Persona 4 the Golden! For at least the fifth time now right? So Persona 4 is a game I first played in 2009 (I know because I have the Amazon receipt to prove it!) immediately after beating Persona 3 FES which was shown to me by my dearest friend and after watching the "Shadows Emerge" cutscene in that game I was like "I need this shit right now".

Persona 4 has the arc words of "Reach out to the truth" which is also the name of one of its MANY 11/10 songs in its soundtrack. You are Yu Narukami (named such in the anime) a transfer student from the Big City moving to small town Japan - Inaba. You move in with some distant relatives as your parents have both moved out of the country for the year and you're kinda the odd man out. Your uncle and cousin seem nice enough but there's a good deal of tension at home... along with the town in general as just a couple of days after you arrive a body is found strung up on the power lines of the town!! Talk about a wham intro huh?? Nah, it takes like an hour for that to happen hahaha..

The game takes place over an entire year with you living and going to school and just kinda doing the whole 'teenager' thing being one half of the game, the other entering the Shadow World with your crew and fighting monsters and rescuing people who've been thrown into that world against their will. Your JRPG party grows with a cast of loveable misfits who for some reason or another are featured on television, and then shortly after appear on the mysterious "Midnight Channel" - a show on rainy nights that seemingly shows the persons inner desires and thoughts in a delightfully over the top fashion. As these people appear they are tossed into the shadow realm and possibly killed if left over there too long - that's where your investigation team comes in and rescues them! The game is ultimately about who is doing this and why - what started the other world and who is using it for murder.

The mystery element of it is done quite well and there are plenty of red herrings and false leads to keep the game going 60+ hours though if you do manage to get the True End there are a FEW too many "We solved the case FOR REAL this time!" by the end haha... While the main story is perfectly good, the characters are what shine here. Each person in your party and several people around town you can form bonds with called "S links" that represent various arcana cards. You go through their stories in 10 parts and forming bonds with them while helping out with their personal problems. Some of these aren't hot, like a girl in your school who is a total dickwad but for sympathetic reasons (but you never actually get to call her out on it..) or a local mother who is having trouble connecting with her stepson. These are rare though and they are mostly VERY good, especially all of your party members stories. Shout out also to your Uncle, Cousin's and Death's social links which are all just frickin' exceptional. Your uncle and cousin are still dealing with the death of their wife/mother a couple years back and neither really know how to talk or interact with each other, even though they love each other very much. Death's arcana is an older woman who became resentful at her husband's mental decline to the point where she was glad he was dead - her immense guilt over this led to her pushing all of her family away. Many of these stories have incredibly moving finales that even after seeing them several times I'm still tearing up a bit while watching them.

The gameplay is standard JRPG with a very neat twist - the "one more" system means that when you hit one of an enemies weak points (be they elemental or otherwise) you are given a follow up attack of your choosing, and if you can knock everyone down you can unleash an almighty "All out attack" that generally OHKO's the bad guys. However the enemies can also do this to you as well, meaning you have to watch your own weaknesses to not get the crap kicked out of you! As you level up you can fuse new personas, which are basically pokemon? However as your S links get higher level your persona receive bonuses to their levels as you make them encouraging you to make more friends and level those links up! Similarly having a persona of a matching type to an slink makes those links go up even faster. A very neat link between the two 'halves' of the game.

While I think the game is one of the best ever made (still sure of that on playthrough 5), it does have a couple of flaws. 1 - the intro is definitely too slow. While you're getting to know everyone in Inaba and see how sleepy the town is is great, it just takes too darn long to get rolling with the story. I think what is there is GOOD, its just not paced perfectly. 2 - the homophobia of one of the characters gets OLD and needs to be called out. 3 - Some of the added Golden stuff isn't that great. Marie is .... okay? Kind of annoying. 4 - The dungeons aren't as bad as 3, but the improvements in 5 are stupendous.

Negatives aside, Persona 4 The Golden is one of the finest damn games I've ever had the pleasure of playing. The gameplay is exciting and tactical, fusing new persona is a fun mini-game, the s links are great, the characters are endearing and funny and heartwarming AND THAT ENDING! Literally perfect. You, the player, and you, the character, are perfectly in line in feeling as the train pulls away from Inaba as your friends chase after you on the platform - you don't want to leave these people... your dear friends. But even though you have to go you will always know that they remain in your heart and the bond you've forged will never be broken.