Persona 4

Written by Tom Clare in PS2 Game Reviews, Monday 8 February, 2010

Released: 2009
Developer: Atlus
Publisher: Square Enix
Genre: RPG
Platform: PS2

Atlus’s decision to develop Persona 4 exclusively for the PS2 surprised some, as by the time of the games release in February 2009, the format was entering its ninth year on sale. Lower development costs and the huge established userbase suggested it made good business sense, but there were some pitfalls to overcome. On the one hand, it faced mounting expectation from fans following the mammoth Persona 3, whilst on the other, there was the difficulty of winning over an ever-sceptical press who have historically dismissed software on ageing formats.

And yet, commercially and critically, these troubles never came to pass. Persona 4 is so good that criticism of its dated exterior seems largely superfluous, and its late show on the PS2 doesn’t stop it from ranking as not only one of the games of the year, but one of the best role-playing games of the entire decade.

Having exhausted virtually my entire catalogue of superlatives on the tremendous Persona 3 FES, it’s tricky to articulate the excellence of a game that tops it in almost every way. P4 doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel – it didn’t need to – but it offers all of what made its predecessor great, and a fair bit besides.

Once again the player assumes the role of a nameless transfer student who, in a departure from P3, moves from a city life to live in the small, rural Japanese town of Inaba. Immediately, things start to get interesting, as murdered bodies begin showing up after bouts of foggy weather. ‘Interesting’ soon becomes ‘outright bizarre’ when you discover a sinister world of monsters and warped architecture residing within TV sets (no, it’s not Changing Rooms). Somebody is throwing people in and it’s your job, along with a party of friends you assemble at school, to rescue them from the Persona’s that their dark thoughts manifest before the fog sets in.

Persona 4 is a textbook way to go about a sequel – sticking to and building upon its strengths, it also showcases numerous small but meaningful improvements; making an already-great foundation even better. When exploring the school or Inaba itself, the player can move to a different location via a simple menu accessed via the square button, saving time as you don’t have to look for exits. Common sense also wins the day elsewhere as you can now use the inventory menu to change the equipment of all party members, an option inexplicably absent in the past.

P3’s daunting 100+ floor dungeon has been restructured in the form of several more manageable ones of around 10 floors, each designed to represent in abstract form the insecurities and fears of the person whom you are trying to save, including a princess’s castle; a nightclub; a sauna and a fantastic-looking pixelated ode to eighties role-playing games.

Combat is largely unchanged, with the turn-based battles having been tweaked slightly to make things more palatable. Wisely, there are fewer instances of cheap, instant-death magic moves being employed by enemies and should you wish, you can now directly control the battle commands of every character in your party, not just the leader.

Indeed, it’s the story that makes Persona 4 such an immersive delight. It offers such a great array of characters, showcasing real variety and depth. P4 is less susceptible to stereotyping than the vast majority of RPG’s, and more attention has been paid to the development of the bonds between other party members. The hot-headed Chie is easily wound-up by the easy-going Yosuke, whilst the initially-introverted Yukiko amuses with her random giggling fits, and the boys comically-overblown reaction to the girls culinary skills becomes a running gag that is guaranteed to raise a smile. Granted, there is a lot of dialogue and some that is needless filler, but you get a script that is much more than clichéd rhetoric, leaving the player with the unusual sensation in a single-player RPG that they’re genuinely doing something in a team, rather than alone, with team-mates backing up.

And it’s a million miles away from your generic sword ‘n’ sorcery RPG narrative, too. Don’t be fooled by the teenage protagonists; it’s one of the most thought-provoking and smartly crafted stories you’ll come across. With the TV revealing the troubled side of a characters nature, it picks a host of topics to explore, and does so with impressive depth and consistency. Along the way you’ll encounter characters confused as to their sexuality; TV stars craving an ordinary life; the dangers of jealousy; the expectations of friendship and pressures of teenage life. All that, and you’ve still got a murder mystery to solve.

The social element of the game remains a joy and is a great reward for putting the hours in fighting. You can get part-time jobs, buy and read books, go fishing, go out for a meal or get some extra studying done. Though none of these activities are actually interactive in a gameplay sense (except the fishing, which has its own mini game), each serves in varying degrees to increase your various personality parameters. If one of these attributes is too low, it can stop you from doing certain jobs or tasks, or even prevent you from expressing a certain comment or emotion to another character. This can range from a low courage rating meaning you can’t stand your ground in an argument or a lack of understanding stopping you from helping troubled colleagues. More substantially, you can choose to spend your afternoons with a schoolmate or one of the townsfolk, and through a series of cut-scenes you’ll learn their aspirations and fears, and help them resolve their problems. In the process, you’ll form bonds which in turn benefit the Persona’s you can create and deploy in battle; thankfully, it’s now a lot harder to offend friends, as in Persona 3 some responses seemed to create animosity where none was intended.

Visually it’s pretty much on a par with its predecessor and this means there are some nicely detailed though unspectacular looking locales to explore. Both the gains and the trade-offs are fairly minor, with the vivid yellow presentation screens proving a positive, whilst the low-res and fog-riddled dungeons are the main step backwards. Quite a few of the Persona demons and monsters (known as shadows) are recycled, aside from some remarkably elaborate-looking bosses, though for budget reasons this is perhaps to be expected and doesn’t hinder the game.

Shoji Meguro delivers what is arguably his best soundtrack to date, with compositions as catchy as they are eclectic. The stomping intro is a fantastic start that is backed up in fine style by tracks that, true to the composer’s record, span a ridiculously wide range of genres. Somehow, it all fits together to give a modern sound to the unusually contemporary, real-world setting. The voice acting is great as well – particularly the main corpus of characters, but it also more tends to nail the tertiary figures a little better than Persona 3 did, so kudos to the translators and dub-actors in this regard as there’s a lot of dialogue.

It’s good for at least seventy hours of gameplay and as Atlus were asking just £14.99 on release day complete with a soundtrack CD, this represents remarkable value for money. For RPG fans I can’t recommend it highly enough, and for those still unsure after all this trumpet-blowing, clear your schedule and take a gamble, you won’t regret it.

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