Amplitude Studios’ rogue-lite Endless Dungeon is also playable while HYENAS, the multiplayer sci-fi FPS from Creative Assembly, will have a photo experience with props (including arcade cabinets and boom boxes). Rounding out the upcoming titles are Atlus’ Soul Hackers 2 and Company of Heroes 3, the latter offering a 1v1 multiplayer map in Italy against the AI and a sample mission from the North Africa campaign.

Attendees can also play recently released titles like Demon Slayer -Kimetsu No Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles, Total War: Warhammer 3, Humankind, Two Point Campus and Persona 4 Arena Ultimax. Gamescom 2022’s physical event takes place from August 24th to 28th with publishers like THQ Nordic also confirmed. Gamescom Opening Night Live is set for August 23rd and offers a two-hour-long showcase with over 30 titles.

Rollback netcode is essentially a method of interpreting inputs between players in a multiplayer match that allows for predictive responses and the ability to rollback—hence the name—any action that might conflict with what players actually did.

Rollback netcode is typically seen as a superior method of playing multiplayer fighting games over large distances online, since the more commonly-used delay-based netcodes ends up feeling quite bad to play owing to its nature of slowing the game down and causing input-delays.

The PC version of the update is currently available as a beta, which players can opt into by going into Persona 4 Arena Ultimax‘s properties on Steam, entering the beta access code “p4auopenbeta03”, and picking open_beta_3 from the drop-down options.

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax is currently available on PC, PS4, and Nintendo Switch.

This includes the Persona 4 Arena Story, all icons and Fighter Titles, Challenge Demos, three additional characters, boss characters, Adachi’s Story Mode, and additional BGM and Navi voices. Dual Audio is also supported with both English and Japanese VO available. On top of this, the gameplay is based on the 2.50 arcade version which is coming to home consoles for the first time.

For more details on Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, check out our review of the PS4 version. Rollback netcode for online multiplayer will also be added as a free update this Summer for PS4 and PC. Expect a public test and other details in the coming months.

And Persona 4 was worth a lot. We got a glut of Persona 4 media and spin offs, from an enhanced re-release to a crossover dungeon crawler, from a dancing game for some reason to not one, but two fighting games featuring the casts of Persona 3 and 4 duking it out against each other, and some new characters in a story that was emphatically declared “canon” and the “true conclusion of the Persona 4 saga.”

That was all nonsense. The story in Persona 4 Arena and Persona 4 Arena Ultimax is terrible, the writing flanderizes all the characters in Persona 3 and 4’s casts, reducing beloved fan favourites such as Chie, Kanji, or Mitsuru into one note gags (if that), and introducing frankly ridiculous stakes that are hard to take seriously on their own, much less as a continuation of the thematic nuance and richness of Persona 3 and 4. If storytelling was the true appeal of Persona 4 Arena, then it failed spectacularly.

But that’s really not why Persona 4 Arena and its sequel became so popular. They became popular because they were damn good fighting games, featuring great fan service, pulling together beloved characters, music, visuals, and locations from two fan favorite games, and because they were teeming with content. All of that holds true as much today as it did when they first came out. Which is why this re-release of Persona 4 Arena Ultimax for the PS4, Switch, and PC, including not just all the content that Ultimax had, but also all its DLC, and the story campaign from the original Persona 4 Arena, pretty much sells itself. It is essentially the exact same pitch as Persona 4 Arena and Ultimax originally were. If the idea of a Persona Smash Bros. appeals to you, then Ultimax is right up your alley. If you wanted a legitimate narrative continuation of Persona 4, and are hoping this game gives you that, run away and never look back. If you want something that plays like Persona, go away and look elsewhere. If you just want a good fighting game, Ultimax is your jam.

So, all the same issues and strengths are present here. The writing is still awful. The story is utterly trite. The characters have been flanderized almost beyond recognition. The story mode is practically a visual novel, with how much text and cutscenes it throws at you in between a few precious minutes of letting you actually fight – and as mentioned, the actual story and writing is terrible, so you’re subjected to multiple minutes of terrible storytelling at a time, over and over.

But on the other hand, it controls and plays marvellously. It translates the Persona universe and characters into an excellent fighting game, one that stands as much as a great bit of fan service for series fans as it does on its own merits. It is a love letter to Persona 3 and 4, including riffs on their themes, music, visuals, aesthetic, and motifs all over the place. It is packed with content, and you can lose hundreds of hours of your life to it if you decide to dedicate yourself to it (more so than even the original Ultimax, since, as mentioned, the base package comes with Persona 4 Arena‘s campaign included off the bat this time around). Even the online mode is going to be a big improvement over the original game’s online functionality, with the PS4 and Steam versions getting rollback net code in a few months. 

Strong presentation (a hallmark of the Persona franchise) and extremely tight gameplay, along with a dedication to providing an absurd amount of content, all make Ultimax stand out even today – few fighting games pay as much attention to their visual flourishes, fewer still deliver this much content. While there are a lot of great playing fighting games, Ultimax is still distinct because of the way it incorporates the characters’ Personas themselves into combat, allowing for a nice variation of elemental and special attacks compared to how other fighting games handle it. The ability to play this game on modern consoles is enough of an incentive to justify this re-release by itself. Atlus making the content from the original Arena available in this package, and also striving to deliver better netcode, further makes this the definitive edition of the definitive Persona fighting game.

Like many, I hope that one day, we get a Persona 5 Arena game, one that allows the all star casts of Persona 3 and 4 to duke it out with the Phantom Thieves. And judging by the way that Atlus has handled narrative in Persona 5 spin offs so far, either 5 Arena won’t be saddled with an elaborate story mode, or if it is, it will be actually well written for a change. If and when it happens, we will have a hopefully superior product to rally around – but until it does, if it ever does, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax on PS4, Steam, and Switch represents the definitive Persona fighting game experience. Anyone looking for a chance to duke it out with their favorite characters, some great fan service for Persona 3 and 4 lovers, or just a great fighting game, is going to enjoy what’s on offer here. 

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.

This after Atlus promised it would look into rollback netcode for a future patch. Numerous Arc System Works titles like Guilty Gear Strive and the upcoming DNF Duel also support the feature. But it was the older titles like BlazBlue Central Fiction and BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle receiving rollback netcode (the latter in April) that really spurred the conversation.

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax is out on March 17th for PS4, PC and Nintendo Switch. Along with the base game, it includes all DLC like Episode Adachi, three additional characters and dual audio for English and Japanese. It’s also based on the 2.50 arcade version which never released outside of arcades so expect some gameplay changes as well.

This isn’t just a re-release though. It’s based on the 2.50 arcade version which was never made available for home consoles, thus bringing potential new changes to the roster. All DLC is also included like the Persona 4 Arena Story, Adachi’s Story Mode, icons and Fighter Titles, Challenge Demonstrations, additional BGM and Navi voice, three more characters and all boss characters. Players will also have a choice between English and Japanese VO.

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax is out on March 17th for the above platforms. Check out our review of the 2014 release here to learn more. Though it won’t release with rollback netcode for online multiplayer, Atlus may consider adding the same in a future patch.

Speaking to Famitsu, the Persona Team’s creative director and producer Kazuhisa Wada said that Atlus is at least considering the implementation of rollback netcode, albeit later in a future patch. Wada also revealed that Persona 4 Golden selling over one million copies on Steam prompted the team to scale up development from the original plan. He also considers this the “definitive” version of the title.

As such, this isn’t hard confirmation and there’s no guarantee that rollback netcode could be added quickly even if it was. We’ll need to wait for more details in the coming year. Persona 4 Arena Ultimax is currently set to release on March 17th 2022.

As noted on the game’s Steam listing, players can expect a Dual Audio, allowing for choosing either the English or Japanese VO. All previously released DLC is also included like the Persona 4 Arena Story, additional BGM and Navi voice, all icons and Fighter Titles, Challenge Demonstrations, Adachi’s Story Mode, unlocked boss characters and three additional characters.

There’s also the Midnight Channel Collection Bundle which offers Persona 4 Golden and Persona 4 Arena Ultimax together for a 30 percent discount. If you already own the former on Steam, then a 30 percent discount will apply when purchasing the latter. For more details on the base game, check out our original review here.

Featuring characters from Persona 3 and Persona 4, the Ultimax version adds eight new characters on top of the base game’s 13. Along with using different specials and Persona abilities, new moves have been added and there’s a new S-Hold system for charging attacks. Another new feature is Shadow Types, which add a bit of “risk vs. reward” along with new move sets.

Given Arc System Works leaning more into rollback netcode for its older titles, it should be interesting to see if the same is implemented in Persona 4 Arena Ultimax. Stay tuned for more details and announcements from The Game Awards 2021 in the meantime.

The Persona series has always had its following, but with the release of Persona 5 and its enhanced re-release, Persona 5 Royal, it seems things have been taken to the next level. More people are discovering the franchise, it seems, including its music. Persona has always had some great beats, and now you can get them on select streaming services, though they may be a pain to swift through at the moment.

Seemingly out of nowhere, soundtracks for the various Persona titles appeared on Spotify and Apple Music. It’s not just music for Persona 3-5, either, but many of the various spinoffs such as the Dancing games, Persona Q and Persona 4 Arena. What’s maybe even more surprising is there is also the OST for Persona 2 (if you’re unaware, the style of the series changed significantly with Persona 3, and the first two games are largely ignored), though the first game is still absent.

Unfortunately, as you’ll notice in the links above, despite being available on English storefronts many albums and songs are still in Japanese and are somewhat terribly organized, especially on Spotify. Something similar happened when Square added the Final Fantasy tracks a few years back, which was fixed eventually to make it more manageable, so hopefully this will happen here, too. Still, though, it’s all here even if you have to do some parsing through. It’s unclear at this time if the soundtracks will come to other streaming services such as YouTube Music and Tidal. The next game in the series, Persona 5 Strikers, is set to release on February 23rd on PS4 and Switch.