3 cast inclusions, the new Persona 3 characters were given redesigns reflecting their personal evolution leading up to the events of Arena Ultimax. For Yukari's outfit, Soejima drew from the costume designs of Phoenix Sentai Featherman, a fictional tokusatsu show that had a long history within the series. Junpei's baseball attire was one of many suggested concepts for his character, ranging from a guitarist to a formal suit related to his Shadow Operatives work. Ken's appearance as a high schooler was simple design, while his fighting style balanced with Koromaru was hard to finalize. The online lobby avatars used the chibi-style character models from Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, which was then in production at Atlus. Discussing the gameplay, Fukumoto noted that much of their work went into rebalancing existing fighters based on feedback from Arena, flattening power levels to be fair rather than doing simple strength reductions. They also sought to properly balance new characters and make them engaging to play, which was particularly important with the range-based Yukari. Rise's inclusion was pleasing for Iguchiya, as he had wanted her as a playable character in the original Arena. Due to her support role and idol status in the series canon, her moveset was based around range and song-based magic. Atlus created the "battle design" for her Persona with these elements in mind. Minazuki was a notable character due to his lack of a Persona, with the team building his fighting style around his two personalities similar to the twin incarnations of Labrys in the original. Adachi had been a highly requested character for Arena, but for story reasons was unable to appear, so the development team had to put some thought into explaining his appearance in Arena Ultimax. Each character's Persona abilities were tailored to them based on fighting style and balance. Shadow characters built upon the twin Labrys characters from the original, while also being designed as similar to traditional fighting games. The fighting styles of Marie and Margaret were directly based on their storyline abilities, such as Margaret having access to multiple Persona types. The music was composed by Atlus Sound Team member Atsushi Kitajoh, with oversight by series composer Shoji Meguro. The soundtrack used both original tracks and recycled tracks by Meguro from Persona 3 and Persona 4. The opening theme "Break out of..." was performed by singer Shihoko Hirata and rapper Lotus Juice, both