Say Hello To Old Friends, One More Time
Playing Persona 4 Golden was a joy and a tragedy. It was a joy much the same way as meeting a friend whom you haven't seen in a long time. Similarly, it is a tragedy in that that friend will, in time leave.
After two playthroughs and almost two hundred total hours, I experienced the joy of getting to know Yosuke, Chie, Yukiko, and the other members of the Investigation Team and exploring Inaba for the first time in four years. I also experienced the bittersweet pang of standing at the TV world's save point and realizing that I am about to say goodbye to this beloved game and its cast of strange, quirky, supremely lovable characters again.
P4G, like its immediate predecessor Persona 4 and its direct prequel Persona 3, latches its claws deep into you not through flashy cutscenes or longwinded angst, but through personal weakness and overcoming them. Be it Kanji's confusion over the nature of his sexuality and masculinity, Rise's issues of identity under a pop culture spotlight, or Teddie's struggle over the very nature of his existence, the characters feel real, tangible, and ultimately real. You know people like them, albeit without the power to cast Bufu.
That cast of characters and the maddening case they pursue will stand foremost in your mind. That is not to say that the combat and dungeon crawling are subpar. To the contrary, the combat system is the fastest and sleekest in any JRPG I have played since Persona 3 FES. The short dungeons, anywhere between eight and eleven floors each, are challenging to navigate but rarely frustrate.
So what would motivate someone who has already played Persona 4 to get this game? The wiki page already details the changes and additions, so I won't get into the nitty-gritty here. I would say, however, that this is a game that holds up extremely well. Atlus did an amazing job porting the original PlayStation 2 game to the Vita and adding a lot of new content. That alone could have caused the game to feel bloated, but it doesn't. The new is well-integrated into the old and the final product is as slick as the old, albeit a little bigger.
If you are looking for a great game for your PlayStation Vita, you can do much, much worse than Persona 4 Golden. If you are a Vita owner looking for a JRPG, you can do much, much worse than Persona 4 Golden. If you are a fan of the Persona series or the Shin Megami Tensei franchise as a whole, you shouldn't have had to read this far into my little review; you should already have your nose pressed up against the Vita's gorgeous screen, savoring all that P4G has to offer.