After venturing through the brave and mysterious world of Persona 3 + The Answer, I came out the other side changed. I had developed that most destructive of proclivities - a voracious Persona fever. Such is that vile plague which has led countless poor souls irrevocably down the wicked path towards holistic moral ruination (reading visual novels). I'm not yet that far gone, but the long and short of it is that I can't stop playing Persona.

Moving from 3 to 4 initially felt like a caveman walking out of Lascaux into the Large Hadron Collider, but as time passed and I settled into the wide wonderful world of Inaba, it started to dawn on me this series would not be the linear increase of quality I had originally anticipated; the vast majority of things are improved, but certain niggling frustrations, some of which end up pretty glaring, keep me from calling this an unequivocal upgrade.

Da Combat

Unlike for Persona 3, let me lead with the combat, the area that has seen the most drastic improvement. For starters, the general flow is noticeably snappier. Generic battles can be one and done in a flash; a fat spell from MC, a nuclear punt from Chie, Yosuke gets to feel like he's helping, bish bash bosh, Dojima's your uncle. I sulked over the loss of variety in physical attacks initially, but I suppose the results speak for themselves; physical attacks play a much more prominent role than in the previous game, in part because the removal of different types makes exploiting physical weaknesses much more versatile. Chie delivering a flying lariat to a hand with a face will shake a couple brain cells loose, even if it might not be considered sufficiently piercing. Speaking of weaknesses, no longer can you channel Fuuka-vision and gain near instant access to a Cupid Baby's resistances, attacks, social security number, and personal views on the invasion of Ukraine. This game requires you to individually piece together the strengths and weaknesses of each enemy by trying to pick them apart with all different kinds of damage. This helps to keep battles more engaging by periodically forcing you back on to your toes when a castle with legs that had been established in Yukiko's dungeon to be partial to macarons is suddenly rushing to the crepe maker instead in Naoto's fallout shelter.

Every single criticism I levied at the fights in the previous game have been more or less remedied here. The maddening stun lock cycle has been completely alleviated. When a character is knocked down, instead of needing to take a turn to psych themselves up by reciting personal mantras, they just pop a couple xannies and get back to balling. The enemies get to do the same, but hey, I'm nothing if not fair. In addition, the introduction of guarding also helps to dull the effect of type weaknesses and / or highly telegraphed boss super attacks (God's super nuclear destructo-beam really struggles against me slightly raising my arms). As for my second major critique, curse / bless attacks are still the stupidest game of face-table roulette possible, but they are SUBSTANTIALLY less common, as well as status effect situations overall, which themselves feel less severe. Finally, the AI issue has been solved, if by "solved" you mean "cheekily sidestepped". Party members are now controlled directly, which does unfortunately undercut the previous game's thematic attempt to establish each character as autonomous from you, though that's an area where the game suffers more broadly, which we'll get to later.

The last specific thing worth noting about the battles in particular is the overhaul of the reward card system - greatly, greatly improved. What was ostensibly a "follow the card with your eyes" system in P3 pretty quickly became a "your guess is as good as mine" system or, towards the end of my playthrough, a "keep your finger on that load save state key" system on my... Playstation 2. Here, alternatively, there's actual strategy! Instead of random chance, you get to choose a positive card, with the possibility of choosing more than one locked behind also choosing negative debuffs, forcing an evaluation of how much trade-off is worth it. Also appreciated is the increased variety of cards, with the introduction of some one-off temporary passive benefits, though a greater variety would've probably been for the best.

Da Dungeons

Now on to Tartarus itself, here replaced with...TV World? Planet Hollywood? Regardless, the structure is monumentally improved. As opposed to a seemingly endless progression of rooms that look like H.R. Giger designed public housing, areas are split into a series of dungeons, each with a distinct aesthetic theme, soundtrack, and which have a firm and satisfying conclusion. Combine the more refreshing structure with the brisker combat and dungeons are actually... wait for it... fun. The lack of any kind of save points along the way can make navigating a bit of a chore, but the game is so generous with Canned Escape Rope it's not a huge issue. What it does do, however, is illustrate a broader shift in philosophy towards a kind of endurance test structure, like The Answer. Unlike in Tartarus, returning to the entrance does not restore your HP and, more importantly, your SP. There's an added layer of resource management, as your squad has to be careful that they've packed enough biscuits and hard amphetamines to make it through the strip club without getting eepy. While a nice idea in theory, the broader structure of the game can strongly encourage you to trudge through in tediously large slices, often a whole dungeon in one day, something I'll elaborate on more later.

Outside of the one-and-done dungeon progression, tedious grinding makes its return in the form of the side quests. In lieu of Elizabeth's to-do list, you play the part of the entirety of Inaba's designated gofer boy, making finding the side quests a side quest in and of itself. Now, getting sent by some rando to collect five Fine Hides from the Stonetusk Boars between floors 7-10 of Misty Bluff is already enough of a waste of time. However, when you then find that the Stonetusk Boar only appears once in a blue moon when Saturn is in retrograde and the stock price of Kit Kats is in an upturn, it quickly loses whatever faint luster it may have had from just being a thing in the game. Once I realized that the reward for my hours of troubles was, more often than not, going to be a baseball card and a handful of Jelly Belly, I just packed in the whole project. Nobody needs five lanterns that bad.

Like a school life sim run by Roger Corman, my financial situation in this game was... limited. Particularly in the early game, the weapons dealer must've been contemplating something to put Ed Gein to shame whenever he had to watch me digging for loose dimes to afford Chie's new Reebok Pumps. New equipment, similarly to The Answer, is delivered at such a tick it's hard to keep up, especially when most moneymaking ventures (more on those later) yield you a Ziploc bag of Box Tops. That is, until the not-so glorious return of Wealth Hands. Here we are having fun when in comes this smarmy dick to force himself into the conversation; it's like talking to an online Persona fan. Wealth Hands are, essentially, the only reliable way to get enough yen to keep up (sans whatever meta trick my puny brain couldn't crack that everyone else probably already knows about). Unfortunately, they are 1) rare enemies 2) with mucho health that 3) are strong against everything except physical attacks, 4) spam status effects to throw off your attacks and 5) dodge like Elon Musk being asked about Cybertruck safety standards. Oh yeah, and if you take more than 25 seconds to finish the job, they get so indignant that they throw up their... hand, shout "I left the service for THIS?" and storm off. Towards the end of the game, it had become feasible to rattle out enough wollops to lay them out pretty reliably, but for most of the year it was like those shooting gallery carnival games where you just hope you can get enough of them for the pink crocodile before the timer runs out.

Final point on nouveau Tartarus is the Persona system. Two major corrections have turned this mechanic into an actual game, as opposed to shaking disassembled Gundam kits and silly string in a bag in hopes they'll produce a Fiat Punto. First, being able to view a list of which Personas you can make with what you have, while not making the actual mechanics of why Mothman and Jar Jar Binks will combine to make Satan any less opaque, severely reduces the obnoxious trial and error of figuring out your options. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, is the ability to select certain moves to pass on to the new Persona. No longer are you rerolling a random crap shoot of moves and hoping the stars align for Satan to coincidentally also know about gooberfish. The ultimate result of these two changes is the ability to create more tailored Personas that fill a more specific niche in your roster.

Da Interlude

Before crossing the great Turned-Based Battle - Social Sim canyon, let me take a moment to highlight some of the technical / aesthetic improvement. While the "Persona aesthetic" as people know it is obviously P5 primarily, there is a marked improvement here over P3. The greater flair and character to the UI makes it a real treat to look at, not that Persona 3 was an ugly game. The character portraits, while cleaner, unfortunately are trending the opposite direction. There's significantly less expressiveness and seemingly a fear of making the characters look "weird" or "ugly" that results in somewhat more restrained expressions (for the most part). That being said, the character designs themselves are phenomenal; allowing them to stray a bit further from the school uniforms than P3 creates a much more diverse and memorable cast, visually. Finally, there's the music. It's hard to say anything firm, since so much will come down to genre preference, but this may be my personal favorite Persona soundtrack, maybe my favorite video game soundtrack period (I'm not exactly an afficianado). Of particular note are "It's Time to Make History" as a blood-pumping battle song, "Backside of the TV" for being a jarring departure sound-wise that still manages to kick ass, "Snowflakes" for perfectly communicating the tonal and thematic shift in the latter part of the game, and "Shadow World", for combining with the opening cinematic to create the only video game intro to date that I never skip.

Da Social Sim

Ok, that's enough of the ruckus side of things. To take things one at a time, let's start with the social links. First question: are the social links as good as in P3? Answer: yes, potentially better. The number one change worth noting is the increased focus on party member social links. While this does reduce the amount of rando soap operas you get to stumble into the middle of, the flip side is party members are given an additional outlet to flesh out and expound upon their character / motivation. Also added to this is that progressing party member social links actually has the more direct gameplay effect of giving them additional moves / abilities. Now that I'm well into Persona 5 (words on that some time in six months, probably), the rewards feel positively quaint / dull by comparison, but it does help to better integrate the two halves of the game than its predecessor. In general, social links adhere to a more specific thematic thru line than those in P3. Every story in some way relates back to the hidden self / "other self" the character is fearful of showing to others - it's a very interesting idea that obviously ties back into the greater theme of the game. As a consequence, the narratives do straddle the line of coming across as repetitive, but generally manage to stay non-specific enough to avoid crossing over. Perhaps more so than its predecessor, the stories really only kick in seriously ~Rank 5, but when they do, they're generally very compelling little narratives that go a long way towards fleshing out the characters, with only a few missteps (ex Chie's feels pretty bland). From a mechanics perspective, we're introduced to a social link that progresses through non-hangout actions in the form of Margaret. She's a surprisingly decent character, and you'll probably enjoy her assignments quite a bit if you're the kind of person who also enjoys looking for palindromes in a phone book. On top of that, social links are expanded upon by allowing you to spend your evenings with your links. This won't progress their rank, but will prime them to progress when next you meet. This is, in all likelihood, an attempt to increase your efficiency at progressing links. Unfortunately, the fact you don't know whether someone is going to be ready to progress until you next see them combined with the fact that whether someone is available at night or not is totally unpredictable makes this a pretty unreliable mechanic in practice. Most importantly, there's just so much more to do now! I rarely had time to spend an evening in a dark alleyway with Yosuke throwing back brewskis.

In Persona 3, your choice of activities was somewhat limited, mainly social links or heading to Paulownia Mall for another evening in the stat mines. Despite being in Podunk, Japan, the amount of activities available here increased to a degree I found borderline overwhelming by comparison. What made much of it manageable was immediately realizing how much of it is broadly unnecessary. I will admit my puny P3 city brain did not figure out how to fish for a long time, but the rewards did not leave me envious. Gardening gives a steady stream of consumables with no cost except the precious seconds spent listening to Nanako talk about how yummy the veggies look for the 300th time, but actually putting in the in-game evenings to micro-dose your maxim tomatoes with the perfect steroid cocktail very quickly seemed like a total waste of time. On the other hand, Chagall Cafe offers a niche (i.e. getting Margaret off your ass), but still useful mechanic, while the theater... is probably also a waste of time, but hey, you get to do it with a friend :). One interesting addition is books, in case you ever wanted to play a video game about watching someone else read. These are little self-contained bundles of stats you can buy, particularly useful because of their scheduling flexibility. When there's nothing better to do, read some Robinson Crusoe to boost your courage, or a spot of Doestoevsky to strengthen your understanding of mid-19th century Russian feudalism. On top of all that, you can put Makoto's lazy ass to shame by getting a part time job with the most zonked out employers to ever construct envelopes, who don't seem to mind that you only show up once every two months. The benefits of doing this are ostensibly primarily for cash, but the wage of your average day care assistant just doesn't cut it in this economy. Still, it's a nice secondary bonus on top of the stat bonuses and social links that are the primary draw. The final activity worth mentioning is the bike rides. Perhaps if you're a better planner than me, you may feel inclined to invest days in unlocking a series of additional standard moves for whichever party member happens to have a need for speed that day, but it didn't feel particularly necessary for Naoto to spend the day talking through the thin walls of the bathhouse so that we could collectively help her unlock the deep secrets of heavy ice damage.

Da Story

As I (hopefully) got across in writing about Persona 3, the heart of these games is, to me, the story and characters (mainly characters). In that game, as well as any effectively told story, the two are inextricably intertwined. Your core cast is the primary avatar of change within the plot, and their change in situation / mentality is generally the main appeal. Persona 4, unfortunately, demonstrated to me such a thing is not a given in this series. To clarify up front, the characters in this game are just wonderful. Every character is immediately endearing (with one exception) and is (usually) followed closely by their respective dungeon. While I previously described these from a gameplay perspective, they're perhaps more engaging from a thematic perspective, in which every dungeon gives insight into the struggles and nuances of each character. The boss fights tying into the general thematic underpinning of characters being forced to reckon with a "true self" or a hidden face is genuinely phenomenal stuff. On top of that, all of their struggles are really interesting stuff! Perhaps more impressively, they felt very distinct even from the cast of Persona 3. In the more "day to day" interactions, everyone played off of each other wonderfully, with a super well-defined personality that made them fun and memorable without coming across flat. The game is additionally chocked full of fun little character moments and hang outs to really endear you to everyone. The only problem, really, comes in the disconnect between those wonderful little character arcs and the broader story at play. Each character's journey begins at the start of their dungeon and ends when the curtains close on their goateed evil doppelganger. Any additional growth is relegated to their social links. I understand how that may seem like enough to most people, but I can't help but reflect back on the way that P3's characters were constantly growing and changing and reacting in response to the story happening around them; the whole game felt like an emotional journey, on top of a narrative one. In comparison, everyone here feels so disconnected from the core plot. Honestly, the characters in this game are SO strong, it's nothing even close to a dealbreaker, but it does further amplify the vestigial feeling of the story. Oh yeah, the story's probably worth talking about more specifically.

On paper, we're looking at a perfect home run here. A low stakes, breezy environment out in the simple country lifestyle, sharply contrasted by the sick darkness roiling under the surface. Your teenage protagonist and his scrappy group of friends having to pile into their groovy van with their talking animal and solve the crimes that the cops can't. It seems perfect. After a laboriously lengthy intro sequence that's approximately the same length as World War II, the first two grisly murders kick it all into motion. From then on, things feel like riding shotgun to a narcoleptic elderly dog. Basically the only plot motivation for most of the game is "clear this dungeon, then pound sand for a month until the next one". Unlike P3, pivotal boss events are entirely at your discretion, with the deadline serving to mark the close of your window, rather than the point to anticipate the fight. If you try and talk to a party member social link while a dungeon is open and uncleared, they'll tell you to piss off. Combine Chie's OUTRAGE that you would DARE ask for gelato at a time like THIS with the aforementioned "endurance test" design of the dungeons and the game is telling you in the largest possible flashing letters that you need to SPEEDRUN that shit! What do you think this is, Animal Crossing?! People's lives are at risk! All of that to say that this game is about 90% sitting on your wealth hands and waiting for the next thing to happen. While Persona 3 has regular smaller plot events of escalating tension bookended by the culmination of a month of waiting, Persona 4 is a constant stop and start. There are attempts at smaller plot events in between the operations, but the problem is the plot doesn't have the complexity to support that. Nothing happens. A murder mystery should have twists, clues, some level of intrigue. Instead, it's playing victim hot potato with the killer for six months. The game's understanding of "escalation" is about 27 fake out endings before the killer is finally revealed based on the same three pieces of information we've had repeated ad nauseum for almost the entire game. One fake out was particularly obnoxious because, even with all the cards on the table, he still doesn't connect to anything at all; he's just a random NPC that wandered out of his redpill forum and decided to be a character for no discernable reason. Unfortunately, I did have the identity of the killer revealed ahead of time. That being said, I still find his ultimate motivation to be somewhat underwritten and the grand picture of the mystery a bit underwhelming, on top of the lack of solid clues to make it all tie together. Really, I think I blame the preceding 60 hours for all of that more than the conclusion.

Unfortunately, the game doesn't stop there. Starting here and continuing into Persona 5 (more on that at least before the Earth is consumed by its ever-expanding star), Atlus made the decision to integrate the expanded re-release content into the regular game, instead of being the awkward, sweaty roommate that gets nutella all over the PS5 named The Answer (who I still love dearly as my own son, despite his weird rash and 25 hours of padding). When I say "integrate" what I really mean is "sprout out of the end like a disgusting 'Basket Case' tumor". Nothing serves to undercut the murder mystery we've been building to the whole game quite like it just ... continuing. No ceremony or anything, it just keeps going, not even initially clear why. This last section focuses in large part on the character of Marie, who is introduced at the beginning before preceding to do nothing the whole game except loitering on the street corner trying to bum cigarettes off of passing tramps. The mystery established with her is interesting, and she herself is a fun character, but the ultimate payoff is not terribly satisfying. You see, what I didn't mention before is the killer fight inexplicably pivoting into eldritch god territory. I'm not saying I wouldn't appreciate a Hercule Poirot whodunit ending with the revelation that the dame of the household was crushed by a falling chandelier dropped by Chthulhu, but maybe a pair of pliers covered in tentacle slime discovered in Act I wouldn't have gone amiss. More importantly, it just feels like such a disappointing needless escalation. The main appeal of the game was the smaller scale story in a sleepy little town, but it still has to end with the Persona 3 ending where Gozer the Gozerian comes to explain why it's very cross with everyone for not playing nice. Unfortunately, in Persona 3 there was months of setup and teasing suspense leading to the arrival of Nyx being a big deal; she didn't just pop out of the bad guy's head like a stripper cake. It's slightly embarrassing to admit that this is when I kind of lost the plot. All of these confusing motivations and different gods that make things needlessly complicated seem to ultimately boil down to the same idea as Persona 3's ending about humanity yearning for destruction, or more specifically in this game, nothing. It's still an interesting idea, slightly muddled by the sudden introduction of a whole OC god relationship web for the sake of more boss fights.

After opening up several more weeks of social sim hanging around, by which point whatever ditch the game's pacing was shot into has been long filled in with concrete, we finally complete the agonizingly prolonged multi-month conclusion with the real final boss, hidden behind a stupid riddle solvable to only the most dedicated wiki warriors, like me. As I said, the thematic undercurrent of her character is somewhat interesting, but the more surface-level plot details are lost on me. She seems to have set up a challenge for John Persona to prove humanity's worth and then gotten upset when he succeeded. Whatever, kill her and it's over. Finally, you get the real ending, a really wonderful and moving farewell, accompanied by a beautiful narration from Teddie as the MC rides away with his new friendships and memories to last a lifetime. Sorry, that was the ending, and then Golden added a new epilogue that lasts for approximately seven hours and is excruciatingly wordy. It's a nice epilogue with some cute moments, and it's great to see how everyone's changed, but it really is such a great microcosm of all these Golden additions by absolutely obliterating the parting bittersweetness of the original ending with this prolonged cutscene. If I can be that "here's what they should've done" asshole for a second, it probably should've been an anime cutscene after the credits, or a series of still images played over the credits.

Things got pretty harsh there for a while. Even though the overall structure seriously drops the ball, none of that is to understate how much the moment-to-moment of this game works for most of it. Towards the end, when everything becomes so bloated, it definitely feels like more of a slog, but most of the game is not like that. Hell, as broadly negative as I am towards the Golden additions, it also gives us the ski trip and the Valentine's Day event, both of which are wonderful. The ski trip in particular is just one great bit after another - Teddie and Yukiko going ham on those slopes, Naoto fumbling around like a drowned cat, getting snowed into a shed with the companion of your choice, Yosuke telling a familiar ghost story. Even the dungeons themselves are really great from both a gameplay and story perspective if you completely divorce them from the overarcing investigation. Another thing worth mentioning is the romance system. While no more complex than in P3 (ie a girl in her SL asks you why you always hang out with her and you choose between "idk" and doing the P in V hand motion), you now get to actually choose to go steady. On top of that, there are substantially more romance scenes throughout this game. It makes it feel way more impactful when your SO invites you to a number of private hang outs throughout, as opposed to one wild night of awkwardly sitting next to each other on your bed and then never mentioning it again.

Da Characters

Before closing, I'd really like to highlight the characters here by taking a bit to talk individually about each party member. I will probably go back and add the same to the P3 review at some point, but it's especially important here, since 4 much more singularly works on that axis.

- Yu: Not really much to say on this one. The protagonist in this game is probably the faintest presence of 3 - 5. I couldn't really imagine the sacrifice ending of 3 working with this guy, who really stands out as a stuffed refrigerator box when surrounded by such an otherwise strong cast.

- Yosuke: Yosuke feels the closest to a repeated character from 3 as the dopey, slacker best friend, but he has enough differentiation from Junpei to work regardless. For one, he's a bit more of a dick, which I always appreciate. His arc also probably feels the most disjointed between different things, but he works perfectly well as the supportive best friend character. I could also give him the distinction of feeling like the only character who experiences actual growth through the events of the plot, as opposed to just his social link and dungeon. On top of all of that, his bickering with Chie and frustration with Kanji is delightful. While I am fine with him being a bit perverted, especially because the game usually follows through on giving Yosuke karmic retribution for it, there are a couple moments that really push things too far into creepy territory for a character that's supposed to be likeable. Primarily, I'm thinking of him essentially trying to strong arm and guilt trip the girls into wearing bikinis he brought just for that purpose; it's a bit much.

- Teddie: I don't care if it's a boring opinion, Teddie has the unique distinction of being the only Persona party member I actively dislike. The mystery of his true identity is not really interesting, and the ultimate payoff is similarly unengaging. The attempt at giving him Aigis's "becoming more human" arc is really pathetic by comparison. More importantly, however, is just that he's a really unlikeable character. He's constantly obnoxious, selfish, creepy, and arrogant. That would all be fine, and in fact often is, when he experiences actual consequences for it. Unlike Yosuke, however, he usually does not. When he does something annoying, like his weird rambling about zebras at the strip club, I can enjoy it when it's followed up by Chie telling him to shut up, but more often than not he just gets a big pat on the head for being such a loveable little guy. Honestly, his voice doesn't help either. I'm really not as hostile to this type of annoying character as most people, but Teddie absolutely did not connect for me, especially when the game keeps insisting how much everyone loves him.

- Chie: As one of the initial party members introduced, Chie is somewhat glossed over arc-wise. Her shadow anxieties don't really play into her social link or her broader characterization to any great degree. However, her gender anxiety (the first character of several) / envy does provide some interesting texture to her actions. On top of that, she's still a fun character. The spunky tomboy personality did hover on the edge of annoying for me at times, especially later on when it seemed to press more on the "dorky" angle, but it settled on the right side. As mentioned before, I found her social link pretty mundane, but in the main story, she essentially functions as the lynchpin of the whole group, having great banter with Yosuke, Teddie, Kanji, and Yukiko. On top of all of that, she has one of my favorite designs, as well as the endless amusement I got from her galactic punting. She also gets bonus points with me for just being kind of funny looking; it's the Fuuka Effect.

- Yukiko: She's an oft underappreciated member, to my mind. While quiet, Yukiko does not lack character. Her hidden goofy awkwardness is really charming and offers a strong counterpoint to the more boisterous personalities around her. Her social link / dungeon story offer shades of Mitsuru, but she absolutely stands as her own character. Indeed, the nuance in her social link of learning to not blindly reject her current life path for the sake of rebellion goes beyond just "learning to be independent", while also making peace with the part of herself that wants anything but agency. It was all very clever, like so much of the rest of the character work in this game. Oh yeah, being voiced by Amanda Winn-Lee is also a free pass for me. The main problem with Yukiko, sadly, is that the game really just seems to run out of things for her to do. She was my favorite character early on, but at a certain point she seems to mostly just sit there and occasionally ask questions for the audience.

- Kanji: Kanji is absolutely my favorite character in this game. His internal conflict, explored in both his social link and dungeon, is really captivating, and, similarly to Chie, tackles gender anxiety issues that I don't think are terribly often discussed this frankly. What's perhaps more satisfying, however, is that's not all Kanji is; he's a fully realized character. Throughout the story, he reveals himself to be headstrong, aggressive, kind of dumb and naive, but ultimately good-natured and well-meaning. The game slowly unveils how much of a dork he is over time, and it's super endearing. It cracks me up that pretty much every strategy meeting will, at some point, have Kanji ask for someone to explain what's going on. The aforementioned naivete is probably my favorite aspect, contrasting so enjoyably with his tough appearance. According to the creators, Kanji's ultimate sexuality is supposed to be left ambiguous; frankly, I think that could've been handled better if the only man he ever showed any attraction to didn't turn out to be a woman, but that's a minor complaint. The game's a little too clever to be about whether Kanji is gay or not; the point is just for him to make peace with himself either way. Last thing worth mentioning is how funny it is that Kanji's weapon class is essentially "big heavy thing".

- Rise: Rise took a little to grow on me. She comes across a bit one note initially, even after joining the team. However, I did come around. Her being flirtatious and giggly with Yu even outside of the romance path helps to give her a bit of spunk and agency that's hard not to appreciate. In fact, her being more comfortable in extroverted or promiscuous situations in general makes for a really fun contrast with the other girls. On top of that, her social link is one of my favorites, offering a surprisingly nuanced look at the "tortured idol" trope that is way more interesting than I expected, ultimately turning into a kind of inverse "Perfect Blue". Her attempts to "play adult", like in the P3 night club, are also pretty fun to watch, as is the way she likes to tease Kanji, in particular (the most immature of the group). Unfortunately, I think she's somewhat comparable to Yukiko in that she somewhat fades into the background towards the end, though not to the same degree.

- Naoto: Probably my second favorite character - she makes me kick myself that I didn't wait for her to join before picking a romance path. I'm a real sucker for a good straight man (pun not intended), and watching Naoto play the stern and serious role amongst all these oddballs is great fun. Critically, though, her mask does slip, and she does get flustered enough to make her a colorful character in her own right. Similarly to several other characters, there's a strong focus on gender dynamics here. Uniquely, though, this anxiety seems to be primarily self-generated from an internalized understanding of what she should look like, as opposed to being imposed by others (they seem more critical of her age, the other half of her insecurity). Watching Naoto's walls break down, especially in her social link, is pretty wonderful, and seeing her in the epilogue was definitely the most heartwarming. She doesn't have as strong dynamics with the others as some characters do, mostly keeping to Yu, Kanji, and sometimes Rise, though there are some scenes of her with the other girls where she is just hilariously awkward. If there's one little complaint I could make, I think her dungeon-as-metaphor is somewhat muddled? I'm not entirely clear on how that all fits together, especially the decision to model it on some sort of bunker.

Da End

With all that being said, the ultimate summary is that Persona 4 is a really great game that falls just short of perfection. While there are some particularly frustrating aspects to it that seriously hinder my enjoyment, especially of the last few months, it still manages to play to its strengths more than enough to stay fun, engrossing, and often times seriously moving. I wish I could call it an unconditional improvement, but it does at least improve in most ways, for what that's worth. The best way to take it probably is as a lazy ride with a bunch of friends - who really cares where we end up? As long as it's together.

P.S. Here's the usual list of random things I want to bring up but couldn't figure out where else to mention:

- Being able to replay dialogue lines and look at a log of the conversation is such a nice addition

- Another nice QoL: being able to save and quit from anywhere

- I wish you could just check the weather forecast from the menu instead of having to make your way to the calendar

- Kanji trying to be nice by saying an omelette tastes "boneless"

- The P3 nostalgia trip is mostly pretty boring, but the whole scene in the club is amazing

- There's a scene towards the end of Nanako's social link that made me cry (in a good way)

- Adachi's social link is really annoying to try and wrangle

- Super bizarre that Hanako doesn't have a social link, or just more of an ultimate payoff

- Being able to replay social link scenes / see the romantic scenes for girls you didn't pick is fun, even if it probably undercuts the consequences of your choices

- The Persona summoning in this game is definitely the lamest of 3 - 5

- The team up attacks feel so superfluous and poorly explained I'm not sure why they're even there

Let’s make a time loop game. First, we need to establish a mystery, something that’ll really play into the strength of the format, with something new to discover each loop. Since we at Arkane have mastered the magical assassin concept, we’ll blend the ideas, and have players discover how to assassinate a list of targets across a repeating day.

But how do we prevent players from just lucking into a solution, going to the right places and beating the game in two hours? Dishonored was already criticized for being short, and if even 1% of players beat the game in one run, we’ll never hear the end of it. So, we’ll have to force some repetition: necessary codes will be mutually-exclusive, so players will have to loop at least a few times before they’re able to unlock the ending. We’ll author a linear sequence of events that will guide the player and pace the experience.

What about players who don't like the repetition though? It won’t take long for people to get tired of repeatedly fetching their favorite weapons. To solve that, we could have players preserve their loadout between runs… but that would mean that we need to add a little more depth to it, so they don’t just gather everything once and stop caring. The weapons could have randomized bonuses like a looter-shooter, and collectible trinket buffs as well. Adding in character buffs and loot rarity would ensure that there’s always something new to find each run.

Of course, that will work well with the invasion-based multiplayer. Everyone will be fighting a unique opponent, which is great. We can also kill two birds with one stone by limiting the amount of powers players can equip at one time, further emphasizing unique approaches and making gunfights easy to follow. Speaking of limitations however, there will need to be some sacrifices in the realm of map design, since having a one-on-one fight across sprawling maps with load zones would be a nightmare, especially if hiding on rooftops and turning invisible is on the table. So, we won’t have events progress in real time, just in a single time-of-day per mission, because we won’t know how long those encounters may last. It also wouldn’t be good to lock weapons and buffs behind the multiplayer system, because that would let expert assassins steamroll new players. As a final failsafe, we’ll include an option to only play single player, in case it devolves into an invisible sniper camp fest.

Great. This design makes sense from front to back. We’ve walked through all the decisions and how they fit with all the others. We’ll have a time loop game where… players preserve everything from loop to loop, with no time pressure to navigate a linear sequence of events. We’ll prevent players from being bored with excessive repetition by… having them farm currency and random items. They’ll do that until they feel comfortable with tackling the big challenges and handling multiplayer invasions, because losing to an invader resets all the progress on your current loop. You’ll only ever do it when you’re not trying to focus on completing the story, since multiplayer has no benefits compared to isolating yourself in single player.

Hold on, how did this happen? We made decisions that made perfect sense; why is everything so wrong? Why do all our systems work against themselves? I guess it’s because we started with some good ideas, like the time loop assassin stuff and spy-versus-spy multiplayer invasions, but then immediately focused on how to sterilize those core concepts for people who aren’t interested. We made a time loop game and then removed all the time pressure! We took the magical powers and intricate maps we’re great at creating, and saddled them enough limitations to where they're worse than our old games! We made those sacrifices so the multiplayer would work, and then disincentivized engaging with it, killing the point and the playerbase in one shot! Next time we try this, we gotta keep it simple. Focus on what we think is cool and commit to it. Start from scratch. Ok.

Let’s make a time loop game.