Parents' Guide to Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight

Though designed to be played on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation VR, this music rhythm game is probably best experienced on PlayStation Vita. That's because Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight's beat-timed button cues flow toward the outer edges of the screen, and are only a few inches apart from each other on the smaller handheld Vita screen. Played on a large living room display, this distance can expand to several feet, forcing players -- especially those who like to sit close to the TV -- to repeatedly dart their eyes from left to right to keep track of all the notes. This one quirk aside, Dancing in Starlight offers a sturdy rhythm game foundation, providing a nice range of note types that range from simultaneous button presses held for specific lengths of time to optional joystick "scratches" to add a bit of custom flavor to each song. And giving players the option to tune the difficulty to their abilities means few are likely to get frustratingly stuck on a specific track. That these songs are largely beloved by those who played the original Persona 5 is just the sugar on top.

Where the experience falters a bit is in its story -- or at least what exists of it. The Persona games are renowned for their dynamic characters and epic narratives, but the brief story sequences provided here, which need to be unlocked by meeting certain conditions while dancing, are a bit shallow, straightforward, and predictable. You get to see a little more of the strange magic that made the original game stand out -- like Mona the cat's romantic obsession with Ann -- but these moments are better categorized as either teases or fan service, and don't really go anywhere. To get the most out of Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight, it's best to set your expectations: It's neither a sequel nor an expansion, but more a lengthy and enjoyable music-based mini-game that gifts us a little more time with some of the most memorable game characters of 2017.