Persona 4

Rating Teen Genre role-playing Publisher Atlus

Finally, a game that isn’t scared to reveal the murderous truth about television.  In Persona 4, your quiet stay in rural Inaba is ruined, almost on cue, by the murder of a television personality.  After that, an upper classman is also murdered in similar fashion.  What does all of this have to do with an urban legend about a phenomena known as the Midnight Channel?  Only that instead of meeting your soul mate, you and your friends are catching a glimpse into who the next murder victim is.  Armed with supernatural powers and the guidesmanship of a giant stuffed egg-shaped bear, defeat the Shadows who are producing prime-time shows with killer ratings.

Hot on the heels of the timeline of Persona 3, there are quite a few modifications to be found with this sequel.  First and foremost, the “Tired” status has been eliminated.  Instead, once you leave the TV world, you will decide to rest until the next day.  To add a bit of difficulty, you no longer recharge HP and SP just by returning to the entrance.  Instead, completion of the Hermit Social Link will allow you to buy healing from Kitsune, guardian of the Fox Shrine.  There are no time limits once inside the TV realm, and leveling up occurs at a steady pace.  An added effect is learning the Social Links of each individual teammate, which will boost their combat prowess.

The Social Link system has more of a focus, since its not just one link for the entire team.  Each individual character has a separate link.  Aside from that, you have five stats instead of three, each of them being leveled up by working part-time jobs, studying, eating strange food, even reading books.  Even more so than Persona 3, the outcome of the story and your progress is more dependant on your daily activities than it is in combat.  There is so much to do in Persona 4 that you will find yourself planning your activities ahead in order to budget your time.  Combat itself has not changed much and is still rather intuitive.

Persona 4 will capture your attention as quickly as its predecessor.  The graphic quality and style are just as rich as ever and the musical accompaniment is as quirky and flavorful as ever.  The music of Persona 4 does much to set the hip and cool atmosphere, much like Persona 3 did.  Persona 4 is also packed with more dialogue than the Harry Potter books combined, and is not short on story.  In fact, it took me three hours before getting to explore the roaming gameplay.  That’s how much setup was involved.  So please, be patient when beginning.  It’s worth the wait.