Famed Megami Tensei and Catherine developer Atlus has a long history of games famous for releasing on Nintendo and Sony consoles. Despite years of fan requests, PC ports of its games are rarely ever made, with Catherine being the most notable recent release. That all changed when Persona 4 Golden, the updated PlayStation Vita re-release of Atlus' hit 2008 JRPG, was dropped onto PC digital game stores like Steam. Golden proved to be a massive sales success, and so Sega has announced plans to port more games to Microsoft Windows, with the Dynasty Warriors-style Persona 5 Strikers being the next Persona game to be on the platform.
Not only are more RPGs like Persona 4 or Disgaea coming to Steam, but Steam is a huge platform for fighting game franchises like Street Fighter and Tekken. With this in mind, Atlus should consider porting one of the most unique fighting games of the sixth generation: Persona 4 Arena and its update Ultimax, a fighting game sequel and spinoff developed by Dragon Ball FighterZ and Guilty Gear creators Arc System Works.
Persona 4 Arena follows the Investigation Team of Persona 4 in a new adventure one year after the bizarre murder case in Inaba, where the Midnight Channel airs once again on television screens and drags the heroes into its strange alternate dimension. A mysterious mastermind masquerading as Teddie is forcing the team to battle each other, and it's up to Yu Narukami and his friends to put a stop to this mindless fighting and uncover new mysteries, including the mysterious robotic "transfer student" known as Labrys.
Alongside featuring the main party of Persona 4 and original characters of its own, Arena also features characters from Persona 3, such as SEES leader Mitsuru, the boxer Akihiko, the Persona-using robot Aigis and Velvet Room attendant Elizabeth. With the updated expansion, Ultimax, more characters from Persona 3 became playable: Junpei Iori and Ken Amada (accompanied by the Persona-using dog, Koromaru). Ultimax even adds more characters from Persona 4, including former non-combatant Rise, Golden supporting character Marie, and the villainous Adachi.
Persona 4 Arena's gameplay is that of a traditional 2D fighter, with features carried over from other Arc System Works games such as combo breakers and dodge mechanics. Unique to Persona 4 Arena is the Persona puppet-fighter system, which works very similarly to Capcom's adaptation of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: players control both their character and their character's Persona in battle, but Personas have their own health units indicated by tarot cards. When depleted, characters are unable to use their Persona for a significant amount of time and are cut off from accessing certain special moves, including finishers.
Ultimax updates the original Arena with various gameplay tweaks, in some cases completely changing the way certain characters function for the sake of balancing and variety (physical characters like Kanji and Akihiko only have two Persona tarot card blips, while magic-heavy characters like Yukiko and Elizabeth have many blips). In addition, Ultimax features Shadow versions of the characters that differ in personality and more resemble their gameplay in Arena.
Faithful to Persona's complex storytelling, as well as a nod to other Arc System Works games, Arena and Ultimax feature a story mode in the vein of a visual novel. The story mode is very detailed, fully voiced, and told from every character's viewpoints as they go through the game's events. While storylines featuring the Persona 4 cast actually tend to be repetitive jokes of one another, story modes featuring the Persona 3 cast, as well as original characters Labrys and Sho Minazuki, add much to the series lore and events.
With Persona 4 Ultimax being a very deep and complex fighting game with its own unique cast of characters and gameplay features, this game is probably one of the most deserving Atlus titles to be brought to PC. The closest equivalent on Steam is BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, featuring Persona 4 Arena characters, but it's about time Arena and Ultimax get their due on modern digital stores--especially since the original console versions are becoming more rare.