P4 isn't the best game in the SMT catalogue, nor the RPG one. Best to borrow of a friend, play and return to them...
The story has the main character (that being you) who moves from the big city to a small town called Inaba, as your parents have gone away for a year they dump you with your uncle, you will stay there for a year. However, you are told by Igor in a dream (if you've played previous Persona games, then you'll be fond of him) that upon your destination, they'll be a mystery you must unfold, otherwise your future will be lost. Not the kinda thing you want to be hearing when you've just been dumped in a town. So you start of by going to Inaba high school, and you meet some friends, after a good 3-4 hours of introduction is where the mystery starts to unfold, as something called the Midnight Channel will let you see your soul mate on a rainy night. When you and your friends try this, you have the weird ability to be able to put your hand in the TV, and later enter the TV. On top of that, you hear about Miss Yumi Yamano being murdered by someone called Namatame, so it's up to you and your friends to investigate. I'm not spoiling the rest of the story for you, as it gets a bit more in depth then just that, but I found the endings to be rubbish for the amount of effort you put into the game. In SMT games, or frankly in the Persona games, the endings have been a "save the world (or something) with bad consequences" being the good ending, in this game, it's all hunky doory, the little difference between the good and normal ending is stupid. If you complete the game with getting the normal or good ending, look on a site for the other ending, don't waste another 60 hours going through it. The story does tend to drag a bit, and I lost all interest about three quarters of the way into the game, maybe it's me but I felt that it got quite boring making assumptions of who it is, whilst if you think carefully about it, you'll discover whom it is right off (little note, one of the beginning characters is the actual culprit).
The gameplay has you going into dungeons, each themed to the character you have to save or kill, fighting "shadows" like a generic RPG game. The "persona" techniques allow you to use your other characters or your own persona's attacks. These can be elemental attacks, buffs or debuffs. They all have their own names, being original to an extent, some are just silly like God's Hand, and Hassou Tobi, good looking attacks but silly names. Some will acquire you to use your HP for attacks, whilst others make you use your SP. You can do your standard attack, using melee basically. You can also use guard, to block attacks, but this will always guarantee you getting hit, but taking minimal damage from the attack. Social Links play a big part in the game, which is a plus side. By levelling up your social links with friends, workers and your uncle, you'll gain more power to fuse Persona's with, making them for powerful, and gaining a extra couple of levels. In battle, some of your friends might help you up if your knocked down, sacrifice themselves as a human shield, or withstand a attack, no matter how much damage they receive, so it's important you level these appropriately, rather than spend time with your girlfriend waiting for some extra prize after maxing their social links. When you do max each persons social link, you'll get a little present, which can help you in the aid of battle. Now of course you'll have to buy armour and a weapon, as well as an accessory, so you'll have to either fight shadows, or get a part time job to earn Yen to buy these. When you defeat shadows they'll drop a material you can take, and sell it to a guy whom will make a weapon or armour, or accessory out of them. You need it in large quantity though, so keep selling the material you've got until he says that he can make something. You can enter the TV world whenever you want, and Igor and his assistant Margaret will let you fuse Persona's together whenever you want, but you need to be the appropriate level to make certain Persona's. The only problem I have with the gameplay is the fact that there are too many cheap deaths on Normal, and I mean way too many. Like the first couple of times I didn't mind, but you get no warning to Guard at all, so it's trial and error....that'll eat up a lot of your time. Even in the later bosses this still happens, like in the Namatame boss, I got right near edge of killing him, when he turns all 3 of my team mates on me, making them attack me, causing me in total 400+ damage, so I died in one round after about 15 minutes of work. Now I remember Final Fantasy 10 didn't do this, and even though I didn't complete it, I found it to be a good game.
The graphics are reminiscent of a anime, which to some are good, but the characters expressions are dull, on the character models, as well as how they react (not the script here, the movement of the characters). The cutscenes are proper anime style, but I feel that the actually graphics make it look like a kiddy anime, despite that it isn't. The environments are colourful, but they get old too quickly, as you'll be in and out of them every day in the game. Games like Naruto Ultimate Ninja, and Dragonball Z Infinite World portray a proper anime style, with the black outlines on the characters. The graphics don't push the PS2 system at all, which didn't really suprise me as from the trailers the character models and enemy ones looked rough round the edges, as well as the shadows.The acting is very solid, not a masterpiece or worthy of a reward of any kind, but it does the job. You'll probably get annoyed at the characters traits like I did, but at the end of the day, as long as you get the point(s) and understand it, then it's good, which this game does smoothly.
The music in the game is alright, I think they could have had different battle themes rather than just one when your fighting the shadows, as Reach Out To The Truth got on my nerves half the time I ended up just muting the TV for a good 30 mins until I got up to the boss. As well as some of the themes in the locations of the real world, I think it would have been better if they had maybe a different theme to the locations each season, give a bit of variety here and there. Other than that it's decent at best.
As for the replay value, I personally wouldn't waste another 60 hours doing the entire thing again. You can do a New Game + on a harder difficulty if you please, or on a lower difficulty. To me it's a game you'll play once, then leave it for a long time and go back to it if you have no other game to play. If you have a friend that has this, borrow it off them for 2 weeks or so, even at the measly price of 20 pounds, you'll most likely be either flogging it off to someone else, or trying to get your money back from the retailer. I would recommend you buying either Persona 3 FES, or a Final Fantasy title, might be best to wait til the new FF game comes out for next gen consoles. This isn't the best work of Shin Megami Tensei, the best is the Digital Devil Saga in my honest opinion. Persona 4 does have it's problems here and there, it's a good game, but there are more I and many others could recommend that would be worth your time.