Since so many people have told me how much better Persona 4 was than the all ready fantastic Persona 3, I was curious to see the degree to which Persona 4 trumped the third entry. I was also excited to play what promised to be another excellent role-playing game. On both fronts, Persona 4 succeeds. It improves on the Persona 3 formula in some important ways while standing on its own as one of absolute best role-playing games money can buy. It doesn't absolutely destroy Persona 3 as some people claim, but it is a leaner experience that is not only more player friendly, but is backed up by a meatier story. If you're into murder mysteries with bizarre supernatural twists or if you just crave an excellent RPG with lively, well-developed characters, you absolutely must play Persona 4.
The story is probably the biggest improvement in Persona 4. Persona 3 had an interesting story as well, but the story you're getting in Persona 4 is denser with detail and is swarming with plot twists, misdirection, and psychological tension. This is because Persona 4 is essentially a murder mystery. You, as the nameless main character, are relocating to the rural Japanese town of Inaba because your parents are on some kind of overseas trip. You end up living with your uncle Dojima---who is a detective---and his adorable daughter Nanako. You make a few friends at school and learn about the Midnight Channel, which will supposedly show you your soul mate if you stare into a TV on a rainy night. Instead of confirming that rumor, you find that you can actually enter another world through the TV, but this world is anything but welcoming. It is foggy and strange and home to an equally strange bear-like creature named Teddie. On top of this, people are turning up dead in Inaba and their deaths are somehow linked to the TV world. Of course it is up to you and your friends to solve the mystery of their murders by saving people who are dropped into the TV world and killed there. That is all I will tell you, but it is an immensely addicting story that will have you pleasantly confused at times and pleasantly surprised once you realize what was really going on.
The plot by itself is fantastic, but the characters are extremely lively, well written and charismatic. This was also one of the things that made Persona 3 so excellent, but I think this game has a slightly better cast. The best characters in Persona 3 are just as good as they are in Persona 4, but Persona 4 is more consistent and has less "meh" characters. What makes the characters feel so convincing is that the game develops their personalities outside of the core plot and does this in a big way, so that your key characters eventually feel like a tight-knit family. With characters being one of the main staples of RPGs, it is nothing short of brilliant that Atlus was able to create such an effect.
The structure of the game certainly helps however. Much like Persona 3, Persona 4 progression is based on a calendar system. You have a small town and school to explore (which seems even smaller than Persona 3's town and school), but you must adhere to something of a time limit. In any given day, you can only do one major thing (luckily, purchasing weapons and items and what not doesn't count as a major thing), whether that be hanging out with friends (which is extremely important because of the game's "social links") or dungeon crawling to advance to plot or simply raising one of your character's personality stats (instead of Persona 3's charm, courage and academics, Persona 4 has you enhancing traits like knowledge, expression, courage, understanding, and diligence) through various means, so you'll have to balance your time, especially since you only have a certain amount of time to save the latest victim trapped inside the TV world. However, since the time limit is very lenient (which is a good thing for those who feel the added pressure of a time limit is a turn off), you will have tons of time to hang out with friends, which gives the developers tons of time to develop them into remarkably believable people.
Forming relationships with people is essential in Persona 4. Whenever you meet a new person, you form a social link with them. You have to basically level up these social links by navigating conversations in a way that is helpful or pleasing to whoever you've formed the social link with. You can mess up relationships, but it is extremely hard to do and most players will breeze right through the social links provided that they are taking enough time from grinding through dungeons to level them up. Each social link is tied to what is called an "arcana." Examples of arcanas are moon, sun, star, empress, fool, priestess, magician, strength, etc. Falling under these categories are Personas, which are creatures derived from the characters' psyches. Think Pokémon, but more adult and edgy. Since they are your main means of battling in Persona 4 (you have a normal attack, but Personas will provide you with all your magic and techniques), you'll want to level up as many social links as you can since social links enhance the Personas you create within the arcana tied to said social link. A Persona can go up several levels on the spot if the corresponding social link is high. This will provide you will tons of useful skills without the trouble of sloooowly grinding Personas up to the levels at which they acquire them. Unlike Persona 3, social links can also grant special abilities to characters in your party, which is a great addition.
However, enhancing your Personas is not the primary motivation for leveling up social links. For me, that was secondary. What captured my interest was the characters they are tied to and the side plots that unfold as a result. These side plots are not only believable; they are also at once sad and touching and you'll feel like you've made a big difference in these people's lives once the social link is maxed out and side plot has concluded. One social link in particular, involving a stepparent struggling to connect to her new child, stayed in my thoughts even when I was not playing the game. That one was my favorite, but all the social links are powerful in their own ways. Persona 3 also had well written, emotionally engaging social links, but I feel that they're a bit better written and emotionally engaging in Persona 4. You can ignore social links if you want, but the dungeons will be much harder on you and your game will lack variation.
Persona 3's dungeon exploration took place in a giant tower called Tartarus and one of the main complaints was that there were just too many floors and since they were randomly generated, they could get extremely repetitive. Persona 4 attempts to address this by sending you to separate dungeons within the TV world (and the theme of these dungeons reflect the victim's psyche, so they are very creative). These dungeons are more varied in terms of their overall appearance than Persona 3's Tartarus, but they are still made up of randomly generating floors that all look the same. Fortunately, these dungeons are very easy to get through, especially since Persona 4 drastically reduces the amount of floors you'll need to fight your way through, resulting in a dungeon crawling experience that feels much more streamlined and also more player friendly. I feel that Atlus should have added more scenic variety within the dungeons, but separate dungeons with more creative themes is certainly an improvement over Tartarus. Not to mention that in Persona 4 the developers let you re-enter the dungeons through the exact floor you were last on, eliminating the need for Persona 3's sometimes frustrating checkpoints.
Another thing that makes Persona 4's dungeons enjoyable in spite of their repetitiveness is the incredibly fun battle system. Not only are battles quick and flashy, but they also involve a good bit of strategy. This is because success is based on exploiting enemy weaknesses. If you use a skill that an enemy is weak to (and the only way to use these skills is through Personas), they will fall to the ground, and you'll get another turn. You can use this extra turn to attack the enemy again, but the better move is to attack another enemy, also knocking them to ground and getting another additional turn. The idea is to knock all the enemies to the ground, so that you can engage in a cartoonish beat-em-up special attack that will instantly kill all but the strongest foes. Most of the time it is easy to exploit weaknesses, but you don't always know them, so you have to experiment and some enemies have attack patterns or buffs that make it more difficult to exploit their weaknesses. Many times you don't have to go the weakness route and you can vanquish some enemies with your regular attack, but exploiting weaknesses is the most efficient way of dispatching enemies and it's a lot more fun to mess around with all your Personas skills and build a team of Personas that will majorly kick ass.
Persona 4's battle system is very similar to Persona 3's, but two key improvements have been made, resulting in a smoother, more player friendly combat portion. The first of these improvements is the ability to control all of your party members. In Persona 3, you could only control the main character and the game's friendly AI controlled everyone else. I felt that that set up was fine, but being able to your fellow party members is not only more strategically rewarding, but it ensures that you are never burned by a dumb move by the AI. Of course you can let the AI control fellow party members if you want, but most players will opt to input everyone's command by themselves.
The other improvement in Persona 4's battle system is the addition of a "guard" command. In many RPGs, guarding is useless, but it is quite important in Persona 4. Enemies can exploit weaknesses in the same way that the player can, so if you know you have characters that are weak to a certain element or ability, the guard ability will come in handy.
The one thing that hasn't been addressed in the battle portion of the game is that you get a game over when the main character dies. It is kind of bothersome that the other characters can't seem to find a way to revive him, but it's a small annoyance. It doesn't really harm the experience in any significant way.
Another improvement is the way the game is structured overall. Though Persona 4 shares Persona 3's calendar system, the structure of Persona 4, though a bit formulaic at first, is much looser and less predictable, resulting in pacing that is even more dynamic than that of Persona 3, which was all ready a very dynamically paced game, with surprise events breaking up the linear progression of days. Though some might be put off by the idea of a calendar system, they shouldn't be. Between the interesting and emotionally satisfying social links, all the little things you can do to raise your personality stats, surprise story events, and the visually creative dungeons, Persona 4 will never get boring, and much like Persona 3, it can get highly addicting in a "just one more day" kind of way.
One aspect in which Persona 4 doesn't improve on Persona 3 is the Persona fusion system. You can obtain new Personas by winning battles and picking the correct card in a post-battle shuffle, but your Personas will be more powerful if you fuse them by combining two or more Personas. This system was wonky and random in Persona 3 with no rhyme or reason to the various combinations, resulting in logic free experimentation that was no fun. In Persona 4, it is just as wonky and random with the only improvement being a "forecast", which helps, but doesn't address the core flaws in the system. If they make a Persona 5, Atlus really needs to find a more logical way of approaching Persona creation. However, that's not to say you shouldn't use the fusion system. The fusion system is the absolute best way to acquire powerful Personas.
Visually speaking, Persona 3 was extremely stylish, with lots of funky fresh Japanese flavor. Persona 4 takes stylish visuals to the next level. Everything from the menus to the enemy designs and dungeons is bursting with cool psychedelic energy. Being a rural town, Inaba itself is more low key and smaller than Persona 3's town areas, but the TV world is a much more visually exciting place than Persona 3's Tartarus with much more attractive dungeons that make better use of color. At the same time, Persona 4 retains the creativity of the enemy and Persona designs, some of which are lifted straight from Persona 3. And underneath all the stylishness and visual creativity are solid, if a bit modest, technical graphics. Not to mention the anime cutscenes, which are very well drawn and directed, visually punctuating some of the game's key moments. In short, this is a sexy game that will constantly entice your eyes while the game's soundtrack will entice your ears. Persona 3 had an excellent soundtrack filled with jazzy j-pop fitting the game's urban aesthetic. Persona 4's j-pop is not quite as jazzy and it's a little more feminine, but the songs themselves are great with their addictive and creative melodies. And since Persona 4 is a "brighter game", the less edgy soundtrack fits.
Persona 3 was a landmark title, and while Persona 4 doesn't quite have its new car smell or its scale, it is undoubtedly the better title due to improvements in dungeon crawling, the battle system and the overall structure and plot. With Persona 4, Atlus set out to make a game that is at once more streamlined and more engaging. In this endeavor, they succeeded admirably. If you haven't played Persona 3, I would recommend playing it before you tackle Persona 4; by doing that, you will undoubtedly be saving the best for last.
GAMEPLAY-4.5/5
DESIGN-4.5/5
STORY-5/5
VISUALS-4.5/5
PLAYABILITY-4.5/5
VALUE-5/5