Before I begin, you must know that I wrote a review about Persona 3 Portable. Persona 3 and Persona 4 have the same game play, graphics, replay value etc. Although Persona 4 have totally new story with new characters and new atmosphere. If you want to know more about the core game play mechanics of this game, read my Persona 3 Portable review.
The JRPG fans are aware that these type of RPG games have deep intriguing story that makes you play till the end of the game to find out real story. Persona 4 has not failed in this at all.
You again start with a nameless protagonist that you name him at the beginning of the game with the help of Igor. Your parents went overseas to work in their careers and you are a transfer student that you are on the way to Inaba where your uncle lives (when I say uncle it is the protagonist's mom's brother). You arrive at the train station, meet with your uncle Dojima and his daughter Nanako who has lost her mom when she was young. Once you have moved to your uncle's house you go to your school the next day. You make a bunch of friends at the school while arguing with a bunch of weird teachers. On the way back to your home with your friends you pass by a crime scene. While being curious of what has happened there, your uncle shows up from the crime scene and you learn out that your uncle is a detective policemen. You find out that one of the most famous TV news presenter was murdered and found hang on a roof antenna in gross and brutal way. Although her case of death is totally unknown. It is completely surprising to have such murder case since Inaba is such a very quite, tranquil and natural rural town. From now on the game starts.
The game progress is again based on the calender but this time weather feature is very important. You must defeat the boss shadows each time before the dense fog arrive the town or the game is over (in which Persona 3 was based on the moon phases). I won't tell the reason why you must defeat boss shadows before the fog or why the weather is very important since it contains huge spoilers. Also you can only enter the shadow world after the school time, which you have less opportunity to spend time with your friends and increase S.Link levels. The dungeons have more unique themes and each of them have about 10 fixed floors, no more random generated dungeons!
Persona 4 has really interesting characters that makes itself unique once again. Each of them are unique and somewhat the have more mature relations with each other. The story have more detective like atmosphere which makes you want to play more to understand the story. It has 3 endings which depends on your vital decisions! The story has great drama-comedy mix that never makes you bored at all. Most of the personas are reused with more new unique personas. Yet again the musics are top notch thanks to Shoji Meguro. The game will take about 60-80 hours to finish it with somewhat more difficult enemies and unforgiving grinding system. You must always come with great recovery supplies, equipment, personas and of course your party's level.
In general this game does deserve to be in the top 10 RPG games on gamerankings.com. Atlus have not failed its successor at all. Persona 4 has the same awesome taste that all Shin Megami Tensei games have. If you have PlayStation 2 buy this game and you won't regret it (if you love SMT games or fan of JRPGs). If you don't have PlayStation 2 cross your fingers that this game will be remade on last generation consoles or even on PSP.