Persona 4 is an excellent RPG, and definitely improves from it's predecessor.
Persona 3 is an outstanding RPG. There is no doubt in my mind that it is one of the best titles available on the PlayStation 2. Not just as an RPG, but as a game in general. It was the year 2009, and there would be a dark world known as Tartarus. Every night at midnight, there would be the dark hour, where time would freeze for everybody around, except those who had the power of the Persona, who were able to enter Tartarus. Every full moon, a shadow would appear. Your objective would be to defeat these 12 shadows, and the power of the Personae could help you. At the beginning of the game, the main character joins SEES, a group of people who have the power to use the Persona. They were all given evokers, and could enter the world of Tartarus. School kid by day, Persona user by night. That is my sum of the third installment.
Almost two years have passed since such events began.....
A new batch of school kids have been gifted with the power of the personae, and are the only ones who can solve the vile problems lurking in Japan, for the fourth time!
We are living our lives. Abound with so much information.
I can easily say that the fourth installment in the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series is just as fantastic as the third. There are some aspects which are better, and some that are inferior. Both games can easily be compared, but it's also hard to judge on which one's better. All I can really say however is that Persona 4 is awesome, and PS2 owners who love RPGs should go out and buy this epic RPG right now! If you don't like the genre, then there's nothing special here for you, and you are excused from reading this review.
It is now the year 2011. The game starts on April 11th, 2011. This is just over one year after the ending events of Persona 3 FES, which ended on April 1st 2010. The plot involves the main character shifting cities again. Instead of living in a dormitory however, he is living with an officer, and his little girl in a small house in the small town of Inaba. He attends Yasogami High School. Shortly after his arrival, two females are found dead after foggy days; A journalist accused of having an affair with a politician, and the high-school student that found her body. Those that watched the Midnight Channel claimed to have seen the victims prior to their deaths. The main protagonist somehow has an odd ability to be able to enter the TVs, and can help other people in. So, the protagonist and his friends go to the massive widescreen TV at a shopping centre known as "Junes" (pronounced "Joo-ness"), in order to fit through, and enter the TV world. The TV world replaces P3's Tartarus world, and The Dark Hour. P4 has an excellent concept, and it makes me wonder what they'll think of next.
There's something special about every protagonist in P4. A lot of the hero's actions can be controlled by the player, so it's up to you whether he's awesome, or a total idiot. Yosuke Hanamura replaces Junpei, although he acts more mature at times while he still acts silly during other moments. Chie Satonaka is considered the leading female. While she has a short temper, she is still cheerful, energetic, and has an obsession with fighting and kung-fu. Yukiko Amagi is another female whom joins the party later on, who unlike Chie is rather shy. In the TV world, you will meet a strange looking creature named Teddie. He guides you through the TV world, and gives everybody special glasses that he makes which clear the fog in the area. You'll also be accompanied by other allies, who have the power of the persona.
Come on, let go of the remote! Don't you know you're letting all the junk flood in.
If you are familiar with P3, or any other game in the series, then P4 will be no stranger to you. However, there are still some minor differences between 3 and 4 (I have not played the other two as I write this). I shall get to those later.
Much like Persona 3, Persona 4 is split up into two parts of the game that feel completely different from each other. You are a teenager attending school. You are also a user of the personae. Players will switch between the two often. As the days go by, there will be different events to partake in after school, making friends, increasing your skills, joining clubs, getting a job (which is introduced in P4) etc. In terms of fighting shadows, and training your characters, there's the TV world. After school, or in weekends, you can arrange to meet with your fellow persona users at Junes, where you can enter the TV world via a massive widescreen TV in the mall. Thank God for today's HDTVs. The TV World is quite a bit different to Tartarus in P3. Firstly, it isn't a massive tower with over 150 floors, but rather, various dungeons depending on the status of the character inside the Midnight Channel. It feels even more like the dungeons in Dark Cloud than P3 did. If you've played Level 5's Dark Cloud or Dark Chronicle (Cloud 2), then you'll be familiar with the randomized floor layout.
Get up on your feet, tear down the walls.
The battle system is no different from P3. Turn-based. If you've played a Final Fantasy game (that isn't XI, XII, Crystal Chronicles or many of the other spin-offs), then you'll know what i'm talking about. Depending on the difficulty you chose at the beginning of the game, it will somewhat effect battles. Of course, the enemies are much harder the higher the difficulty is, that's obvious; but also, from Normal onwards, if the main character dies, the game is over. I'm unsure of the higher boundaries, as I played Persona 4 on Normal. As I was saying, it's turn-based. Up to four allies can fight at once. You can switch around personae for different abilities. You can also fuse personae, in order to create powerful new ones, and abilities. And the awesome thing is, this time, you can choose to control the allies yourself, unlike in P3 where your allies were AI controlled.......always! So, it's easy to say that this alone is the reason why I prefer P4's battle system over that of P3's.
We're all trapped in a maze of relationships. Life goes on with or without you.
Social Links return. Social Links are the individual levels which you can gain when you make friends with others. When an important event happens between you and the friend, and you're treating them in a good way, your level for that particular relationship will increase. If you spend enough time with a certain person, eventually, that social link will get to Max, when the friend fully trusts and respects you. Social Links can also increase the stats of certain element personae. The elements vary from person to person. You can also date some of the girls that you can make friends with, including the leading females. You can date Yukiko and Rise!! A new feature in the Social Links is hanging out with more than one person at once, to increase more than one level in one afternoon. This can only work with certain friends though. Joining clubs can help you increase your range of buddies.
One other thing to mention are the side-quests. If you remember the requests from Elizabeth in the Velvet Room from P3, than you'll be somewhat familiar with requests that are asked by students at school, rather than Margaret (Elizabeth's sister, who replaces her for P4). Many different students will ask you for certain items that can be found in the TV, or other requests, such as doing quizzes, talking to a girl for a guy, etc. You will be rewarded for each of these you do, so they're good to at least start after school, before hanging out with mates.
All this gameplay adds up to well over 100 hours of gameplay. And well.......THAT'S A LOT!
Catch a glimpse of the hollow world.
The fourth game isn't really much of an improvement from the third, when it comes to the graphics. I might just be spoiled with the graphics of Square-Enix's big three from 2006, (Kingdom Hearts II, Valkyrie Profile 2 and Final Fantasy XII, in that release order) as those three games still have amazing graphics, even after playing several PlayStation 3 titles. While Persona 4 does have some pretty good graphics for the system, I still think they could've done a little better with them. But hey, it ain't anything to cry about. The anime cinematics are back, which were awesome in P3. They are more common, and (in my opinion) more awesome in P4. Anime art has always impressed me.
If you've read my Persona 3 review, then you'll probably know how much I disliked it's soundtrack. A very tiny selection of tracks were enjoyable. Persona 4 improves vastly on this aspect, and move onto more of a genre that is in my liking zone. I've learned to enjoy bits of the J-POP genre (J-ROCK is much more awesome though). Persona 4 relies heavily on the J-POP genre. Most of the key tunes fall into this genre. As a bonus, I got an extra CD, containing some of the P4 soundtrack. While it doesn't have all of the songs in the game, it does have a few goodies on there, and a reasonable quantity of tracks. Shoji Meguro composed the soundtrack, and I can say that he did a decent job. The sentences I've put in throughout this review come from the main song used in the intro to P4. While some songs are pretty silly, J-POP songs with Japanese females singing in English, (which you can barely understand, I hope that wasn't racist) at least that's nowhere near as bad as in The World Ends With You, where that soundtrack was mostly HIP-HOP. Overall, while P4's soundtrack isn't the best I've heard lately, it's still satisfactory, and much better than P3 in this aspect.
I search for your heart, pursuing my true self.
It's hard to believe that the PlayStation 2 got released almost ten years ago, (ninth year now) and such a system is STILL GOING! Well, with all the awesome games available for the system, and some good games still being released for it, with Atlus still contributing heavily, it's barely surprising. It's quite amazing to know that there was such a small gap between P3 and P4, but P4 still ends up awesome, and (in my opinion) an improvement from P3. If you previously enjoyed the other games in the series, then it's a no-brainer to go out to the stores and buy this game now, before it withers away like all RPGs tend to do outside Japan. If you're new to the series, then either play P3 first, or wait for P1 to make a release on PSP. I do guarantee you, RPG gamers will love Persona 4. Live a life in Japan, as well as fighting shadows in a world of fiction behind a TV screen. Atlus has captured my heart yet again with this amazing RPG. Persona 4 is an excellent RPG, and definitely improves from it's predecessor.