Damn Protagonist. Damnnnnnnn Protagonist. Damn Protagonist! Back at it again with the stylish glasses! Welcome to Persona 4.
I know Erin reviewed Persona 4: Golden some time ago (like some years ago) but I decided to pick the original release of the game on PSN. And I soon regretted my decision of ever doing so… Kind of.
For those of you who don’t know the story of Persona 4 (how could you not?), our protagonist comes to Inaba to live with his uncle and cousin as his parents are working overseas. Soon after arriving in the countryside town, crap goes down as people are being murdered and found hanging on TV antennas. It is now up to the protagonist and his new friends to find out the cause of these murders inside the TV world. Yeah, the TV world. Get rekt, son.
The gameplay is very similar to that of P3. You have your standard attack, skills, guard, persona switch, escape, the like. Once again, only the protagonist can be allowed to have multiple personas.Thankfully in P4 you don’t have to worry about tired or sick party members. That feature was taken out.
When P3 gave us one place to explore, P4 gave us many… with the majority of them only having nine floors. With every dungeon, the theme is centered on who got kidnapped along with the boss. For quite some time, I thought that the map changed because every time I went back into the dungeon, the mini-map would be blank. Thankfully I was wrong but I still forgot the layout of the dungeon. Now after you finished a dungeon, you can go back and fight a stronger enemy that is the boss room. If you decide to go fight the stronger enemy, you can get a weapon for someone in your party.
Quests are back but they are completely different than what they were in P3. In P3, quests are given out by Elizabeth. Either she would want to see an item or have a persona fusion done. In P4, Margaret doesn’t give out quests, people around Inaba do. So I said screw it and didn’t do quests until I found out that if you do, you can lower the price of healing from the fox in the TV world. The quests here follow closely the same as they did for Elizabeth, get an item for someone or solve a problem but no persona fusions. I didn’t do many quests, probably only a handful unlike what I did in P3P.
Social Links are back in full force once again. They still play out the same as they did in P3 so nothing much to talk about there.
FUSIONS! I did only one. Once I found out that no quest really calls for one, I left fusions alone. I only did one so I could have a persona that could repel physical attacks. But like the previous Persona titles (excluding P2 IS & EP), persona fusion follows the same rules.
The music of P4 is quite good except for the song that plays during battle… I heard it enough times from the anime and having to hear it constantly in battles drove me up a wall. Give me Your Affection and I will be just fine.
Persona 4 will still makes you cry over the difficulty of the game but do not let that stop you from playing. P4 offers humor, excitement, MURDER, and Social Linkssssssssssss. But mostly murder. With the game being Atlus’ cashcow as of late, it is still good to go back and find out why it is.
Persona 4 (PS2)
3.5/5
One of these days I will learn how to play Persona good.
Hey Emma… Where is P2 EP?
So… Ummm… Some floors are set, yes. But most are generated when you actually go on them. Did you really beat the game with only one fusion? It’s kinda one of the most important mechanics in the game, so much so that I can hardly believe it’s possible to beat it without it. Being able to pass on and inherit skills, and make personas like Black Frost that are fusion exclusive is how you make the game not insanely hard. Doing one fusion sounds almost like a challenge run of some kind. If you’re saying it’s too hard, that’s probably why. What difficulty did you play on?
Yeah, I did only use one Fusion persona and that was near the end of the game to fight Adachi and Ameno-sagiri. This is not the first time that I have done this (P2 IS was the first). I played on Beginner and even on that difficulty, I ran into some hard times (but mostly at Adachi and Ameno-sagiri). Atlus games are always hard (it’s why I haven’t beaten Trauma Center yet) and I am not a Persona master. :B