The Best Game I Have Ever Played -- Persona 4

Back in 2008, when the PS2 was being smothered with an HD pillow by the PS3, the next generation of consoles was finally starting to gain headway. The PS2 had been alive for at least 7 years and it had seemed as if no other major developer had any interest in the dying dog. But not Atlus, those mighty stallions. They knew that the PS2 still had plenty of kick. So instead of switching over to the next major console, they decided to make a sequel to one of the highest rated JRPGs of all time. That's Persona 3, in case you were wondering.

Atlus was determined to make an amazing sequel to one of the highest rated JRPGs ever made, as stated previously. That is no easy feet, but lo and behold, Atlus succeeded. They streamlined combat, improved the social links, created more interesting characters, and provided various other tweaks that made the game a masterpiece.

Argh, what am I doing, I gotta stop gushing and tell you what the game is actually about and what makes it such a unique experience. Alrighty then, I will divide this review into multiple sections because this game is chocked with so many good facets that I can't just list into a few paragraphs.

So without further ado, this is my amateur review of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4.

Story: First, a quick synapses.
Persona 4 starts out with you, a transfering high school student, arriving in the town of rural Inaba, which is where you will be staying for the next year with your uncle and cousin while your parents are out of the country for business reasons. Upon arrival, you hear these strange rumors about "The Midnight Channel"; A mysterious TV program that only appears on rainy nights when the clock strikes twelve. The locals say that whenever you watch The Midnight Channel, your soul mate appears on the screen. How crazy as that?! Well, not everything is as harmless as it seems in your little town when a mysterious string of serial murders start happening. That's some spooky stuff.

Now you might be thinking, "Could this string of murders possibly be connected to this mysterious Midnight Channel you keep hearing about around town?" Well, it is up to you and your friends to find out how is killing all of these innocent people, all while using The Midnight Channel to aid you in your quest to find the truth. Jump into TVs to save your peaceful town and fight the mysterious shadows that lurk within.

To be completely honest here, this is one of the best told stories I've ever seen in a video game. After the initial set-up, the story keeps you gripped and doesn't let go until the end of it's 80+ hour story mode. Yeah, it's that long. For a game of this length, you should at least have an above average story to tell. The reason I find that it's such a well-told story is because it does pacing juuust right. Nothing happens too quickly and every bit pieces together nicely. There are plenty of twists that happen along the way and the murder mystery will always keep you guessing. To find the truth at the end of this murder rainbow, you really have to use your noggin. Every piece of information counts.

Now, what would a story be without a supporting cast of characters? Not much, let me tell you that. The good thing is, P4 lets you be-friend multiple other high school students who will help you solve this murder mystery. Every character you interact with act and feel almost... human. These characters are some of the most interesting and realistic companions you will ever have. Every one is written perfectly and all have their own varying personalities. No JRPGs tropes here, folks; all of these characters are fully realized. As I mentioned earlier, you be-friend these people and grow stronger relationships with them. (When you form a connection with someone, your connection with this person is known as a Social Link. These will aid you in gameplay. More on that later.) You become better companions, help them through hard times, and if you want, even date some of them. The point is, these characters are incredibly well-written and are not just NPC characters that fill up game space. I connected with them on a personal level, which is something that has never happened to me with a game before.

Gameplay:
The game is divided into three main gameplay types: Dungeon crawling, social life, and Personas.

First, let's talk about the Dungeon crawling and battle aspects.

The dungeon crawling system would remind anybody of an RPG with Rouge-like elements. Every floor is randomly generated with chests to open and monsters to defeat. But unlike other JRPGs where random encounters are the way battles commence (*cough*Final Fantasy*cough*), P4 uses it's own unique way of dealing with encounters. If you hit an enemy from behind while roaming the floor, you will gain an advantage and your entire party will have one extra turn before the enemies can attack. However, this system applies to enemies as well; If they catch you off-guard, they can easily get their own advantage and wreck havoc upon your health.

The battles in P4 progress much quicker than most JRPGs thanks to it's unique way of dealing with encounters.
The battles in the game move fairly quickly by giving every enemy you face a certain element to be exploited. (Kinda like Pokemon.) Whenever you hit an enemy with it's weakness, they will fall into a downed state and will be more vulnerable to damage and it will give you another turn to use however you want. You could use an item to heal, exploit another enemy's weakness, etc, etc. Once every enemy on the field is down, the game will give you an option to issue an "All-out Attack!", which will cause massive damage to all of the enemies currently on the field. Just like Player advantages, enemies can exploit your weakness and use them to their own advantage. This fast paced combat system makes P4's battle system one of the best I've ever encountered in a JRPG. It's addictive and no battle usually last more than 2 minutes. It's quite a thrill.

Now, with P4 being a JRPG and all, you would probably expect it to come with some sort of level grind. Well, thankfully, Atlus set out to fix this issue that has been plaguing games for many years by introducing their own anti-grind system that works most of the time. "How does it work", you ask? Well, my friendly reader, it's simple. All you need to do is kill every enemy on every floor in a dungeon. Oh no, don't worry, most of the dungeons are only about 10 floors each, unlike P3's main dungeon of 250+ floors. Simply do that and you should be prepared for the boss that awaits you at the end. If you still feel under-leveled, simply go back a floor or two and level up some more. Thanks to the quick battle system, grinding doesn't last that long even if you are under-leveled.

Staying off the subject of battles for a bit, let's talk about the average social life of a Persona high schooler. Persona 4 uses a calendar system to keep the game moving forward; every day progress the story forward in some way or another. The game world is full of stuff that will eat up your time, it's almost overwhelming. You can get a part time job translating English, eat at the local Chinese Ramen shop to boost your various personalities stats, hang out with friends and upgrade your social links, study in the library at school, or pet that weird cat that is hanging out in front of your house. All of these options are important in some way and always benefit you as a player. The options seem endless, don't they? Well, guess what. You won't be able to do everything you please. Remember, you still have a murder case to solve. It's your responsibility as the leader of the group to decide how to spend that valuable time, all while juggling your school life and the murder case. Because if you can't manage to save the next victim by the end of the string of rainy nights every month, it'll be game over. You don't want that.

This calendar system is great and really adds a certain urgency to your actions. It makes you think about what really needs to be prioritized before you progress forward and find the next clue in the case. That system keeps me coming back with the "one more day" mentality that I usually reserve for the Civilization games. Frankly, I find it addicting.

And now, the last portion of the gameplay section. We will talk about Personas. Personas, as according to psychology, are your "other self". Personas are kinda like the Pokemon of the Persona universe. Every Persona has their own elemental strengths, weaknesses, and spells. There are two ways of acquiring Personas: An item chance at the end of a battle or by Persona "Fusion". Fusion is pretty self-explanatory. You pick 2 or more Personas and, well, put 'em in a blender to make a stronger Persona that has skills and stats inherited from it's parent Personas. Each Persona also has their own type of arcana tree that they belong under. (Example: Izanagi, the Protagonist's first Persona, belongs to the Fool arcana.) In order to level up your Personas more, you must boost your Social Link ranks in order to boost the arcana powers. Social Links and arcanas are connected. Strengthen your friendship (Social Link) with a friend from a school (Let's say this friend has the Magician arcana), and it will makes Personas under that arcana tree level up much faster when fused. The Fusion system is much more complex than that, but that's enough information for anyone to get started with.

Audio:
This game's audio is PERFECT. PER. FEC. TO. You couldn't penetrate it with even the sharpest knife. It's just too good. Every song is worthy of a good old fashioned foot-tapping. Songs with vocals are in English, excluding the ending song. And although the singer has some pretty bad engrish, the songs are still fun to sing along to. Every song just feels well orchestrated and arranged. The J-Pop style of the series is still strong, but not as prevalent as it was in P3. Thanks to the addition of the synthesized keyboard and with extra emphasis on percussion and guitar, the song arrangements feel more old fashioned when compared to P3's, which was more J-Pop-y with techno beats. For sound effects, the game is just right. All of the little details make the game such a pleasure to listen to. You can hear the locusts cricket in the Summer heat. During rainy nights, you can listen to the heavy patter of rain on the roof while enjoying a good book. I know I've said it before, but the audio in this game is just masterful. This isn't a game you want to have muted the whole way through. It is an audio-visual experience the whole way through. The music is actually so popular, it has gotten multiple concerts in Japan.

We're almost done here. Before you leave, I want to discuss the ending with you all. No, the ending is not bad. It's far from it. This ending openly brought me to tears. Manly, manly tears. It was so wonderfully constructed and had me wanting to play the game again once it was over. Saying goodbye to those characters that I had gotten to know so well was heartbreaking. I won't spoil it for anybody, but I just want to say that it deeply affected me more than any other game available on the market.

I also want to talk about symbolism. Symbolism in the Persona games have been present since the very beginning, but I feel like P4 provides a much stronger emphasis on symbolism than the other titles. What with the glasses, fog, Persona designs, it's just so well done and really adds a kind of second meaning to the game. Just something to consider before you hop into the game.

Alright, I'm done. That's it for my review of Persona 4. It is simply the best game I have played and has some of the best, well-written characters I have ever seen in a video game medium. If your a fan of anime, JRPGs, or just video games in general, pick this game up. You're doing yourself a dis-service for not having it in your library.

The game has also been released on the Playstation Vita, along with additional content. If you haven't played the game yet, I'd suggest you get the Vita version. It'll be much easier to find than a PS2 copy since it was only recently released November of 2012.

You can also watch Persona 4 Anime with subtitles the entire way through or with an English dub up to episode 12 at the moment on your favorite Anime streaming site. The next volume of English episodes will be released in the near future.