Persona 4 Golden review

Overview

Persona 4 Golden is an RPG developed by Atlus that was released in 2012 and was rereleased on PC in 2020. In this game you play as a high school student (who you get to give a name) who has moved to the small town of Inaba for a year to just chillout and relax. However a string of murders disrupts this and now it’s up to you and your new friends to find the culprit.

Story

Persona 4 is a very story focused game with many twists and turns along the way. The game starts normal enough with you moving in with your uncle and cousin. Soon the first big story development happens which is the midnight channel, a mysterious TV channel that shows people’s true desires and shows them before they die. Now since almost half of the fun of Persona 4 is seeing where the story takes you, I won’t talk about anything more. What I can say is the game has a very interesting story and the actual culprit for the murders is also a good payoff. Another thing to note is that this game is long, like really long. It took me 75 hours to finish it on my first playthrough.

Characters/Social Links

Now Persona 4 has a very colorful cast but more importantly they can be used to aid you in battle. If you hang out with your friends then your social link with them will increase which allows you to make stronger personas of that type and do some cool combo attacks. Here are the people you can form social links with and a little bit about them as well:

Yosuke Hanamura: He is your best bud and not very bright; he also runs a convenience store .

Chie Satonaka: She likes kung-fu, her friend Yukiko, and steak, she loves steak.

Yukiko Amagi: Yukiko runs an inn, is best friends with Chie, and she can cook (she can’t do it well but she tries.

Kanji Tatsumi: Rough and tough on the outside but sweet on the inside; he also loves to knit.

Teddie: Okay this going to sound like I’m making this up but I’m being serious here, Teddie is a bear mascot looking thing you find inside the TV and befriend. Teddie is usually fascinated with the simplest things which can be annoying and endearing, but it’s mostly annoying.

Naoto Shirogane: Naoto is an ace detective who is trying to solve the same crime that you are. However they are really stubborn, but they have a cool hat so that sort of makes up for it.

Ryotaro Dojima: This is the uncle who you will be living with. He is also part of the police so it’s pretty awkward when he sees you looking around crime scenes.

Nanako Dojima: She is Ryotaro’s daughter, her mom got killed in a hit and run, and she has a pretty bad relationship with her dad.

Tohru Adachi: Tohru Adachi is the best character in Persona 4. You’re just going to have to trust me on this, but he is an absolute joy to hang out with.

Marie: Now Marie is a very weird person as she is bound to a car where most of your stuff about personas happens, but we’ll talk about that later. Anyway Marie is one of the the only people where you kind of need to hang out with them for story purposes so you should try and talk to her at least a few times.

There are many more characters in Persona 4 that you will meet, but I covered most of the basic ones. One more thing to note about social links is that you need to hang out with them 10 times to max them out.

Gameplay

Persona 4 is split up into two major gameplay parts. One part being your daily life where you can hang out with friends, eat food, watch a movie, get a job, catch some bugs, or other daily life stuff. But be warned, you can only do two things per day. Now all that stuff that seems like it wouldn’t matter at all, but it actually does in a lot of ways. For example, if you study in your room for a test at school your knowledge will increase which will make the tests easier. Now the other game type is the turn based combat that takes place in the TV world where you kill shadows on your way to rescue whoever is trapped inside the TV world this time. The shadow fights are standard turn based RPG fun; you pick an attack and go. However, you have a few options on your turn. Persona 4 has one big gimmick which is personas, you know the name of the the game. Anyways, personas determine what moves you will have at your disposal. Personas have eight different types of attacks which are fire, ice, electricity, wind, both light and dark are instakills to anything that is weak to it so be aware of that. There is also physical which causes your health to go down instead of SP which when that runs out you can’t do any persona attacks. No one persona will be good against everything; all of them have weaknesses so the best that you can do is build a well-rounded team with your party members. One special thing about you, the player, is that you can have multiple personas instead of your party members which can only have the one they are given so make sure you try to get a wide variety of personas. Another thing to note is a minigame called Shuffletime that sometimes plays at the end of battles, here you can earn new personas, some money, and/or some stat buffs.

The Velvet Room/Personas

Personas don’t just fall out of the sky they have to come from somewhere, right ? Well that place is the Velvet Room which can be accessed by a blue door in most important places and leads into a blue car (I know, it’s pretty weird). There are three people in the Velvet room and each has a unique purpose. First we’ll start out with Igor, the long nose man who sits in the front, he is responsible for persona fusion. Usually when you get personas they aren’t very good which is where persona fusion comes in. Persona fusion can involve 2 to 6 personas and the more you fuse generally the results are going to be better, but this is not always the case. Fusion can be confusing for new players so I suggest just looking at them all and picking the one one that best suits your playstyle. The next person in the Velvet room is Margaret and she is responsible for keeping track of what personas you have made. You can also buy personas from her too, and Margaret also has a social link you can do if you so desire. Last but not least is Marie the girl I mentioned before in the social link section and that place I was talking about is the Velvet room so surprise! Anyway you can give Marie skill cards which allows for any persona to use the move on the skill card.

Game World/Soundtrack

The small town of Inaba has a lot of charm to it. In all of the five areas you get to go to in the town, each one has a unique look and fun visuals. The dungeons should also not be overlooked here as each one of them is vastly different from each other. As I have said before, Persona 4 is a very long game so the soundtrack better be good if you’re going to have to listen to the same songs for that long. Luckily Persona 4 has an amazing soundtrack with catchy tunes left and right (some of my favorites include “Never More” and “Snowflakes). There is not a bad song in the bunch.

Some Things to Know

Persona 4 is a game where a lot of the clever tricks you get to know are through gameplay. Here are some helpful tips that will help you on your journey (skip over this part if you want to figure this stuff out on your own),

• To get the true ending you will need to max out Marie’s social link
• Maxing out Adachi’s social link also can provide some extra scenes
• Your party members will not be under your direct control when you first get them so to change that go to tactics and select direct control
• You can go back to dungeons you already beat for some extra goodies
• Save often
• Don’t fight bosses unless you have full SP
• If you see a golden hand enemy, fight it because it will give you tons of XP and money
• If you start hearing chains rattling in the background of dungeons, then fight an enemy or somebody unpleasant will show up
• Look up a dialogue guide for December the 3rd, trust me! You will probably say, “I’ll be fine”, but trust me you won’t be. It can just be annoying to figure out so treat yourself .
• Out of your 5 personality stats, increase knowledge and courage the most

Conclusion

Personally Persona 4 is one of my favorite games of all time with lovable characters, a great story, and fun game mechanics. This game is not to be missed!

9.5/10 reviewed by Charglez