Collection essentials #499: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 (PS2)

Persona 3 was a surprisingly successful late PS2 game. And even though the PS2 was already a little long in the tooth, Atlus decided that they had to follow up with another PS2 Persona, which would be one of the very last significant exclusive releases on the platform.

Persona 4 follows pretty much the same gameplay structure as Persona 3, with a calendar-based progression where the player must decide on two actions per day to “pass the time” with. Not surprisingly, “social links” return in which the player can bond with certain characters which will allow them to fuse stronger personas. This game takes it a little further by adding certain extra benefits to certain other social links, making them even more enticing.

The vibe of Persona 4 is quite different from 3’s, as this time they made it more upbeat, with the main featured color being a bright yellow as opposed to 3’s dark blue. The music is a big part of this difference too. Like 3, the game features many songs with vocals sung in English by a native Japanese speaker, this time mainly featuring the voice of Shihoko Hirata. But the “style” of the music, despite being comparable in some ways, is much different. I think it’s pretty cool how Persona’s music is so distinguishable from other games in general, and also each individual Persona game also stands out as unique in the series.

The story this time involves a high school student going to live with his uncle in the rural Japanese town of Inaba. It doesn’t take long for two mysterious and disturbing murders to happen in the city. Around the same time, he and his friends discover a supernatural and dangerous “TV world” which they can enter by physically going into television sets. Here, they awaken to their persona powers and meet a cartoony-looking talking bear named Teddy who wants to help them out. The hero and his friends aim to investigate the Inaba murders, the TV world, and whether or not there is a connection between the two.

Persona 4 has a very strong cast of characters which are one of the main draws to the game. One way the game builds character depth is that, throughout the game, each main character must face a doppelganger of themselves in the TV world who represents all of their own least favorite traits which they do not want to accept. And of course, there are many amusing scenes throughout the game with the colorful cast hanging out together.

The biggest gameplay difference from Persona 3 is probably the simple fact that…you can actually control all of your party members in battle directly!! You can still have AI control them if you want, but that’s a choice I’d never make. Another thing that’s different is that the dungeon-crawl part of the game takes place in a variety of different small dungeons rather than one enormous dungeon (though the areas are still randomly generated). There are other gameplay changes, but most of them are “tweaks” that I’d rather not explain in a relatively brief post like this.

Persona hit store shelves in the summer of 2008 in Japan and then the following December in the USA, which, again, was a very late release for a PS2 exclusive. I got the game in 2010, and possibly saved a few bucks as the GameStop price tag on the game seemed to be erroneously a little lower than what it should have been. It went on to be one of the most-lent-out games in my collection, as three different friends would borrow the game from me during the decade.

Nearly four years after its release, Persona 4 would receive a spruced-up rerelease on a newer platform. That is the version of the game that I played, and I have to confess that I’ve never actually played through the original PS2 release. From what I can tell, the newer version is a lot better, though this PS2 original is not technically completely obsolete. There are some graphical changes which some fans don’t care for in the newer version. Two English voice actors for the main characters were swapped out for new ones, and I really like the new voices, but I can imagine there are a few people out there who may not. There’s a new remake of Persona 4 that is currently in the works, but as of this post very little information is known about it.

I’m going to save my full gushing praise for when I cover the version of the game that I actually played. I’m not sure I actually will give this one a full playthrough, but Persona 4 is one of my favorite games and this PS2 original certainly belongs in my collection. In other words, it’s a real “Personassential.”