Persona Q2 New Cinema Labyrinth review: The JRPG crossover you need to play

If Avengers: Infinity War was the most ambitious crossover event in film history, then Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth is the gaming equivalent for Persona fans

Picture: (Atlus)

Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth is the second Persona game to be released on the Nintendo 3DS. The first, Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, featured the main cast from Persona 3 and 4.

New Cinema Labyrinth instead throws you into the world of Persona 5, roughly around the half-way point during the story of that game. But this is not a normal Persona game.

The Persona series are Japanese role-playing games which involve systems of a time management and social simulation game, while also having turn-based combat.

The Persona Q games are non-canonical spin-offs. They differ greatly from the main Persona series in terms of gameplay; ditching the social simulation and time restrictions and instead borrowing heavily from Etrian Odyssey.

Etrian Odyssey, a first-person exploration game, involves navigating multi-floored labyrinths set out in a simple grid format.

You must physically use the Nintendo 3DS stylus to draw in the walls and floor panels using the console's bottom screen as you explore from tile-to-tile, filling out the map on each floor.

The protagonists from Persona 5, a group called the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, take centre stage, but they're not alone.

The pull of the game is that it's a huge crossover which brings together the full cast of characters from the past three main Persona games.

With all your favourite characters from Persona 3, 4 and 5, you'll party up to explore four film-themed labyrinths and fight challenging turn-based battles. All of which are beautifully created and designed around the charming Persona series.

The Phantom Thieves in the cinema (Atlus)

The combat, while initially daunting, is sublime. It continues the very basic RPG attack, magic and guard options present in mainline games, and your characters all have access to magical summons called Personas.

These summons, depicted as mythical beasts and deific beings, allow you to use awesome magical healing spells and elemental attacks.

Combat is immeasurably in-depth and tactical, with each player and enemy have a fixed set of elemental weaknesses and resistances.

By exploiting these weaknesses with the right spell your foe will be knocked down. You’ll then be able to take your next turn without expending any of your preciously scarce pool of SP. For anyone who’s played a Persona game before, this will be par for the course.

What makes the battles challenging is that the enemies can also hit your weakness, dealing extra damage and knocking you down. Simply, it means weighing your options between defence and offence is more pertinent.

Persona 3 Portable's protagonist summing a Persona with her Evoker. (Atlus)

The Persona system in Q2 is exhaustively detailed. You have one main Persona which is unchangeable and another optional one called a sub Persona. Equipping one allows it to level up and add their abilities to your arsenal, while also giving you boosts to you HP and SP pools.

Choosing your sub Persona to complement your main one, by offsetting weaknesses with one of their abilities for example, is just scratching the surface of how exciting it is to play around with the customisations and party makeup available to you.

Q2 does a wonderful job of bringing all these characters together. The interactions are superb and not once does it feel like bad fan-fiction. With Persona Q2, Atlus ultimately brings the term ‘fan service’ to new, enviable heights.

Persona 5's protagonist Joker (Atlus)

As you might suspect, the music and presentation is flawless. You’ll find yourself taking time to sit back and relax in the cinema hub, listening to the beautiful theme song Cinematic Tales as you change your party, buy gear and fuse new Personas in the Velvet Room.

Filling out the map can be confusing at first. This, coupled with challenging turn-based battles, does make progressing a bit of a slog. However, there is a ‘safety mode’ as well as an option to auto fill in walls and floors on your map, trivialising any woes for new players and letting you purely enjoy the story.

As for the lack of an English language dub? Well, it does mean you need to read a bit more, but the original Japanese voices are wondrously performed and translated near perfectly.

Persona Q2 is one of the most stylish games on the 3DS. It's so much more than just a chance to see characters you’ve invested hours and days of your time in, in entirely different scenarios and surroundings. It stands proudly as an extremely rewarding extension from the main Persona series you won't want to miss out on.