Looking at: Persona 4 Golden

High School Blues

You'll need to enter the TV world through the biggest TVs you can find.

I'll be the first to admit, I hated high school. I think, on reflection, most people do, since it's an awkward and terrible time in your life. Either that, or they loved high school because it was the last time their life made any sense, and that's even sadder. Regardless, for me high school sucked, and that's terrible, but at least I didn't have to fight a horde of demons hell bent on killing people.

Ok, in fairness, I don't think a lot of people have to do that in high school. Math class may have been terrible, but at least it wasn't trying to eat me.

Persona 4 is, in many ways, the complete opposite from my high school experience. It's a poppy, happy-go-lucky, monster slaying good time and easily one of the best JRPGs I've ever played.

Small Town, Big Adventure

Knocking down all enemies gives you the opportunity for a powerful counter attack.

The setup for P4 is that you've recently moved to the small rural town of Inaba while your parents are away on business for a year. You move in with your uncle and cousin, attend high school, make some friends, ect. A few days later bodies start showing up, mutilated and tied to TV antennas, and you learn of something called the Midnight Channel. The Midnight Channel shows up at midnight on rainy days, and while the rumors say it's supposed to show you your soul mate, the reality is it's showing people about to die horrifically. You, along with your friends, soon discover that you can enter into the midnight channel and save these people by freeing them by way of killing a shitload of monsters.

That's really all I'm going to say about the plot for two reasons: First, the story of this game is so long that recapping it here would make this my longest article yet by far. Having just beaten the game, my total playtime is well over 50 hours, and that's just for the main plot. Persona 4 is a massive game, and encourages extra playthroughs with a New Game Plus mode and a bevy of side missions and entire side plots to explore.

The second reason I'm not revealing any more about the story is that it really needs to be experienced, and just talking about it doesn't do it proper justice. It's a weird tale, with plenty of surreal and unbelievable moments as you get drawn deeper and deeper into the mystery surrounding the Midnight Channel. It also draws heavily from the likes of Saturday Morning cartoons, and it's no coincidence that the entire game was adapted to one of these post launch.

Whatever it is, the writing is amazing, with memorable, multi-layered characters that are worth exploring. There is the occasional awkwardness due to the translation, especially with the total inclusion of Japanese honorifics (I now understand what Senpai means, and I hate it) but overall the translation work is great and it works well in English. It constantly walks between noir-horror, high school comedy, and coming of age as the characters and plot evolve over the year, and I enjoyed every moment of it.

The overarching theme of the story seems to be discovering what's hidden inside of a person. The Midnight Channel accentuates the innermost thoughts of whatever victim is trapped inside, and dealing with this creates some of the most grounded moments in the game. You'll see people dealing with their sexuality as they approach adulthood, and it even touches on the subject of homosexuality, something incredibly taboo in Japan. It's an odd contrast to the mile-a-minute of the rest of the game, but it proves effective for flushing out the characters and making them feel much more real.

Math Class, Killing Demons, and the Dating Scene

Improving your relationships with people is necessary to succeed.

Gameplay wise, P4 is a mix between traditional dungeon crawling JRPG, and... high school life sim? I'm going to go with visual novel for the other half, but that's only because my knowledge of that genre is limited at best.

Basically, when you're in the Midnight Channel, you'll be stalking along the hallways of randomized dungeons, hunting or avoiding monsters and battling them for cash or loot. It's a classic formula we've seen dozens of times before... mostly. More on that in a bit.

The other half of the game is spent as a teenager living in a small town and going to school. You'll need to study for tests and attend classes, as well as buy supplies and prep for your excursions to the other side. Most importantly though, you'll need to make friends and strengthen your bonds with people, referred to as Social Links. Social Links increase as you get to know people, and they feed back into combat by allowing you to create better Personas to fight with.

That leads me to the Personas themselves. Personas are kind of like Pokemon, at least functionally. You collect them by winning battles, and you can train them and equip them with skills. What this means is Personas act as your magic abilities in combat, giving you access to elemental attacks, and various buffs/debuffs. The most interesting thing about Personas is the ability to merge them, either as a pair, threesome, or even more powerful combinations later on. This allows you to create even better personas from the ones you've trained, and combining the right Personas with each other can lead to incredibly strong outcomes, especially when you start giving them the proper skills.

All of this feeds back into the combat, which you'll be doing a lot of. Combat in a JRPG can drag and get boring, especially thanks to random encounters, but Persona 4, having learned from P3, seems to have been built to keep combat going at a break-neck speed. The trick is the ability to stun enemies by exploiting their weaknesses. If the enemy is weak to fire, hit them with a fire attack and they'll be stunned. Stun all the enemies and you'll have the option to launch an All-Out Attack, where all available party members rush in and do massive damage. Battles are blissfully short when conducted correctly, and you're encouraged to balance your party, as well as your stable of Personas to stay prepared for anything.

Golden Hour

The golden re-release contains so much new content, it might as well be it's own game.

I've played a bit of the PS2 version of P4, but it's the Vita re-release that I beat the game on. The Vita version is called Golden, and that's not an understatement. It's the definitive version of the game by far, with a huge list of additions and extra balancing to even out some of the rougher areas of the game. The Vita doesn't have a huge list of games worth playing, but Persona 4 is definitely worth it alone.

Graphically, the PS2 version was pushing the system to it's limits. Everything is incredibly stylized to look like a cartoon. It's an incredibly colorful game, with everything over the top and popping with style. Animations are all smooth, and character models look great both in game and during battles. There are a handful of animated cutscenes, and while they don't look as good as the official companion anime, they're a great addition to the game and help to sell some of the more important scenes. The Vita's Golden version is even better, with a wider resolution and smoother frame-rates throughout, even despite being on a hand-held.

The audio in Persona 4 is brilliant. There's really no better way of putting it. Sound effects are punchy and help to sell the animations, but it's the voice work and the music that really shine here. Firstly, let me say that Persona 4 might have one of the funkiest soundtracks ever recorded. It's an eclectic mixture of J-pop just south of annoying, 80's style hair-rock, and what I can only describe as electric orchestral. The PS2 version came with a soundtrack CD, and it's not hard to see why.

The voice over work is equally impressive, calling on some of the best from both anime and video games. You're main character is silent throughout, but there's strong performances from people like Troy Baker, Laura Bailey, and a huge cast of extras. Like most Japanese games, only select portions of the dialogue are voiced, but the parts that are, are extremely well done. There are some lines that grow annoying after hearing them for the 500th time, but you eventually just tune this out as you loose yourself in the game.

Graduation Party

Persona 4 isn't afraid to touch on taboo subjects, but it's also filled with humor.

It's rare that there's a JRPG that I like, and even rarer that I like one so much I play it till the end. I really considered not writing this review, since in my mind there's something terribly off about a grown man playing a game about high school teenagers.  In the end though, P4 is such a great game I decided it was worth talking about.

Persona 4 is, single-handily, one of the best reasons to own a PS Vita. It's one of the best JRPGs I've ever played, and it's one of the best RPGs in general I've ever played. It's a game that forced me out of my comfort zone, and I'm all the more happy for it.

image sources:
http://gearnuke.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/persona4-golden-1.jpg
http://www.snackbar-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/persona4golden4.jpg
http://gamingtrend.com/wp-content/screenshots/persona-4-golden-vita/Persona%204%20Gold%20-%201.jpg
http://www.thescoreonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/persona4-social-link.jpg
http://gamerchatter.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/2013-02-01-132245.jpg
http://static4.gamespot.com/uploads/screen_kubrick/mig/3/1/4/5/2123145-169_p4golden_extras_homegardening_ot_vita_110912.jpg
http://cdn3-www.playstationlifestyle.net/assets/uploads/2012/11/p4g-screenshot1-555x315.jpg