What’s up everyone?
Alex here!
Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth was a great
game with its own unique set of quirks.
For many, it was a great excuse to hang out
with some of the most beloved characters in
the series’ current renaissance.
For some, it was a grueling experience that
betrayed both the approachability of its source
material and its seemingly innocent art style.
Regardless of where you may find yourself
between these points - or even if you’ve
never played Persona Q - I’m happy to say
that Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth is the
series’ best foot forward, with the series’
developers addressing many of the previous
games’ quirks.
But is it worth playing even if you’ve never
played - or maybe even finished - the first
game?
Join me, as we descend into a new cinema labyrinth
in Persona Q2 and answer these questions and
more with the Persona gang, in my review,
Hours Later!
Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth tells the
story of the Phantom Thieves from Persona
5 as they take their usual trip down Mementos
but wind up elsewhere, finding themselves
in a city where a villain they’ve faced
before is being praised as a superhero.
As the city’s authorities learn of their
presence, the Phantom Thieves manage to escape
their grasp and stumble upon a portal that
takes them to an old cinema that appears to
be showing their experiences to an unsuspecting
audience of two.
The mystery only deepers however, as the team,
now joined by audience members Hikari and
Nagi, begin to encounter other Persona users
from eras unknown to them, as they learn that
they are held captive by an unknown entity,
forcing them to finish each movie to reveal
the identity of their latest foe.
Co-developed by Lancarse, the team that brought
you the Etrian Odyssey series and this year’s
Zanki Zero, Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth
is a first person dungeon crawler RPG with
turn-based battles activated via random encounters.
During these battles, you command a party
of five characters, distributed across a front
and back row, allowing for a maximum of three
party members in each row.
This distinction from mainline Persona party
configurations is important, as certain party
members, depending on their positioning, might
not be able to hit certain enemies who also
adhere to a similar row system and vice-versa.
Knowing this, the game has been designed around
the strategic movement of party members between
the front and back row, asking players to
move weakened characters to the back for some
much needed heals, and replenishing them with
HP-filled party members up front.
This movement occurs at the beginning of each
turn and can be done an infinite amount of
times, and while the game glosses over this
feature, I personally think that this is one
of the most important aspects of this game.
Building on that point, newcomers will notice
that each character won’t be able to take
the entire brunt of attacks monsters lob at
them, making them think that maybe they’re
underleveled or that they need better equipment.
And while the latter certainly is helpful
in many situations, the game’s first boss
battle makes it readily apparent that Persona
Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth wants you to be proficient
at its systems quickly so they can throw more
challenges at you later on.
This first boss battle features an endurance
fight that lasts for at least 20 minutes.
I probably spent a good chunk of time trying
to understand what to do in this fight, only
to be frustrated at the sudden difficulty
spike.
In most other RPGs, endurance fights are typically
used mid-way through a game as a way to gauge
whether or not players have mastered the game’s
many systems, and this kind of fight just
seems to be introduced too early in the game.
But I digress: I’ve enjoyed the differences
in Persona Q2’s battle system compared to
the mainline games, regardless of the oft-putting
battle design of the game’s first boss.
Any way you slice it, and despite the developers’
best intentions to improve the difficulty
balance of the game, Persona Q2: New Cinema
Labyrinth will be a challenging game for newcomers
to this series.
That said, while I have played Persona Q:
Shadow of the Labyrinth, I can tell you that
you don’t need to play the former game to
enjoy the story of Persona Q2 and frankly,
it’s preferable.
Tonally, while Persona Q’s story sometimes
reflected the harsher, more horror-centric
stories of the mainline games, this clashed
with the game’s character art direction.
This isn’t to say that there’s no place
for cute characters to have serious - and
even dark - storylines, but parts of Persona
Q felt to me as though the development team
didn’t have a lot of details nailed down
during its development.
Persona Q2 benefits heavily from these details
being sorted out, such as whether the game
is canon or not (answer: it is, but it might
as well not have been), or whether the developers
should care that this series affects the mainline
games heavily (answer: they shouldn’t).
This allows the story to be free of the shackles
of the mainline Persona games, giving the
Q series its own identity, while allowing
us to enjoy spending time with characters
that we’ve come to know and love.
And what a story Persona Q2 tells!
Not only is there only one storyline to follow
this time around (compared to two in the original),
the developers managed to incorporate every
single Persona character naturally into each
story event while appropriately handling their
introductions and interactions in a manner
fitting of their personality.
I can’t stress how difficult it must’ve
been to try and give meaningful moments to
a cast of 27 (!) playable Persona characters,
but they masterfully did it!
That said, even if you’re unfamiliar with
any or some of these characters, you’ll
quickly learn why many long time fans love
them!
And while Persona Q2’s story isn’t as
dark as the former game or even its mainline
brethren, it still has the slight flavor of
horror that you’ve come to expect from a
Persona game, though peppered with much more
hijinks and bits that give the Q series its
own identity.
The game’s story also delivers constant
twists and turns while exploring each dungeon
that helps ease the experience of playing
a dungeon crawler RPG, and since I eat up
this kind of stuff, the story kept me playing
for a very long time.
Bringing everything together is the kind of
presentation that long time fans have come
to expect from the Persona games, blending
slick and colorful transitions with artwork
that makes the characters pop.
That said, I wish the developers spent some
time designing its user interface with quality
of life enhancements in mind, as I found myself
toggling between a couple of different menus
just to see every characters’ levels.
Due to the enormous size of the cast, Persona
Q2 only features Japanese voiceovers, making
it a little jarring for players like myself
who have only heard the English voice actors
of the featured games.
Thankfully, the localized dialogue matches
the intensity and energy of the Japanese voice
actors’ delivery, and soon enough, I stopped
caring about not having another voice track.
Accompanying the familiar sights and sounds
from the Persona mainline games is yet another
fantastic soundtrack by Atsushi Kitajoh, and
thanks to the creativity of the game’s settings
and locales, he’s able to flex his musical
talents in a variety of interesting ways.
Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth feels like
it’s the ultimate fulfillment of the team’s
wishes of what the Q series was supposed to
be: a “who-cares-if-its-canonical” kind
of attitude that wants to revel in the celebration
of the Persona series by utilizing its vast
array of memorable characters, mixed in with
some supernatural hijinks - and jokes - that
the Q series will be known for in the years
to come.
And while Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth
was a good game, Persona Q2 will make it really
hard for any player to go back, and anyone
willing to take this detour before Persona
5 Royal comes out next year will be in for
a challenging and memorable experience with
friends old and new.
