I know this is a bit late, and it may seem strange by bumping a thread to post this, but as this is a new account I’m unable to post threads and I decided thus to post it in here. With the release of Persona 4 Golden on PC, it really brought back memories of this game for me, and thus I got a bit nostalgic overall and decided to write up an admittedly poor retrospective on Persona 4.
Persona 4 has a special place in my heart. While I was aware of the franchise beforehand, I hadn’t actually taken the plunge yet into the series, nor its larger Megami Tensei series in general. However, that changed when in early 2015 the first trailer for Tokyo Mirage Sessions was released. Many people were outraged at the direction the game had taken. However, not having played any of the games myself, I decided to try to play them. I thus ordered two games: Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne and Persona 4.
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne was actually the first of the two I played. I remember loving the music, and the difficulty… Yeah, I had just come home from a 3-month trip in France and I was very overwhelmed by the amount of schoolwork I had, so I decided that maybe I should play something more relaxing. So, I decided to try out Persona 4. And that’s where my journey begins!
Being 17 myself at the time, I was right in the age group of the Persona 4 cast, which really helped make an impact. Of course, not everything was the same; I’m evidently not from Japan, and the camaraderie of the main cast was something I yearned (and still do). But I just loved the sense of slice of life in the game, and the music was great too. The game overall was such a different experience to the other RPGs I had played throughout the years.
That is not to say that I think Persona 4 is flawless. The dungeons do get tedious after a while, and as a result it did take me months to get through it. It’s not helped by the fact that the dungeons are randomly generated, and while people tend to not like random enemy encounters, they are certainly much better for grinding purposes. There is also the day system – since you must replenish your health and MP by exiting for the day. This is not really advised though as the more days you spend in the dungeons the less time you have for the social links – essentially sidequests/plotlines centering around a certain character.
I should note that I played the vanilla release and not Golden. Maybe Golden improved on that aspect. Maybe it didn’t. Either way, I guess I really should try out Persona 1 + 2, since those actually lack the day system and non-random encounters. Speaking of the other Personas, I also played through Persona 3 and Persona 5. I don’t know if it was a result of fatigue, or that I truly didn’t enjoy them as much as Persona 4, but each game I enjoyed less than the previous one. Persona 5 in particular took me forever to finish because I just could not muster the desire to grind through the dungeons. Again, I wouldn’t call them bad games; I’d say they’re pretty good actually! It’s just that the Persona series has really stayed static with the latest releases to the point that they are definitely not ideal for a runthrough.
Why post about it here, of all places? Well, I do heavily associate the Persona franchise with this site in all honesty, and I figured that if I were to talk about it, I may as well do so here. When I started posting more frequently on here, it was right around the time Persona 5 was released, so a lot of the discussion revolved around the franchise, and that’s how I formed a lot of my early connections on here. While things might not have worked out in the end, I still have some happy memories of those early times. And with the PC release of Persona 4 Golden, I hope many more people that weren’t able to enjoy the game due to console limitations will be able to do so now.
Take care.
