One of the best PS2 games makes it way to the Vita remastered with a ton of new stuff.
The story for Persona begins with your main character-a silent protagonist which you can name yourself, you get sent to live with your uncle in a sleepy town called Inaba. You get settled into your new school and you'll make some new friends pretty quickly you'll become best friends with Yosuke, a hyper-active girl who's in to Kung-Fu films called Chie and the daughter of a famous family hotel Yukkio.
Throughout the story you find out that there have been some strange incidents during the night, and finding a strange channel called The Midnight Channel which leads to another world full of shadows. So you and your friends find out more about The Midnight Channel by entering the world and you'll meet a funny looking character called Teddie who is strange looking teddy bear who helps you out. But later on in the game you find out that certain people get kidnapped and thrown into the TV world, you have to rescue them before the next 7 days or they die.
But if you do try and rescue them you find out that their own shadow tries and kills them. But it turns out that their own shadows are a part of them and they can become their own Persona which you can summon in battles. The story gets more random and funnier with a mix of Murder in it turns out to be enjoyable story.
Gameplay: If you are new to series or played the PS2 version, Persona 4 is a traditional Role-Playing game you shouldn't have any problems with the battle system if you've played other RPG games before where certain enemies will have weakness or what does more damage to enemies. You can only have up to 4 party members in your team, you can change their tactics during battles if you want to, you can also team up and beat the crap out of enemies if you hit their weakness. If you want to end the battle quick you can press Triangle to fast forward in battles which you can only do in battles.
The Vita version has online features which allows you to get help from other players online if you are stuck in a situation before entering a random battle you can send out a signal on the top left of the screen, if anyone picks up your call, they can aid you with a little HP and SP during each battle. You can also fuse other Persona monsters to making new ones which can help you and register skill cards.
At the end each battle you can play through a quick mini card where you can earn new Persona's but if you pick a red card out of random you'll get no EXP, items and Yen which can be annoying if you're not too careful. When you are not battling through enemies and taking down bosses in Dungeons, you'll also be studying if you want to keep your grades up in school and become the most popular person in school. You can also go to after school clubs like Drama or hang out with your friends who have their own problems in life but you're always there to help them out.
You can get into relationships and date other girls or you can go fishing which is a mini game which you can do at any time. There are shops where you can buy equipment and armour and items when you're exploring dungeons. You can fuse other Persona's together and make more powerful Persona's in battle which you can switch at any time. Certain times you'll be trying to solve the mystery about the strange murders and kidnappings in Inaba and in the TV world where you'll also be making choices and little team of investigators will help you along the way to find out who the culprit is. An extra dungeon and new Social-Links have been added in only on the PlayStation Vita along with a few new surprises including a TV Pop-Quiz show
Graphics and Sound: The graphics might be perfect to an RPG game for PS2 but has a lot great Anime visuals and character animation; but all of that is in HD on one little handheld. There have been a ton of huge improvements in The Golden more places to explore in Inaba and outside but it does feel more like you're in a traditional Japanese little town you've got the school to explore, the Shopping districts, Junes Shopping Mall where you can meet your friends and enter the TV world. The Dungeons in the TV world are a little wired something that you would only see in certain films and games that have a bit of Goth and Emo mix in it together.
You'll be fighting your way through 10 floors in each dungeon with a different setting, like an Enchanting creepy castle or 2D/RPG fantasy world. There's a lot of Anime/Manga moments make the game more fun to play and yes there are a lot of random moments in Persona 4 which will keep you laughing for a while.
Another thing I liked about Persona 4 was the soundtrack which has a mix of J-Pop in the game but yet some of the music yet memorable and catchy odds are the Battle music will get stuck in your head of the time. Shoji Meguro has once again given its Persona fans some awesome music to listen to and memorable themes.
The voicing for most of the characters are well done unlike some RPG games that have weak voicing or annoying characters with terrible voicing, there is a lot of voice dialog in the game. You'll not be disappointed on how bad the voicing is for Persona 4 it fits well for an Anime RPG game. But if you've played it on the Playstation 2 they've changed the voices for both Chie and Teddie which may or not disappoint you.
Overall: This is the reason why you should buy a Playstation Vita either on cartridge or download from the Playstation Store; you can easily spend more than 80 hours in one sitting. You can choose what difficulty you want to play it on from easy all the way up to expert mode, there's a ton of stuff to do after clearing the game on your first play through. Trophy support is added and a ton of extras from music concerts, artwork, music and videos. It's still my all-time favourite game on both Playstation 2 and now on my Vita, this is a game that should be in everyone's collection, almost every gaming site and magazine have also claimed that this game is a classic too.