"This memorial is dedicated to those who perished on the climb."

I played Celeste for the first time when I was around 12. The themes of overcoming your anxiety really resonated with me, but I obviously never read too much into the transfem themes woven into the story. Coming back to this game, 6 years later, now a woman officially on HRT, I almost broke down crying seeing that lonely stone slab after chapter two. I wish she could have known. I wish I could have been there for her. Climbing the mountain again makes me think back to how crushed I felt as a little girl. How lonely it really was surrounded by men when I wanted anything else. I wish she could see how far we've come because I would rather die trying than give up.

I guess the gameplay is pretty good too.
10

There's a lot of complaining in this review but I did really enjoy myself playing Persona 4, so hear me out.

But it drags hard. And there are a lot of problems. It took me over a month to beat and there is so much downtime between a lot of story events - just nothing happening, with not much to keep you engaged. I do like how many random events there are with the investigation team where you just go and hang out with them and do stuff but it's still pretty far and few between. There are two whole months where literally nothing happens between story beats.

A lot of people say the characters feel the most like friends out of all the modern Persona games and I do absolutely adore the cast and the little inside jokes and interactions they have, but a lot of it is dragged down so much because of the unbelievable amount of misogyny and homophobia and transphobia (no I'm not talking about Naoto) that is so pervasive in Persona 4. It's hard to empathise with Yosuke when a lot of cute moments are interrupted with objectifying women for no reason or calling Kanji gay - it's insane how literally scared of gay people he is like all the time. Teddie's character arc is undermined by how his entire bit is just being a womanizer. It's even more frustrating that the protagonist joins in on all this and you don't get much choice in joining in on some new pea-brained scheme to spy on the girls in the group, you just have to go along with it. I wanted to close the game so many times in scenes like the bathhouse or the inn (not to mention how Hanako's character is just the punchline of countless fat jokes and Kashiwagi is the opposite end of the spectrum and a one-dimensional bitter 'slut' stereotype) because these ENTIRE sequences are so uncomfortable and cringeworthy to sit through. What really struck a chord with me the most was the crossdressing pageant. It's not nice to be playing a videogame as a trans woman and suddenly get hit over the head with the most outright bigoted transmisogynistic attack on trans women that the game expects you to be giggling at, making your existence into the punchline to a joke. Persona 4 is rife with terrible, creepy, dehumanizing jokes that sexualise and objectify women and it made me deeply uncomfortable throughout my playthrough.

That's only one part of what I think really cheapens the experience of Persona 4. This is a lot less of a rant than the previous paragraph but the dungeons are just boring. It feels like you're perpetually grinding. I changed the XP gain in the custom difficulty settings to more because I found myself so ridiculously underleveled in the first few dungeons despite fighting literally every enemy I spotted on the way to the stairs. Trudging through the same hallways and identical chest rooms is an almost joyless endeavour after you've used up your 20 minutes of excitement over a new environment - but the music is fantastic. Heaven is definitely my favourite of the bunch.

The last of my really big problems I think is the buildup to the killer. It came out of nowhere even though I was already spoiled a while before I started the game. Not in a "oh wow I'm so shocked and surprised" kind of way but more in a "what?" kind of way. They just became evil and started calling women worthless bitches. There was literally no reason to suspect them other than the way the game basically tells you who to choose when you're outside with Naoto. Really had zero emotional impact because they just spontaneously became evil. Didn't even do much killing if you've also played the game and know all the details of the story. Persona 4 just kind of throws villains at the wall to see what sticks and ends up with God. None of them are really an effective foil or anything to the MC (which I will take this opportunity to say right now is given about as much personality as a wet sock).

All this complaining does make me sound really miserable and you expect me to give it a super low rating. But I really enjoyed this game. The misogyny is really hard to ignore. Flaws and all, Persona 4 is heartfelt and you grow very close to the cast and all your social links. Battles are actually very fun and I enjoyed min-maxing my personae. I would recommend you play it rather than not - but go in expecting it to be a bit of a drag sometimes, and to be more than just insensitive to a number of minority groups. Overall I still really liked this game and it was fun. I thoroughly enjoyed myself more than not.

Pretty goddamn good.
Decent 8