Hey, hum, Green Mamba, what's your opinion about Rise getting her Persona to change form to battle, using a mic as her weapon and Marie getting a Persona just so she can be DLC playable? I know you don't like changes from the original game in spinoffs, and I enjoy reading what you have to say about it.
Sorry, was at work. Now I can answer.
I've long since made peace with Rise being playable, but I have a complicated relationship with it.
For instance, moveset liberties don't really bother me: Persona 4 isn't a fighting game, so transferring its gameplay style and turn based characters into a fighter is going to take liberties and I'm fine with that. Like Teddie's moveset, being completely made up? I'm fine with it (which is funny, because I know PK Gaming isn't, so that's some fun reversal!). As long as the moveset fits the character in some way, whatever. And Rise fighting with a mic is fine. Like, the only adapted character moveset I don't care for is Junpei's, only because it revolves around baseball gimmicks and themes when baseball was such a comparatively small part of his character.
The form change I'm less okay with, because of a couple reasons. One--I don't like that it's an explicit form change of
Himiko instead of her upgraded Personas. I feel it "validates" Arena's silly and contradictory usage of the base level Personas in a way that's harder to ignore story wise. By contradictory I mean their reason for using the base level Personas is that of a silly crossover fighter (they're more iconic), which flies in the face of the game's other attempts to be a serious continuation of Persona 4's story. This is kind of a recurring problem I have with Persona 4 Arena--it's of two minds, trying to have its cake and eat it too. But getting back to the earlier point, the usage of the initial Personas was hardly called attention to in the first Arena--they're there, but they're just there being Personas. Himiko's form changing calls explicit attention to this inconsistency.
Kind of waiting on the storyline reason for the change to jump the gun further though. If it ends up being a self-contained change brought about by something specific to Ultimax then whatever. I'm less cool with the change being brought about by something that
could have happened in Persona 4 but just didn't. Like, Rise just getting super angry at not being able to fight, or her being pushed to the brink, or something. Anything that weighs the story of Arena more heavily than Persona 4's is something I'm not overtly okay with.
To connect back to the moveset liberties angle, I feel that the form change misses the point of having a playable Rise. Like, if you're going to make up a Persona, then why not invent a new character while you're at it? This is one liberty I'm less okay with.
Also, small niggling issue--Himiko's form change breaks a cardinal rule of Persona 4's Persona designs: no faces. That's more of a personal OCD thing.
But by and large, I have pretty much made peace with it (and have even argued at length for Fuuka to be playable!) and it's not a subject I really want to debate much about anymore, but there are my feelings on it.
Concerning Marie, fuck her. She can do whatever she wants, I don't care for her at all.
But seriously, Marie using a Persona seems completely within the realm of "sure, what the hell, why not" considering her Velvet Room presence and that... other spoilery stuff.
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Other stuff that came up since I left and want to comment on...
Really appreciate your post on the matter, NichM. We do tend to get too wrapped up in canon around here, especially for a series that is defined by player choices.
Regarding shipping Mitsuru and Akihiko--I'm not really a shipper, but I did kind of feel that Akihiko may have, at some point in the past, had feelings for Mitsuru, but has since gotten over them after realizing it probably wouldn't work. And then Arena revealed him to be a complete goober more interested in fighting bears than being an actual human being, so what do I know.
Beetle's vomiting up paint?
EDIT: That was way bigger than I think I intended it to be.
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