Michael “angstygaijin” Migliacio wrote:Posted by admin on Aug 28, 2012 in Blog
After an impressive finish at A.R.K. V, Team EG’s Justin Wong shares his thoughts on up-and-coming tournament fighter Persona 4: Arena.
Despite having limited time to devote to P4A in the lab over the last couple of weeks, Justin has certainly seen his share of tournament combat in Atlus’ brand new franchise fighter. After finishing in third place at last weekend’s A.R.K. V tournament in Arkansas using the character of Yu Narukami, Justin made a few interesting observations concerning the state of P4A’s early high-level game. He then shared those observations with us.
Early ImpressionsWhen asked about the current state of the game in terms of both competitive high-level play as well as its place in the libraries of casual fighting fans, Justin had a lot to say. Justin finds the game “awesome to watch” when played at a high level while still remaining a lot of fun to play for casual fans. He also noted that P4A’s gameplay resembles classic Arc System Works fighter Guilty Gear XX Accent Core far more than any title in Arc’s more recent BlazBlue series.
Justin claims that the game’s longevity will definitely be tied to how well ATLUS approaches the fighting game community. He noted that they did an amazing job supporting the release of KoF XIII and expects the publisher to do the same with P4A.
The game was recently called the company’s “most important title of the year” by ATLUS USA, which also means that it’s probably a good bet that they’ll be doing everything they can in order to keep the game’s hype factor high over the next few months. Justin was extremely excited about ATLUS and Cross Counter teaming up to produce P4A tutorials for beginners, and said that he “wouldn’t be surprised” to see ATLUS at future tournaments handing out prizes or contributing to tournament winnings.
New Game, New RulesWhen asked about his character selection in the game, Justin said that he enjoys playing as Yu Narukami the most, although he is also taking an interest in trying out Chie Satonaka due to her similarities between Jam from GGXXAC and Iron Fist from Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
Game balance, however, is another matter entirely. Persona 3′s Imperious Queen of Executions Mitsuru Kirijo is also the current Queen of the tier list, and rightfully so. She does a lot of damage and has several outstanding normals, most notably her 2B with its 3 frames of full invincibility. Justin is currently on the hunt for anti-Mitsuru technology, but finds some of her offense difficult to cope with as Yu.
Justin feels that Mitsuru will certainly hang onto her spot on the top of the tier list as the game matures, but also expects to see Chie slowly make her way up the charts as more people become familiar with the game. He also says that he hopes Yu will place higher as well, though notes that this probably won’t happen.
Though not #1 in the current tier list, he believes that Yu will “remain a solid character” as the tournament scene continues to become familiar with the game. While the P4A’s fate in the competitive circuit is far from decided, at this stage it certainly looks promising.
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By Michael “angstygaijin” Migliacio
@angstygaijin