year gave them some growth, they still appeared as teenagers, and I would love to see them as adults.

I think the porting of P4U2 is probably a warm-up for the fight game of P5. But in recent years, Atlus' publishing strategy has become more open, and it has begun to bring their games to more platforms, such as P4G on Steam; P5S is not only on the PlayStation, but also on PCs and Switches. So porting P4U2 to a new host may be for the same reason.

But isn't it a sin to fantasize about it? This fighting series has not produced a new work in nearly 10 years, I think the transplantation of P4U2 is not too outrageous to create momentum for P5U, right? The P5S has been out for more than a year, and we don't know if there are any P5 derivatives in development. Would we wave goodbye to the Monster of hearts and join Atlus and P-Studio as we move into the P6 era to meet more teenage girls involved in supernatural events?

I hope the answer is "no", but I'm also trying to control myself so that I don't expect too much. Although it was a great experience to play P4U2 again, when I played it, my mind was focused on something that Atlus and P-Studio didn't even hint at. The 25th anniversary of the P series continues, but except for the P4U2, most of them are peripheral products, souvenir pictures, exhibitions, physical store linkages and the like. It may be a bit unrealistic to expect two fighting games to be announced in a row at a commemoration event, but I hope that Atlus will not forget the Monster of hearts when commemorating the history of the series and looking forward to the future of the series.

Translation: Yamamuko

Edit: Tony