Dreaming of going to the Japanese countryside but worried that there won’t be enough murder, magic TVs or bear mascots? Look no further than Persona 4 Golden. If you read my P3P review, you’ll know that I first played P4G on the PS Vita around 10 years ago, and I loved it.
Finally being ported to modern consoles, P4G still holds up today as one of the best JRPGs of all time with a compelling story, intriguing characters and classic turn-based gameplay. The game begins with a train ride to Inaba, a quiet countryside town in Japan, where you will be living with your uncle (a detective) and his daughter for a year while your parents are working abroad.
As you settle into the slower pace of a rural lifestyle, you find the small community is rife with rumours. On top of this, dead bodies are found hanging from TV antennae and telephone poles, leaving the local police stumped and the townspeople shaken.
Persona 4 Golden
One of the many small-town folk stories concerns the Midnight Channel. Supposedly, if you watch TV at midnight while it’s raining, you’ll be able to see your soulmate. It quickly becomes apparent to our protagonist that instead what you are seeing is foreshadowing for the next murder. You also discover that you can enter the television, and the world on the other side of the screen is full of fog and Shadows.
Only you and your friends are able to solve the mystery of the murders and save Inaba by fighting the Shadows in the TV World with your Personas. As is typical of the franchise, the dungeon-crawling combat and life-sim JRPG is balanced in such a way that both aspects of the game feel equally important.
The TV World is where you’ll find dungeons –labyrinthine areas similar to Tartarus in P3P – littered with enemies, loot and a boss at the end. Using the battle advantage and disadvantage system, you’re able to make battles with Shadows smoother by hitting them from behind before they notice you but are punished for either being too slow or not noticing the enemies at all. As for combat, you’ll be using either your physical weapon or the abilities of your Personas. There are also multiple options for individual teammates’ actions, including Act Freely, Full Assault, Conserve SP, Heal/Support and Direct Commands, giving you the choice to either play as all characters during battle or just the main character.
I found the dungeons and combat to be a little more refreshing than those in P3P, thanks to the shorter levels and increased visual thematics in each dungeon, including bosses. Not only that, but the music is memorable and I found myself humming along while running around each floor. While not a new addition, the network functionality in the game has an SOS command. By pressing this, you can get help from other players and help them in return by giving and receiving HP or SP. The amount you receive varies depending on how many people helped you, so it’ll be interesting to see how many people will be using that function in the current port of the game.
Outside of the TV, you’ll be living your best student life in rural Japan. You’ll go to school on weekdays and attend classes to help prepare you for exams. After school and on weekends there are a variety of ways you can spend time, like participating in sports and cultural clubs, going to your part-time job(s), watching a movie, hanging out with friends or enjoying a meal. By engaging in these activities, you’ll have a chance to improve your Social Links.
Social Links are the bonds you form with other characters throughout the game. Higher Social Links help you to gain power when fusing Personas, acquire passive and active abilities in battle, and romance other characters. Social Links are available with both your classmates (Chie, Yukiko and Yosuke to name a few), as well as other NPCs (Dojima, Margaret and even Teddie). Although a feature of all Persona games, the Social Link system is, as always, a satisfying way to keep track of your relationships in the game. In addition, the cutscenes you see when spending time with the NPCs give a meaningful look into the conversations and activities, bringing you closer to both the characters and the town of Inaba.
It can be difficult to decide what to do or who to see when you have free time in the game, especially if you’re trying to play as efficiently as possible. Network functionality also has a place here. The Voice function allows you to see what actions other players have taken during the same point in the game as you, so if you’re struggling with what you should do next, you can always follow the lead of other players who have lived through that day already.
Despite being a system from when Persona 4 Golden was originally released, the network functionality is still useful. This can be said about the game as a whole, it hasn’t aged at all. The story and gameplay still hold up as some of the best in JRPG history, while still managing to reflect the growth of the Persona franchise from P3P to P5R. The only thing holding it back is the visuals, which, when compared directly to those of its successor, are a little less smooth.
This doesn’t take away from the game in any meaningful way, but instead highlights the feeling of living in a rural Japanese town, further pulling the player into the story in a way that resonates deeply.
Persona 4 Golden is a masterpiece in its own right. With some of the best music, characters and storytelling in the whole franchise, the game has always held a spot at the top of the JRPG rankings – rightfully so. The port to modern consoles does nothing to lower its position but instead boosts it by allowing newcomers to the franchise an opportunity to experience the game for the first time. For those of us who have played before, this is our chance to relive a story that undoubtedly has a space in our hearts. This port has only increased my love for this instalment of the game and has reminded me why I originally became a fan of JRPGs.
Persona 4 Golden was reviewed on Xbox Series X using a digital code provided by the publisher.
