Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4

Let me start by saying that usually, I'm not too big on JRPGs. Their characters are just too over-the-top, too ridiculous for me to enjoy playing as. Moreover, the grindy gameplay the genre generally offers also makes me turn up my nose. Both of these things, however, did not make me love Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 any less.

This Persona's main draw is its story, as most would expect from a role-playing game. It does not, however, take place in a giant fantasy world, but in the rural town of Inaba. Your main character, whom you can name as you see fit, goes to live there with his uncle and cousin for a year, because his own parents have to go away for their work. Unfortunately, the town's peace is quickly disturbed by a series of brutal murders. Meanwhile, the main character and the friends he makes, discover that they can enter TVs and give physical shape to their personalities called Personas. That gift will come in handy, as they encounter demons in the mysterious TV world called Shadows. They progress through various dungeons trying to figure out what this world has to do with the murders, finding the killer and trying to save those in mortal peril.

That might not sound all that special, and maybe it's not. Technically, there is nothing that sets the plot apart from other RPGs. The scale of the story starts somewhat small, but ends being about the end of humanity when you get to its conclusion. That too, is nothing special. What makes this game so enjoyable story-wise, is the hilarity some of the situations give birth to.There's no denying that Persona 4 is Japanese. Japan has always been somewhat eccentric when compared to the Western cultures, and even if scenes aren't necessarily meant to make fun of that pop-culture, they were still ridiculously funny to me. The dialogue was well-written to begin with, and Atlus' American localization team has done a fantastic job of making the writing stick in English. If nothing in this game made you laugh, you have no sense of humor. Some of the scenes, like the part where the group attends a culture festival, or where they go on a school trip together, made me fall off my chair laughing. The mix of archetypes and realism makes all these scenes work, and they feel like a reward for playing the game.

The gameplay in Persona 4 is also quite fun. You live day by day, and you have to manage your time between hanging out with friends to increase their Social Link level, (a concept that's familiar to fans of Persona 3) upping stats (courage, knowledge, understanding, dilligence and expression) which come into play during the previously-mentioned story sequences and going into the TV to train your party and rescue those endangered by the killer. You get to do two of these activities each day. However, you do not get complete freedom. The person you must rescue shows up on the Midnight Channel, a program that's on during rainy nights when the clock hits twelve. You then have to save them before several days of rain are over, as they mean that it'll get foggy in the town. For reasons you'll understand once you play the game, that fog means the death of the victim. However, you should have plenty of time. Once the story led me to see the next target on the Midnight Channel, I immediately got to work on it and tended to have saved those in peril with two weeks to spare. Those two weeks could then be used for the most fun aspect of the gameplay; Social Links. When you start hanging out with one of the many characters that populate Inaba, you get a Social Link with them. Even though the main character doesn't actually say anything apart from the occasional grunt and Persona name, he still gets people to talk about their personal problems. As you hang out more and more with any given person, he or she will overcome their troubles and eventually max out the link, which may lead to a reward. If you do not feel like doing either of these things, you can study to gain knowledge, fold envelopes to become more dilligent or translate to raise your expression, for example. All of these skills come into play one way or another, be it whilst suffering through the exams or when asking a girl whether she would want to be your girlfriend.

However, like any JRPG, Persona 4 involves dungeon crawling. It is a concept I have always despised, especially when one has to grind in order to make it past a boss. Each time you identify one of the killer's victims, you must run through a dungeon that is designed to reflect their personal problems. You will encounter Shadows and bosses that the victims materialise, and must fight them in order to proceed. Thankfully, Persona 4 has a pretty good battle system. It is neither too complicated nor lacking depth. It mostly revolves around casting different types of magic on foes in order to find their weakness, which will knock them down and allow you to have another go at them. Enemy weaknesses and strengths are recorded by your supporting character, so that you can always call up a screen that holds all available data regarding the enemy at hand. When you've knocked all the enemies down to ground at the same time, you can also go in with an all-out attack, where the characters will blindly and violently rush the enemies, usually destroying them without sacrificing Spirit Points or Health Points for attacks. I am not in the least bit proficient in turn-based combat, but I managed to come to grips with Persona 4's combat system quite easily. It's really satisfying to be able to totally ravage enemy groups by exploiting their weaknesses and then driving them into the ground with a rush. The game is quite low on grinding as well. This does not apply to the Hard difficulty, but on Normal, simply beating every enemy you find and fully exploring every floor of the dungeon should be enough training to carry you through the game. Exiting the dungeon does not restore your SP and HP, so you'll have to turn to a mysterious Fox who can help you with that. However, it is paramount that you hang out with Fox, run errands for him and build up his Social Link. That way, he'll give you big discounts, which makes asking his help much, much less painful. That is just one small example of the craziness that is Persona 4.

A big part of the experience are, obviously, the personas themselves. While my knowledge of Japanese mythology is limited, I could tell that a lot of them were inspired by those gods. Some are taken from different sources as well. Design-wise, the Personas are eye-candy. They all have wildly varying looks and are always interesting to look at. While most of Persona 4's heroes all have a single Persona that represents them in battle, your main character is unique in this respect, much like he was in Persona 3. He can hold multiple Personas at once, and he can switch between them at will. Furthermore, he can fuse them into new beings with the help of his guide throughout the game, a long-nosed man called Igor. The fusing is quite addictive, in the same way that you “gotta catch 'em all” in Pokémon. The strength of your fused Personas depends on your own level, so the stronger you are, the stronger the Personas you create. An additional layer to think about is that the higher your Social Link with a particular arcana, the bigger a bonus a Persona that's a part of that arcana will get. You can mix 2 to eventually 6 Personas, and getting them to inherit the right skills from their component parents can be quite time-consuming, but also something that you may just be compelled to put a lot of time in. Making that super-powerful Persona that has just the right skills and repells lots of magic types after you've just spent an hour looking for it can be so satisfying.

Persona 4 is a PS2 game, and it shows severely in its graphics. The textures are very basic and repetitive, and the characters lack an awful lot of detail. However, none of that matters. The bland look of the environments somehow make sense when you think about how mundane the setting of the game is. And the characters look quite cartoony, which also fits the vibe of the game really well. But you'll hardly ever be looking at the pretty badly animated figures that are standing around on the screen. During dialogue sequences, a drawn picture of the character that's talking will appear next to their text. That picture will convey a bit of emotion, which is cool when it's appropriate and hilarious when it's not. It works quite well, especially since the lame look makes you focus on the star of the show, the dialogue. And during sequences that need to be accentuated or really require good looks, the game shows a brief anime clip that always looks great and furthers the drama of that particular moment.

When it comes to the sound effects, Persona 4 basically gets everything right. The voice actors turn in a superb performance and while the amount of dialogue here is truly staggering, most of the game is fully voiced. It's downright unbelievable when you think about it. Other sound effect are far less important, but what does really matter is the music. Atlus was kind enough to package in a seperate disc with the soundtrack free of charge, but that thing would've sold easily by itself. The music is, in a single word, fantastic. In two words, it's ridiculously awesome. I loved the way the compositions managed to strengthen a particular moment's atmosphere. When something sad had happened, the music was very melancholic. When something nice happens, your ears are filled with the sonic recreation of joy. It works really, really well.

I loved every second of Persona 4. When you reach this epic's conclusion, probably around the mark of 60 hours, you may just want more Persona. I know I did. The fact that this gamer, who had always turned his back on JRPGs loved Persona 4 and is now looking for more RPGs like it, is a testament to its quality. Even if you don't consider yourself a fan of the genre, I implore you to play this game. You won't regret it.