The Longest Grind 07 - Persona 4 Golden

Introduction

Persona 4 is one of the number of significant video games that was a glaring big black mark on my gaming backlog. I bought the original PS2 version of the game around its NA launch back in December 2008. I only got to play a few hours before a combination of a sudden increased workload at work, more gametime dedicated to the X-Box 360, and my PS2 console stopped working a few months afterward shuttered my chances of completing the game back then. I eventually bought a Vita and subsequently Persona 4 Golden as soon as it went on sale at a good price on PSN in late 2013, but it wasn’t until the impending release of Persona 5 later this year (2015) that finally gave me the push to finally put my foot down on Persona 4. I am glad to finally cross this game off my incomplete list.

I wrote a formal review of Persona 4 Golden a few weeks ago, which you can read over at my Wordpress blog. This blog is more of my condensed and informal take of the game.

It’s a Fascinating Read, Just Takes Its Time Getting It All There

Although P4G ended up having a solid story when all is said and done, I wasn’t enamoured with the story until deep into the game. I did not think the story was terrible at any point before the story got to its climax, it was still interesting to see which person was presented next and the team trying to take whatever clues they claw and deem substantial to their investigation. Each succeeding event throws the investigation crew into more confusion after accruing and analyzing new information. After the story cycled through that method numerous times, impatience was starting to set in on when the investigation team’s efforts was going to steer them into the right direction. That point finally came through (in dramatic fashion no less) and all of the numerous questions thrown out were being answered. In fact, the resolution all came crashing in after the prolonged lead up to it. There was a couple of neat things they tied in the story with particular dialogue choice selections that dictates how the story/game will end. I definitely viewed the story at a much better light once the game is all said and done, it just took its fine time introducing the cast, setting, and mystery to set in motion.

There’s Surprisingly a Lot to Do Here

P4G’s great gameplay is not limited to simply traveling from one point to another point and battling a ton of monsters. One of its greatest gameplay mechanics that not many other games in the JPRG genre has ever employed and something that makes it easily identifiable to the game is its activity function. There’s surprisingly a tons of content to discover and experience which accounts for a good portion of its long gameplay time. Over the course of the year the protagonist is residing in Inaba, the player will have a number of days where they can choose to partake a number of activities over certain parts of the day, such as studying, reading books, catching bugs and fish, watching movies, eating at a restaurant, working at a part-time job, battle training and item questing hunting at one of the TV world’s dungeons, and hanging out with particular characters. Certain activities can only be conducted at a certain phases of the day. It can be nerve-wracking not knowing if the activities you chose for that day were the optimum choices that makes the best use of the day.

Lots of Tie-Ins and Benefits

A lot of the activities the player can partake in P4G always results in something meaningful in numerous results. Working at a part-time job or undertaking particular activities will increase the protagonist’s behavioral barometers in intelligence, diligence, expression, understanding, and courage. Improved ranks in each behavioral characteristics assists in progressing through particular activities and social links. Higher rank social links translates over to bonus experience points to the newly produced persona through fusion and can immediately unlock the additional skills from the amount of bonus experience points awarded. Spending time with the investigation team can unlock special skills that are outside of their base set of skills which could be a better fit for the character to have in battle. It’s neat how much one little gameplay aspect in one area can have huge effect in others. As conducting activities is equally as important gameplay aspect in P4G, it’s nice that the developers offer players relevant awards for spending a significant amount of time taking up all the available activities.

Discovering and Solidifying Your Friend's Missing Links

P4G’s Social Link gameplay activity is excellent because of it touches upon many aspects of the game outside of gameplay reasons. I really like the use of social links as a side plot tool for introspection and development of all the characters available as social links, especially for the important characters to the central story. It’s like reading through a bunch of nice side stories that highlights their biggest personal obstacle stemming from their past and with the help of the protagonist, understand the root of their problem and attaining that breakthrough that allows them to feel much more comfortable about themselves. The game’s writers and developers deserve a lot of credit of making this gameplay element a fun challenge to do that is also endearing and inspirational.

Utilizing All the Tools in Your Party’s Arsenal

Part of what makes P4G’s battle system engaging is finding out which affinites a particular shadow is weak against, but that’s only part of what makes many battles in P4G fun. The game does a great job mixing up different shadows with differing strengths and weaknesses that pits the player to utilize all the tools in their arsenal: a culmination of the player’s cast of personas with their skill sets, along with items on hand and the other three party members skill set. The challenge is to know what option to execute at every turn to quickly attain the upper hand and ultimately win the battle. Every battle requires a new plan. The small details in team and skill compositions against the shadows’ characteristics is another mark in P4G’s excellence.

All the Small Things

There are so many subtle things presentation wise done in P4G that amazed me, scarily more so than its excellent story, gameplay, and characters. I noticed that during battles in a dungeon, the cast’s shadow mimics that dungeon’s theme background. It was a nice touch seeing rainbow colors in Nanako’s dungeon, red with black lines in Adachi’s dungeon, etc. No music playing during the day if the town in under rainy weather is another neat little detail touch. I also dig the game giving out subtle hints at certain parts of the game that may hint at something else, in particular toward the story’s climax and the end-game. I also love having a simple button to detail an item, equipment, or skill right then and there on the menu throughout the game. No more having to recall or trial and hope whatever that thing is what you thought it should do.

The Real Stars of Persona 4

Persona 4 Golden does a ton of things right, big and small. To me, I do not think Persona 4 reaches its pinnacle status as of the greatest video games (in the JRPG genre and overall in gaming history) without its excellent cast of characters, spotlighting the investigation team. Each member of the investigation team brings on their own colorful and distinct personalities that are strong enough themselves to easily identify who they are, but together bring more out of themselves and the others they are surrounded with. Folks have strong opinions on who they like and dislike. There are characters that I liked and disliked to a degree, but none of the characters I disliked were for poor writing by the game’s writing team. Characters are disliked because they were well written for how the act within themselves in the game.

Going Back to Fill in the Blanks

Persona 4 Golden is one of the rare JRPG games that I had the urge to replay the game through New Game Plus because of the surprising amount of content that’s packed into P4G, much of it I did not realize was accessible when I did some post-game research into the game. Discovering the missing content is not the only reason to replay through P4G again. One new run could have the player doing their own maximum efficiency playthrough of the game. Others simply want to replay through the game all over again. Even though the critical piece is solved, there’s a bunch of small pieces missing awaiting to be filled in to complete the P4G picture.

Does Persona 4 Golden Do Anything Wrong?

It’s hard to find anything significant that P4G does terribly that it hampered my experience with the game. On my review, I scrutinized a few gameplay details that I wished were implemented or better executed in the game, but the issues that I had with the game are few and miniscule against everything else the game did right. Here’s a list of what I thought were my few P4G miscues.

• Extremely slow start with barely any player activity
• Lack of severe consequences or relationship dynamics from choices in Social Links
• Due to battle design, end-game bosses end up being slowly beating bosses to death
• New addition Marie, still implemented well although felt like she had to be shoehorned into what was established in vanilla P4

TL;DR

It’s a damn fantastic game that does almost everything it above and beyond excellent aside from a few scratches in its overall shine.