The first time I played Persona 4 was back in 2018-2019. I didn't have a PS Vita at the time, so I played the vanilla PS2 version and at the time I loved it, but I kept hearing about how great Golden was, how it was the game to get for the PS Vita, which naturally made me curious and got me hyped and hoping it would come to other platforms. When it was announced that Golden was coming to PC, I immediately went to grab it and played it and I came out of it both wondering not only how in the world Vita owners hyped this up so much, but also questioning how much I actually liked Persona 4 as a game.

Now, don't get me wrong, the gameplay changes in Golden are good- manual skill inheritance is always a great feature to have in a Megaten game, the Shuffle Time rework is nice, having an extra month for social links and more nighttime options is appreciated among a bunch of other changes- a lot of what made me re-evaluate my opinion of the game is stuff from the vanilla game I found a lot worse in hindsight (mediocre recurring comedy bits that get run into the ground, homophobia and other clumsy handling of gender and sexuality, I could go on but we'd be here all day), and the stuff about the original game that is great is all still here. That being said, though, Golden's new story content does the game almost zero favors. A lot of the appeal of the original Persona 4's setting was that Inaba was a quintessential countryside town with not much to do, and the story and available activities reflected that very well, but Golden adds a bunch of day trips and other events to the story and gameplay that not only take away from that small-town feel, but also mostly highlight and double down on the worst parts of the original game and its characters- the scenes are inessential at best and actively make the game and its cast worse at worst. Of the two new social links, Adachi's is a pretty good addition to the story, probably the best new story content in Golden, but Marie on top of being an acquired taste as a character to say the least brings with her a new bonus dungeon that is just a terrible, gimmicky experience.

Overall, I feel like this is the only "updated" Persona version that takes away from the original experience more than it adds, and if you have the means to play it, I would strongly recommend making the original PlayStation 2 release your first exposure to Persona 4.

the story of this game is phenomenal, every dungeon feels like it helps build up it's themes, almost all the social links are well written, and the presentation is absolutely top of the line. the characters are interesting in their respective arcs and while i don't like how short newsona character arcs are, the characters for this game are still enjoyable after their arcs end for me
but fuck man the gameplay is so fucking DOGSHIT WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED THERE IS NOTHING HERE ok shuffle time's kinda cool BUT THERE'S NOTHING ELSE, the combat system is so barren and lacking in complexity i could give this game to a 4 year old and they could probably beat it
i want to rate this game higher, i really do, but god damn that gameplay is too shit im sorry