GameSpy Review of Persona 4

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 is a role-playing game that can be enjoyed on many different levels. It's an intriguing look at a high school student carving out a life for himself in a new town. It's also a fascinating murder mystery thriller filled with plot twists and shocking moments. It also happens to be a challenging dungeon crawler that will test your knowledge over the game's combat system to its limits. Persona 4 does all those things and does them very well. This is an RPG that succeeds on many different levels and is one of the best games of the year.





Persona 4's greatest strength is its finely honed storyline. The game starts off without pulling any punches, dropping you head-first into a thrilling murder mystery that takes place in sleepy rural Japanese town of Inaba. While much of the game revolves around discovering the killer and protecting potential victims, there's a whole lot more at play here.





Welcome to Inaba





This is as much a story about the protagonist and his ability to settle into a new living situation as it is a dungeon-crawling adventure. The day-to-day life of your high school student becomes a crucial part of the game thanks to the Social Link system. The time you spend exploring this delightfully recreated slice of life in rural Japan is a great part of the allure of Persona 4. You'll foster relationships with the other colorful characters that inhabit Inaba, like your hardworking detective uncle, his adorable and diligent young daughter, and the other teens that will end up forming your circle of friends.










Social links are improved by managing your schedule (which includes weather patterns and numerous school functions) and making time to interact with these characters, whether it's by going out on a date or just taking the time to sit down and talk over a meal. You'll have to do this while also maintaining your studies, working part-time jobs, and performing other self-improvement tasks, raising hidden attributes like knowledge, diligence, courage and understanding. Try to conquer the bottomless beef bowl challenge at the local diner on a rainy day, for instance, and you'll learn more about yourself than you could have predicted.





You're rewarded for developing Social Link relationships in numerous ways, foremost by gaining the ability to create more powerful Personas, otherworldly manifestations that lend their strength to those with the willpower to control them. (They're like the traditional concept of RPG "summons," only their power come from within.) Creating strong bonds will also improve the abilities of your companions and move the plot in new directions.





As you begin to learn about the methods in which local women are being killed, Persona 4 becomes much more than just the story of a group of nosy teenagers doing their best Scooby Doo impression. At the core of the story is the trademark Shin Megami Tensei staple of an alternate "otherworld" parallel to our own, where special people can visit to face shadows of themselves. Reaching the outlandish TV world is accomplished much like in the Bloody Mary urban legend, but instead of staring into a darkened mirror, you'll watch the "Midnight Channel" explored by staring into the depths of a darkened television screen on a rainy night.















Psych 101: Persona Style





Each potential victim of the Midnight Channel killer inhabits a specialized mini-universe that takes their deepest, darkest secrets and twists them into a delightfully tacky themed dungeon. By exploring each TV world dungeon, you can confront the physical manifestations of these characters' repressed emotions. The tale, carefully woven over the course of many in-game months, delves deep into psychological subject matter like the unconscious mind, our hidden desires, and repression as a defense mechanism.





While learning about each character and helping them overcome their shadow side, you'll be able to peek inside what makes these characters tick, and the revelations are often surprising. It should be noted that the content is for mature audiences, not only in terms of language, but also in concept. The story deals with various issues relating to human sexuality with alternating doses of humor and maturity.





The story wouldn't work if it were told by cardboard caricatures, and thankfully, Inaba is inhabited by characters that you'll want to know more about the more you interact with them. The characters deliver believable dialogue in their many day-to-day interactions with you, and the voice acting is performed with great attention paid to capturing the emotions and nuances of each personality. The dialogue manages to often be quite funny, while also keeping a serious tone, when appropriate, that pushes forward the intrigue behind the plot's murder mystery.












Heartbreak, Heartbreak





If you're not sold on the unique story alone, rest assured that Persona 4 delivers on other fronts as well. The art direction is creative, with unique, unconventional character designs and a super-stylish, brightly colored presentation that permeates everything from the combat sequences to the menus. Even small touches like a color saturation effect that bleeds across the screen before a major battle go a long way. The music is incessantly catchy, ranging from retro pop songs to strong battle themes.





Persona management alone is deep enough to keep strategy-minded gamers occupied for hours on end. Each Persona is represented as a card in the tarot deck, and by fusing together multiple cards, you can create new Persona. Newly forged Persona inherit abilities from their parent cards, and finding the combination you want can take some research and good old trial and error. While you can find many Persona on your adventures in the TV world, customized Persona and those that benefit from your established Social Links are only earned through the fusing system.





Persona 4's dungeon-crawling mechanics are remarkably deep without sacrificing anything in terms of challenge, but the weakest aspects of Persona 4 all relate to this aspect of the game. The corridors are very uniform, and the dungeon layouts lack the creativity put into the fun enemy creature designs. Gameplay-wise, you can easily overlook the bland dungeons, but you may be annoyed by how often enemies have combat advantage over you, as it's difficult to get the jump on enemies in the real-time sword-swinging challenge that prefaces every encounter.





Push it to the Limit!





Combat itself is plenty of fun, though, as you'll find yourself challenged to exploit enemy weaknesses while defending your own. You'll get into the zone, pushing yourself to the brink of your characters' resources in dungeon challenges that bring to bear the best that rogue-like games have to offer. It's often all-or-nothing, and deciding when to push your luck and when to crawl back home in defeat is the name of the game.





Boss fights in particular are tough, so you may want to play the game on the beginner setting even if you're an experienced gamer. There's no effect on the storyline, and there's no shame in admitting defeat in the face of overwhelming odds. On the higher settings, you may have to grind through dungeons multiple times just to become strong enough to tackle the best the game has to offer.





Persona 4 pleasantly surprised us, coming from out of nowhere and showing us that the PlayStation 2 still has what it takes to power a gaming experience that is on par with the best offered on next-generation platforms. If you only buy one more PlayStation 2 game before retiring the trusty system to that dusty closet, make sure this is it.

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