Persona 4 impressed me right off the bat by building off many of the core ideas and design elements of the older games but also making it more friendly than those rougher early games (I've only played SMT).
It's got a slick anime intro and cutscenes here and there. it has a flashy and stylish UI, dungeons that arent as slow (as earlier titles or even many dungeon crawlers i've played), P4 is an overall smooth ride (at least initially) and one can get lost in playing it as it shifts from laid back narrative, anime cutscenes or choices and decision or to proactive dungeoneering. This shifting play style is actually quite cool and feels cohesive. P4 has many elements from various game genres like visual novel, simulation and 'dating' RPG.
But where the game really shines I felt was the context of it all... It's not just the fact the game is a dating RPG minigame but how it touches on various elements of japanese culture in subtle ways. It's not the cutscenes or goofy JRPG story its the fact that they are very anime-like cutscenes and character concepts and it plays out like various tropes and genres in an anime... It's not the defacto high school setting, but it's the themes of nastiness of how people have a bad side or how people do things they might regret when they are young and be haunted/shamed by. It's as if many little details and elements have some backbone or life behind it. Indeed, this game is the anime/otaku/japanese gaming culture equivalent of what Farcry 4 Blood Dragon was to American Action movies (It's also appropriately a JRPG instead of an FPS) As awesome fun and enjoyable as a game like this may sound to be, the game has its many quirks and even flaws that i make it far from 'perfect,' and there were also several things in it that i just simply didnt like... still, merely at it's face value its gotta be one of the most approachable games in some of the pool of these incorporated genres i've yet to play. It wins on this merit alone but also offers one a fairly engaging and interesting experience.
the 'dating RPG' component is a lot better than i'd have imagined it being described by those words. I'd describe it more as "choose your own adventure ad hoc NPC interaction" This NPC interaction is something akin to Dragon Age: Origins, but the dating aspect isnt really core. You are interacting with different kinds of people, different effects or routes get unlocked in the process. They are all great characters too (at least in concept/archetype). It's fun to discover NPC interactions in the game. (Its fun to discover everything in this game!)
The high school setting is a pseudo-'shounen' type premise. Something I have not played many games that revolves around, but I absolutely love it (at least in the context of Persona).I loved how many different characters there were and just how different their personality types are. It seems all these characters have some dark side or some issue. The only one that doesnt is the hero character (which is kind of crappy!) Everyone else has some big secret flaw which gets exposition. Even minor characters not in the plot seem to have these exagerrated qualities. (Old people hunched over...) I think a lot of it is just 'anime' stylization. But in a weird way it seems realistic because everyone has some problem. And this isnt really something you see in too many games.
The game design built around this setting is great. During the day you have these high school students who are a group of close friends and then later at night it's as if their imagination forms the actual game. It almost has this mischievious tone to it at times and it very much feels like something like Harry Potter, The goonies, The PAgemaster, and other movies (Depending on what era/how old you are you seen such things) as they try to figure out what is going on in this awkward way which very much feels seemingly the way young people would go about it.
it has a really memorable soundtrack that is quite good and on point while playing the game.
The game was one I really did enjoy... I'm quite suprised just how into this game i got while playing it. It was definitely one of those games I was thinking about all day every moment i wasnt playing it due to it. However, even as much as I did enjoy it. I dont feel it's perfect.
Compared to SMT the repeating mechanics of play and interface are a million times better and things have gone a long way but there are still weird quirks here and there and dry bits as well as parts of the game that are just a wee bit abstract. Fusion system is still just as confusing as it ever was and I found grinding in the late game REALLY takes the fun out of P4. I became worried about missing things or screwing up paths at some point, but all things considered it's not too bad. The low point imo (and this is just my opinion) of P4 is the story/writing in different ways. At times it's good and fine and at times I thought it really could have been better. My criticisms for the writing include:
controversial content/behavior/speech on part of the characters that often seem unnecessarily spontaneous or even out of character (I kinda feel like they made them do/behave just to be 'edgy' possibly as 'fan service' to anime crowd?)
narrative twists (its just my opinion but i can think of grander paths the story could have taken such as for example: SPOILER nanako's unconscious id being the 'culprit' somehow taking away people that she sees on tv, since she watches tons of tv and the reason this happens is because she is traumatized since she saw her mother on tv for several days before her father eventually told her that she was dead 'and not coming back'... which makes sense if you think about it. this would be kinda cool because many players would really never suspect sweet nanako and while focusing on this adolescent dark side stuff only eventually come to a much deeper and darker side of human existence that isnt necessarily age related and challenges notions that some people are good/bad or even that good people must somehow triumph over their demons. to me anyway it would have been more interesting
