GBAtemp Recommends: Persona 4 Golden
Persona 4, on the other hand, stands out with its more optimistic tone. It leaves its protagonist a blank slate, focusing on the power of bonds to help people become the best version of themselves and the damaging effects of isolation. Scored with an upbeat J-pop soundtrack, bathed in primary colours, and featuring a stronger focus on comedy than previous entries, it’d be easy to mistake for a vapid, friendship-is-magic story. In realty, it’s just as dark and complex as the rest of the series; the cheerier mood just reflects its belief in the endurance of the human spirit.
You play as a young man who moves to the small town of Inaba just as it finds itself in the grips of a serial killer. You discover, when you accidentally push your hand through your TV, that another world exists on the other side and that the killer has been pushing people into it, leaving them to die, only for their bodies to wash up back in Inaba after a few days. Since only you and your friends can enter the TV world, and one of your classmates has been thrown in, you take it upon yourselves to save her and solve the murders.
It’s a little bit of a stock premise — take away the convoluted inter-dimensional aspects and it’s another “anime teenagers save the world” story — but where it sets itself apart is its dedication to character and how it uses fantasy elements to explore them in a unique way. When people are thrown into the TV, that world changes around them, and becomes a physical manifestation of their deepest secrets and desires. Since you’ll usually only have a passing familiarity with each victim, exploring these dungeons is an interesting way to contrast the real person with how they present themselves, and it lets the player learn about these people naturally through observing the dungeon design rather than through hamfisted exposition.
Each dungeon is also captained by a Shadow, a representation of how the victim sees themselves, and they play an important role in exploring these characters. Typically, at the end of a dungeon, you’ll find the victim revolting against their Shadow, unable to accept that they represent a distasteful aspect of themselves. This causes the Shadow to erupt into a monstrous form, which acts as the final boss for the dungeon. Winning that fight isn’t what defeats the Shadow, however. Only after seeing the harm caused by their denial is the victim able to accept that part of themselves, at which point the Shadow becomes that person’s Persona, an extension of their ability to fight in the TV world and save others.
It may be a bit too saccharine for some, but it’s also completely sincere, refreshingly unafraid of displaying big emotions, and it’s a clever way to gamify an intensely personal moment. It blends the character work with the genre elements seamlessly, turning basic JRPG needs like exploration and boss fights into extensions of the character work. But it also doesn’t let the personal breakthroughs be reduced down to hitting a big monster with a sword by keeping a strong focus on the victim’s journey of self-acceptance. These stories are so engrossing, in fact, that you’ll often forget that helping people overcome their issues doesn’t really have anything to do with the central plot of finding Inaba’s serial killer.
That plot is the biggest drawback of Persona 4’s writing. While it has a good payoff, it struggles to spread the information out over the mammoth running time (generally estimated to be around seventy hours), which leads to long stretches of nothing. The pacing in general is an issue. The opening drags on, taking a couple of hours before the player is allowed free rein to move and make any meaningful decisions on their own. The characters have a bad habit of talking in circles, to a degree that goes beyond showing their frustration with the case and simply becomes tedious. Jokes have a tendency to go on for one or two dialogue boxes after the punchline, draining most of the energy out of the gag and slowing the conversation.
Yet, the characters are so well-realized that it’s still fun to spend time with them, even if the content could be better. Cutting out the filler would certainly make things snappier, but listening to the Investigation Team playfully bicker does wonders for rounding out their relationships. Persona’s always excelled at its character stuff, but one of 4’s triumphs in particular is how rounded out the full group dynamic is. These meandering, talky scenes flesh out the dynamics of the cast and giving definition to one character often helps round out their friends as well.
For example, let's look at Chie Satonaka and Yukiko Amagi, two best friends who become some of your earliest party members. Chie is a tomboy in every way, generally carrying an intimidating demeanour and being obsessed with martial arts. Yukiko is the exact opposite, a demure, feminine beauty who's training to overtake management of her family’s inn. Chie’s Shadow reveals her insecurity over her lack of femininity, and her feelings of superiority over Yukiko due to her greater independence. Yukiko’s Shadow feels trapped and helpless, constantly relying on the strength of others, primarily Chie, to help her through life. Chie wants Yukiko’s femininity, or at least the feelings of acceptance that accompany it, but with it out of her reach, settles for the satisfaction of having qualities Yukiko herself desires.
Crucially, while both women accept these feelings in themselves, they don’t let it invalidate their other feelings. Chie may get some satisfaction out of seeing that Yukiko’s femininity doesn’t solve all of her problems, but that doesn’t in and of itself make her a bad friend. She doesn’t revel in her friend’s problems, or prioritize that satisfaction over Yukiko’s happiness. Similarly, Yukiko may take more than she gives in her relationship with Chie, but that doesn’t discount her genuine affection towards her. Selfish feelings like that are an inevitable part of any relationship—it’s simply human nature. But the answer isn’t to pretend those feelings don’t exist, or to beat yourself up over it. The answer is to make sure you can still be there for them, that you add more to their life than you take away, and to accept that their shortcomings are only an aspect of them as well.
Learning to accept yourself can be a bit of a cliché theme. It’s an idea that’s pounded into our heads from after-school specials, from platitudes about how everybody is unique and deserves acceptance. Persona 4 makes the idea sing not only by offering a greater deal of complexity to its issues, but by focusing on the uglier parts of ourselves that, maybe, we shouldn’t accept. That we shouldn’t like. But they’re undeniable, and pretending that you don’t have these flaws will only make them worse. Perhaps that’s why it carries such a happier tone despite carrying the same darkness as the rest of the series. Instead of focusing on the harm caused by people’s flaws, it focuses on our ability to incorporate those flaws into ourselves, the freedom that comes with accepting who you are, and the beauty of doing so without succumbing to your selfish side. How could that be sad?
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