[PS2] Like RPGs? You GOTTA play Persona 4.

[ChrisGrenard]

I recently finally finished up Persona 4, one of the last games to come out for PS2. And, simply put, if you own a PS2 you NEED to play this game.

First up, let me list the game flaws:

- You really don't start actual combat gameplay for several hours at the beginning. LOTS of storyline.
- Your characters are idiots about 20% of the time.
- I don't like one of the songs in the game.
- If you don't save ASAP in December (NOTE THIS!!!) you can screw up and end up with the bad ending.

Now the good points:

- The gameplay, both the RPG and the weird social mechanics, are actually superb. This transcends into the very competent storyline.
- Your characters are vastly more intelligent than the 90% of the time retarded standard RPG characters.
- Every other song in the game is pretty great, to the point that I never got tired of them.
- The game actually rewards you for paying attention!
- The characters are actually GOOD. Despite their anime-ness, they are somehow pretty realistic considering. Honestly, Yosuke pretty much strikes me as about as sane as a real person would be in that situation.
- Pretty much everything else.

Now, I went on record back in Persona 3 as a person who didn't care for it much. I found the mechanics of only being able to control your main character along with that if you died in combat (just your character!) it was instantly a game-over. Persona 4 corrects both of these issues instantly, and I gotta say that after getting into the actual combat system in the game, it is superb to the extreme.

For those unaware, combat essentially works like this:

- You have a list of "Persona" creatures that you can have summoned. You have a huge collection, can carry maybe 6-12 into combat at any given time, but only use a single one at a time. Essentially, you could probably think of them as Pokemon-style creatures. Each has elemental affinities and various abilities. But that's not the fun part. The fun part is that you can recombine your current Personas into new ones that will in turn inherit abilities from their predecessors. Let me give an easy example.

Persona Alpha is a magician-type who knows the spell "Zio" which is an electrical attack.
Persona Beta is a healer-type who knows the spell "Dia" which heals a person.

We combine these two Personas and it forms Omega, who naturally knows "Arrow Strike" which is a physical attack. However, due to his parents, he also learns Zio and Dia, thus making him much more diverse.

This is especially interesting near the end of the game, as you combine various Personas specifically to get cool abilities. For example, I made a creature that, at the start of battle will automatically cast both a full team offensive boost and defense boost. Both of these abilities were learned from parents.

Final Note

Long story short, I've played a lot of RPG games. And I'm gonna say that this is in my Top 3 RPG games I've ever played. Combat is fair, fun and challenging. The social system, outside of maybe half a dozen weird characters is very solid. The humor is pun-tastic. The main group is about as realistic as you will find in a Japanese RPG. In all honesty, this is the best game I've played since World of Goo.

Oh, and it's only 35 bucks at GoGamer. You can probably get it cheaper used as well.

Edit: GameRankings.com reviews have it at about 92% ranking.

[Chaz]

I'm going to throw in a corollary that you should also play Persona 3. Not required to play 3 before 4, but probably a good idea. Main reason being that in 3, you only have indirect control over your teammates, while in 4 you have full control, and it will likely be difficult to go backwards if you play 4 first. Otherwise, there's no storyline link (that I'm aware of). I started Persona 3 about a month ago, and now I'm 80 hours in and nearing the end. It's an awesome ride.

I can't wait to play 4, but I think I'm going to play something different in between so I don't burn myself out on the series.

[Hipolito]

I'm definitely going to play Persona 4 someday.

I've seen some cutscenes of it, and something seems odd about having a silent protagonist this time. In Persona 3, it makes sense that the main character says nothing because he's an "emo kid." But in P4, the main character seems pretty normal. Let him at least sing the Junes jingle along with Nanako, instead of just waving his hand!

[Skinypupy]

- The gameplay, both the RPG and the weird social mechanics, are actually superb. This transcends into the very competent storyline.

This is where Persona 3 lost me. I loved the RPG bits, but had absolutely zero interest in managing the daily activities of a Japanese schoolboy. Had the same problem to some extent with The World Ends With You, which people also rave about.

[hitbyambulance]

unexpectedly, this was just ported to PC: