After playing Persona 5 Royal and Persona 4 Golden back to back, I came to the conclusion that I prefer Persona 4 Golden. Why is this? Well I'll explain.
Story
This is my favourite story of all time, why is this? Character writing. Each character in this game is fully developed in their own way, most characters to me have relatable struggles of identity and finding themselves. This makes the game more personal to me since the characters are so grounded, easy to empathise with and easy to relate to. Even freaking Teddie has an incredible arc of realising that it doesn’t matter what you are or how you were born, it’s how you can change and creating meaning for yourself. Even the villain feels relatable in a sense since he's a lesson on what happens if you live without actually living, end up being alone, and blame the world and people around you for your problems.
The games’ theme of truth also is relatable, sometimes it's easier to live a peaceful lie rather than accept the truth of reality. In a sense, a world full of shadows would be peaceful, where no-one thinks for themselves, believing what they want to believe, living in ignorance to the world around them. Ignoring your problems, running away from yourself, thinking everything is fine when it's not. But facing the truth shows strength of character, in a way it's a precursor to the third semester in Persona 5 Royal, it's an interesting idea the game plays with.
The game also has a lot of levity, it's the funniest game out of modern Persona trilogy due to how well the group dynamics are written, the voice acting and the weird scenarios. The game has a lot of funny moments, the most in the series, but this is balanced out because this game can have very dark, twisted scenes sometimes like confronting the true culprit for the first time and seeing how his twisted mind sees things or December 3rd. I do admit the darker aspects aren't as common though, but they hit harder due to their scarcity and the highs the game has. I wouldn't go as far to say it's "darker than Persona 3" but the dark moments felt darker for me than Persona 3 or 5 if that makes sense.
Another thing I like about the story is how dense it feels. I’ll explain, with Persona 3, the main story is basically about the mystery of Tarturus, at least for the first half. This is fine, but it sometimes makes the story feel a little sparse. With Persona 5, it’s about the short term villain arcs and the mystery of mementos. Persona 5 feels quite dense too, Persona 4 has the mystery of the TV world, the murder mystery aspect and the short term character arcs in the story when you go to rescue them. There are a lot of initial “hooks” in the story which keep you engaged and wanting to see more, this to me shows structurally the story is great.
We cannot forget about the social links though, these are basically side stories to the main story. These social links allow you to further explore a party members inner struggles and helps you even overcome them. Like helping Kanji to be more honest about his hobbies and not caring what others think or helping Rise realise her “Idol self” was never fake and was always a part of her, or helping Yosuke face the reality of Sakis death. These party member social links are so well written, they are the best in the series, Persona 5 had some excellent party member social links but some were questionable like Ann’s social link (still was entertaining though). The non party member social links are also consistently good and the best in the series. Some are incredible dark, like helping Saikis brother coping with his sister’s death and the reaction of people around him to that or the Death social link which explores the guilt of Hisano when she wished for her husband to die due to him suffering from dementia and forgetting she even existed. Or Nanako and Dojimas social link which explores what “family” is and exploring how isolation hurts yourself and the people you care about. The social links are so good, there are two forgettable ones like Eri’s and Shu’s, however even these have some heartfelt moments at times and aren’t bad at all. So yeah, this has my favourite social links in the series.
Presentation
Lets start with the graphics. This is a PS2 game plain and simple, but, I think it’s aged incredibly well. Character models are clean and simple, the character designs are so iconic so that helps too. Environments look simplistic and slightly low resolution, especially in more rural areas of Inaba, but it has this charm to it.
The music… It’s literally Persona, of course the music is incredibly good. Amazing battle theme, amazing overworld music, amazing music all around. Maybe the opening isn’t my favourite but that’s about it. I love the J-Pop vibe the soundtrack has, it fits the game due to it prominently featuring media and Rise existing.
Gameplay
I love the gameplay a ton. The Persona formula is so excellent. The time management aspect is so fun for me since it’s actually quite strategic, loads of little decisions are always made like if I should see a certain social link today, or level up my social stats, among other decisions which can affect how efficient you are with your time.
What about dungeon gameplay? Since it’s divided into two halfs, the dungeon and social sim aspect, it provides a good balance. Is battling and dungeon exploration fun? Yes. Basically, dungeons consist of randomly generated paths you go through, it’s simple, kinda lazy, and nowhere near as engaging as handmade dungeons like Persona 5’s. But it gets the job done, floors don’t feel tedious to explore like Tarturus since there are less floors than Tarturus (but floors are bigger though), and you can fast travel to the stairs once you find the stairs which you cant in Tarturus. It would be nice to have handmade dungeons but this certainly isn’t bad.
What about the battling though? I love the battling in this game. The game feels very balanced with enemy encounters, each encounter is mostly fair, and can be beaten with any number of strategies. Going for all out attacks feels satisfying, I love the reliance on follow up attacks since you can make educated guesses on when they’ll usually appear and plan around that, abusing status ailments (especially dizzy) is sometimes necessary, it’s not always about all out attacks, sometimes it’s better to not go for an all out attack. The game on very hard mode is indeed very hard throughout the entire game, this difficulty makes battling fun since it makes me feel like each decision matters. If a game is too easy then it makes me feel like decisions don’t matter in the end. This is one problem I had with Persona 5 because in the second half it gets way too easy. So due to this, despite having less mechanics than Persona 5, Persona 4 feels more balanced so I actually prefer the gameplay of Persona 4 which is probably strange. I will say though, sometimes enemies can be bullshit, like one time I literally did an enemy encounter, and it used Megidola, wiping out my entire party before I could even act. This is rare though, on very hard mode you are underlevelled most of the time, but due to how good the combat is, most enemy encounters are still beatable if you play carefully.
However, I actually haven’t spoken about bosses yet. On hard mode and below, bosses feel mostly fair and balanced, besides one stupid ass baby boss you must deal with. But on very hard mode, grinding is basically required, especially Ameno Sagiri which had me grinding for hours. So for bosses, I’d recommend turning the difficulty down since no matter how much strategy you use, if it can wipe out your entire party in one strike, it doesn’t matter in the end. Bosses aren’t fun to fight anyways, and feel mostly very bullet spongey and rely on basic strategies like “Guard when it uses a super move”. Bosses are definitely a weaker aspect of the game, although they aren’t bad. Persona 5 Royal has better boss fights yet the enemy encounters are too easy, these take up most of the game so I’d rather have engaging enemy encounters over engaging boss fights personally.
Final thoughts
Overall, I have to say, I think this game is my favourite game ever made. I was able to do two playthroughs back to back to collect all the achievements, and never ONCE felt burnout, I was able to do the same somewhat with Persona 5, but due to how easy that game is and some weaker arcs like Okumura’s arc, I think it’s clear to me Persona 4 Golden is slightly better than Persona 5 Royal but not by much. Thank you for reading my rambling if you made it this far bruh lmao
Story
This is my favourite story of all time, why is this? Character writing. Each character in this game is fully developed in their own way, most characters to me have relatable struggles of identity and finding themselves. This makes the game more personal to me since the characters are so grounded, easy to empathise with and easy to relate to. Even freaking Teddie has an incredible arc of realising that it doesn’t matter what you are or how you were born, it’s how you can change and creating meaning for yourself. Even the villain feels relatable in a sense since he's a lesson on what happens if you live without actually living, end up being alone, and blame the world and people around you for your problems.
The games’ theme of truth also is relatable, sometimes it's easier to live a peaceful lie rather than accept the truth of reality. In a sense, a world full of shadows would be peaceful, where no-one thinks for themselves, believing what they want to believe, living in ignorance to the world around them. Ignoring your problems, running away from yourself, thinking everything is fine when it's not. But facing the truth shows strength of character, in a way it's a precursor to the third semester in Persona 5 Royal, it's an interesting idea the game plays with.
The game also has a lot of levity, it's the funniest game out of modern Persona trilogy due to how well the group dynamics are written, the voice acting and the weird scenarios. The game has a lot of funny moments, the most in the series, but this is balanced out because this game can have very dark, twisted scenes sometimes like confronting the true culprit for the first time and seeing how his twisted mind sees things or December 3rd. I do admit the darker aspects aren't as common though, but they hit harder due to their scarcity and the highs the game has. I wouldn't go as far to say it's "darker than Persona 3" but the dark moments felt darker for me than Persona 3 or 5 if that makes sense.
Another thing I like about the story is how dense it feels. I’ll explain, with Persona 3, the main story is basically about the mystery of Tarturus, at least for the first half. This is fine, but it sometimes makes the story feel a little sparse. With Persona 5, it’s about the short term villain arcs and the mystery of mementos. Persona 5 feels quite dense too, Persona 4 has the mystery of the TV world, the murder mystery aspect and the short term character arcs in the story when you go to rescue them. There are a lot of initial “hooks” in the story which keep you engaged and wanting to see more, this to me shows structurally the story is great.
We cannot forget about the social links though, these are basically side stories to the main story. These social links allow you to further explore a party members inner struggles and helps you even overcome them. Like helping Kanji to be more honest about his hobbies and not caring what others think or helping Rise realise her “Idol self” was never fake and was always a part of her, or helping Yosuke face the reality of Sakis death. These party member social links are so well written, they are the best in the series, Persona 5 had some excellent party member social links but some were questionable like Ann’s social link (still was entertaining though). The non party member social links are also consistently good and the best in the series. Some are incredible dark, like helping Saikis brother coping with his sister’s death and the reaction of people around him to that or the Death social link which explores the guilt of Hisano when she wished for her husband to die due to him suffering from dementia and forgetting she even existed. Or Nanako and Dojimas social link which explores what “family” is and exploring how isolation hurts yourself and the people you care about. The social links are so good, there are two forgettable ones like Eri’s and Shu’s, however even these have some heartfelt moments at times and aren’t bad at all. So yeah, this has my favourite social links in the series.
Presentation
Lets start with the graphics. This is a PS2 game plain and simple, but, I think it’s aged incredibly well. Character models are clean and simple, the character designs are so iconic so that helps too. Environments look simplistic and slightly low resolution, especially in more rural areas of Inaba, but it has this charm to it.
The music… It’s literally Persona, of course the music is incredibly good. Amazing battle theme, amazing overworld music, amazing music all around. Maybe the opening isn’t my favourite but that’s about it. I love the J-Pop vibe the soundtrack has, it fits the game due to it prominently featuring media and Rise existing.
Gameplay
I love the gameplay a ton. The Persona formula is so excellent. The time management aspect is so fun for me since it’s actually quite strategic, loads of little decisions are always made like if I should see a certain social link today, or level up my social stats, among other decisions which can affect how efficient you are with your time.
What about dungeon gameplay? Since it’s divided into two halfs, the dungeon and social sim aspect, it provides a good balance. Is battling and dungeon exploration fun? Yes. Basically, dungeons consist of randomly generated paths you go through, it’s simple, kinda lazy, and nowhere near as engaging as handmade dungeons like Persona 5’s. But it gets the job done, floors don’t feel tedious to explore like Tarturus since there are less floors than Tarturus (but floors are bigger though), and you can fast travel to the stairs once you find the stairs which you cant in Tarturus. It would be nice to have handmade dungeons but this certainly isn’t bad.
What about the battling though? I love the battling in this game. The game feels very balanced with enemy encounters, each encounter is mostly fair, and can be beaten with any number of strategies. Going for all out attacks feels satisfying, I love the reliance on follow up attacks since you can make educated guesses on when they’ll usually appear and plan around that, abusing status ailments (especially dizzy) is sometimes necessary, it’s not always about all out attacks, sometimes it’s better to not go for an all out attack. The game on very hard mode is indeed very hard throughout the entire game, this difficulty makes battling fun since it makes me feel like each decision matters. If a game is too easy then it makes me feel like decisions don’t matter in the end. This is one problem I had with Persona 5 because in the second half it gets way too easy. So due to this, despite having less mechanics than Persona 5, Persona 4 feels more balanced so I actually prefer the gameplay of Persona 4 which is probably strange. I will say though, sometimes enemies can be bullshit, like one time I literally did an enemy encounter, and it used Megidola, wiping out my entire party before I could even act. This is rare though, on very hard mode you are underlevelled most of the time, but due to how good the combat is, most enemy encounters are still beatable if you play carefully.
However, I actually haven’t spoken about bosses yet. On hard mode and below, bosses feel mostly fair and balanced, besides one stupid ass baby boss you must deal with. But on very hard mode, grinding is basically required, especially Ameno Sagiri which had me grinding for hours. So for bosses, I’d recommend turning the difficulty down since no matter how much strategy you use, if it can wipe out your entire party in one strike, it doesn’t matter in the end. Bosses aren’t fun to fight anyways, and feel mostly very bullet spongey and rely on basic strategies like “Guard when it uses a super move”. Bosses are definitely a weaker aspect of the game, although they aren’t bad. Persona 5 Royal has better boss fights yet the enemy encounters are too easy, these take up most of the game so I’d rather have engaging enemy encounters over engaging boss fights personally.
Final thoughts
Overall, I have to say, I think this game is my favourite game ever made. I was able to do two playthroughs back to back to collect all the achievements, and never ONCE felt burnout, I was able to do the same somewhat with Persona 5, but due to how easy that game is and some weaker arcs like Okumura’s arc, I think it’s clear to me Persona 4 Golden is slightly better than Persona 5 Royal but not by much. Thank you for reading my rambling if you made it this far bruh lmao
4 Comments
Thank you Augustus
DELETED
2 years ago
Deleted
Ummmm... Are you good?
AUG
2 years ago