So, let's talk about Persona 4, shall we? In my humble opinion, its strongest suit is hands down its characters. The Dojimas absolutely steal the show with top-notch writing and amazing social links. It's funny, though—those characters don't have shadows, and maybe that's why they stand out so much as amazing parts. Shadows are supposed to be all about accepting yourself and facing your true beliefs (Which is completely ripped away for no reason later on in Namatames shadow, being the beliefs of the public instead of your true beliefs), but ultimately they just end up as character assassinations once you do their respective social links. Dungeons are… okay. Some are utter garbage in their theming such as Naoto’s and Kanji’s. Aside from that their okay, with a stellar dungeon for the culprit. So, is Persona 4 a masterpiece? Nah, not in my book. Is it the ultimate JRPG gem? Nope. But does it offer a cozy, feel-good ride with awesome characters and a decent theme? Mhm. Overall, I had a great time with it.

Edit: Coming back to this review and thinking about it more… I do not like this game. I think I was caught up in my first actual jRPG and the characters that I forgot I needed to enjoy a game to like it. The characters are good, enjoyable, but I just do not get it. Their shadows character assassinate them, their social links ham fist their way into doing a circle for their character arcs. It just feels… weird. For a game that got such critical acclaim to breathe new life into the persona series, I just can’t see it. So many features of this game seemingly hate the player for playing the game, dungeons are boring, grinding isn’t fun, this game is not fun. Persona 4 Golden apparently improves on a lot of my gripes for gameplay, but in return they kill parts of the story. I don’t know. Jrpgs have a lot to offer, this is bottom of the barrel in my opinion.