My Thoughts on the Persona Endless Night Collection
Saturday Night Fever in The Velvet Room
The Persona Endless Night Collection consists of three separate dancing rhythm games using the characters and music from Persona 3–5. The bundle was released on 4th January 2019.
These games are:
- ‘Persona 3 Dancing in Moonlight’
- ‘Persona 5 Dancing in Starlight’
- ‘Persona 4 Dancing all Night’
‘Dancing All Night’ is the oldest of these three games and was released on the PS Vita on 25th June 2015, before getting a remastering on PS4, but only if you buy the absurdly expensive pack.
Being extensions of their respective Persona games, it is somewhat imperative to play those games to understand and fully appreciate references, characters and the iconic music of these games. I wrote blogs on all three of these a while ago in the order I played them. I will leave them below, for you to read at your own leisure.
I was fortunate enough to pick up the Endless Night Collection during an online sale and played the games in bullet-pointed list above and was going to write about them in that order as well, but then I thought it would make more sense to talk about the first of these dancing games (‘Persona 4 Dancing All Night’) as the other two would, in theory, build off of this one.
I should mention that I may refer to each dancing game as P4D, P3D or P5D throughout this blog.
There are some SPOILERS for the story of these games and one, potentially two NSFW picture(s) beyond this point. Consider this your warning folks!
Persona 4 Dancing All Night
Story Mode
The story of ‘Persona 4 Dancing all Night’ takes place one month after the epilogue in ‘Persona 4 GOLDEN’, where The Investigation Team has met up in Junes like the good friends they are. Rise Kujikawa, who has since returned to the idol industry, asks Yu Narukami (the canon name of the protagonist that you would play as in ‘Persona 4’ and ‘Persona 4 GOLDEN’) and all her other friends to dance alongside her in the upcoming Love Meets Bonds (LMB) Festival, the meet up you watch once you beat the game proper in an additional chapter.
The game’s story mode proper begins with Yu, along with Naoto Shirogane, who both join up with Rise at her dance studio and are introduced to fellow idol Kanami Mashita (see above and below), they learn that Kanami’s idol group, Kanamin Kitchen (see below), has gone missing under mysterious circumstances.
There is also a strange rumour associated with the festival’s website that if you are on it at midnight, you see a dead idol dance around and then you too share her fate (ie, death). Yu, Naota & Rise look into this rumour and are dragged into a strange world within the website called The Midnight Stage. A mysterious entity reveals itself, using strange ribbons and song to force Shadows to form a bond with it, effectively brainwashing anyone who comes into contacts with the ribbons. Unable to use violence in this world, the trio discovers that they can use the power of song and dance to express their feelings to the Shadows, freeing them from the voice’s control.
‘Persona 4’ players may find this premise very similar to the main game’s plot. A godlike entity found beyond a digital screen can only be defeated by the power of friendship and minimal investigation work.
Don’t you just love the absurdity of JRPGs?
The presentation of the story is very different from the other Persona games, even the original three that ATLUS constantly neglects. The visuals are presented in a form similar to that of a visual novel. Some may find this jarring, but I found it quite appropriate and fantastic to look at. The character design and artwork of Shigenori Soejima and the rest of the ATLUS art team is always beautiful to look at, and seeing the ‘Persona 4’ team illustrated/presented in glorious HD is just…well, glorious!
Like the main ‘Persona 4’ games, you can choose what to say at certain points in the story, but they don’t alter the narrative in notable ways, other than making you look a bit dim. You are not going to find any bad endings as you can in other Persona games, which is fine, as not every game needs an alternative ending. That being said, given the themes the story touches and the motives of the main antagonist, a bad ending would have been very interesting here. I will iterate that ‘Persona 4 Dancing all Night’ does not need an alternative ending, as the only ending is quite a satisfactory ending.
The story is broken up into different chapters, each one is shown through the eyes of one of three characters. Yu, Kanami (who has more of an importance than you are initially led to believe) and Rise, who I initially thought was a bit of a curveball to have as ‘lead’ character. Rise had moments in the main ‘Persona 4’ games that made her quite the good leader, and I thought P4D did a good job at properly making her a leader of one half of The Investigation Team when they decide to split to rescue two of the four idols. It is also implied at various points of the story that Rise’s powers are a lot stronger than a lot of her party members, which certainly makes for some interesting conversations for Persona fans…
One thing I did not like about how the story was presented was that the format was incredibly predictable for the most part. Story, Dance, Story, Dance repeat. This is at it’s most irritating when the party are rescuing the Kanamin Kitchen girls, who are tempted to staying in The Midnight Stage forever as the antagonist convinces them that they have to be a certain type of person to please everyone, just like the party members of The Investigation had to go through in ‘Persona 4’ in order to conquer their Shadows and acquire their Personas. The stills (for a lack of a better word) of the girls being caught up in ribbon are probably able to inhibit BDSM flashbacks, with the metamorphosis of a convinced Kyoka Ochimizu, the producer of LMB Fest is perhaps the most risque of said transformations (see above).
Margret and The Velvet Room (under the guise of Club Velvet) speaks to you, the player, at certain intervals of the story for some reason. I don’t think ATLUS needed to shoehorn her in, especially when she has nothing to do within the main plot.
Codetta
I wasn’t expecting much with this story when I first booted the game up. After all, you could only defeat this evil with amateur dancing and it’s still the same old ‘happy-clappy’ ‘Persona 4’! However, I was rather surprised by how moved I was by huge chunks of the narrative's themes, as it not only tackled the more serious and unusual lifestyle of your traditional pop idol (something I cover very briefly in a blog I wrote about Junji Ito’s manga ‘Gyo’) but it is also a coming of age story, extending upon the ideas found in ‘Persona 4’, and subsequently, ‘Persona 4 GOLDEN’. It just goes to show that you can really make the most stupid ideas into compelling narratives.
Free Dance Mode
With a solid story, how does the actual gameplay fare in comparison? Well, the controls are simple enough. You either press/hold the left, down, up, triangle, square, circle buttons singularly or in unison when the correct symbol approaches the corresponding button on the edge of your screen. You can also flick the analogue sticks when blue or multicoloured rings approach the screen edges, but I recommend you turn on the option to activate those rings with the R1 and L1 buttons.
The multicoloured rings are FEVER rings, and if you get 3 in a row (in time with the music) you activate FEVER TIME at certain points in each song, where one of The Investigation Team members (or Naniko, Yu’s cousin) can jump in for a dance as well. The tutorial that you play through to understand the mechanics is better explained than what I have just done, so I will provide a video I found online of someone acing the first track you can dance to, a remix of ‘Specialist’, on the hardest difficulty, All Night mode.
Each completed dance earns you points, granting you the rankings of ‘Stage Clear’, ‘Brilliant’ or ‘King Crazy’, depending on how good your timing was. The better your score and combos, the more prizes you get, which of course is money that you can spend on buying costumes and accessories for the characters, as well as items to make life easier/more difficult for you in each dance, dropping/boosting your score and money earnt. This is my favourite inclusion of Tanaka in a Persona game to date might I add!
If you clear a dance that is found within The Midnight Stage (which is most of them), that member of The Investigation Team ends with a short musical interlude where their respective Persona defeats the dancing Shadows with some musical instrument playing (which makes sense when it happens if you play Story Mode first and not Free Dance Mode as I did). My personal favourite interludes are Naoto’s and Yu’s, which I have uploaded specially for you. I also like the final dance where The Investigation Team dance together, but that is right at the end of the game, so I won’t spoil that for you.
This game also has a small amount of DLC, which includes additional costumes, songs and dancers, Adachi, Marie and Hatsune Miku, the famous Vocaloid. which I believe are all fairly priced. I only bought one of these DLC’s, and that was Adachi, who dances to a remix of ‘The Fog’ as I cannot stand Marie and not really a Hatsune Miku fan. More importantly, I like Adachi as an antagonist.
Some of the trophies require you to play some of the dances on the higher difficulties, which is not too much of a feat if you are enjoying the game and have gotten pretty competent at it. Obviously, certain dances have higher difficulties than others, but sometimes I think the game would forget which difficulty it was on. Some of the button presses on an Easy mode dance would only be found on an All Night mode version! It kept me on my toes, to say the least. As all of the remixes of the Persona 4 tracks/songs are absolute bangers (technical term), I didn’t mind it all that much.
One of the items you can purchase from Tanaka allows Margret to dance, as well as a partner choice for some of The Investigation Team. That inclusion was nice, be it a tad forced. My opinions may be somewhat biased, as Margret is my least favourite Velvet Room attendant after Lavenza.
This would be a simple problem to solve, but only if Margret had more involvement with the main story. That is one element that the ‘Persona 3’ and ‘Persona 5’ dancing games improve upon…barely.
Persona 3 Dancing in Moonlight & Persona 5 Dancing in Starlight
I decided to talk about both newer dancing games together, as they are essentially the same game, just with a different art style, cast and music. It actually felt at points it was originally one game that ATLUS sliced into two. They even share the same story!
The Phantom Thieves and SEES are summoned into different Club Velvets by Elizabeth and The Twin Wardens (Caroline and Justine) in each respective game and say that their over sister (Elizabeth in P5D and The Twin Wardens in P3D) is to be beaten in a dancing contest, so they can prove their team are better than Margret’s Investigation Team when the defeated a threat through dancing. Through their power of Forced Plot Development, SEES and The Phantom Thieves are able to dance as well as they want to, by merely thinking it.
That is it by the way. This is all introduced to the player during the first 5–10 minutes of the game as you marvel over the ‘Persona 3’ and ‘Persona 5’ with the stunning ‘Persona 5’ graphics and modern anime art style. It is also mentioned that they won’t remember any of their activities in Club Velvet because it is all just a dream, making the game and subsequent interactions completely and utterly pointless on a narrative point. A complete slap in the face for anyone who buys the Endless Night Collection at full price!
That is not including the MANY additional DLC items you can purchase. Like with P4D, the DLC takes on the form of additional songs from the ‘Persona 3’ and ‘Persona 5’ games, films and anime. Some of the music also comes from previous Persona games as well! You can also buy costumes, accessories and characters, such as Akechi and Shinjiro, none of them being particularly cheap to purchase. I am in the mindset to believe that this was all very deliberate, as there are far fewer songs in P3D and P5D than there were in P4D. There are more costumes and accessories in these games, some carry over from P4D, whilst others are specific to these two games. I feel that there is actually too much choice, which is something I thought I would never say, being a fan of dress up…in games mind you!
Social Mode
With no story mode present, the game replaces that with ‘Social Mode’. These are similar to Social Links in previous games, in that there are 8 ranks (as opposed to the usual 10) for each character, where you can talk to certain party members about something that is bothering them or something that is on their mind. More often than not, they are conversing with another character, and it provides for some really nice heartwarming moments and insights, including each game’s respective Velvet Room attendant. The Twin Wardens in P5D were rather adorable, bouncing off of each other's insecurities and quirks far more than the original game, and I loved the strangeness of Elizabeth, as I did very much in ‘Persona 3’. She interacts with the members of SEES far more than The Twins do with The Investigation Team.
The other party members were great to engage with as well, just as you would expect in the base games. From the ‘Persona 5’ cast, Yuskue was blunt and rather camp and that always tickles my funny bone. Ann and Makoto were fighting for who was my best waifu and Haru finally got her sought after screentime. Pit it is a dream and none of it matters…
Seeing the ‘Persona 3’ cast, however, was far more exhilarating, as the graphical upgrade made me care far more than it did with the ‘Persona 5’ team, as I was used to seeing them in that game engine. Fuuka and Aigis were as cute as ever and it was wonderful to see Yukari and Junpei bicker again. Similarly, seeing ‘Persona 3’ places in this engine made my heart melt with delight.
The way you unlock each social link depends from character to character, but they require to do certain things such as equip so many different costumes or items to make life easier/harder for you for each dance, to name two examples. The Velvet Room attendants just require you to watch other social links.
From social link 5 onwards, you are able to explore the rooms of each character from these two games, which is a feature I didn’t realise I needed until I explored the first bedroom in P3D (which was the game I played first out of the dancing trilogy). P5D had the slightly better experience, as it occurred to me you barely saw any of the bedrooms of any of The Phantom Thieves in ‘Persona 5’, whilst you saw SEES’ bedrooms quite frequently (if you played ‘Persona 3 FES’ that is). Exploring bedrooms does serve a legitimate purpose, as Elisabeth and The Twins have placed cards for you to find. Some are harder than others, including one in each game cheekily hidden on a ceiling. You can tell if you are close because you will hear a ringing triangle/bell when you are near. Finding a card rewards you with more ways to dress up your favourite characters.
Dancing
The controls for this game are exactly the same as they are for P4D, with the button prompts and the rings looking much nicer than before, which makes sense, given the hardware improvements. Like P4D, some songs are more difficult than others and some forgetting which difficulty it should be on. For example, the remix of ‘Mass Destruction’ that Ken dances too is my Achille's Heel. There are some interesting curveballs found in P5D as well.
P3D and P5D also have one song where all the males dance together and all the females (minus the Velvet Room attendants) dance together, which is something that P4D lacked and I am glad that was improved upon. However, one dance I feel incredibly uncomfortable playing was the P5D all-girl dance to ‘Last Surprise’. They are dressed in tight-fitting ‘sexy’ burlesque outfits, doing their risque routine in cages, a big ol’ fluffy heart-shaped bed, as well as transitioning to them in their bikinis by a swimming pool.
I understand that ‘Persona 5’ is the most mature out of the three modern Persona games, but there is something morally wrong looking at teenagers behave like that and I don’t believe it is not needed for 15 and 16-year-olds to be prancing about like hookers. The internet does enough to overly sexualise the cast (see below picture) and I don’t think the creators really should add to it. That said, they did create what I am dubbing ‘The Battle Bikinis’ for the ‘Persona 3’ girls in ‘Persona 3 Portable’.
Because I was made aware of that dance number, I then noticed that each of these three games had substantial boob physics going on, with P5D being the most notable.
Once you reach Rank 8 of each Velvet Room attendant, the credits roll and Elizabeth and The Twin Wardens are able to dance as partners and in their own track. Out of the three games, Elizabeth has the best track, which is a remix of ‘Aria of The Soul’ and The Twins have the worst one, which is a shockingly lacklustre remix of ‘Life Will Change’.
Coda
If you have been watching the videos on this blog, you may have noticed that the games share one unanimous issue. With hundreds of colours flying around the screen, your eyes and mind are focused on where each symbol is going so you can push the buttons to get said presses in time with the music. This means that you are not really aware at the dance routines…which is a considerable flaw, given that they are dancing games, but at least you are free to watch them once you have cleared the level/dance.
Regardless, I found these games utterly infectious and loads of fun to play. I recommend all Persona fans to give these games ago, especially if you are a fan of the music and the arrangement albums, as some of those have snuck their way into the games. Just be wary that of the short song list in P3D and P5D encourages you to buy the DLC, and that the Endless Night Collection on PS4 is rather expensive, both digitally and physically. They are all available on PS Vita and PS4, but P4D is only available on PS4 if you buy the Endless Night Collection. I played these games on PS4, so I have no idea how they are better/worse on PS Vita from a gameplay standpoint.
If I were to put the games in order of my favourite to least favourite, it would be 4, 3, 5. P4D has the advantage with a legitimate story and not a sibling rivalry, whilst the overall presentation or P3D feels somewhat more polished than P5D. The existence of P5D felt like it was very much an afterthought…to me at least.
If I were to put the soundtracks in order of preference, it would be 3, 4, 5. ‘Persona 5’ currently has the disadvantage over the other two as it has not been as milked as much with spin-off titles (yet) and does not have a good decade’s worth of music to chose from, but that does not change the fact that the remixes are considerably worse than the other two. Such bangers ‘Butterfly Kiss’, ‘Layer Cake’ and ‘Ark’ could have been great additions to the playlist, but yet ATLUS decided to have a billion remixes of ‘Last Surprise’ and ‘Beneath the Mask’ instead.
A theory of mine concerning music composition is that music is led by one of two factors; harmony or rhythm. Most of the soundtrack of ‘Persona 3’ and ‘Persona 4’ are led by their rhythms, with fairly simple harmony on the backfoot. ‘Persona 5’ is the inverse, which presents the interesting task of dumbing down the harmony but still keeping the original ‘flavour’ of the original cues. It’s harder than it appears.
Here are some of my favourite tracks/songs found across the three games, excluding the remix of ‘Aria of The Soul’ found in P3D, as that has already been included.
Now I if I were to rate the three Persona Dancing games out of 10…
- Persona 4 Dancing all Night — Mikuratana-no-Kami/10
- Persona 3 Dancing in Moonlight — Elle-P/10
- Persona 5 Dancing in Starlight —Tsundere/10
Which is your favourite Persona dancing game and why? Do you have a favourite remix? If so, what is it?
Let’s start a conversation, people!
