Review #238: Persona 4 - Golden

 Because going inside the TV never goes outta style.

 Persona 4 is easily one of my favorite games of all time, behind only Final Fantasy VII. When I heard of 'The Golden' port, I didn't really care about it, it was a Vita game, and I wasn't interested in the console at the time, and I was so satisfied with vanilla P4's excellence, that I didn't really need it. It didn't help that once it was released, there were a couple of mixed opinions regarding the new content. Well, I think The Golden's, or 'Golden' outside Japan, additions are mostly good ones.

 For the uninitiated, Persona 4 is a JRPG unlike others. This game doesn't take place in steampunkish lands, medieval villages or futuristic times... it takes place in modern day Japan(Well, in 2011 to be exact). You play as a mute hero who recently traveled to the country town of Inaba to spend the whole year, who is quickly drawn into a series of murders and kidnappings haunting Inaba. In the midst of it all is the 'Midnight Channel', a channel that appears exclusively during midnight after rainy days, and kidnapped victims begin appearing on it, and the Hero will soon discover that he can enter the TV World. In Persona 4, you must juggle your highschool life, perfecting your talents, forming bonds with people and saving the victims. But I'm getting ahead of myself, as far as the story is concerned, it's pretty much excellent, both the main story as well as the optional Social Links that you can follow. There's about 12 different 'Social Links', surrounding different secondary and tertiary characters, all whom are excellently written and are a joy to follow all the way through the end. While it does follow a few cliched anime tropes, I felt most characters felt pretty real, which really helps invest you into the town of Inaba and the trials and tribulations its inhabitants face.

 Persona 4 is actually slightly more than just a JRPG, it actually holds a ton of 'simulation' mechanics that are excellently tied to the game. The game moves throughout different days, divided in 'Morning' and 'Night' each. During either, you can only do one activity and one activity only, with a couple that actually leave you too tired to do anything during the night. Days are better spend advancing Social Links, which is to say, interacting with secondary or certain tertiary characters, each storyline is a reward in itself, but following each Social Link to the end will grant you access to an 'Ultimate Persona', and in the case of party members, will evolve their Personas into stronger versions. Plus, the higher the level of a Social Link, the more bonus Experience a fused Persona, which will be explained later, will receive upon its creation. You can also opt, but it's better to do it during the night, to try to increase your passive attributes: Courage, Knowledge, Understanding, Expression and Diligence. These 5 stats provide you new options when answering questions, or allow you to interact with characters. Maybe you require a certain level of Understanding in order to interact with a depressed character, or the such, so in order to complete certain Social Links, you might need to raise these.

 But that's only part of the game. In the game, you'll join up with other students to try to thwart the killer behind the kidnappings. Luckily for the cast, whoever appears on the Midnight Channel has until the first foggy day before they are murdered in the TV World. Persona 4 employs a modified 'One More' version of the turn-based combat system modern Shin Megami Tensei games use. There's 7 different damage sources: Physical, Wind, Electric, Fire, Ice, Light and Darkness. Hitting an enemy with their weakness will grant you an extra turn, as well as leaving them in 'down' state, however, this holds true for enemies as well, so if they hit your weaknesses, they get extra turns as well. I always felt that it was a fantastic system, and it works really well. Then there's the Personas, unlike your party members, who have a set Persona, the protagonist can hold many different Personas. You obtain them by chance after defeating enemy encounters, or by fusing Personas in your possession. On the other hand, dungeon design is uninspired to say the least. It's just bland looking corridor after bland  looking corridor, with the rare gimmick floor. To be perfectly honest, at times I had more fun with the 'sim' elements of the game, than the combat itself! Besides, you'll want to limit your visits to the TV World as much as possible in order to max as many Social Links as possible!

 So, what's new in 'Golden'? Quite a bit, albeit most of it is rather superfluous. The first thing that'll come to your attention, is that there's a new, massive gallery that contains all sort of extra content, like official art, advertisements or other miscellaneous videos regarding the franchise. It's pretty neat. Teddie and Chie have new voice-actors, the new Teddies sounds pretty similar to the old one, while Chie... well, she takes a bit of getting used to if you are used to her deeper voice in vanilla P4, even though she isn't bad per se, I think the previous Voice Actress fitted the character better. There's two new Social Links, one related to a new character, and the other related to the mysteries regarding the Midnight Channel. As far as Marie, the new character, is concerned, I didn't really like her, remember how I mentioned how real the other characters felt? Marie is a walking tsundere archetype, with nothing original to her name. She's terrible, but it's not like you are forced to follow her Social Link all the way to the end. The other one... I didn't like either, they tried to make this character a bit more sympathetic, which in my opinion, works against him. Still, once again, it's optional, you can ignore it altogether and the plot will play out just as it did before.

 There's a new ending, if you make certain choices, and a new dungeon, if you complete Marie's Social Link. The dungeon is a bit of a gimmick dungeon, it's fairly uninteresting, but at least it feels different than other dungeons, thanks to its gimmicks. Now there's a fair amount of costumes for each character, which was pretty cool. There's the obligatory new Personas, as well as a third new Ultimate Persona for each party member. Speaking of those, characters and enemies have been rebalanced, some enemies appear on different locations or even have different weaknesses! Also new to the game, are scooters, early in the game you'll be forced to get one, and it allows you to go into the two new areas in the real world, plus, you can invite party members for a ride! Two new activities have been added, catching bugs and gardening, neither take up time, and on certain nights, you can leave the house, there's not a whole lot of stuff to do at night though! The last major addition comes in the form of new 'Events', like skiing, Valentine's day or the trip to the beach, these are pretty entertaining and fit right alongside the rest of the game. And while they are mandatory and take up some days, the game gives you two extra months, so it evens out in the end. Finally, you can now fast forward scenes, and customize the difficulty settings on a New Game+, things like how much Experience Points are earned, which can allow you to to breeze through the game or challenge yourself, the second time around.

 Persona 4 - Golden is every bit as amazing as it once was. It looks and sounds just like the PS2 version, and nothing was cut. Then there's all the new content that only adds to the already-large game. While I was iffy on the two new Social Links, they are entirely optional. even if Marie has some unnecessary scenes whenever you go into The Velvet Room to fuse Personas. Basically, most of the new content I really, really liked. The new events, the new Personas, the Costumes, the Areas... I enjoyed them all, and what little I could've done without is optional. That said, as much as I liked it, I don't think it's worth double dipping if you already own Persona 4.
 10 outta 10.