Released in 2008 by Atlus on the PS2, the latest main entry into
the subseries of the Shin Megami Tensei games known as Persona. Persona 4 takes
the template set up by Persona 3 and adds a few tweaks to the system
incorporated with an all new story and cast. Persona 4 also seems to break the
cycle of the series being redesigned from the ground up as the predecessors
have, which may have angered a few hardcore SMT fans, but the rest of the
gaming world seems deeply satisfied.
Gameplay:
Like Persona 3, Persona 4 is a mix between life simulation
and dungeon crawling, and the game progresses day by day. The days are
separated into morning, afternoon, and night; each with different actions being
available. The mornings largely consist of you being in class, the game usually
fast forwards through this, but occasionally you'll get quizzed on random
trivia and if you get it right, you'll increase certain stats. In the
afternoon, you get either a choice between progressing into the TV world to
complete the various dungeons, or to hang out with various students (or get a
job) to increase your social link levels (more on this later). At night, there
isn't much to do but study to increase your knowledge, read a book to increase
other stats, or go to sleep to go to the next day. Occasionally there'll be
mandatory story events at night.
For the dungeon crawling, you are tasked with reaching the
top of the tower and defeating the boss by the specific deadline, or risk
having a game over. Unlike Persona 3, the dungeon layouts aren't randomly
generated, and you also have the ability to go down to lower floors if the
enemies are getting too tough for you. Dungeon navigation is done in full 3D,
and you get to see your character, and your party members following you around.
The monsters (called shadows) are visible on screen, so there's none of the
annoyance of random encounters. You are unable to tell what kind of shadows
you'll fight, as they are displayed by a generic shadow sprite. You are also
able to swing your sword at the shadows to initiate the battles, if you
successfully swing it, you can have an initiative at the beginning of battle.
If you fail, or just touch the shadow, you just have a regular battle. The
shadows are also able to chase after you, so if they catch you, they get the
initiative. Though if you are above a certain level in each dungeon, you are
able to scare off the shadows.
The battle system is largely your traditional turn based
battle system, but most of your abilities focus on you summoning various
Personas. Personas are what the series calls the various monsters you summon
into battle. Many of them are based on various mythological characters from
various cultures around the world. Each Persona has their own stats, abilities,
and weaknesses, and the hero is the only one with the ability to have multiple
Personas while the rest of your party only has their own special Persona. To
gain more Personas, you get an event after certain battles to collect the cards
with Personas on them. They briefly flash you the cards and you have to get the
card right, the penalty will risk you leaving empty handed, and possibly losing
all the experience you got from the battle. For your party, you have a choice
between having the rest of your party under tactics to let the AI do the
thinking for you, or for full manual. Luckily the AI in this game is fairly
smart, and you can go through the game with tactics with no problems.
The big deal with the Personas is fusion. While the ones you
gain from battles have their abilities, they are fairly weak and only know one
or two moves. Your task is to go to the Velvet Room and fuse Personas together
to gain stronger Personas with more, and stronger, moves. You are also able to
save Personas into a compendium to recall them later if you want them back, but
they cost money.
Your character has two different sets of stats: one for
battle, and one for social. The battle stats are your basic RPG stats, but the
social stats can help you along with the social aspect of the game. Allowing
you to be able to talk to certain people, or to initiate certain story events.
The beauty of Persona 4 is how the social aspects of the
game, and the dungeon crawling aspects are fairly dependent on each other. The
social links are corresponded with a certain tarot card arcana, one social link
for one arcana. The various Personas are also categorized by tarot card arcana.
If you hang out with the social link people enough, the corresponding link will
level up, this in turn gives your Persona an experience boost when you fuse to
make them even stronger, and saves you grinding time. Each of your party
members also have social links, so if you max out a party member's social link,
their Persona evolves into a stronger one.
With the social links, you basically hang out with a person
and help them through their dilemma. You get to watch various people work
through their life problems, and you get a warm fuzzy feeling inside when you
help them out. The girls' social links have a slightly different ending, if you
max out a girl's social link, they will ask you out and you can start dating.
The problem with this is if you have a bunch of girls around a certain social
link level, they'll start to get jealous and leave you with a broken social
link that you must then mend! If you do time everything right, you are able to
have multiple girlfriends in the game, and end up dating all of the girls in
your party (and then some) what a stud!
Story:
The protagonist has no default name, but if you watched the
anime, or played Persona 4 Arena, he is known as Yu Narukami, and for the sake
of this review, we shall also associate him as such.
You play as Yu Narukami as he has to spend a year of high
school at a new school in the small town of Inaba. Your parents are going to be
working for the entire year overseas and you must live with your uncle Dojima
and your elementary school cousin, Nanako. As you enter the school, you soon
befriend 3 students: the goofy Yosuke, tomboy Chie, and the elegant Yukiko, who
are all friends.
Chie tells you of a rumor flying around school about
something known as the Midnight Channel, where if you watch TV at midnight when
it's raining, you'll see your destined lover on there. As the game goes on, you
discover that the people on the channel show up missing, and appear dead a few
days later, and you and your friends begin to notice something suspicious, as
clearly you can't have a Shin Megami Tensei game without murder victims. You
then discover that there's a hidden world inside the TV and there's a strange
bear known as Teddie who tells you about a stranger throwing people inside and
you find out that those people were the kidnapped victims.
Most of the game cycles around you seeing a person on the
Midnight Channel, and jumping into the channel to prevent them from dying. All
while trying to figure out who the culprit behind the murders and kidnapping.
They also tend to mix in stories revolving around your high school experience
which tends to follow some typical tropes from anime school shows like: summer
vacation, school camping trip, school festival, swimsuit scene, etc. While the
story may have a dark demeanor in it, there's also a mix of comedy into it to
lighten the mood. While the game can feel a bit repetitive after awhile, the
story events can be quite enjoyable and give very nice breaks away from the
grinding. While there are plot twists in the story, you won't have to worry
about M Night Shyamalan style twists like a few Final Fantasy games, and the
story is a bit straightforward.
The game is largely voice acted, with only the social links
not being voiced. There is only the English voice cast, so if you're a Japanese
voice purist, then you will be disappointed. Though if you're okay with English
voices, the voice cast is very well done and has some big names like Johnny
Yong Bosche of Bleach and Code Geass fame and Ali Hillis from Final Fantasy
XIII and Mass Effect.
Yosuke Hanamura:
Yosuke is one of your first friends, and previously the new kid, as he moved to Inaba six months before you did. His father runs the local Junes department store, and he works there part time. He's the typical comic relief character that people like to hate on as he's kind of annoying. He has a brash personality, and acts before he thinks, usually getting him in trouble with Chie. To get around the fact that you don't have a default name, Yosuke calls you bro, which has caused fans to dub him as Brosuke. Yosuke's Persona is Jiraiya who has wind abilities.
Chie Satonaka:
Chie is the tomboy of the group, and can have a short temper, especially when it comes to Yosuke being well... Yosuke. She's been best friends with Yukiko since they were little, and is always there to protect her. Despite having a short temper with Yosuke, she's pretty friendly and outgoing, which is why she's the first to make friends with you. She's a big fan of kung fu movies, which shows in her fighting style, as she's the kicker. Despite the fact that she fights in her school uniform during much of the game, she wears modesty shorts under her skirt, so you won't get any sneak peaks at her panties, sorry guys. Her Persona is Tomoe who carries a big spear and is a big physical attacker, and also has a few ice moves up her sleeve.
Yukiko Amagi:
Chie's best friend, Yukiko is initially a shy and introverted girl. Her family is rich as the owners of the renowned Amagi Inn. Apparently every guy in the school has the hots for her, and always try asking her out, which causes Chie to scare the guys off, as Yukiko is too shy to talk to them. Despite having the best grades in class, a running gag is where she gets into laughing fits at really bad jokes, which makes Chie wonder about her sometimes. Her persona is Konohana Sakuya and specializes in healing and fire abilities, a very important person to have in your party.
Teddie:
Teddie is a mysterious bearlike creature who lives in the TV world. He helps you out in the game by giving you tips in battle. He has a penchant for having bear related puns, despite nobody, except Yukiko, finds them enjoyable.
Ryotaro Dojima:
Dojima is your uncle who offered to take you in while your parents are abroad. Dojima is a single parent and works as a detective. He has a very authoritative personality. Since he'll be stuck at work a lot, he's not at home most of the time, much to the dismay of his daughter Nanako.
Nanako Dojima:
Nanako is Dojima's daughter/your cousin. Due to her father being gone all the time because of his job, she's a lot more mature than other kids her age, as she manages to do things at home by herself, like fixing meals for the family. Initially shy towards you, she eventually opens up and shows a lot of affection towards you, like calling you big bro.
Visuals:
The art style is largely anime based, and Atlus also doesn't
disappoint with the graphics which are quite good for a late PS2 title.
Everything is rendered in 3D polygons, and the characters are full sized (none
of that super deformed nonsense) and very closely resemble the anime graphic
they show when they're talking. Even the anime graphic has different facial
expressions when they're talking, to add to their feelings.While you are only able
to rotate the camera while you're in a dungeon, or at school, you still feel
like you're running around in a small town despite the limited exploration you
can do. Occasionally there are full anime cutscenes, but they are fairly rare.
Music:
The game comes with a CD of the soundtrack, luckily it's a
fantastic soundtrack. Persona 4 follows the steps of Persona 3 by having a more
J-pop influenced soundtrack with vocals sung in English. Luckily, unlike 3, the
Japanese vocalist has a much better English accent and you can understand what
she is saying, whereas with Persona 3's vocalist, you'd think she's singing in
Japanese until you look at the lyrics and it's supposed to be in English.
While some of the songs have a J-pop twist, it's not that
fluffy and cute stuff that some people associate J-pop with, and there's
several instrumental tracks to keep with the mood of the game when it starts to
get dark.
Verdict:
As typical of a Shin Megami Tensei game,
this is quite a monstrous game and will be quite lengthy. Luckily there's
plenty to do in the game to break from the mundainty, and you will be kept on
your toes over who the killer is. With its colorful cast and great story, Persona
4 is perfect for those who want to dedicate time to a lengthy RPG that doesn't
crush under its own weight.
Music: 9/10.
Visuals (Or Graphics): 9/10.
Story: 9/10.
Content: 9/10.
Conclusion: 9/10
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