Review cover Persona 4 Golden (Computer)
Official GBAtemp Review

Product Information:

  • Release Date (NA): June 13, 2020
  • Release Date (EU): June 13, 2020
  • Release Date (JP): June 13, 2020
  • Publisher: SEGA
  • Developer: ATLUS
  • Genres: JRPG
  • Also For: PlayStation Vita

Game Features:

Single player
Local Multiplayer
Online Multiplayer
Co-operative
After eight long years, Persona 4 Golden has escaped the grips of the PlayStation Vita, making it the first Persona game to officially be playable on PC. Here's why you should give P4G a chance.

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Persona is a series that drastically shifts tones between each release. Persona 3 is edgy and depressing, Persona 4 is upbeat and exciting, and Persona 5 is angry and rebellious. Between the three, though, I think the winner is clear when it comes to the overall feel. Persona 4 Golden is the perfect mix between cheery optimism and a gloomy pessimism. It has, in my opinion, the best mix between the social and gameplay aspects.

As a sequel to Persona 3, it improves in leaps and bounds. In comparison to Persona 5, I'd choose Golden in a heartbeat. The way I see it, Persona 4 Golden has gameplay that feels like a means to tell an engaging story, whilst Persona 5 has a shallow story for the sake of sleek gameplay.

Story

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Persona 4 Golden foregoes the common RPG trope of ‘saving the world’, instead opting for a smaller-scale story. The protagonist arrives for a year of school in the rural countryside, but is shortly caught up in a mysterious series of twisted murders. At midnight on rainy days, the warped Midnight Channel appears on TV, featuring the corrupted and perverse thoughts of kidnapped local residents. After appearing on the Midnight Channel, the star is shortly found dead on a foggy day—that is, unless you save them. You and your friends discover a special ability—touching a television allows you to phase through the screen, leading to a foggy world filled with murderous shadows. This is where the Midnight Channel is made, and it's up to your Investigation Team to save lives, and to discover who is behind it all.

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Persona 4 is ultimately a story about accepting yourself. This theme is evident from the start, when you first investigate the Shadow World. Your new friend, Yosuke Hanamura, meets a version of himself created from his own distorted conceptions of reality. These creatures are known as Shadows, and only by accepting them can one be at peace, and awaken to the power of Persona. This theme carries on throughout the experience, most notably with two characters, Kanji Tatsumi and Naoto Shirogane. Both of these characters must accept some deep truths they hide from themselves. Whilst I really don't agree with some of the aspects of Kanji or Naoto, it certainly solidifies the overall theme of self-acceptance.

Gameplay

I'm writing this with the assumption that those reading it have not played Persona 4 Golden before—perhaps you've played Persona 5, and you're interested in some of the earlier games in the series. After all, Persona 5 seemed to blow up in the West. With this assumption in mind, I have to be straight with you—Persona 4 Golden is nowhere near as stylish when it comes to battle as Persona 5 is. But, as I mentioned at the start of this review, Persona 4 makes up for it with far more interesting characters and an engaging plot.

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In Persona 4, you enter the TV to save those who have been kidnapped. Your enemies are the ravenous Shadows that live here, who would easily eliminate those without a Persona to defend them. To obtain a Persona in this world, one must face their inner feelings and accept themselves for who they are. For most people, one Persona can be summoned, but you are special. You can summon over 150 different  monsters, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. To awaken to your full potential, you must obtain as many Persona as you can, and utilise fusion to combine them together and create even more powerful creatures. This ultimately leads to a game where grinding is, in fact, not your main method of becoming strong. Instead, the focus is on building up Social Links, allowing you to blend together your Persona to even more powerful levels.

Battle itself is focused around physical, magic, and support moves. Each Shadow has its own strengths and weaknesses that can counteract your own. This is where you can utilise a surprising amount of strategy, switching your Persona when appropriate to cover your defense, or to go on the offense with powerful magic attacks. Some of the bosses can be tough, making it crucial to utilise your arsenal to the best of your ability, combining both supportive moves with attacks and guards when appropriate. One downfall with this series as a whole, though, is that some spell names can be confusing. I have over 70 hours in Persona 3, Persona 4, and Persona 5, but I still find myself checking which move decreases defense or increases attack.

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Persona 4 Golden has a huge focus on character interactions. Each Social Link (Confidants, for you Persona 5 players) lets you dive deep into each character's inner psyche, as well as give you an advantage in battle. Each Persona has an Arcana, and each Arcana is assigned to an NPC. When you become closer to these characters, you can form Social Links, which greatly enhance the abilities of Personas created via fusion. This may seem like an unnecessary chore at first, but these bonds break up the battles in the perfect fashion. In fact, I slowly found myself invested in each character as their story progressed.

The cast of Persona 4 Golden is the best in the series. I love Persona 3, and I'm enjoying Persona 5, but the characters in those games do not grab me nearly as much. Persona 4 Golden has an ensemble of unforgettable characters who I found myself genuinely attached to as the game progressed. Hell, I've had Chie Satonaka as my icon on at least one website at a time for the past 6 months. Each of these characters is also backed up by some of the best voice-acting you can find in a JRPG. There’s no voice that sounds half-assed or unconvincing, portraying each individual exactly as I'd imagine them. I mean, even Teddie has an intentionally grating voice, but it suits him bear-y well.

Graphics & Sound

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Graphically speaking, Persona 4 Golden really isn't impressive. I mean, when you bear in mind that it's a PlayStation 2 title that was ported to the PlayStation Vita, and then over to PC, it's not surprising. That said, I still think, for the most part, Persona 4 Golden is a pleasant-looking game. Sure, the character models are dated, and the textures aren't exactly high-res, but the detail in the environments is still impressive to this day. Hell, since it's on PC now, we can even look forward to some impressive mods to freshen things up. There's already a mod available to disable the motion blur.

The PC version has a few nice graphics settings in store. Most notably, Persona 4 Golden can be played at up to 120fps. That's right, you can play a Persona game on your PC at 60+fps, and it's an official release. That just blows my mind. There's also the option for supersampled antialiasing, which I'd highly recommend, as the game is already incredibly easy to run. There have been reports of some issues with FMVs stuttering, which I haven't personally experienced, and there's a slight hitch when you perform an all-out attack, but for the most part, it's a rock-solid experience.

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As with the other Persona games, Persona 4 Golden has an excellent soundtrack. Each of them feels emotional, even if some of the lyrics can be complete nonsense. Music, is of course, something that the Persona series seems to get right again and again. I was continuously impressed as the game progressed, each new track seeming better than the last.

Further thoughts

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I originally played Persona 4 Golden on the Normal difficulty, and it was pretty easy. To me, it seems as if the game was 'dumbed down' from the original release on the PlayStation 2. There's almost no consequence to dying, since you can just retry from the start of the floor you're on, which definitely isn't a bad thing. I can't remember how many times Persona 3 killed me off and made me lose a huge chunk of progress. 

Persona 4 Golden is well-paced, but has a problem with knowing when enough is enough. There are several secret bosses at the end of the game, just after you think you're finally done. In order to continue, though, you must do specific things to avoid each "bad ending." This meant that I watched the credits sequence way too many times. That said, each additional dungeon was a blast, and it’s certainly a step up from the unbearable filler Persona 3 was plagued with.

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As for replay value, it really depends on who you are. Six months ago I would have said that I wouldn't be playing again for a good long time, but here I am, having a blast with the New Game+ on PC. With New Game+, you start off with the same social stats as you finished the original playthrough with, as well as your Persona compendium, money, and weapons in the shop. This makes you completely overpowered, which lets you focus more on the Social Links.

So, Persona 4 Golden—is it worth giving a shot? Well, to be honest, I've spent over £100 to play this game, and I don't regret it. I bought a Vita for £80 back in 2019, bought the game for £30, and now that it's on Steam, I paid £16 for it in a heartbeat. It’s certainly not perfect, and I'm not sure if it would be worth that £100 I spent, but now you can play it on your PC for just £16. That, my friends, is a bargain. 

Verdict

What We Liked ...
  • Excellent soundtrack
  • Great story
  • Engaging characters
  • Incredible gameplay
What We Didn't Like ...
  • Maybe a bit too long
9
Gameplay
Persona 4 Golden, like all JPRGs, can be repetitive. That said, the strategy and thought that goes into each battle is engaging, and whilst it isn't as stylish as Persona 5, it's still flashy enough to keep me interested.
8
Presentation
For a PlayStation 2 title, this isn't half bad. With the new supersampling options, and the ability to play at 120fps, I just can't fault this port in this department.
9
Lasting Appeal
Persona 4 lasted a good 60 hours on my first playthrough, and I've just started my NG+ run on PC. I spent about 8 hours yesterday blasting through it with the overpowered NG+ abilities, and I'm having a blast revisiting Inaba.
9.5
out of 10

Overall

Overall, Persona 4 Golden is the Persona title I would recommend the most. It has an engaging story, great character development, and an amazing soundtrack. Truth be told, I do like Persona 3 more, but Persona 4 Golden fixes every flaw Persona 3 had. If you play just one Persona game, make it P4G.
"Maybe a bit too long" - I think it's to short. I wanted more time with the people in the game... I really enjoyed their stories etc.
 
one thing i don't like about these persona game is the talking i messed up my save data due to me not paying heed to do something i was suppose to do. so i had to load an old data 19 day's back and go through all that again... still i wonder if the online rescue is still a thing?
 
Dungeons are literally the same hallways copy pasted over and over.
I'd argue this matters a ton in Action-RPGs such as Dark Souls, but matters almost not at all in a turn-based JRPG, especially one that has so much else going for it. The aesthetics and the presentation of each dungeon in P4G end up being what make them memorable.
 
Now, seeing as I originally played this on a 17" shittop in 2013/2014 before I got anything that you could call a competent gaming PC with at least good dual-core performance, I"d be curious to try this on that same laptop to see how much better it runs without the overhead of PCSX2...except that I took the HDD out of that mess of constant HDD paging and put it into a PHAT and BC PS3.

"Maybe a bit too long" - I think it's to short. I wanted more time with the people in the game... I really enjoyed their stories etc.

Yeah, if you think this game is long, wait until you play Persona 5, let alone Persona 5 Royal I can imagine! Even The Completionist was getting burnt to cinders over having to "complete" the game by getting every item from every girl that's dateable in P5 on Valentine's Day.

9.5/10

Dungeons are literally the same hallways copy pasted over and over. Good review.

You think this is bad? Try Persona 3 where the only dungeon that can be visited more than once is a repeating set of hallways meant to be a tower that are randomly generated, and go for 200+ floors long, features a music track that, while foreboding at first, wears on you. Yeah, any release after the OG one on PS2 will have the option of listening to remixes of music tracks from previous Persona games, but it's only three of them, and you'll be preferring the dungeons in Persona 5 real quick.

At the very least, in the PS1/PSP Persona games that aren't Persona 3 Portable, the dungeons, while mostly boring (the worst offender is the original Persona), usually have something you have to do, a puzzle to solve, rooms with traps that must be navigated, and just more to do than just, "grind enemies, reach the top, maybe go back after saving so you can grind more in preparation for the boss ahead" formula that these games' dungeons tend to devolve into.
 
9.5/10

Dungeons are literally the same hallways copy pasted over and over. Good review.
Persona 4 Golden is about a lot more than the dungeons. The battles themselves are entertaining, and the simplicity of the dungeons allows you to blast through them and enjoy other aspects of the game.

"Maybe a bit too long" - I think it's to short. I wanted more time with the people in the game... I really enjoyed their stories etc.
I feel this way about every Persona game, but most strongly about Persona 3. Persona 4, as I mentioned, does a good job of at least keeping the playtime meaningful, but I just think that the number of 'FINAL FINAL BOSS' type scenarios gets out of hand.

one thing i don't like about these persona game is the talking i messed up my save data due to me not paying heed to do something i was suppose to do. so i had to load an old data 19 day's back and go through all that again... still i wonder if the online rescue is still a thing?
Yeah Persona in general is pretty story heavy. I personally don't mind it too much because I learned to save constantly on my P3 playthrough, but Persona games seem to have a way of giving me incredibly long cutscenes when I need to stop playing and go do something. Maybe saving in a cutscene would be helpful...

Anything new compared to Vita version?
It's essentially the same, other than resolution and framerate. Hopefully there's gonna be some cool mods that add improvements. To be fair, though, it is only £16.
 
Anything new compared to Vita version?
You can turn off Shadows in the settings, making it so you can easily get the True Ending.

All jokes aside, P4G is a really great game as this review says. Really glad it's out now on PC where more people have access to it.

You think this is bad? Try Persona 3 where the only dungeon that can be visited more than once is a repeating set of hallways meant to be a tower that are randomly generated, and go for 200+ floors long, features a music track that, while foreboding at first, wears on you. Yeah, any release after the OG one on PS2 will have the option of listening to remixes of music tracks from previous Persona games, but it's only three of them, and you'll be preferring the dungeons in Persona 5 real quick.
It may just be me but I find P4's dungeon themes to be repetitive compared to P3's variatedTartatrus themes. At the very least, it isn't Mementos where you had to listen to the same godforsaken repeating loop for 66 floors. Glad they changed that in Royal.
 
You can turn off Shadows in the settings, making it so you can easily get the True Ending.

All jokes aside, P4G is a really great game as this review says. Really glad it's out now on PC where more people have access to it.


It may just be me but I find P4's dungeon themes to be repetitive compared to P3's variatedTartatrus themes. At the very least, it isn't Mementos where you had to listen to the same godforsaken repeating loop for 66 floors. Glad they changed that in Royal.

Meh, I never needed to go to Mementos for much other than sidequests and to progress further downward. The enemies in the current active palace usually gave more experience, were much better to recruit and fuse with, etc. than what you could usually find in Mementos.
 
i know the PS Vita had an online option called rescue mode. is there a mode like that in the steam version? i asked that all ready but i wonder if anyone else knows.
 
i know the PS Vita had an online option called rescue mode. is there a mode like that in the steam version? i asked that all ready but i wonder if anyone else knows.
The rescue thing still exists and works in the PC port.
A tutorial for it pops up the second you enter the first dungeon.
 
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First off, I respect this review, thank you for taking the time to actually play the game before reviewing it, and for simply acknowledging that "Whilst I really don't agree with some of the aspects of Kanji or Naoto..." you still remained professional and stuck to reviewing the game. Much respect. However, I personally have seen this issue come up in the community for years and I am still frustrated by it. This Japanese game with Japanese characters have great stories and backgrounds, they don't need to bow down to western standards and perceptions of sexuality. Its insulting to this game to suggest that Kanji or Naoto ought to have been gay or trans, that they as characters would be better off or that it would somehow improve the quality of this game. I love these characters, I dislike constantly seeing people say they would be better off with a different sexual orientation, or that they as characters are in anyway offensive or ignorantly constructed.
 
9
it's not a bad port imo, i had it on the vita and to actually be able to play it at 60fps, that's amazing. atlus is learning
while its not a perfect port some stuff can be changed through mods to work better
i wish it had an option for the motion blur without using special k since you can just up the contrast and it will still be bright.
(special k screws with the game resolution, its really annoying, id rather just upgrade my pc than deal with the screwed up res. i have a potato pc so i can barely get above 30fps. rip)
 
I finished my first playthrough on Tuesday, personally, and...I quite like it. Sure, it's got parts that get old fast (Teddie trying to flirt), parts that are nothing but tired clichés (boys entering hot springs whilst girls are there, boys trying to peek over the hot spring wall - both of which end with the girls physically assaulting the boys, since somehow that's a justifiable and normal response), and parts that shouldn't be there in the first place (crossdressing pageant, group-date cafe), but the vast majority of the game is top-notch.

Sure, the menus aren't anywhere near as striking as Persona 5's, and the battle menu is a list instead of options relegated to their own separate buttons (and Rush is set to Triangle, when using a DualShock 4 controller - NOT Persona skills. Muscle memory did cause a few accidents early on), but visually it's still a treat. Each area is bright, vibrant, and striking, leaving a lasting impression. The sheer variety of environments encountered within the TV is also quite nice - though each dungeon is a flat procedurally-generated maze, instead of a dev-designed 3D space with set pieces and the like, so traversal can get boring after too long. Ehhh.

The team members and Social Links are also very well-characterised, with each one having a distinct personality, world view, and outset/goals. In fact, I feel these Social Links can have more character and relevance than some of Persona 5's Confidants, and aren't nearly as set-in-stone; in P5, female Confidants always started to get romantic feelings for the player character in Rank 9, whereas here it's not quite as formulaic, for example.
Though, as mentioned before, Teddie's near-constant flirting attempts does get tiresome, especially when it inevitably gets ignored by the girls, or gets them angry. Ugh.
Oh, and the scene where the boys walk in on the girls in the Amagi Inn hot spring? Turns out the girls shouldn't have been in there - the reception called the boys to let them know it was Men's Hour for the springs, and one of the girls is the Inn heiress, who should know the schedule! So the girls getting embarrassed, then violent, is POINTLESS - they're the ones in the wrong, yet it's the boys who miss out on the hot springs in the end, after getting pelted by thrown objects! This scene pisses me off due to just how clichéd and sexist it is.

Actual battling now - it sucks there's no "normal" Light/Dark skills in P4G, unlike in P5/R where Kou- and Ei- skills exist for Bless/Curse. Instead, there's only Hama and Mudo skills, which are luck-dependent insta-kill skills that NEVER work on bosses - kinda making Light and Dark as elements meaningless, no purpose for existing. Shame, that. Otherwise, the battling system is decent.
There's also no unused Zenith Defense skill in the game, and the only element-affecting skill cards are Resist, Absorb, Dodge, and Evade [Element] - no Null or Repel. Quite unfortunate, that.

Saving is also restricted to the southern end of the Shopping District, the main floor of the Dojima house, and the TV World hub, unlike Persona 5's near-limitless saving.
Cheating in the Midnight Miracle Quiz is also extremely easy now, since the game auto-freezes when focus is lost (Alt-Tab, or going from one monitor/screen to another) - allowing the player to casually open up a list of answers and search for the asked question. Oops; unintended exploit!
 
Review cover
Product Information:
  • Release Date (NA): June 13, 2020
  • Release Date (EU): June 13, 2020
  • Release Date (JP): June 13, 2020
  • Publisher: SEGA
  • Developer: ATLUS
  • Genres: JRPG
  • Also For: PlayStation Vita
Game Features:
Single player
Local Multiplayer
Online Multiplayer
Co-operative

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