Persona 4 Golden
Developed by: Atlus
Published by: Atlus USA
Where to start with Persona 4 Golden? Well, let’s start with the story. In Persona 4 Golden the player controls a transfer student who moves to a rural town known as Inaba for a year while his parents have gone overseas to work. The transfer student moves in with his uncle and his young daughter and early on during his stay in Inaba learns about an urban legend by the name of the “Midnight Channel.” The legend goes, if you stand in front of a television that’s turned off at midnight, on a rainy night, the image of your soul mate will appear on the screen. The transfer student quickly learns that isn’t exactly true. Instead of your soulmate appearing on the screen, the Midnight channel displays someone that will turn up dead. The transfer student discovers they can enter the television through the screen and in doing so can save potential murder victims. The story of Persona 4 is complex is extremely engaging.
Let’s move on to the graphics. While this game is over a decade old the anime like cutscenes, and visual novel style of game play graphics hold up extremely well. If you play Persona 4 Golden after Persona 5 Royal the graphics will be a bit jarring at first but if you’re like me you’ll become so utterly engaged in the story that you’ll quickly get used to the graphics and appreciate the visual style of the game for what it is.
When it comes to the sound, like Persona 5 Royal, Persona 4 Golden has an INCREDIBLE soundtrack. The sound effects, and overall sound design is on point.
On to the gameplay. Like in Persona 5 Royal, 4 Golden is split into two parts. There’s the “everyday life” aspect of the game and the “Midnight Channel” or simply put TV world part of the game. In the everyday life aspect of Persona 4 Golden, the player will attend school, spend time with friends, read books, fish, or work at various jobs to make money. On to the TV world part of the game. When the player enters the TV world they will enter different style of dungeons that are procedurally generated to rescue other students that upon rescuing can be recruited to join the players cause. Inside the dungeons the player will encounter “shadows” which are enemies on the floor. If the player hits a shadow they will begin a battle and have advantage to strike first, but if the shadow runs into the player a battle will begin but the shadow will have the advantage. Shadows are completely avoidable but avoiding them is not something I would suggest as the experience gained from fighting shadows is highly valuable. On your first run through a dungeon I’d highly recommend fighting every shadow in order to gain experience to level up your character and party members. Battles in Persona 4 Golden are like Persona 5. Battles consist of the the player attacking shadows with a weapon or magic based attacks via “Persona’s.” Shadows will have elemental weaknesses that will take player experimentation to figure out.
There’s more I could type up but if you’ve played another Persona game this game won’t be too complicated for you to play. The same basic DNA that exists in other Persona games can be found all throughout Persona 4 Golden. Persona 4 Golden is a masterpiece. It contains a great story, that is accompanied by a brilliant soundtrack and engaging combat. I loved my time with Persona 4 Golden. I played through the story twice and unlocked all but one achievement. It’s hard to not recommend this game to anyone that’s a fan of JRPGs and that has Xbox GamePass. PLAY IT!
Played on: Xbox Series X via Xbox Game Pass
Review Score: 5/5
Developed by: Atlus
Published by: Atlus USA
Where to start with Persona 4 Golden? Well, let’s start with the story. In Persona 4 Golden the player controls a transfer student who moves to a rural town known as Inaba for a year while his parents have gone overseas to work. The transfer student moves in with his uncle and his young daughter and early on during his stay in Inaba learns about an urban legend by the name of the “Midnight Channel.” The legend goes, if you stand in front of a television that’s turned off at midnight, on a rainy night, the image of your soul mate will appear on the screen. The transfer student quickly learns that isn’t exactly true. Instead of your soulmate appearing on the screen, the Midnight channel displays someone that will turn up dead. The transfer student discovers they can enter the television through the screen and in doing so can save potential murder victims. The story of Persona 4 is complex is extremely engaging.
Let’s move on to the graphics. While this game is over a decade old the anime like cutscenes, and visual novel style of game play graphics hold up extremely well. If you play Persona 4 Golden after Persona 5 Royal the graphics will be a bit jarring at first but if you’re like me you’ll become so utterly engaged in the story that you’ll quickly get used to the graphics and appreciate the visual style of the game for what it is.
When it comes to the sound, like Persona 5 Royal, Persona 4 Golden has an INCREDIBLE soundtrack. The sound effects, and overall sound design is on point.
On to the gameplay. Like in Persona 5 Royal, 4 Golden is split into two parts. There’s the “everyday life” aspect of the game and the “Midnight Channel” or simply put TV world part of the game. In the everyday life aspect of Persona 4 Golden, the player will attend school, spend time with friends, read books, fish, or work at various jobs to make money. On to the TV world part of the game. When the player enters the TV world they will enter different style of dungeons that are procedurally generated to rescue other students that upon rescuing can be recruited to join the players cause. Inside the dungeons the player will encounter “shadows” which are enemies on the floor. If the player hits a shadow they will begin a battle and have advantage to strike first, but if the shadow runs into the player a battle will begin but the shadow will have the advantage. Shadows are completely avoidable but avoiding them is not something I would suggest as the experience gained from fighting shadows is highly valuable. On your first run through a dungeon I’d highly recommend fighting every shadow in order to gain experience to level up your character and party members. Battles in Persona 4 Golden are like Persona 5. Battles consist of the the player attacking shadows with a weapon or magic based attacks via “Persona’s.” Shadows will have elemental weaknesses that will take player experimentation to figure out.
There’s more I could type up but if you’ve played another Persona game this game won’t be too complicated for you to play. The same basic DNA that exists in other Persona games can be found all throughout Persona 4 Golden. Persona 4 Golden is a masterpiece. It contains a great story, that is accompanied by a brilliant soundtrack and engaging combat. I loved my time with Persona 4 Golden. I played through the story twice and unlocked all but one achievement. It’s hard to not recommend this game to anyone that’s a fan of JRPGs and that has Xbox GamePass. PLAY IT!
Played on: Xbox Series X via Xbox Game Pass
Review Score: 5/5