GAME REVIEW: PERSONA 4 GOLDEN

Here’s a review I did of what remains to be one of my favorite games of all time. Enjoy!

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How do you take a good thing and make it better? Simple: You dip it in gold. 

…Alright, that was lame.

When Persona 4 Golden was announced I couldn’t help but scratch my head. Instead of porting the gem of a game that was Persona 4 to the PS3, Atlus was releasing a revamped version four years later for the PS Vita of all things? I mean, I’ve been a fan of P4 but the strangeness of the concept wasn’t enough to convince me to splurge on a new handheld that probably wouldn’t have seen more than two or three games worth of use. I picked up P4A and Golden eventually drifted from my mind. 

A few weeks ago, however, I got Katsu’s permission to borrow his, went and got Persona 4 Golden the same day, and I have had the hardest time putting it down. 

In case you aren’t familiar, Persona 4 tells the story of the protagonist, a transfer student from the big city ionto the quiet town of Inaba. The countryside doesn’t stay quiet for long, though, as the town is interrupted by a series of murders that seem linked to a local rumor about a supernatural “Midnight Channel.” You, along with the friends you make, take it upon yourselves to set out and solve this mystery by traveling into an alternate dimension inside the television where you battle against dangerous creatures called shadows making use of your ability to summon your own persona to fight alongside you.

On top of the narrative, there is a unique and significant life sim aspect to the game as well, where you go about daily activities and cultivate your friendships in your new hometown. There is huge incentive to this, as ranking up your social links makes for greater fusion benefits when creating new personas.

A large portion of the exploration that’s typical of any JRPG is set in the style of a dungeon crawl, where you traverse each dungeon floor by floor in order to reach the boss at the end, fighting any shadows that happen to come your way. Persona 4’s combat system is turn-based, and allows you to make liberal use of not only all the persona you happen to have on hand, but also the character specific ones of your party members as well,  and there is a ton of fun to be had picking and choosing which party members you want to roll with, be it the ever versatile Yosuke, the sweeping Naoto, or having Yukiko on for support; your party will determine which Persona you roll with in order to cover weaknesses and vacant roles to fit your combat needs, and once you’re committed and everyone you’ve been rolling with is 20 levels higher than everyone else, you know you’re going to have to play through again, just to see how things go a different way. It’s a game that keeps you coming back in an almost Pokemon esque way, where no matter how many times you’ve played it it really never does get old, and with golden introducing two new Arcana into the deck, there are even more persona to be fused and commanded.  

The characters are great too, and you may be surprised to find just how little time there is in the game to cultivate each unique relationship, slowly discovering the fun little backstories and glances into the personal lives of these characters. There’s a young mother struggling to connect with her stepson, a student put under the pressure of achieving academic perfection, a basketball player coming to terms with the fact that he’s adopted, a boy navigating his own sexuality, a girl dealing with a degree of dysphoria…the list goes on, and save for a peculiar fox living at the local shrine that you do favors for, most all of the things these people are dealing with are very real situations. They’re believable, they’re relatable, and that makes the game infinitely more engaging.

This game is honestly massive, and Golden only adds more to it. Two new arcana, The Jester and The Aeon, are added, there’s a whole new night life to experience, a plethora of new cutscenes are there to enjoy, a new system similar to the TM one from pokemon allowing you to create even more personalized personas, and there’s a very important new character that gets an arc all her own at one point. It’s not enough that the game is completely changed, but it builds on what is already a wonderfully structured game.

There are some frustrating points: occasionally the dungeon crawling can feel a little arduous and boring, and some battles get repetitive once you figure out an enemy’s weakness, as well as those occasional periods of time where you lose days of activity due to the progression of the narrative which can be frustrating when you’re trying to carefully plan it so that your social links are all maxed before you get to the cut off. But these frustrations are minor in comparison to the rest of the game; the only real reason a dungeon would bore you would be because you’re tearing through it, after all.

Persona 4: Golden is one of those games that you pick up and find yourself unable to put it down. I’ve personally had a lot of experience with the original Persona 4, having played through multiple times just because it’s so great, and yet playing Golden I found myself hooked all the same yet again. I got no complaints about that, though.

I know there’s no such thing as a perfect game, but if you were to ask me then out of all the games I’ve played this one comes closest. Because of that, I’ve got no qualms with giving it a perfect 10/10.

Stay gold, kiddies.