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Does the Persona Series Benefit From all the Spin-offs?

The Persona community talks Persona Dancing games.

This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team.

The inevitable Persona development cycle continues as Atlus announced several new spinoff games for Persona 3 and 5. Of course, this means that the different types of Persona fans have come out of the woodworks to offer their opinions about the news, ranging from: "Why is this a thing?" to "About damn time".

The three new Persona spinoffs announced today include: Persona Q2, a sequel to Atlus' Persona dungeon-crawlers, and two new rhythm games, Persona 5: Dancing Star Night and Persona 3: Dancing Star Moon which spurred the best reactions. Partly because they're both sequels to Persona 4: Dancing All Night, one of the silliest, and best spin-offs in the Persona series and the one that first had people tilt their heads in a mild confusion.

Persona 4 Dancing All Night introduced players to a Persona game where not only can you dress up your favorite characters and have them dance to your favorite Persona songs, but also told a weirdly deep story that was also completely canon. At this point, it should be expected that any Persona game, whether it's a fighting game or dungeon-crawler, should be considered canon unless told otherwise.

While there are plenty people are excited for more Persona games in general, there are some who will take this chance to vent about the now numerous Persona spinoff games.

The idea that Atlus is milking its most popular franchise is typically the core of a lot of grievences. Though considering Atlus also puts in the effort to make sure each spinoff weaves into a larger, ever convoluted canon, I don't necessarily see the harm. Especially if Atlus puts in the effort to bend over backwards to write a canon tale.

Others argue that the spinoffs take away from the original games by introducing old favorite characters in ridiculous situations, though I find this argument harder to buy considering I just want my anime children to live fun, stress-free lives.

To be fair, people have been complaining about Persona spinoffs for a while (as seen in this NeoGAF thread). I did enjoy how there are commenter who seemed resigned to playing games like Persona 5: Dancing Star Night just for the story however.

In the meantime, there are fans who are just plain excited for more Persona games, especially announced months after Persona 5 released outside of Japan.

Also, since these games are presumably canon, people are asking how the Persona 5 protagonist managed to dance all night while Morgana's around.

At the end of the day, these games really do serve mostly as fluffy bits of fanservce. For some players they highlight how sharply focused the marketing arm for the Persona series has been since achieving mainstream popularity (and mainstream sales). And while that doesn't necessarily take away from the quality of the spinoff games, I think it's important to recognize them as part of a larger marketing cycle of a game like Persona that's become more and more anime-y since achieving widespread popularity.

Still, the music is so good, and I'd take any chance to play through remixes of soundtracks from both Persona 3 and 5 which means I'm part of the problem. How do you all feel about the many Persona spinoffs that will inevitably follow each new Persona game?

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