3.5/5 ★ – bokonon764's review of Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight.

First things first: the music in this game fucking RULES. It was one of my favorite things playing through Persona 5, glad I finally got around to playing this one. Never played the other two Persona dancing games, I’ve never played the games they’re based on either, but I may try and play them now. I don’t have a ton of experience with rhythm games, but I guess this game is kinda like DDR without a dance pad controller thing. It’s entertaining enough. The button prompts are all over the four corners of the screen, and felt taxing trying to keep track of all of it. The game deals with this by mostly having the waves of notes move in a circular motion, or up and down, so getting into a groove was easy, for the most part. The highest unlockable difficulty on this game is very, very hard. Could barely get through most songs. The game gives you modifiers to make it more challenging or easier, and only rewards/punishes you when it comes to score. So with modifiers, anyone can play through the game, just for the grooves. Most tracks feature visuals of the characters from P5 dancing, and it’s pretty cool. Seems like they put a lot of work into making their dance styles match up with their personalities. My only complaint is I would’ve liked to see more of the side characters represented, it’s my same problem with the P5 spin-offs. Mishima, Takemi, Sae, Sojiro…would’ve been cool to see them included. If you’ve played Persona 5, you know there’s a lot of talking. There’s some of that here, but it’s only to unlock cosmetics, track, other odds and ends. I really didn’t need anymore anime exposition, or conversations between the characters. Just mashed x through all of it. So there is some kind of story, but I ignored it completely. As I said, stellar music. ATLUS Sound Team and Lyn are all over this game, and they’re so rad. A great mix of funk, pop, rock, dance, and electronic, the recordings hold weight on their own. I had no problem replaying tracks over and over, it’s just that good. If you’re not into rhythm games, do yourself a favor, skip this game, and just listen to Persona 5 OST, it’s worth it. The DLC is a fuckin racket. Not that it isn’t good, it’s just that about two thirds of the DLC should be unlockable in game. I still bought a good chunk of it, tracks, cosmetics, alternate characters. I got it cus I’m a chump. There’s really no need to get any of the DLC, other than the the free tracks they offer, one of which is “Dance!”, the opening track from Persona 4: Dancing All Night, and it is one of my favorites. So yeah, fun game, good for fans of the series, music lovers. Nothing too noteworthy, but I enjoyed it.