As a fan of the series Persona 4 in general is one of my all-time favourite games, the Shin Megami Tensei series got more and more popular after the release of both Persona 3 and 4 which would explain why there have been spin-off games for it including Persona 4 Arena and Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth. Persona 4 in general did also get an anime series in 2011 and a enhanced remake of the original game on the PS Vita called Persona 4 Golden which added a ton of new content.
Persona 4: Dancing All Night is another spin-off game in the series but its story takes place roughly a month after the epilogue of Persona 4; Rise returns to the entertainment world and teaches her friends from Inaba on how to dance so they can act as her backup dancers in a live performance at the Love Meets Bonds Festival. Seems like something out of Love Live but it's not turns out that a rumored website called Midnight Stage only appears at midnight seeing a strange figure on the screen and you end up disappearing soon after. So it’s up to Yu and his friends to step into the Midnight Stage World and solve the case.
Seems like a basic dancing game when you first start playing only using the directional buttons Up, Left and Down on the left side and also using Triangle, Circle and X buttons on the right side of the screen. When you see stars coming towards any of the buttons be sure to tap them to break the notes in time when they come close, seeing green star lines you'll need to hold down them and release them before their line ends and of course the purple star lines where you'll need to press two buttons together. If you see Fever circle coming towards them use either tilt the left or right analog sticks to scratch in order to get a Fever circle mange to collect three stars on the top screen one of your partners will come in and help you out. But the aim of completing each song you'll need to have to keep the audience excitement up, the color and expression will change depending on your performance and could affect your result at the end of the song.
Completing the main story in one sitting if you tried depending on what difficulty you play it on either Easy or Normal, playing any of the songs on either of those settings seems like a straight forward dancing similar to the likes of the Hatsune Miku: Project Diva series more you play you'll unlock more songs if you play through Free Dance. It may feel like a short game at first but when it comes to playing most of the songs on a harder difficulty setting this is where Dancing All Night can really be addicting for a handheld game. I actually found it really hard to put this game down at certain times when it came to playing Dancing All Night making me forget to charge my PS Vita as well.
What really does make the game also stand out especially on the PS Vita is that the graphics and visuals really look impressive to look and of course seeing our favourite Persona 4 characters showing of their dance moves. Going back to the main story you'll get a lot of text-dialog making it feel more like a visual novel but is easily ignored once you start playing the songs and start dancing. Another thing that stands out is the soundtrack it may only have 27 songs total might not be that much in a dancing game, but this is still a real big treat its Persona fans both Shoji Meguro and Ryota Koduka composing the soundtrack with classic music that used in the original game and in Golden have a few remixes and some tracks have been used in the Persona Live Concerts which happen almost every year in Japan. More songs and music can be added if you have a PSN account you can download more music to play on Persona 4: Dancing All Night.
If you don't have a PS Vita this game is compatible on PS TV meaning that you could play this on a bigger screen and using either a PS3 or PS4 controller instead. If you've not a huge Persona fan the game can still be fun especially with a good music soundtrack kind of makes you want to check out the Persona franchise when you think about it. But yet Persona 4: Dancing All Night is also another good example that the PS Vita itself still has a good line up of games for its system and library.