45| Persona 4: Golden

Released: December 9th, 2008

Definitive Version: Playstation Vita; Also on: PS2, PSN for PS3

In December of 2008 the then new current generation systems were red hot. Nintendo's Wii was selling extremely well to the annoyance of a lot of gamers who were displaying self-parody levels of hysteria, their DS system was selling even more, the Playstation Portable was at its high point, and the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 were in their stride. Persona 3 was released in the summer 2007, when all the new systems were out and gaining traction. Despite the media and the market being laser focused on the new generation consoles, Persona 3 gained a huge amount of buzz being released on the Playstation 2, the senior citizen of the console market. The game sold well and gained a big cult following. When Persona 4 was announced shortly after, fans were ecstatic. However, people were shocked to hear when the game was announced for the Playstation 2, when every other developer seemingly moved on to one of the major new consoles, or even handhelds, to develop games. Despite the initial bemoaning, in hindsight it was a great move as it gave so many more people the opportunity to play one of the greatest games in the genre.Persona 4 quickly became one of the best regarded JRPGs of all-time, and threw a wrench in the common notion that the subgenre has stagnated.

Persona 4 starts off as you play a teenage boy who is going to live with his father and his cousin for a year. The transition is going to seemingly be rough as the main character, I'll call him "Senpai" as that is what most people call him (yes I know this is a formality in Japanese), is a city boy who is moving into a small town. The transition occurs smoother than expected as he picks up new friends fast. Before he knows it, he has his own little clique going on. Suddenly  a grisly murder occurred as a former TV announcer's deceased body is publicly displayed for all to see. Murders and disappearances start becoming a common occurrence. Senpai begins to notice that prior to a murder occurring, silhouettes of human figures begin to appear on TV at midnight when it is raining. What is strange is that this happens when the TV is turned off. As the days pass by, eventually the silhouette will turn into a visible person who rambles on and on about strange things. It turns out that these figures are of those who have disappeared. In sheer curiosity, one night Senpai touches the screen on his TV and discovers that his hand goes through it. He tells his friends, but they obviously don't believe him. When they go into a department store, he and one of his friends are in the TV section. They joke about Senpai putting his hand inside the TV. It's all fun and games...until he actually does. In a panic Senpai and his friend fall into the TV world. They are greeted by a stuffed bear who claims that strange occurrences have been happening lately. They form a pack with the the bear to solve the mystery for him. The rest of the game follows the Senpai as he makes new friends to save innocent people from being murdered as he tries to find who the real mastermind behind these murders are.

Gameplay wise Persona 4 is very unique. It's part dungeon crawler and part dating simulator. It seemed to hop on the date sim bandwagon well before the likes of (waifu) Fire Emblem and other titles. This really help set the series apart from other RPGs during its initial release. Basically during the day the player goes to school. Once school is finished, they have the option of either going to a school club, talking to their friends, or going inside the TV. The former two choices can result in building social links. Essentially, the stronger the link, the stronger the friendship. This results in specific perks, mostly that whenever the player fuses as persona of the same arcana, alliance type for the layman, as their friend, the persona gains experience points to level up depending on their strength of their friendship. If the player strengthens their friendship with one of their party members, then that party memebr gains special battle abilities. Some of these are useful such as characters learning new magic skills, but others are extremely important such as the ability to resurrect the player automatically from death. If one chooses to go through the dungeon instead, then the game plays just like any other dungeon crawler. The party walks around an, often randomly generated, dungeon trying to find the next stair case until they get to the dungeon's boss and save the kidnapped victim. As hinted at before, the party fights enemies with creatures called "persona", they are literally the demons from the Shin Megami Tensei games, as you can collect up to a certain amount at a time. Players can fuse demons into specific types as they can customize some of their moves to create the perfect persona for any given situation. Boss battles will often require the player to craft the right persona for the job. Some times bosses may change into different forms and what not, and lucky for that the player can switch persona at any given turn.

The battle system is press turn. Essentially this means that one can exploit an enemy's weakness as if they use an attack they are weak against, one can attack again. For example imagine fighting a fire monster and then proceed to use an ice attack. After the fire monster is hit, it collapses and gives way for another attack. If all enemies are collapsed it gives the option for a gang beat up as all party members rush across the screen to the enemy(ies) to give them an ass whooping.This results in the foe(s) taking significant amount of damage. The press turn system is powerful, but is also a double edged sword. The game's rules goes for the player's party as well, as if someone is hit with an attack they are weak against, they fall down and receive another attack from the enemy. Fortunately enemies don't have a rush down attack like the party does, but that only comforts one so much when an enemy gets three attacks in a row by exploiting your characters weaknesses.

While the game's general story is pretty good, Persona 4 truly shines in its individual vignettes. Building social links with friends and acquaintances has the player get to know them much more personally and even intimately. The player feels a connection to others, as their stories are often well written and very human. There is story that everyone can relate to, as the stories often touch upon families, dreams, and expectations. Building social links isn't best just to gain advantages in battle, but to also experience to core point of the modern Persona games. If one doesn't feel like doing social links for some reason, but still wants to fulfill more traditional, and boring, RPG duties, the game has many sidequests for the player to complete. Admittedly most of these are fetch quests or "find person X", but they can be a nice distraction at times.

As said before the game's main story is very good. What really makes it so good is the cast of characters. Even if one doesn't bother to build up their social links, they really stand out. They are actually arguably some of the best cast of characters in RPGs in general. Each of them has a very unique personality and back story.  In a way, it makes the game's ending very sad as one knows that they will end up wrapping up the story and no longer seeing the characters. It isn't surprising at all that Atlus managed to milk the cast for four completely unique games.

Presentation wise the game is probably has the most memorable style since Jet Set Radio. The entire game has a very "hip" feeling to it, thanks to its art style, fashion sense, and menus. But what really makes the game stand out is its incredible soundtrack. It's "groovy" and stylish soundtrack really give tons of character to the game. I say this with no hesitation that it is probably the best soundtrack in any video game ever. Eight years later I still find myself listening to the music on an almost regular basis. It is kind of ironic thinking of how trendy and "cool" the game is being that it doesn't take place in Shibuya or Akihabara, but a small town.

The game received an enhanced port on the Playstation Vita called Persona 4: Golden. It is the exact same game but with updated graphics, new music tracks, new social links, a new character and dungeon, and a much more fleshed out epilogue. It is comfortably the best version of the game. Being on the Playstation Vita also makes it a portable experience, which despite being developed with a console in mind, fits the game much better.

Persona 4 isn't perfect however. For starters the game is a bit too grindy and the bosses take far too long to beat. To be fair this may be because I suck, am too good, or both. This may sound weird, but when ever I made these complaints people always said grinding literally isn't an issue with the game if one hunts down the golden hands. This is something I often didn't do because I found the golden hands way too difficult to defeat, especially since they would often run away. People were also shocked when I told them what level I was at, and were amazed that I managed to beat the bosses at such a low level. So I'm not sure if grinding and repetitive fights became a problem with me because I was too bad at the game or too good at it.

However, one extremely obnoxious aspect of the game that is universal to all players is the difficulty to actually get a satisfying ending. First is that around two thrids through the game there are a series of actions one can choose, unless they choose the exact correct order, the player will immediately receive the bad ending. What's worse is that if somehow the player doesn't realize this, the game gives the option of saving over the previous file. This could result in hours of loss play time, or even having to replaying the game from scratch as the player goes through dozens of hours just to get back to that specific scene once they realized that they made a mistake. On top of that, the true ending of the game is very obtuse to get. The game tricks the player at literally the last minute thinking everything is finished and wrapped up. It turns out that if the player goes to the major department store at literally the last second before heading home, they will meet up with their friends and end up fighting the true final boss. This is something I would have never figured out by myself if it wasn't for someone telling me, especially since you can go to the department store beforehand and nothing happens. The plot, while interesting, is kind of ruined by how stupid the concept of the Midnight Channel is. How the fuck do such few people notice that their TV will turn on mysteriously at midnight showing crazy people on screen. Midnight isn't even that late! I refuse to believe if something like this really happened that it wouldn't be all over world news the next morning. The game is also a dozen hours or so too long for its own good, but again this could be because I had under leveled characters while playing through it.

With the fifth entry finally in sights of being released, I feel that there is no better time to reflect on Persona 4. In development for less than two years, Atlus managed to create one of the most classic RPGs ever made. The game is almost ten years old and despite that still has a fanbase that is hungry for more as they purchased games in the dungeon crawling, fighting, and music genres due to the characters starring in them. It isn't surprising as the world of Persona 4 is one of the most engaging around. Here's hoping that Persona 5 will capture the same magic that this title did.