Persona 4: The Golden Promise

I'm a major Persona fan. That's no surprise. I started off with Persona 3 and have played almost every game in the series except for Persona 1 and 2 because I don't know how to legally get them, the Dancing games because I suck at rhythm games, Persona Q2 because that's for the 3DS and I haven't touched mine in years, and Persona 5 Scramble because that isn't localised yet.

Prior to Persona 4 Golden being released on Steam, I had never played it. I could not afford the Vita way back when and thus, could never have touched Golden. It was always a regret I had. I couldn't even justify getting the Vita now because it's obsolete. But lo and behold, Golden appeared on Steam sometime ago and boy was it a surprise to everyone.

I could finally fulfill my wish. To play Persona 4 Golden. At this point, I had already watched all the new content so nothing came as a surprise but I was still excited to jump back in. Like a kid giddy with joy, I went back to Inaba after what seemed like forever.

Nostalgia waves aside, there's nothing much to say here that hasn't already been said. Persona 4 Golden is a tried and true game and it is the game that made the franchise mainstream in the west contrary to popular belief. Persona 5 made it too mainstream to the point where even I started getting annoyed by it. How do you ruin the fandom of a particular foreign franchise? Bring it to the West. That's another post for another day.

There are very few differences between the Vita version and the PC version. On PC, you can choose the Japanese voiceovers and you can finely tune the difficulty of the game without having to go into New Game + . That's about it as far as I know. I'm fairly sure the Persona TV feature was quite different too but it's unrelated to the game.

I played it with Jap voiceovers this time around considering I never quite preferred Chie's voice in Golden and I've grown accustomed to the Jap VAs through the various spinoffs anyway.

So how is getting back to Golden after all this time? I can actually criticise the game's writing somewhat now considering how much I've consumed since then. The gameplay mechanics while still good are obviously dated. The music is great but the sound mixing is a little odd. Lots of ups with some of the expected downs. I wasn't disappointed if you're wondering.

However the one aspect that I spoke highly about still remained as strong as ever: the character relationships. I always complained that P5 never did do it as well as P4 and I can still say that even now. P4 is definitely more anime and tropey than P5 but the latter doesn't exactly try to be entirely realistic either and thus, P4 gets away with more here. It's funnier with truly hilarious and iconic moments, it's more homely with characters simply talking about their day that's completely unrelated to the mystery at hand, and social links take longer to level up and thus you spend more time with each character (in terms of schedule progression in-game). It's all just far more involving.

P5 has more dialogue sure but most of it relates to the story and while this builds the characters up, their relationship with one another and the protagonist doesn't feel as genuine as P4. That being said, they're both excellent and they do a way better job than a lot of other games out there.

I've fulfilled by Golden promise. After 12 years since the release of the original, I have gone back to Inaba and while I did not tear up as I did the first time around, I couldn't help but smile the same way all the protagonists do at the end of every game. It's definitely good to be back.