It feels bad to have to apologize AGAIN for a delay, but circumstances pretty much forced me to put my reviewing aside.  I had to deal with some added responsibilities, and I was sick for most of this week to boot.  It didn’t help that this is by far my longest review to date – although warranted due to the sheer amount of things that I need to cover with this game.  I simply ask that you bear with me on this one.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 is a 2008 role-playing game developed by Atlus.  It is the fourth game in the Persona series, one of many offshoots of the main Shin Megami Tensei series.  Both this game and Persona 3 are arguably the most popular games in the entire SMT series: Persona 4 has received both an anime adaptation and a recently released sequel in the form of the fighting game Persona 4: The Ultimate in Mayonaka Arena.   Persona 4 has been heavily praised in both Japan and worldwide, so let’s see if it lives up to the hype.

Persona 4 starts with the player-named protagonist moving into the small Japanese town of Inaba, to spend a year living with his uncle Ryotaro Dojima and his daughter, Nanako.  Not long after arriving, a series of mysterious murders start occurring in the town, which leave the police (including Ryotaro, a detective) stumped.  Meanwhile, the protagonist learns of an urban legend called the Midnight Channel – supposedly watching a switched-off TV at midnight will reveal the viewer’s soulmate.  But as the protagonist and his new schoolmates find out, the Midnight Channel doesn’t reveal one’s soulmate, it shows the murder victims prior to their killings!  And what’s more, the protagonist realizes he has the power to go through TV sets like a portal, transporting him and his classmate Yosuke to another world on the other side!

No, you have to actually fit through the screen to go in

The fog-filled world contains mysterious places and items related to the murder victims, as well as a strange bear-like inhabitant called Teddie, who informs them that he has sensed people being thrown into the other world and asks the pair to find a way to stop these events.  Besides Teddie, monsters known as Shadows inhabit the TV World, becoming notably aggressive after people are thrown in.  Initially powerless to fight the Shadows, the protagonist and each of his friends end up confronting “Shadow Selves” of themselves: Shadows formed out of their inner thoughts that wreak chaos in the TV World (the majority of those inner thoughts cover rather mature subject matter – the main reason this game is rated M).  Once they come to terms with the thoughts that gave birth to their Shadow Self, it transforms into a Persona, a manifestation of their true selves that they can commend in battle, allowing them to combat the Shadows.  The protagonist and his friends form an Investigation Team in order to find the link between the TV World and the murders, and catch the culprit behind them!

Considering all that information is just an introduction, the beginning of the game drags on for several hours before you get into your first battles and are allowed to choose your own actions.  The bulk of the game consists of the Investigation Team’s missions to save those that appear on the Midnight Channel, and thus become targets of the murderer.  The mysteries behind the TV World and the murders are revealed very slowly, leaving large sections of the game devoted entirely to character development.  Though in a game where character development directly leads to the ability to fight, it’s quite appropriate.

Following the long introduction, Persona 4 plays like a cross between a visual novel and a dungeon-crawling RPG.  Players are free to wander around Inaba after school and spend time hanging out with other characters, working at part-time jobs, completing various quests or developing their character stats (courage, expression, understanding, knowledge, diligence).  The game operates on a calendar system – players are only allowed one action after school and one action during the evening.  Certain days have pre-determined events, and sometimes the game sadistically steals an entire week from you in the form of midterm exams.

Persona 4’s small town setting really sets it apart from most modern RPGs

Each person that the player can hang out with has their own Social Link, which increases as the protagonist forms deeper bonds with them.  This of course includes all of your party members.  Some Social Links require character stats to be at certain levels before they can be started (annoyingly high requirements in some cases).  It is very important to develop Social Links, for a reason I’ll explain soon enough.

As for the dungeons, they consist of 8 to 10 maze-like floors to fight through to get to the boss, with the enemies becoming progressively tougher as the player progresses.  The floors are randomly generated, so it’s difficult to predict where the doorway to the next floor will be.  The dungeons unfortunately have only one save point in them, right before the boss.  However, there is a purchasable item that allows players to exit the dungeon at any time, and they can start off at the highest floor they reached upon returning.  A battle will start upon contacting any of the shadowy enemy avatars, but unless the player themselves initiates the fight by “attacking” the enemy with their weapon, the enemy(s) will get a preemptive strike.  I found this particular part of dungeons very frustrating, since it is almost impossible to approach the shadows without alerting them, and missing with the weapon attack almost always results in the enemy catching you off-guard.  Each dungeon has its own particular theme (most being rather out there), and manages to stand out despite every floor looking almost identical in appearance.

And your party follows you in some sort of awkward formation

The dungeon’s treasure chests are also randomized: some of them yield weapons and armor, some have SP (magic points) recovery and others have completely useless 10 HP recovery.  SP recovery is hard to come by for most of the game, unfortunately – that fact alone makes it necessary to set aside several days to finish a dungeon.  It doesn’t help that most of the dungeons have several enemies that can’t taken out with physical attacks, thus forcing you to spend SP to deal with them.

The battle system of Persona 4 seems rather simplistic at first, but holds a deceiving amount of depth, especially once you build up a full party.  With the exception of the player’s own character, the player can choose to directly command their party members in battle or just give them orders on how to fight and let them choose their own actions.  I personally didn’t bother with the orders and just controlled them directly.  The key to fighting in this game is exploiting enemy weaknesses, mostly through the elemental magic present in every RPG ever, which knocks them down and allows an additional attack.  If all the enemies are knocked down, the player can order an All-Out Attack, which deals heavy damage to every enemy.  The problem with this though, is that there’s no logical method to figure out enemy weaknesses, reducing the player to simply guessing in most cases.  And the OTHER problem is that your party members have weaknesses of their own, which the enemies can exploit for a free turn of their own.

As you develop Social Links with your fellow party members, they gain the ability to perform certain actions in battle – such as shielding the protagonist from attacks, the ability to endure killing blows and the ability to wake up knocked-down allies when they themselves knock an enemy down.  The REAL key to battle in this game is teamwork, becoming closer to your allies equals better teamwork potential.  I’d advise not to change your party members around too often unless you plan to do a lot of level grinding; being underleveled substantially increases the difficulty of fights.

Stating the obvious is a common theme in battles too

My biggest complaint about the battle system is a simple one: it’s an automatic game over if the protagonist falls.  This is REALLY annoying if you’ve progressed through half the dungeon and just ended up in a bad situation with a powerful enemy and/or got caught off-guard.  You can buy an item that lets you instantly escape from battle, assuming you can recognize when you’re in a tight spot.  The battle system’s ultimately a lot of fun, but the possibility for unfair enemy advantages is very real (thanks a lot, preemptive strikes).

Let’s finally get into the namesake of the game: Personas.  While the protagonist is a special case, every other party member has a single Persona, which possesses specific strengths and weaknesses.  With one exception, each Persona lays claim to one specific element of magic.  The protagonist starts with one Persona like his allies, but can possess up to 12 different ones – additional Personas can be earned through the “Shuffle Time” game that takes place after victories in battle.  Two or more Personas can also be fused together to create a new one in The Velvet Room: a type of dream world that exists in the protagonist’s mind.  Just for the record, no, this isn’t optional.  You’ll likely get destroyed in the first dungeon if you don’t take a timeout to fuse Personas about halfway through, and this applies for just about every subsequent dungeon too.

Fusing 3 Personas usually yields a better result than 2 as well

Fusing Personas is where all your Social Links come into play.  Each Persona and Social Link has an Arcana, such as “Magician” or “Strength”, associated with it, and developing the Social Link of a certain Arcana boosts the player’s ability to create Personas of the same Arcana.  There is a formula of sorts to fusing Personas, but it becomes very complicated when fusing more than two together.  Fused Personas can inherit up to four skills/magic from those that are combined to create them at random, but it’s rather time-consuming to get them to inherit the exact skills you want.  That aside, it’s pretty fun to experiment with fusions and see what new Personas come out of them.  The Persona Compendium expands the potential for experimentation – it allows you to register any Personas you possess and pay a fee to resummon them after they’ve been used in a fusion or discarded.  Helpful if you want to use a specific Persona in multiple fusions.

Now that all THAT’S out of the way, we can move on to the characters.  The player-named protagonist can’t really be considered a character though, as he only communicates via player-chosen speech choices.  He is essentially a player avatar (his canon name is Yu Narukami, also).

Yosuke Hanamura is the first ally to receive a Persona and participate in battle alongside Yu.  He and his family moved to Inaba 6 months prior to the start of the game, and opened the megastore Junes, which is despised by some for stealing much of the local shopping district’s business.  Yosuke himself leans towards being comic relief and establishes himself as a wannabe ladies man – but he proves to be an insightful and reliable (if sometimes hot-headed) team member.

Chie Satonaka is another classmate of the protagonist, a steak-loving tomboy who is interested in martial arts.  While very hot-headed and pushy, she shows occasional moments of insight and is gifted with physical attacks in battle.  She is very protective of her best friend Yukiko Amagi, and has no problem kicking Yosuke around when he says questionable things.

And man can she kick

Said best friend Yukiko Amagi is a very reserved girl whose family owns the Amagi Inn, a traditional Japanese inn that is the pride of Inaba and a well-regarded vacation spot.  Yukiko is set to eventually take over the inn, and is incredibly dedicated to her current job of helping out there everyday.  Perhaps too dedicated, as Yukiko can come across as rather oblivious at times despite her high intelligence.

Teddie is the lone inhabitant of the TV World, a strange being who appears as a person in a bear costume.  He is very emotional and a bit of a worry-wart, aspects of his personality that are often played for laughs along with his unfamiliarity with certain real-world concepts.  A more serious aspect of Teddie is that he himself doesn’t know what kind of being he is, which leads to major problems later on in the story.  He eventually becomes a guide during battle, remembering the strengths and weaknesses of Shadows for the player and giving advice during battle.  At the same time though, he NEVER shuts up when your party members have low health or are afflicted by a status effect.

A bit later in the game, Kanji Tatsumi, Rise Kujikawa and Naoto Shirogane are introduced.  Kanji Tatsumi is an infamous delinquent who allegedly beat up an entire biker gang on his own.  Rise Kujikawa is a teen idol that goes by the stage name of “Risette”.  She moves back to her hometown of Inaba after announcing that she will be taking a break from showbiz.  Naoto Shirogane is a 15-year old detective prodigy, who is sent to Inaba to assist the police with their investigation of the murder case.

Ryotaro and Nanako Dojima are also major characters in their own right.  Ryotaro is so dedicated to his police work that Nanako is often left to fend for herself.  Though the bumbling of his assistant, Tohru Adachi, is sometimes to blame as well.  He does manage to figure out parts of the mystery despite not knowing about the TV World, and eventually comes to suspect that the protagonist is involved in the murder case in some form.  Nanako is initially quite shy, but opens up to the protagonist before long.  She is mature for her age, doing most of the housework that her father isn’t around to do.

She’s absolutely adorable too

The main cast of the game has great overall chemistry, leading to some memorable and hilarious moments, and none of them are unlikable.  They also go through some further development via their Social Links.  I won’t go over the Social-Link only characters, but many of their links can be started via joining clubs at school or accepting certain part-time jobs.

Considering Persona 4 was made for the Playstation 2 system, it looks really nice.  While there’s nothing particularly impressive about Inaba itself, the dungeons are always beautifully rendered and the battles look great.  The bosses are for the most part very imaginative in design and are quite memorable, if a bit out there in the themes they personify.  Each character’s personality is clearly shown in their idle and attack animations – it’s really quite awesome.  The occasional anime cutscenes are a real treat too, especially since they’re usually saved for the most visually-appealing scenes.  I still wish there were more of them though.  The one thing I can criticize would have to be the visual novel-style headshots that pop up whenever a character speaks in-game.  They really, really need to have a wider range of expression when the difference between “normal” and “pissed-off” is very minimal.

You don’t look tired at all!

Persona 4 mostly uses J-pop songs for its music (performed in English).  The game achieves varying levels of success with its soundtrack – while I do enjoy most of the songs, some of them, particularly the dungeon themes, need longer loops to avoid being repetitive as hell.  The boss themes are not J-pop; they’re just awesome.  However, you won’t hear any of them besides “I’ll Face Myself” until pretty late in the game.

The voice acting is, for the most part, really good.  Chie sounds like she should, Teddie sounds appropriately silly and so on.  I don’t feel that Yukiko’s voice is that fitting, however.  It sounds too overly nasally and is more suited to silliness than anything serious.  While doing Social Links, the voice acting becomes just horrible, if you can even call it voice acting.  Only small snippets of dialogue are actually voiced during Social Link activities, which come off as really unneeded and awkward, especially since what they say rarely if ever matches up with the shown dialogue.  This even applies to the Social Links with major characters.  I honestly don’t see why those aren’t fully voiced, in the least.

Overall, Persona 4 is an incredibly engaging game that has sometime for everyone.  Whether you’re interested in the moderately-challenging battle system, solving the murder mystery, fusing cool creatures or watching a varied cast of characters develop before your eyes; there’s never any lack of things to do in Persona 4.  I would recommend this game to any RPG fan of any age. . . well, not really.  The mature subject matter the game covers at times doesn’t make this a game I’d recommend to anyone under 17.  And the visual novel aspects of the game on their own aren’t particularly well presented: don’t buy Persona 4 just for that.  If you happen to own a Playstation Vita, I would recommend you buy the updated version of the game – Persona 4: The Golden.  Aside from including another playable month and new Social Links, it allows the player to actually choose which skills their fused Personas inherit.

Unfortunately, Super Teddie is not a playable character