This Week in Ultimax: Wow. I Am So Shocked.

20140809-010447_45dee7eaf4beb80f687c56651edd586c1407341969_fullIt’s been a busy week for your pals at Sega Addicts, between chatting with the Elysian Shadows team, doing awesome music things, and hanging out at one of the east coast’s biggest conventions. So busy that we’ve missed out on a ton of news regarding Persona 4 Arena Ultimax. So let’s get caught up in what might become a new feature up until the game’s release.

Which, speaking of, we finally have a North American release date! The wait for P4AU ends on September 30th, which is honestly a lot sooner than I expected. As mentioned before, Marie will be free for one week after the game launches, and preorderers will have access to Tohru Adachi as well. You have a little over a month now to say goodbye to the original game, and prep your lungs for blowing up the Teddie bop bag you also get if you preordered. If he’s as high tier as he was in P4A, that thing will come in handy as a nice stress reliever.

And if you need more reasons to get excited for the game, Atlus has also released more character trailers, this time focusing on the Shadow Operatives Aigis, Akihiko Sanada, and Mitsuru “More Money Than God” Kirijo. I can’t speak for how the other characters look as I don’t use them often, but as someone who mains Aigis, I’m really happy with how much more dynamic she seems in this game compared to the first one. Depending on how Naoto’s changes feel, I might just be switching to her full time, so this is a very good thing.

We’ve also gotten a good look at the profile customization system for network play, and it’s basically a porting of BlazBlue ChronoPhantasma‘s profiles. For those unfamiliar with BBCP‘s system, it allows you to make an ID card of sorts, with a title, custom sprite (for use in the game’s interactive lobbies), icon, and what times you’re available to play. It’s one of the nicer systems as far as expression goes, so I’m glad to see Persona embracing it as well.

Finally, in a move pretty much everyone saw coming, Margaret has officially been confirmed as the next DLC after Marie, and what we’ve seen so far has convinced me that she actually might be cooler than her Velvet Room sisters. Margaret uses at least four Personas in battle, with Yoshitsune, Cu Chulainn, and Ardha shown off so far, and her Astral Finish summons Lucifer, of all things. Suddenly, Elizabeth seems as low tier in story power level as she was in gameplay last time. So far, though, we still have no info on her price point or release date, but we’ll post it as soon as we hear anything.

Regardless, it’s very interesting how the Velvet Room, minus Igor and Theodore, are as hands-on as they are in this story, so this could end up being very very cool.

And that’s all we have for this week so far. We’ll keep you posted on anything else that gets released.

Sources: Gematsu; Shoryuken

About the author

Brett Hatfield

♂/34 ✭ former sega addicts head and megavisions writer ✭ too many mixed up interests ✭ asuka kazama saved my life ✭ final fantasy type-0 shill ✭ asuka ayatsugi in xiv ✭ go preds