awoolcott's Full Review: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 (PlayStation 2) Rele...
Following up a modern classic like Persona 3 can't be easy, but just one year after a region outside Japan finally experienced the penultimate entry in the PS2 collection of Shin Megami Tensei games, Persona 4 is here...and somehow, they've managed to pull of something special, and did it all on the “dead” PlayStation 2. Sure, it can be looked at as Persona 3.5 to cynical gamers, but the knob has been turned to 11 for this sequel. Almost everything that needed improvement has been fixed, and Atlus has followed up a great cast of characters with an even greater cast of characters that highlight one of our most important values – friendship. A role-playing murder mystery, Persona 4 is a huge, funny, sentimental, and ultimately rewarding RPG that sets aside melodrama and delivers a lighthearted, fun game that's less about saving the world and more about getting the girl and building friendships. If it accomplishes anything, Persona 4 makes me actually miss high school a bit...scary as that may seem. This'll probably be the final Persona 4 for the PS2, and though another Devil Summoner is hopefully seeing a US release, you're looking at the highest point for a franchise umbrella that's really come into its own during the legendary era of th PlayStation 2.
Rather than return to a big-city setting, Persona 4 drops you, the protagonist, into a sleepy Japanese countryside town known as Inaba as a new transfer student. No, your parents aren't dead or anything; they're just out of the country for business and your uncle (and Inaba detective) Ryotaro Dojima offered to take you in for a until they return the following year. Alas, while Inaba is usually a small, rural, quiet town where nothing really happens, that changes immediately as a dead body is found hanging from a TV antenna, with no real understanding as to why, and more importantly...who was responsible. How you get involved is another matter entirely; as school rumor about something called the “Midnight Channel” starts circulating, and you and your new friends Chie Satonaka and Yosuke Hanamura decide to see what it's about. When the person they see ends up the next victim, the gang starts figuring out what's going on. Making matters more interesting, you've discovered a portal of sorts – the ability to enter the television. When mutual friend Yukiko Amagi goes missing and winds up on the Midnight Channel, the party springs into action along with their newfound Persona – an alter-ego used for battle – and looks to not only save whoever winds up in danger, but figure out the guilty party, seeing that the police will never be able to figure it out. Meanwhile, you must deal with the often hilarious life of a student and keep your activities quiet from those same bumbling cops.
Like Persona 3, Persona 4 is a combination of dungeon delving, school, and social simulation designed around a day-to-day structure with limited time available each day. In the morning you go to class, where you might get asked a question that can boost your Knowledge stat, meet a new friend (or girlfriend, if you decide to go that route with a female link), or join a club. In the afternoon when classes end, either you can enter the TV world and work towards the completion of the task at hand, or hang out with allies or perform various part-time jobs to earn some extra cash and gain other Social Links. At night, you can either retire to your room and boost stats by doing school work, another part-time job, or reading books (all of which cannot be done if you did TV world exploring), along with a few other Social Links. Social Links are the lifeblood of your performance in the game; doing as many as possible will result in stronger fusions of the Arcana corresponding to that person when creating new Personas for the main character in battles. Even more importantly, the Social Links of your allies are vital to succeeding in the TV world. Every single party member has their own, and completing it nets many bonuses that can make the game less difficult, meaning if you only do some Social Links, it needs to be the members of your party.
The TV world is different from Tartarus in Persona 3 – rather than one huge roguelike tower to explore, the world is built around smaller, unique dungeons that are a nod to Psychonauts, in that they deal with someone's mental state. In this case, they're usually built around the repressed feelings of the character that's been captured and thrown into the television. They have some Persona 3 feel to them; they're randomly generated each day, though you can go up and down floors this time around. There's always a mini-boss to defeat on the way to the top, and there's plenty of shadows floating around to make your life miserable. Because of the smaller dungeon design, there's no warp spots; if you want to leave you have to use an item from one of the local stores, though the benefit is being able to resume on the floor you left off. At the top of each dungeon, a save point is thankfully provided, which too can be used to warp back to the entrance, and vice versa. Though it's fairly relaxed, each dungeon has an expiration date – after two days of rain, fog appears in Inaba and that's when a dead body appears. In other words; if there's a character inside the Midnight Channel when that happens, they die. If you do not rescue them by that time, the game ends. However, it's usually 2-3 weeks after they first appear on TV before that occurs, so there's plenty of wiggle room, and good players will be able to finish the job in a couple game days.
Fans of Persona 3, or the Shin Megami Tensei franchise in general, will be at home with the turn-based battle system in place. In general, it's the same as Persona 3's – there's the One More system for follow-up attacks after hitting a weakness/critical, AI commands, and the like. But within the game there's many changes. First off, you no longer have to let the AI control teammates; by setting their AI tactics to manual, you are in charge of everything they do. While generally you can get by with AI commands for basic encounters, boss fights basically require manual control unless you want to die a lot, because the AI script tends to not be as in-depth as Persona 3. It's smarter, yes, but more limited – there's no spamming of mind charge, Marin Karin, etc, as they've been written out of the script. Personally, after finally giving in and taking full control, there's no way I'd go back to letting the other party members do their own thing. Other changes include a Guard option which can shield from weaknesses, and an adjustment of the One More system, letting you follow up attack even if you hit one enemy weak point with an attack that hits all enemies. The Social Link involvement comes into play here too; if you get a party member's Link up to 3, they can perform their own follow-up attack, which can be handy. Especially if it's Chie and her Galactic Punt which boots the enemy out of the fight. Makes you wonder why she doesn't do that all the time. Higher up the Link, allies can heal status effects and help friends get back up after a knockdown attack, and most importantly, allies will push you out of the way of instant death attacks to reverse being “SMT'd”, slang for sudden death. Perhaps more importantly for many, the “tired” mechanic of Persona 3 is gone, meaning you can spend hours in the TV without getting tired out or sick.
Unlike past Shin Megami Tensei games, Persona 3 was not brutally hard unless you played stupidly. Persona 4 is strangely top-heavy; things are more difficult early on than later. Getting the initiative against shadows, once a mere matter of sneaking from behind, is much tougher, as they will hear you coming, though depending on your level they're slower to turn around meaning it gets easier as you learn the tricks or are much stronger than them. At the least, it's best to not get hit from behind, as it'll give them the advantage and the enemy AI is not afraid to wipe you out if you're not careful. If someone has a weakness, they tend to exploit the hell out of it, which can lead to an untimely death. As in the past, playing the weakness game is required – if an enemy is weak to something, exploit it. The difference now is they can still get up after being knocked down (as can the party), but a second attack will “dizzy” them for a turn...same as with your party. In Persona 3 Fuuka/Mitsuru could analyze and see all weaknesses and strengths at once after a few turns; this time around you have to find them yourselves through trial and error, though if you max out Rise Kujikawa's Social Link, she can tell one single weakness or strength at the start of a battle.
As said though, Persona 4 is top-heavy on challenge; the more familiar you get with the game, the “easier” things get, though by easier I really mean you'll be better prepared for boss battles. The first “real” boss fight can be a real pain, but eventually things get less about challenge and more about survival – a few battles take forever and become a battle of supplies and SP for magic attacks instead of brute force, which is one of the few things about the game that I dislike. That's not to say the game is easy; on the contrary, it's only easy if you're a pro at this stuff, and you should probably be playing on Expert which is significantly harder – on the level of Persona 3 FES's epilogue “The Answer” which was significantly harder than the core Persona 3 game. New players might find themselves annoyed at the ease of getting crushed, and even the newly renamed Beginner option gives 10 instant retries but doesn't really switch things up that much. Merely being familiar with the game mechanics, spending time doing the Social Links for your party members, and frequently fusing new Personas with a wide variety of skills and defenses for all various situations can make Persona 4 an enjoyable game, though one that will always carry that fear of a one-hit kill if you make a single mistake, whether you're on hour one or hour 70 (which was my completion time after seeing all the endings the game has to offer).
In addition to the grinding, fighting, and soul-saving part of Persona 4, the game offers plenty of other adventures. Quests return – and instead of only Elizabeth from the Velvet Room offering them, the quests are triggered by talking to people in Inaba, whether it's kids in school or random people on the street. Almost always what they're looking for can be found in dungeons, meaning you can go off the trail and revisit the old TV worlds and hunt them down. The rewards can be pretty good, whether its cash, items, or books that raise the main character's statistics, making them worth your while. Because they don't advance time like Social Links, you can accomplish many of them in a single run through the TV and collect the rewards the next day. Persona 4 rewrites the weapons and armor system too; you are responsible for your equipment. By fighting, you gain materials that you can sell to the blacksmith in town, and he'll frequently use it to craft new weapons, armor, and accessories to keep you ahead of the game. The main mini-game is of course, a fishing game. Hey, it's an RPG, you come to expect this stuff. It's necessary to fish, be it after school or at night, for some quests, as well as a fairly important Social Link, though it's not completely necessary. It's merely a matter of mashing the Circle button, so it's not a big deal, but it takes up an afternoon.
Though it's a PS2 game, Persona 4 really pushes the machine hard. There's reasonable improvement over Persona 3 in character design, and the move to the countryside offers a nice change of pace as the city is quieter and more serene than the busy Port Island from P3. Even the buildings are retro in feel, a nod to old-world Japan. The TV worlds are vastly different, ranging from weird to beautiful to haunting to hilariously awesome; a major change from the repetitive nature of Tartarus. The only downside is that during some battles, especially against huge enemies, there can be some slowdown, though in a turn-based RPG, it doesn't really matter that much. It's just annoying at times. The anime cutscenes are great, and better than the somewhat plain ones of Persona 3. They don't happen that often, only in important moments, but they're still great. Again the game reuses assets from way back with Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne; almost all the available Personas are taken from that game and rebalanced for Persona 4. At this point its familiar game; a small company like Atlus has to make things work their way, after all. That said, there's a lot of different Personas that were omitted in Persona 3 this time around.
The audio on the other hand is pure amazing in every way. The soundtrack is a varied collection of J-Rock during fights, jazzy pop tunes during exploration and investigating, and creepy overtures when things are going wrong. Themes for all the TV worlds are perfect, especially one particular Void Quest. Reused music from P3 is at a minimum and used for great effect during the class trip, but rarely elsewhere. As good as the soundtrack is though, it's the voice acting that takes the cake. Quite simply this is one of the best dubs in the genre...ever. The cast keeps the story going with seriousness that rarely falls into melodrama, and carries the numerous funny situations with the necessary attitude. And with a game that has so many funny moments, it makes for a more enjoyable experience. It makes the whole thing more believable and most importantly, it gets the point across that these kids are also really good friends – a key theme to the game. It's a nod to the localization team (which includes an Epinions alum, Clayton Chan aka Alkaiser) for doing such an outstanding job of taking the task seriously and pumping out such an effective translation that often goes beyond what even a big-budget company like Square Enix can do.
Closing Argument
Sure, sure, the PS2 is past its prime, and overshadowed by the next-generation of hardware. But Persona 4 brings the goods, and is my own personal Game of the Year for 2008. An interesting whodunit with tons of funny moments and outstanding battle mechanics along with a more rounded social/dating simulation system, this is the kind of game that can keep you glued to the TV for hours on end. It's day-by-day design makes it perfect for a quick game here and there, at least once you get past the initially slow introduction period, though even then it can be played in bite-size portions if necessary. Long as you're not one of those snobby people who can't handle a non-HD game in this era of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Persona 4 will be one of the very best role-playing experiences of this year, and is undoubtedly one of the best in its genre for PS2 as a whole – a machine known for its deep, varied library of RPGs. Whether or not Persona 4 is the game to finally put Atlus in the so-called “mainstream elite” of RPG developers with Square, Namco, and the like is unknown, but if I was them, I'd keep my eye on the rear-view mirror because David is starting to beat the hell out of Goliath.
Video Games. The paranormal Persona role-playing series continues on PlayStation 2 in this fourth installment. Building on the acclaimed third chapter...More at DeepDiscount.com
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