Persona 4 is a great RPG wrapped in a Japanese High School life simulator, and pulls all of it off magnificently.
The Graphics are nice, and do a good job of making you feel like it's an anime or manga, with special/important cutscenes being presented in wonderfully rendered anime sequences. The battle animations get repetitive after a while, since once you see one attack you've pretty much seen them all, but that is to be expected in any RPG.
Controls are straightforward, and speaking of control, you can now control each party member individually! That may not seem like much, but in the previous installment, you had to rely on your allies to think for themselves, and that is scary in any game. You'll hit 'X' a lot when entering conversations and going through menus, but it's all good.
Sound is great, with characters with real voices, pulling off acting that is on par with a popular anime or cartoon (meaning some cheesy dialogue, forced emotions, and general inconsistencies) but it feels alright in the game. Now, the music on the other hand...Let's say you'll want to mute your audio in when in dungeons. It gets old, fast. You're happy when a new track comes in, but it quickly plays over and over again 1000+ times over.
The story is a dark one, like all the Megami games, but it plays like a combination detective/thriller movie. When you're not leveling up or gathering social links, you and your team are gathering clues to a series of murders in the town, talking to people, assembling theories...Sadly, these fun moments are few and far between. But, they are fun.
The game is fairly challenging, of course depending on what difficulty you choose. For the most part, it's a good combination of strategy (like using an attack an enemy is weak against to gain an extra attack) and old fashioned hack-n-grind (when a boss is too tough, level up).
You will die eventually, so be prepared to start a level all over again if you hadn't saved, and always defend your main character! If you die, it's all over!
All in all, Persona 4 is an amazing game, easily the best I've played of the series, and definitely on the list of my favorite RPGs, and I'm going through it again with the new game plus feature. If you need a new RPG, or just looking for a fun murder story mixed with high school drama, go get it!