Um dos melhores e mais controversos RPGs que já joguei na vida.

A estética do jogo é maravilhosa. A trilha sonora impecável. A história, a temática, os diálogos. Os social links, combate, tudo nele me agrada.

Mas se tem algo que eu odiei, e odiei MTO é o fato do jogo não ter conteúdo endgame. Isso somado à mecânica de gerenciamento de tempo é de longe a coisa mais frustrante que eu experimentei no jogo. Não poder realizar atividades secundárias ou menos importantes depois, focando mais nas amizades e estudo durante o período letivo destrói meu apreço e minha experiência.

Adoraria poder explorar as amizades sem estar preso ao limite de tempo. É um puta limitante que me impediu de gostar mais do jogo.

Let's get this out of the way, P4G is NOT a well written story.

It has terrible pacing, it moves along at the pace of a slug on sedatives, and even besides that pacing the way the storylines are threaded together is weak and only makes true on its thematics rather than the character studies it teases, as those end up only two dimensional at best on the surface. Also the combat is decent at best.

That being said, other than the main story, I had a blast playing Persona 4 Golden. That 100% has to do with its enjoyable fluff and understanding of its main tone, "Joy", which Golden helps substantiate further. The dialogue between characters here goes from funny and endearing to incredibly engaging. For the most part, it doesn't take itself seriously at all, and it's all the better for it. The characters themselves are surprisingly well developed in their social links, which has always been the backbone to the nu-Persona games when the main story drags to a halt anyway.

That sounds contradictory that the main story has them two-dimensional where the side quests don't, and that requires a bit of explanation. The main story makes the characters face their inner selves but it's done in over the top black/white ways where they all quickly accept that this self is part of them with little fanfare. It's even worse, when the characters specifically code themselves in queer culture before backing the fuck up on it and waving its hands like it doesn't matter. It even has a couple full on homophobic scenes. The social links, however, have them actively evaluate their own selves and seek improvement. It also helps that it ebbs fuck societal roles for each one, but isn't close minded as to say that you're wrong if you decide to go along a route society expects from you (i.e. Yukiko). This society deciding how everyone's perspective is skewed towards one the consensus created is in-of-itself interesting if somewhat poorly executed by the time the credits roll.

That's where P4's heart lies, in its personality, characters, and themes, rather than its story and sequence of events. It's great in that, and even goes as far as to rewrite the perspective of a lot of its shortcomings in so bad it's good ways. I mean, with how garbage Marie is, what other choice do you have?

My favorite RPG of all time, and one of the finest ever created. I cry every time at the end of my play through, not because anything sad happened, but because I'm going to miss my friends. The characters feel real and alive, with Kanji and Dojima being the pinnacle. I love RPGs, and I love games about time management, so it's no surprise that I love Persona. Is the story as good as Persona 3? No. Is the combat as fun as Persona 5? No. Does Golden hyperbolize some characters, particularly Chie? Yes. But it doesn't matter. No game is perfect, and this is the closest I've ever come to seeing it.

There's a lot of discussion in other reviews about how this game is nostalgic to people, but as someone who didn't play it until recently it feels pretty charmless. Party characters range from their stories starting out interesting before taking a nosedive (Chie, Yukiko, Kanji, Naoto) to being intensely aggravating from the jump (Yosuke, Teddie), and the game's mystery and plot similarly start out interesting before succumbing to a repetitive structure and a dismal post-game ending. The dungeons—procedurally generated for the most part—lack the craft that other SMT games have, and this combined with the game's decision to replace fighting demons with repetitively-designed Shadow enemies leaves dungeon traversal to be a slog.

There are some positive points—the non-party character Social Links are generally well-written, the soundtrack is fantastic (Heartbeat, Heartbreak is an all-time video game song), and the small town murder mystery atmosphere of the game is lovely—but overall, Persona 4 is a lackluster entry in the SMT series.