Persona 4 Arena Ultimax Review - Not Quite Golden

thegamer.com:

There is no single place to start if you want to get into Persona , but it's safe to say Persona 4 Arena Ultimax is almost certainly not it. After Persona 5 took the series to a new stratosphere of popularity, it seems like a strange call to head back to Persona 4 once more. Yes, P4Golden has been re-released on PC since then, and it’s not like P5 has been neglected with the arrival of Royal and Strikers, but it’s difficult to know who exactly P4AU is for, other than people who liked it the first time.

I’m no fighting game expert. Footsie is something you play under the table with your 1950s sweetheart at a box social, and if you play your cards right you might wake up in a BnB afterwards. I can’t speak to whether P4AU will become a big hit in the esports scene, but as far as fighting games go, it feels as if it has too steep a curve. While I don’t play competitively, I have played through most major modern fighters and can beat the game comfortably while holding my own online. I’m not completely useless, but I don’t think P4AU is suited to my skill set.

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If you’re expecting a button for kick, a button for punch, et cetera, you’ll need to shake those preconceptions quickly. Being able to implement the Personas is obviously a necessity in a Persona fighting game, but it takes a while to figure out which button does what. It’s not just complex button combos, but even something as simple as the Triangle button seems to act in different ways for different fighters. There is a tutorial, but it’s typical of a mid-tier 2D fighting game - there are 70 different stages and they begin with ‘do this to walk’ then quickly evolve into ‘dislocate