Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight review for PS Vita, PS4

I purposely gave myself a couple of months between playing Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight and Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight because I didn?t want the two games to run together in my mind, or to judge the latter based on my opinion of the former.

Turns out, that didn?t matter much, since even with those months separating the two games, they still seem almost indistinguishable to me,

I mean, yes, there are some minor differences. Whereas P3D featured the SEES being taken to the mysterious Velvet Room, in P5D it?s Joker and the Phantom Thieves. Likewise, the music differs, with the soundtracks for each song being taken from their respective games. And, uh?

Honestly, that?s about it. There are storylines of sorts in both, but they?re essentially identical, with the cast of characters from each game simply being swapped out for each other. The games look the same, too, so unless you?re already familiar with the characters, they?ll all seem kind of interchangeable to you. The gameplay is exactly the same, as you?d expect, with all the same controls, and visuals, and cues, and, well, everything.

This isn?t terrible, to be sure. Just like P3D was fun even for people like me who aren?t intimately familiar with the series, Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight offers a pretty solid rhythm game experience, with a good mixture of funky beats and engaging character interactions.

But as far as standing on its own two feet…it doesn?t. Or, I guess, it does if you?ve never played P3D, in which case Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight will seem relatively fresh and original. But unless you?re a diehard Persona completist, I just can?t see why anyone would need to play both. They?re more or less the same game, and even if that game is fine for what it is, you really only need to play one or the other.

Atlus provided us with a Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight Vita code for review purposes.