Persona 4 Arena (Ultimax)

Persona 4 Arena and its sequel Persona 4 Arena Ultimax(P4AU) are two Arc System fighting games set in the Persona universe. The game is set two years after the events in Persona 3. This page contains details about the mechanics of the game itself if you want to know more about Akihiko's character arc in this game check out the Character Info pages instead!

P4A was originally a Japan-only arcade game released in January 2015. A rebalanced and remastered port was released for Switch, Playstation 4, and PC in 2022. Information on this page is based on the most recent P4AU patch used in the home console released port!

Fighting games are their own complex monster (I've learned so much since starting to write this page) and while I'm trying to keep this guide beginner friendly I'd have to write a novel to cover all the nuances. The first section is devoted to playing Akihiko in single player mode but I'll touch on online play a bit at the end.

The Basics

In P4AU, Akihiko is a fast character with high burst damage potential balanced by having a very short reach.

His core mechanic is his Cyclone Meter which rewards chaining combos into higher and higher damage. This makes him a great rushdown character who can apply a lot of pressure especially to opponents who make mistakes. He doesn't rely on his Persona as much as the rest of the cast and can survive being Persona Broken better than most.

That said, getting to a point where you can apply all those big punches is difficult because Akihiko has approximately negative reach. He's generally thought of as ahigh risk, high reward character. Despite a fairly large health pool, you may need to spend some of it just to close gaps and try to make opportunities to pick up a kill.

Akihiko's Instant Kill move is called Earth Breaker. It is one of only two moves in the game where he uses his Evoker (the other being Maziodyne) though realistically you'll basically never see this in action. To compensate, I've screen recorded myself fumbling though performing it in the training area on Yosuke -- once I've figured out how I want to handle video on this site I'll post it here.

As a Navigator

Misplaced these notes... BRB...

Stats

Still collecting this data!

Online Play

I've never been very good at fighting games so if you want a real deep dive on the mechanics of P4AU in general, and Akihiko's gameplay within that I really cannot recommend DustLoop enough. The wiki contains extremely detailed information about anything you need to know to play the game online. That said, while writing this guide I got weirdly hooked watching tournaments on the Persona Fight Club YouTube channel and picked up some Akihiko commentary.

Akihiko is fairly rarely seen in the tournaments I've watched (though when he does show up commentators regularly go wild). While his damage potential is quite high his extremely short reach makes it challenging to set up win conditions especially when the meta is full of characters with long reach like Ken and Yukari.

More often than not Akihiko players will run as normal Akihiko. His damage potential is high, but the short reach will get him into situations where a defensive Burst is the only thing keeping him afloat.