 Persona 4 This was actually the game that really got me into the Persona series initially. If you were one of the 10 people who had a PS Vita back in the day, you'd know that for the longest time Persona 4 Golden was considered to be THE game to get further handheld. Everyone who owned a Vita had this game. And to be fair, there wasn't a whole lot of competition. If a half decent game landed on the Vita, you'd know everyone would be talking about it. So it's no wonder so many people were excited about this game. I bought this game on a whim. I knew basically nothing about it going in. What I found was an amazing experience on like anything I had ever played. I loved this game. I've beaten it 4 times, I have over 200 hours poured into Persona 4 Golden across multiple playthroughs. And I don't usually give any RPG that much of my time. It's THAT good. In this game you play as a transfer student with old man hair who moves to the rural town of Inaba to stay with his abusive alcoholic uncle for the next year. Soon you make some friends at your new school and together you stumble upon a serial murder mystery involving another world on the other side of the TV. Yeah, it's a Persona game, so of course there's a supernatural element present. And this time it's in the form of a TV world you get to explore after school. The game is about balancing your two lives. That of a normal high schooler and that of a secret shadow slang sleuth. So first off, this game has an incredibly good story and an amazing cast of characters. I really like the characters in this game. They're all fantastic. They all have unique personalities that shine through their many interactions with each other. The first three characters you meet are your classmates, Yosuke, whose main struggle in life is being a Walmart employee, What the hell is this? Chiye, who's obsessed with meat and is always screaming, and Yukiko, who's...well... The characters are all so well written that they actually feel like your friends. Moments like when Yosuke calls you up in the middle of the night and asks you which of the girls you prefer, or when the whole group has to study to get their driver's licenses so they can go to the beach, make their interactions feel so genuine like they're actually a close-knit group of friends. And as the story goes on, your group expands with more and more characters who each have their own inner struggle. This game is so good that I even like the obligatory, annoying-talking JRPG animal in the form of Teddy, who you meet in the other world. This dude is one of the funniest characters I've ever seen in a video game. When I first saw him, I thought to myself, oh boy, a marketable mascot, how predictable. But then he quickly grew on me. I usually hate this kind of character, but in this game I actually found him very endearing and he has a surprising amount of depth to him. And he makes these terrible bear puns that are so bad that they're actually funny. Thank you very much! This land feels so... I feel like I'm going bear-zerk! I honestly enjoyed almost every scene with him in it. He's a great character. See, that's how good Persona 4 is. It takes one of the JRPG genre's most annoying and overused tropes and somehow makes it good. It transcends the entire genre. Honestly, this game is just really funny. I don't usually like games with a lot of cutscenes, but the cutscenes in this game are just so entertaining and the story is really intriguing. It makes me laugh sometimes. The writing in this game is top notch. They know how to tell a good story with well-written dialogue without over-complicating things and the pacing is very good. These characters feel so authentic and their interactions and antics with each other are just very fun to watch. The game balances the serious and lighthearted scenes perfectly, which is not an easy thing to do because this game does have its dark moments for sure. At its core, Persona 4 is a mystery game and a damn good one too. The whole game is about solving a big mystery in Inaba and you find yourself investigating and putting the pieces together over the course of the story. It is a phenomenally well-written adventure with twists and turns at every corner. It is just such a good story overall with dynamic characters, humor, thought-provoking themes and a gripping mystery plotline. And as good as the story is, the core gameplay loop is just as engaging. So the game takes place in Inaba and this is one of the best RPG towns ever. It's a small town with a lot to do. You'll become familiar with the area and its inhabitants quickly. Inaba is a quiet town and they did a really good job of delivering that countryside atmosphere. The town has plenty of NPCs roaming around and you'll find that they each actually have their own personalities if you talk to them over the course of the game. A lot of them even give you side quests. They even change their dialogue every month while maintaining all of their little personality quirks and they did not have to do this. This is just indicative of how much attention and detail went into this game to make Inaba feel alive. The various shopkeepers of the market district even have their own quests to give you and they actually have unique designs and personalities. You can even talk to them about rumors and for help when investigating. It's crazy. The game's world is like a snapshot of the late 2000s. You live in a cramped little house with a tube TV. Everyone has flip phones. People actually go outside and hang out with their friends. Instead of sitting around on the internet all day, it was a simpler time. There's just so much to do in Inaba. You can go fishing, you can catch bugs, you can garden, you can build models to display on your shelf, you can ride your motorbike to different places and hang out with your friends and you can spend your evening doing things like drinking expired milk from the fridge. You just will not run out of things to do and the game keeps you busy as you balance your social links with dungeon crawling. So what'll happen in this game periodically is someone will go missing in the TV world and you haven't told the next foggy day to save them before they end up on the morning news. So you have to keep track of the weather report to get a good estimate of how much time you have left and try to get through each person's unique theme dungeon that represents a part of them that they wanna suppress. The game is so ahead of its time that there was even a Minecraft dungeon and this game came up before Minecraft even existed. I'd be lying if I said the dungeons in this game are amazing. They really just consist of like a dozen or so floors with mazes that almost feel randomly generated. You fight shadows on these floors, collect treasure and take on many bosses while helping yourself to some Dr. Salt Neo to restore your SP, which sounds disgusting honestly. It's your typical dungeon crawler setup though the battles are really where the game shines. The battle system in the Persona series is honestly really amazing. I love how you can exploit enemy weaknesses and chain follow up moves. The bosses in the game are also very well designed and they offer a satisfying challenge especially if you're like me and enjoy fighting bosses under leveled. And the fights go together so well with the game's amazing soundtrack. The music in the game is so good. It legit gets me hyped every time I fight a group of shadows. It actually helps make the repetition seem tolerable which shows how strong the whole soundtrack is. They just did a really good job with the game's music. Outside of dungeons, you of course have to franchise the signature social links. Yeah, that's what they used to be called before Persona 5 came up with confidence. What the hell does that even mean anyway? I'm pretty sure they just made that up. Look, the social links in this game are fairly good. I really like the main cast of characters a lot and hanging out with them shows the player a hidden side to them that you didn't see before. This game has some amazing side stories alongside its already great main story that you just wanna explore. You can join clubs, meet strange people around town and you can even hang out with your cousin at home. These social links often intertwine with one another and you'll sometimes run into different characters you know while progressing someone else's story. They aren't isolated at all. It gives the world a sense of depth and you can even date the girls in the game. This game has a lot of good romance side stories but the best one to choose is obviously Rise Kujikawa who is most definitely the best character in Persona 4. She's a famous pop star you can go with and she is the most friendly option out of all of them so she's a clear winner here. Persona 4 Golden is a hugely ambitious game that turned the JRPG genre on its head and introduced tons of new ideas and perfected the series formula. This is one of my favorite games of all time and now they're pouring it to Switch, Xbox and PlayStation and it's only 20 bucks. So as for whether or not I would recommend it, I say, hell yes. That will literally be the best 20 bucks you've ever spent. This game blows 99% of modern games out of the water. It's a phenomenal experience from a time when the genre was at its peak of creativity. So if you're looking for a good RPG that will suck you in, this is your game. If you enjoyed this look at Persona 4 and want to know more about the series, be sure to check out my thoughts on Persona 5 right here. I think you'll enjoy it. I'll see you there.