Reaping the rewards of friendship
You are, as usual, the silent protagonist with null personality. That is something you yourself has to give him (through your own imagination and in-game conversations).
You play the life as an highschooler, a 16-year old "normal" boy living a teenager life.
This time the games plot spins around an urban legend - "The Midnight Channel". It states that if you look into a turned off TV at midnight you may be able to see your soul-mate. But here the plot has another twist. Mysterious kidnappings and murders are connected to the channel because the victims are said to be shown on the channel right before their disappearance.
The place is Inaba, a backwater countryside town, where you have come to live for a year with your uncle and his daughter.
Pretty soon after your arrival here a couple of mysterious murders takes place. It does not take long before you are dragged deeper into the mystery and everything just gets even more freakier from there.
You discover that you have the power to enter a TV. And to your amazement you discover that there is an whole world inside. A world inhabited by shadows.
All this is of course to much for you alone, so it is important that you had some time to make good friends with some of your schoolmates before entering this ghost world. And making friends is the most important aspect of the game. These "social links" are vital when battling the shadows. The higher these links are the more effective youre friends are in battle.
All of your teammates have something called a "persona" - your inner strength taken form as a powerful entity to fight shadows. Personas get experience from battles, levels up and get improved skills.
But you are special, as you can have more than one persona and even switch them in and out of battle. And a fusion-system allows you to create even more of them.
Fusion takes place in a ...car... this time around. But it still is called the Velvet Room (yes Igor is back). Here you also can accept mini-quests to further improve yourself, your friends and personas.
What makes this game so amazing is the story and its characters. How the game slowly builds up at the beginning, through character interaction and development, twists and turns in the story and the ever present "fiction contra reality" - feeling.
You have to dig into a supernatural case only known by you and your mates. Adults all around you only sees you as an ordinary teenager with teen problems and teen responsibilities. They would not belive you if you told them, so you have to solve this on your own.
And characters around you have their own life to attend to, they really "live". Just as in P3 I have to say that characters and also voice-overs are top-notch. I would go as far as to say they are the best ever, this far. They are, in my book at least.
I have played through this game 3 times now ( I have read about ppl played through it like 12 times! ) and although the games is dead linear - all those social links makes up for multiple play-throughs. Every time I start up a new Souji Seta it is like seeing an old friend. Hell, you can just say I have fallen in love with this game.
I have never played a perfect ten but this is damned close. Some minor flaws like somewhat long loading-times and a little monotonous at times when dungeon-crawling keeps this at 9,5. But it is up there in my top 5 besides stuff like Baldurs Gate II and Grim Fandango.
I can Bearly wait for a P5 ;)