Persona 4 (2008)

I went straight to this after being blown away by P5 and reading online that a lot of people rate this as their favorite Persona game. I honestly think it's all about which Persona you played first because these games are definitely like nothing I've seen before and they are always worth your (long) while.

I enjoyed the setup in the little charming Inaba that felt really alive thanks to the presentation and the characters, almost as if I had been there in real life. The storytelling is on point and very captivating thanks to the dialogue and lovely anime scenes. It took a long time before I even got to "play" because as per usual these games take their time to immerse you in their world, and I love that!

The soundtrack is nice and helps in creating the right atmosphere but a lot of the songs are extremely catchy so I found myself humming them quite a lot even when not playing ahah!

The combat is the same as the other Persona, turn based and with a weakness-strength system, it has a good flow to it.

It does require quite a bit of grinding and the dungeons can get repetitive since they look quite simple, the map gets reset every time you leave and treasures are randomized, which I think takes away the point of exploration. I do believe that is more than forgiveable when we are talking about a ps2 game though!

Overall a must play JRPG :)

Persona 5 may be the talk of the town right now, and is most likely the entry point for many newcomers to the series, but I'd say if you loved Persona 5 definitely give this one a shot. It may not be as polished and refined as Persona 5 (Atlus did an amazing job developing a completely new engine for that game), but it has the heart and soul of a Persona game through and through.

Fun characters, hilarious/dramatic moments, killer soundtrack, addictive gameplay, by the end of this journey I promise that all these characters will have grown on you and like any good friendship, you'll be a little sad to see them go lol.

Off topic for a bit, I love Persona 5 and it is in my top 5 favorite games. Right after playing 5, I decided to play 4 and 3. So after around 70 hours of P4, I really like it, but I have a lot of problems with it. If I were to give P4 a subjective rating, it'd be a 7 or even an 8 out of 10.

Let's start with my problems, asking NPC's for information about someone was filler that didn't really provide much. Bosses have a lot of health, but the reward you get is very underwhelming. For example, I beat the killer and I get 6000 XP while in the miniboss before that, I get 15000 XP. I didn't like having to backtrack a few floors to get an item in order to proceed to the next floor. Someone "dies" and then comes back to life. It's a trope that was forced and unnecessary. I felt like it would've been even more emotional if that character stayed dead. Like something the characters should try and accept. This is something Destiny 2 does better with Cayde-6 because you don't bring him back to life. He stays dead. I found the killer to be very predictable. I called it after beating Yukiko's castle. My most recent problem would be the final dungeon as I really had to grind a lot to get to a high enough level to beat the game.

Now for the positives. Like I said previously, the story and characters are as strong as Persona 5's. The world building of Inaba and the TV world is great. The OST has some great tracks. I still liked the combat, even though I'm not really a fan of turn-based combat. The gameplay in general is weaker than P5 due to more grinding and procedurally generated dungeons but it's still good.

I might not be saying much when it comes to positives, but what is there is strong. The story and characters really make it a fun experience and I can easily recommend it despite a couple of issues. Subjective Rating: 7 or 8/10 Objective Rating: 6/10

RPGs usually come with a setting where I, as the player/protagonist, am the one single person who can save the world from an impending disaster. It's pretty much a core part of the genre. However, this is the first time that I've had to save the world while attending classes, hanging out with friends, bonding with my family, and generally dealing with life as a teenager. Persona 4 was my first experience with the Persona franchise, and I'm really happy to have played it.

Being an RPG, there are far too many details and mechanics in Persona 4 to list here. I found the story interesting, with its murder mystery setup and race-against-time approach. I really enjoyed the Social Links, which allowed me to get to know the characters better while rewarding me in-game. The passage of time in Persona 4 was also unique, with a fixed calendar from April 2011 to March 2012, instead of the generic 'X days has passed' statistic common in most RPGs.

On the other hand, I was not too impressed with the combat system. Battles with the regular shadows were pretty much elemental rock-paper-scissors. Boss battles had me chipping away at their massive health bars for about 20-30 minutes until they went down. All of this was on the lowest difficulty, so I can't imagine what kind of torture awaits at the higher levels. The Persona Fusion mechanics also caused some frustration, because of the randomized way in which the skills are passed on to new personas.

But despite my personal gripes about the combat, I would still rate Persona 4 as an amazing game. It's chock-full of content to explore, has a host of likable characters, tells an engaging story, and keeps you entertained all the way.

Jumped straight into this after finishing Persona 5. Was hooked immediately by the opening credits. Again, a beautifully stylish video game.

And, once again, I fell in love with the world, the characters and the mythology throughout. The dungeons were mostly visually interesting, although the procedurally generated aspect of it was a drag compared to the designed experiences in P5.

All in all, this has aged very well for a PS2 game. I loved it and...well...Persona 3 now I guess. Another 80 hours later and I’ll probably be saying the same things again...