Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight is an emphatic return to beloved characters and themes from Persona 5. While its energy is relentless and its rhythm mechanics are capable, it's hard to deny Dancing in Starlight is a product picked, borrowed, and assembled from existing Persona games. It's a performance that moves but a show that doesn't go anywhere.
Persona’s characters and themes have proven effective outside of their native territory. After labyrinthine adventures in Etrian Odyssey’s style of dungeon crawling and brawls with Arc System Works brand of 2D fighting, 2015’s Vita exclusive Persona 4: Dancing All Night poured Persona in the mold of a rhythm game. A dancing themed follow-up with the casts of Persona 3 and Persona 5 seemed inevitable.
Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight is that game. It creates a perfect facsimile of Dancing All Night’s rhythm game mechanics with support from Persona 5 songs and Persona 5 characters. It replaces Dancing All Night’s dedicated story mode with sixty-four brief vignettes loaded with fan service, reproducing Persona’s fondness for visual novel storytelling but withdrawing from any attempt to create forward progress with its characters. Dancing in Starlight is a vaguely familiar entity that really, aggressively wants to be friends with you, the Persona 5 fan. You’re suspicious, and yet you’re having a good time. What does this mean?
Dancing in Starlight’s stab at the rhythm genre cuts identically to Dancing All Night. Three points on each side of the screen accept a flow of notes pouring out of the middle of the screen. Three directional buttons and three faces buttons corresponds to each point, rendering Dancing in Starlight a six button rhythm game. Record scratches, prompted by bright blue bands, provide bonuses points with a flick of the analog stick. It’s a lot of information to keep track of.
Note timing is rated as a miss, good, great, or perfect. Complexity arrives with pink notes that need to be pressed simultaneously on parallel sides of the screen and green notes that need to be held down. Never missing and creating a massive combo is considered ideal play, and punctuated with fever sequences where other members of the crew jump in and dance. Easy, normal, hard, and all night (extra hard) difficulties are viewed as different interpretations of each of Dancing in Starlight’s twenty-five songs, and each have their own point ratings.
Dancing in Starlight carries an impressive number of accessibility options through its Support modifiers. Auto-scratching notes, allowing one button to work for any note, and other extra boosts soften Dancing in Starlight‘s frantic difficulty and, as a side effect, may open the game up to players with disabilities. There’s even a mode that disables a performance instantly ending if a fail state has been reached. All of these Support options, as one might expect, dock points from the end score. All Support options also need to be unlocked, but most open naturally by playing through (or failing at) early parts of Dancing in Starlight.
On the other side are Challenges that can make Dancing in Starlight more difficult. Making notes fade out, randomizing note paths, and fluctuating note speed can challenge personal performance alone and wreck even the most accomplished player when combined. As expected, they also add different percentages and tally bonus points to the final score. Like the Support options, Challenges need to be unlocked in order to be used.
Dancing in Starlight’s song selection either adapts or remixes twenty-four tracks from Persona 5. With less source material to draw from, some odd selections are in place. Wake Up Get Out There, Last Surprise, and Rivers In The Desert, between remixed and original versions, all make three appearances, or 25% of the soundtrack. The longest song in Dancing in Starlight is also a reprise of Persona 5’s literal credits, which is a visual sequence I can’t imagine anyone needing or wanting. Despite this (and seemingly in spite of Dancing in Starlight’s upcoming DLC selection), other tracks like the Shacho remix of Will Power and the Yukihiro Fukutomi remix of The Whims of Fate are excellent. Shoji Meguro, Toshiki Konishi, Kenichi Tsuchiya, and Atsushi Kitajoh’s work was left in capable hands.
Outrageous production and choreography compose the background of Dancing in Starlight’s tracks. Last Surprise decked Persona 5’s female cast in burlesque gear to a choreographed group routine. Life Will Change, assumed by Persona 5’s male cast, is a full blown music video, cutting between animation from Persona 5 and the guys, in their full Phantom Thief gear, playing a faux live performance. An interesting highlight was Rivers in the Desert, which was composed entirely of live concert footage from an event in 2017. It’s completely impossible to focus on any of this while playing, but Dancing in Starlight does include a nifty replay feature after you’ve finished a song.
Performing well and opening Dancing in Starlight’s social sequences unlocks a smattering of wardrobe and accessory options. Hats, contact lens colors, hair styles, complete outfits, and a bunch of gag pieces are available for all eight characters. Halloween and Christmas outfits for each character make for some goofy highlights, specifically getting to see Makoto as a colorful zombie cop. Most costume pieces are consistent with seasonal wardrobe items from Persona 5. Others, like maid costumes, cheerleader outfits, and sex gear of questionable taste, I couldn’t remember existing.
Whereas Dancing All Night featured a legitimate additional story—hackneyed as it was to assemble the gang for another weird one-off—Dancing in Starlight opts to stay inside an existing narrative and say nothing. Inside of shared dream, the whole cast is summoned to the Velvet Studio by the event’s “producers,” Caroline and Justine. The Phantom Thieves are told they’re going to put on a dance competition against an unnamed rival group in another place at another time (and while never outright stating who, there are plenty of hints and references as to whom that group may be). None of the crew will remember what happened when they wake up, providing a retcon-free out in the greater Persona narrative.
Meeting certain criteria unlocks Dancing in Starlight’s social sequences. Cumulative combo scores will unlock Ryuji’s path while cumulative perfect notes will open up Yusuke’s path. Haru’s, which requires the player receive the second-highest rating, “brilliant,” may be a roadblock for some players who can’t avoid missing notes in rhythm sequences. Dancing in Starlight doesn’t require every social sequence to be unlocked in order to receive the “main” ending through Caroline and Justine’s social line, but it will prod the player through completing the same songs on different levels of difficulty. Social unlock requirements are intended to drive engagement through Dancing in Starlight.
Each character has eight social sequences. Almost everyone is constructed to reinforce the traits and quirks we learned in Persona 5. Makoto hopes her practice of aikido will guide her through the competition. Futaba compares practically every situation to anime or role-playing games and Ryuji remains a knucklehead with porn under his bed. It felt great to see my friends from Persona 5 again, even though it’s only been a year, but everyone and everything in Dancing in Starlight is just spinning its wheels. Unlike the grand narrative work in Persona 4 Arena and its sequel Ultimax, Atlus seems either uninterested in or unwilling to create forward progress.
Localization remains a strong point. Quips delivered by the cast during dance sequences range from encouraging to outright razzing; Yusuke observing Ann’s dancing as “beautiful, just beautiful,” is met with Ryuji’s immediate response of, “You’re creeping me out, pervert.” The voice cast, as best as I could tell, is completely intact from Persona 5. The player character is often referred to in the generic term “leader” while being identified in Dancing in Starlight’s roster as the canonical Ren Amamiya. This is weird and the inconsistency is glaring.
It’s hard to take Dancing in Starlight seriously without questioning its place as a $60 product. The tangible game is lifted directly from a three-year-old Vita game. Social interactions, the beating heart of Persona, are whimsical but dispensable. VR mode—which is on the front of the retail package!—is limited to either watching character models dance or wandering around their static rooms. The Japanese release of Dancing in Starlight currently offers thirty (30) new songs as downloadable content, eclipsing the 24 in the box.
It hurts that Dancing in Starlight’s PlayStation 4 appearance is cross-save, but not cross-buy, with a $40 Vita edition of the exact same game. Most cynically, Dancing in Starlight’s unlock requirements, trophies, most accessories, and general structure are identical to Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight, an entirely different $60 product releasing on the same day. This isn’t a Pokémon dual-release situation and there is no interactivity between the two games. All of this comes off as uncomfortable at best and vaguely predatory at worst.
What is the price of fan service? Since its revival in 2007, Persona has earned goodwill through its novel unification of character development and dungeon crawling. It allowed a social simulation and a considerably hardcore turn-based role-playing game to reflect divergent strengths in a manner unlike anything out there, and Persona has successfully done it three times. Has Persona 5 earned and amassed this kind of indulgence?
It’s a question I’m still struggling with. I liked playing Dancing in Starlight. I unlocked everything in the game and earned a platinum trophy. I liked seeing these characters and hearing their voices again; it felt like hanging out with old friends. Like most human beings, I appreciate it when a low-key thing I enjoy specifically panders to me. It feels great to be seen. When I finished playing Dancing in Starlight, however, I suspect it only exists to take my money. Of course this is true of literally every product on the market, but Dancing in Starlight almost grins inside of its cynicism.
Dancing in Starlight is a heedless trip back to the Persona buffet for seconds thirds fourths. You wanted more Persona 5? You got it. Chew the fat. Pretend the calories aren’t empty. Pray you won’t get sick. Somehow, despite the intemperance, I still feel fine.
