This review contains spoilers
I have a complicated history with Persona 4. On one hand, it singlehandedly changed the course of my life and set me down a path in my own life that I do not think I regret in the least. On the other hand, I have had to contend quite a bit with my nostalgia goggles for this game fading a little and with really beginning to understand that this game isn't the masterpiece I thought it was. Is it for you? That's up to you to decide.
Persona 4 Golden's biggest strength is its atmosphere - the backwater town of Yaso-Inaba, for how little there is to do in it, captures a very particular sort of feeling that can't really be done justice. It's the sort of hazy joy that comes with thinking of good times in your high school years, the lazy, halcyon "summer years" of yours that slowly begin to taper off into the realization of what you have to do and the responsibilities one has to take on as an adult.
My favorite part of this game really does have to be the Dojima family (Adachi included). Ryotaro and Nanako Dojima's Social Links hit more than a little harder than I expected it to as a AFAB person with a father mainly absent for work reasons. Tohru Adachi's Social Link is one of the best additions Golden makes, giving fun amounts of foreshadowing and context to a character who historically didn't receive much in the original Persona 4. He is, as always, a fantastic fucking villain with a lot of complexity - even more so, the older you get and the more you experience the world. The Accomplice Ending still remains one of my favorite Bad Endings in any RPG to date. Everything surrounding these three remains as good as it ever was in my mind's eye, even despite everything that's happened surrounding them in my life.
However...
that doesn't fix the fact that this game has a lot, and I do mean a lot, of issues. The rest of the Social Links (aside from those like Marie) aren't really too great. I can see what they were going for with the main party, but it was infamously bungled by the way the developers just did not think about how they were deploying their themes in their plot. The queerphobia in this game just ages worse and worse with every year, the gameplay is clunky and doesn't really grow on me, some of the impacts don't hit as hard as they used to.
But then again, why would they? I'm a very different person than the weird teenager who picked up Persona 4 Golden in 2019-2020. This was a game for that me, who needed it the most. I'm 21 now, I have an apartment, I'm entering my senior year in college.
The Persona 4 Golden in my head was never the Persona 4 Golden that actually existed. It lies, instead, in the past - in my past self's hands, a past forever stuck in that hazy summer year. It lies, somewhat still, with me in the quiet present, in an autumn year of my life that paradoxically seems both colder and warmer.
Persona 4 Golden's biggest strength is its atmosphere - the backwater town of Yaso-Inaba, for how little there is to do in it, captures a very particular sort of feeling that can't really be done justice. It's the sort of hazy joy that comes with thinking of good times in your high school years, the lazy, halcyon "summer years" of yours that slowly begin to taper off into the realization of what you have to do and the responsibilities one has to take on as an adult.
My favorite part of this game really does have to be the Dojima family (Adachi included). Ryotaro and Nanako Dojima's Social Links hit more than a little harder than I expected it to as a AFAB person with a father mainly absent for work reasons. Tohru Adachi's Social Link is one of the best additions Golden makes, giving fun amounts of foreshadowing and context to a character who historically didn't receive much in the original Persona 4. He is, as always, a fantastic fucking villain with a lot of complexity - even more so, the older you get and the more you experience the world. The Accomplice Ending still remains one of my favorite Bad Endings in any RPG to date. Everything surrounding these three remains as good as it ever was in my mind's eye, even despite everything that's happened surrounding them in my life.
However...
that doesn't fix the fact that this game has a lot, and I do mean a lot, of issues. The rest of the Social Links (aside from those like Marie) aren't really too great. I can see what they were going for with the main party, but it was infamously bungled by the way the developers just did not think about how they were deploying their themes in their plot. The queerphobia in this game just ages worse and worse with every year, the gameplay is clunky and doesn't really grow on me, some of the impacts don't hit as hard as they used to.
But then again, why would they? I'm a very different person than the weird teenager who picked up Persona 4 Golden in 2019-2020. This was a game for that me, who needed it the most. I'm 21 now, I have an apartment, I'm entering my senior year in college.
The Persona 4 Golden in my head was never the Persona 4 Golden that actually existed. It lies, instead, in the past - in my past self's hands, a past forever stuck in that hazy summer year. It lies, somewhat still, with me in the quiet present, in an autumn year of my life that paradoxically seems both colder and warmer.