I'm in Mid-June on my first playthrough of the game, and Rise has just shown up on the Midnight Channel. I went online to try to find some information about how Persona level and stats contribute to actual attack numbers, and the top Google result has some bozo talking about how he fights Adachi late in the game and thinks he didn't do anything wrong. I have no idea why someone would type that in a response about simple game mechanics, since presumably anyone asking such a basic question hasn't finished the game.

This seems like a very major spoiler, and now I notice him turning up during all the Investigation team's snooping around Rise and I'm just super bummed :(

My question is how deadly this spoiler is. I had so many theories flying around, and even though there is so much more to the game, my will to finish has been completely sapped.

Ideally this would be something I find out naturally not much further into the game, and I've only spoiled myself a month or two out. If so please tell me. But if I've just ruined the final plot point of the game and have to sit through another six months of the characters pursuing people I already know aren't the culprit, it's going to be really hard to keep going. I might just go watch the animation...

You do fight Adachi, but to be fair, you don't know why yet. He may end up being the mastermind behind it all, or he may have something else going on! (Not a spoiler really but marked just in case)

It is a pretty shitty spoiler, but I wouldn't give up playing the game altogether because of it. I will say though, it happens very late in the game, so yeah.

It is a spoiler but its not the end of the game. You should finish the game anyways.

Just as a tip here, GB is maybe one of the worst places to be if you are trying to stay 100% Persona spoiler free so I would use caution about what threads you click.

There's more to it than that, but:

Adachi is central. Sorry. If it doesn't drive you crazy there's still really fun stuff in that game though, and there will be much more going on in relation to the murders. If it makes it easier for you, I did like the anime even if a lot of people did not. If you want to cut down dungeon time to nothing and still get the plot, that's a way to go about it.

Was it spoiled? Yes. Ruined? Absolutely not. The genius of Persona 4 is the characters on the investigation team and what they go through, and you've got all that to look forward to.

I pretty much had that plot twist spoiled by the artbook that came with the game before I even started playing and P4 is still one of my favorite RPGs ever. Don't let something like that stop you from playing, and watching the anime instead is definitely not the solution. The game is still a better experience even when you know everything that's going to happen.

Besides, the murder mystery really isn't the game's strong point anyway. (To be brutally honest, I'd probably consider it one of the plot's weakest elements.) It's the cast of character that you get involved with.

Alright, I will soldier on.

I just watched the the first Rise episode of the Anime, and it seems pretty...rough. It sounds like they had someone playing the game and just pressed X after an appropriate amount of time after each character's line and drew some heads with moving jaws over the top. The game definitely seems like the better story-delivery vehicle.

I dont get why people dont like the anime series(the first one). At all. It was exactly what I wanted.

It's not so much that the anime is "bad", the game is just way better, and too much of what makes P4 special is lost in the transition to an anime. (No funky student, for example.)

Maybe my expectations were not as high. I mean I never expected the anime to be as good as the game. How could it be? That would be silly to expect. Some of the cut stuff did suck indeed and I didnt get why they turned the Blacksmith into a fireworks maker but for me I kind of accepted that a bunch of that stuff was only a big deal because of the endurance run. Does anyone outside this Persona bubble care about funky student? I have no clue. Anyway, everyone likes or dislikes what they want and thats fine.

I had that plot point spoiled for me too when playing it last year.

Don't worry, it's worth seeing the ending. Other stuff happens that you won't see coming at all.

@71ranchero: The point being, I don't think the anime is an equivalent alternative to playing the game. It's something you can watch afterward if you care to, but not instead.

Funky Student wasn't as big a deal before the endurance run, but he was always one of those little touches that made the game stand out. There's lots of little touches like that in the game that elevate it above and beyond the norm that you don't get in the anime.

@71ranchero: This is probably super pretentious, but characters like Funky Student did a whole lot for worldbuilding and tone in that game. Those characters made that town feel like somewhere you wanted to spend 50+ hours of your time. The anime lost that feel for me, so the whole thing ended up feeling like a hollow reenactment. Think Twin Peaks if all the characters were James's.

On topic: I had that twist spoiled for me after getting the bad ending and thinking I was done, but I still had fun watching it play out, and getting all the finer details. It's an incredible game, and worth going back to, especially because there's a bunch of important stuff you haven't been spoiled on yet.

I just want to say that the Golden animation is pretty great. Like, maybe 10% Persona 4 stuff, 90% Golden stuff. I couldn't imagine watching the original series after watching the ER so many times (and playing both P4 and P4G), but the focus on Golden-related stuff got me to power through all 12 episodes in a day.

Also the Golden best ending is one of my all time favorite endings.

Knowing what you know is not a big deal--I mean, it's a neat twist that makes sense in retrospect, but there's so much more going on that it doesn't matter. Shit, I watched the whole ER before picking the game up, and I'm having a blast even though I know the major plot points.

Stumbling across any aspect of a story that is meant to be held secret until later on is always a huge bummer, but a lot of what makes Persona 4 a great game is the time you spend with the characters.
Keep goin. There are still things to enjoy in there.

Persona 4's a game that's much more about the journey than the destination, so I don't think you've had the game "spoiled" in that sense.

In any case, the game definitely puts out hints about Adachi being more than he seems, and you're expected to work it out without the help of a "big reveal". And the resolution is ultimately quite a bit bigger than "you fight Adachi". I wouldn't sweat it at all.

@pcorb: In the spirit of the thread, can you add spoiler tags to your post :)

I would hate for my whining about spoiling to cause yet more spoiling to occur.

@teddie: @zeik: I never looked at it like it was standalone, more of a companion. For me, its like an abridged version that I dont have to do any fusing in. I completely get what you guys are saying though and I kinda see why people could come away from it without thinking it was great. What do you guys think of the P3 movies(the one thats out anyways)?

Also sorry about derailing the thread.

For what it's worth, the thing you feel spoiled by is something Atlus has been pushed through marketing much of its spinoff game. To that end, you could chock the information up to "official spoilerage" similar to a bad movie trailer. Unfortunately, your keen instincts and/or obsession with noticing that character's every move will certainly hurt the experience, if you let it.

I'll put it this way though, regardless of whether your suspicions are correct or not, that character and anything revealed about them isn't even the tip of the iceberg for how P4's story unfolds, and that was if you were just playing vanilla P4. Golden's expanded story adds even more layers to the mystery.

@andthentrumpets: Oh shit. Totally forgot.

Hopefully the thread title put off anyone in a position to get spoiled...

I don't know, man. If you have to ask, "was this spoiled?" Then it's kind of not spoiled, right? I mean, you clearly don't know. Either your suspicions are right or wrong, you just have outside evidence one way. I'm not sure that really changes the way I experience a narrative, but I guess I've always been one of the "it's about the journey not the destination" types.

And there's more spoilers in this thread than the little bit of information you think you may have seen.

@andthentrumpets: I had this EXACT thing happen to me in my playthrough. Persona 4 is still my favorite RPG ever and the story isn't lesser at all for it. Persona 4 is great because it is a culmination of everything you experience: the social links, character development and story; one plot spoiler can do nothing to hinder its greatness. Keep playing, you'll see.

@capum15 said:

Agreed! While I still really enjoyed P4 Animation (particularly the king's game portion was hilarious with how "macho" Yu was acting) I felt Golden was much funnier throughout. I have yet to finish P4G on Vita but I still loved P4GA and I really grew to like Marie as a character, to the point where she might've overtaken Rise as my favourite female P4 character.

@wchigo: Yeah, Marie is pretty much equal with Chie as my favorite P4 character now (though to be honest, having done every Social Link, all the characters are pretty great, and by the end of each link I cared about all of them to some extent). I'll probably eventually go finish P4A (I think I got around episode 6 or so) sometime, but Golden was just so good. The 'best plan' episode with the scooters and shopping had me constantly laughing (the combat music that kicked on as he said 'three minutes' for getting numbers was goddamn perfect).

And at risk of broken-recording, I can't state how much I love the best Golden ending. It just ties everything up so damn well.

Edit: Also to be more on topic, I guess this kinda shows that even though I knew everything about regular Persona 4 from the Endurance Run, I still had an absolute blast playing Persona 4 and Golden. You should definitely keep playing it, @andthentrumpets

Since you dont know what is going on at all anyway just let it rest and be happy, it may be a spoiler but how would you know?

I knew about that before I even got to that point because I wanted to get the true ending. Even knowing I thought the scenes where they confront the culprit were still tense. Granted I didn't look it up until I'd gotten to that point pretty much so I didn't really think about him showing up everywhere until I'd read the plot point.

Hey, me too! Goddamn that thing.

Probably because the internet is all a bunch of bitches...

@capum15: once again I must agree! That best plan episode was fantastic and set a true high bar for comedy that I don't think was ever matched afterwards, though the beach visit was pretty good too.

I will definitely go back and finish up Golden on Vita at some point, that's one of my goals for this year. Just finished Mordor so now I got some time on my hands.

You're lucky you only got the Adachi fight thing spoiled. I got the whole damn thing spoiled. (my own fault, really. I should stop reading wikis.) I still finished the game and got the best ending, but it was a bit of a bummer to see the major twists coming.

It was actually during the whole Rise investigation that I figured out that Adachi was the culprit. The game isn't exactly very subtle about it, so you probably would've noticed it pretty soon.

I remember when I was playing Persona 3, I came across the fact that Ikutsuki ends up being evil when I was browsing for information on the game, and that really sucked, since I would have genuinely been surprised by that since there wasn't ANY indication that it was coming. So I know exactly how you feel. but I say keep playing, because there's a LOT more to it than that.

It's why one should be extremely cautious when looking up any information whatsoever about a game they don't want spoiled.

This is going to inevitably happen with some people with Persona 5, and they won't be happy about it.

I too had it spoiled, yet I have gotten close to the end (or what I think is the end) I still have no clue what the hell it all means despite being near the end! I need to keep going to actually know.

Ya, that's a big spoiler, but that's only one twist. There are others after that if you still want to try and figure out where it goes. You haven't had the whole thing spoiled.

I would recommend looking up info on Gamefaqs (the actual faqs not message boards) or wikis if you want to be able to control how spoiled you get. Googling stuff is just asking to get stuff you don't want spoiled.

Keep playing on, the game has loads of twists and turns that are worth experiencing even if you do get spoiled on a few things.

@wchigo: Yeah, that episode was my highlight. The rest were great, but not as hilarious. I hopped back into my NG+ run of Golden and realized I had just gotten to the point where I could theoretically farm the Reaper 'easily'.

Even with super Personas, dude hits like a freakin' orbital laser with everyone around level 67. Still, two powered up Hassou Tobis work, as long as he doesn't decide to insta-death with an AoE and/or Charlie doesn't manage to dodge.