My favorite RPG of 2008 and my favorite PS2 game yet!
User Rating: 10 | Persona 4 PS2
Without a doubt, Persona 3 redefined Japanese role-playing games with its modern setting and melding of RPG dungeon-crawling and social simulation side quests. It's been two years for Japan and one year for the US, and Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 plans to raise the bar once again. Persona 4's story is definitely a little bit wierd. As a Japanese high school student sent to live in the rural town of Inaba with his uncle, Dojima, and his daughter, Nanako, just as you begin to make friends on your way home from school, a bizarre murder in which the corpse is dangling from an antennae. Later that night, you watch the Midnight Channel, supposedly looking onto your turned-off TV on a rainy night at midnight to see you soulmate, but what's really being shown is someone who is trapped inside a TV world you discover the next day. It's up to you and your friends to use the power of the Personas to bring the culprit to justice. It's strange, but it instantly sucks you in from the very beginning. Largely in part to its characters, that all have something to hide, and its setting in a Japanese backwater town. Cutscenes never bore thanks to the exceptionally sharp and hilarious writing. You can also define your own experience through dialogue choices, and you decide what you do and who you hang out with each day. Much like Persona 3, two commitments will pull you through the game: You have to go to school Monday through Saturday, except holidays, and you have to save people in the TV world so they don't end up dead in the real world. Each dungeon is randomly generated each time you visit, but this time you can go down previious floors to get a certain item or more experience. Unlinke the 200+ floors of Tartarus, each dungeon only has about a dozen floors, so the environments don't get repetitive. Also, you're teammates will never get tired, so you can grind and dungeon-crawl to your heart's content. Although, you will have to leave eventually since you only have so much spirit power and items to replenish it. The whole game isn't just about fighting Shadows, as your social life is just as important. Each Social Link with a person is represented by a tarot card with a particular Persona symbol. As your Social Links level up, you'll be able to get more experience when fusing Personas. Social Links with party members have more benefits, such as follow-up attacks in battle that can help or hinder your current playthrough. Those mechanics help bind the life simulator and the battle system together, seamlessly woven into the gameplay. You can't raise Social Links and go into the TV World in the same day, so time management is important. You have plenty of time to save the victim before the fog comes, but if you fail, you'll be sent back a week to change the outcome. It's straightforward enough to add tenseion without feeling restricted. You can also play through the game again, at a higher difficulty if you wish, and bring your money and Persona compendium with you. Persona 4's design is flexible enough so that any player can get hooked into its 60+ hour adventure.Things can definitely get rough in TV land and you never know what's around the next corner. Thankfully, the fast-pace, depth and challenge of the battles makes things exciting and addictive. Sure, it's traditional turn-based gameplay, but it's far deeper and more complex. Poison is poison, but Enervation cuts all stats in half, and nobody wants that. Every ability works on your enemies just as much as it works on you. Things are in constant balance, and that makes things fair without being cheap. The two biggest additions in Persona 4 from Persona 3 are really impressive. You can now fully control your party members, though you can still leave them to the AI, as their quite capable on their own. The second is the new Guard command, it sponges damage and causes critical hits and weakness strikes to do normal damage. Though after one hit, you're left vulnerable again. As quick as battles are, you'll still need strategy, though experimenting is also rewarded. There's never one single dominant tactic, and the enemies change with each dungeon. Each Persona and Shadow has its own unique, yet widely variable strengths and weaknesses, and there are a lot. Personas can be collected by defeating Shadows, or you can fuse two or more together with the Fusion system. When a fused Persona is created, it gains abilities depending on what Personas it came from, Social Link levels and the weather conditions. A carefully crafted Persona can make all the difference in any battle. The wide variety of weapons, armor, accessories and Personas give it incredible depth. It's highly doubtful that two players will progress in exactly the same way. I've managed to save every victim before the fog came, but the battles don't make things seem so easy. If you save a victim early, you can spend the rest of the time either leveling up your Social Links or dungeon-crawling. The basic strategy of battles is to expose an enemy's weakness to knock it down and get another turn. Knocking all enemies down allows the team to perform a cartoonish, deadly all-out attack. The bosses are all varied from one another and are a total blast to play through. Battles are an important part in any RPG, and Persona 4 delivers here since there's not too much of a grind, but a lot of things to level up, depth, strategy and fun. The PlayStation 2 may no longer be state-of-the-art, but that doesn't keep Persona 4's presentation from being incredibly sharp and stylish. Colorful and lively vibes set it apart from anything else out there, even Persona 3. The 2D art is of impressively high quality and the 3D visuals really brings the rural setting to life. The engine has been upgraded from Persona 3, meaning way fewer slowdowns. Some Shadow and Persona artwork is reused, but it shouldn't bother you if you haven't played prior games. In fact, it doesn't detract from the overall quality at all. Each dungeon has its own visual theme, like a castle and a strip club, and contains Shadows usually relating to the victim's fractured personality. The soundtrck is also unique with some really catchy J-pop tunes. This is a really good thing since the soundtrack comes with the game. There's also some tunes involving dramatic violin strokes and moody piano keys. The voice acting delivered by the actors is top-notch, very reminiscent of anime dubs. It may only seem poor because you've been spoiled by the next-gen consoles, but Persona 4's presentation undoubtedly stands out in a good way. Each year, we're treated with a game that makes us proud to be gamers. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 is one of them. It's a well-polished game jam-packed with content and replay value with a compelling story and the freedom to grind at your liesure. On such a console heavy with JRPGs, none of them has pulled me in quite like Persona 4. 
