Everything great about Persona 3 is back and even better in Persona 4.
But how does one top that? We've seen sequels fail, we've seen sequels outdo predecessors by a small margin. But not Persona 4, no you won't find "small margin" outdoings here. At first glance Persona 4 may be the same as Persona 3: FES just with a different story, a different cast and minor tweaks but it is far from it.
The first thing that caught my eye when I was playing through was the characters. You'd interact with them a lot more thanks to each party member being a Social Link, giving you a better understanding of each character's resolve, their battle against themselves. You yourself begin to develop an emotional connection with each character and start to understand the game a lot better, what the main idea is, what the "TV world" means, in other words, you truly understand yourself a lot better. Yea I know it's weird to get that from a game, but trust me on that, Persona 4 really dives into your mind while you dive into its. Did I mention that Persona 4 has SUPERB voice acting? (English version), much better than P3. Each voice just fits with each character, they seem believable and you could probably relate to them a lot as well find real life friends or family or anyone who's in the same situation. But more on the characters later.
Aside from characters you have the gameplay, Persona 4 is the same as Persona 3, you have your mixing of dungeon crawling, monster fighting, your "dating-sim" esque gameplay, as well as having a school life. If you've played P3, you'll remember the dungeon was roughly 200+ floors, thankfully Persona 4 minimized that by a lot. Instead having mini-dungeons in which follows the same principle as P3, fighting mini bosses, reaching the "top" and fighting the main boss. All this while on the side you have to build social links, do part time jobs, raise your character's traits and do random sidequests. This is a lot to swallow but let's break it down.
-Social Links help you by creating stronger and better Persona (I forgot to mention, Persona are demons, or a manifest of your inner self that you call during battle to aid you). Course with Social Links, you're constantly building them as you go along through the game, maxing out a link gives you the ability to create the ultimate persona of that arcana. Some S. Links are automatic while others you have to manually progress them yourself. Party member S. Links are vital as maxing them out evolves their Persona, making them stronger, and even sometimes losing their weaknesses.
-So how about part-time jobs? Well part-time jobs not only gives you money (something I found to be a lot harder to get compared to P3) but they're another way of finding more social links, building up your character's traits, the higher level your traits, the more money you get. At times there are options that either increase or decrease your pay depending on your choices. Part-time jobs add more to your already hectic schedule but don't worry, somehow you'll fit it in as well.
-Character traits make a return from P3, if you recall, these traits were Courage, Charm and Knowledge. Not anymore, in P4, you've got Courage, Understanding, Diligence, Expression and Knowledge. Just like in P3, the higher the rank, the better it is. Why? Simple getting a max rank in Knowledge allows you to score the highest on the exam, having max courage allows to ask certain people out, having max expression allows you to talk to certain characters, and so forth. So it'd be in your best interest to max out or attain as high as rank as possible. All this will be beneficial for social links, better pay and better yet, who doesn't want to show off their eloquent speech to their friends?
Onto the actual battle system. P4 follows the same style as P3, exposing weaknesses, performing All Out attacks and so forth. Several changes include party members being able to perform follow up attacks, in other words, when you attain a certain social link rank with your party members, they can perform a 100% critical attack on an enemy as long as you knock down a monster prior. Raising their social links even further they can cure status ailments, even survive a mortal blow once during battle! This reinforces the fact that maxing out social links are a priority, especially among party members. Another change is the fact that you can actually command your party members this time around (Thank God, I was tired of Yukari constantly wasting SP and healing me with Diarahan in P3). This makes battling a lot easier than in P3 as well you can customize their movesets rather than they chose their moves at their own will. This means you can easily stack passive abilities such as Elec Boost + Elec Amp to do a ton of damage. Course you should chose carefully as they can't relearn forgotten moves. Another change is the way One More Turn! works, in P3, when using group attacks on enemies, unless you knocked them all down, you wouldn't do an All Out Attack. This changes, as long as you even knock down one enemy, you'll get another turn, damaging enemies again with the same elemental weakness makes them dizzy, requiring two turns to fully recover. Of course this goes for the same with enemies exposing YOUR weaknesses as such, it's good to plan ahead. Another thing they added was the ability to Guard, Guarding prevents being knocked down when you're hit with an elemental weakness as well as lowering damage received. This will come in handy when having party members weak to certain bosses. Lastly is the fact that though you're knocked down, it does not waste your turn, meaning you can still perform attacks right away after getting up. This changes it up a bit as this works the same for enemies, adding another element to the strategy in making them dizzy when trying to land an all out attack. The rest remains the same, the ability to scan enemies, seeing the next person/enemy to go, using physical skills or magic skills that either cost HP or SP. The shuffle card system is still in P4, however there's no longer the EXP bonus, or money bonus. Rather you can acquire a few extra Persona, get a blank card or get a black card which takes away all your rewards. At times there will be an Arcana Chance, Arcana Chance is similar to the "Double Up!" chance in P3, depending on what you get, an effect happens, for example the Death Arcana, if upright, lowers HP to 1, restores SP and kicks out of dungeon. Upright or upside down, different effects occur, good or bad. It's up to you of course if you're willing to take the chance.
For the dungeon crawling aspect, a lot has changed. Rather than a tedious boring 200+ floor tower, they changed it to mini dungeons. These mini dungeons have roughly around 10 floors for most, others less, some a bit more. However since the dungeons are a lot smaller, don't expect the helpful teleportation device found on every floor in P3. Not to mention there is no "stamina" limit found in P3, rather the limit is based on your HP and SP, you no longer gain full health when returning to the base floor. This constraint makes a bit more difficult but at the same time gives you the ability to explore and grind at dungeons for as long as you want. The game also remembers the last highest floor you were on, this makes it easier rather than reclimbing 9 floors or something of the sort. In the case of party members, it follows the same fashion as P3, select your members prior to entering and they follow you around, this time though you can't tell them to seperate or anything, monsters don't even attack them. Being too far from a party member doesn't exclude them from a battle either, so attack away even if they get stuck behind some door (this happens a lot).
In terms of story, P4 easily beats P3 in that category. Not only is it more interesting, but it has multiple endings. It starts off with you, the MC being transferred to another school because of your parents having to work somewhere. You live with your Uncle and his daughter. Soon after your transfer, strange murders occur, not just once, but twice in the same fashion. The police have deduced it to be a serial killer. After hearing a rumor the Midnight Channel in which on rainy nights, the TV will turn on at midnight and show you your soulmate, you discover the ability to enter the TV. Concluding that the murders and the TV world are somehow connected, you and your friends decide to solve the mystery using the power of Persona (friendship, courage and other sappy things). Overall, the story will draw you in as you try to draw an epic conclusion.
Lastly is the soundtrack. Though many find the songs to be bad, I for one love it. I loved P3's soundtrack, but P4 topped it with even more catchy beats and more vocal songs. While it is a mix of hip hop and a bit of orchestral songs, it does well to blend it all together in a modern day look.
Overall, Persona 4 is a great follow up to Persona 3. It does everything P3 did well, but better. Has a great soundtrack, even better battle system and better feel for interaction among the characters. The only downside is the pacing, most dungeons take around 2-3 days to complete while you're given around 2-3 weeks to complete them. This means you're often in a drought of nothing but ranking up social links, this can get a bit tedious at times.