Persona 4 Golden is the best 6/10 I've ever played.
The story is okay, but it doesn't hold up too well if you actually try to look deeper into it than "it's about the truth", which isn't really a very interesting theme to begin with.
This game is kinda faux-progressive in that a lot of character arcs appear to be related to LGBT issues or about overcoming a society that forces its own expectations onto you, but almost all of them end in "actually I'm not LGBT and we're not gonna talk about how people would react if I actually was" or "actually society's plans for me are good and I will stick with the status quo". It's good enough when you're actually watching the scenes, but trying to analyze anything too much left a bad taste in my mouth. Also, social links as a whole are too heavily relied on for character development. Characters in this game get about one scene to themselves when they first join your party, then everything else for them gets shoved away into a social link. The optional, nonlinear nature of social links makes it so that the main story cannot effectively use any of the development that occurs within them, which makes any development that comes from social links feel kinda fake. As a result this game's entire main cast feels rather one dimensional, even if the scenes of them hanging out with each other can be entertaining.
The combat just feels like a step down from 3. Going to the Midnight Channel costs time that you could spend with social links, which heavily incentivizes doing all the dungeon stuff in one long stretch, side quests included, rather than being able to spread it out over several shorter sessions like with 3's dungeon crawling. I think this really hurts the pacing a lot, honestly. This would be less of an issue if I enjoyed the combat more, but I don't, so that's where we're at.
The atmosphere in the original P4, which I've actually played, is amazing. A masterful balance between catching a serial killer and enjoying small town life with your friends. I think Golden really tips that balance too much towards the latter half. You can't go more than a week or two without having some special Golden only scene of the friends doing something silly together. It's not that the scenes themselves are badly written, but I think their presence makes it too easy to forget the other half of this game's story.
The game's still okay, but compared to Persona 3 it feels like a huge step down.
The story is okay, but it doesn't hold up too well if you actually try to look deeper into it than "it's about the truth", which isn't really a very interesting theme to begin with.
This game is kinda faux-progressive in that a lot of character arcs appear to be related to LGBT issues or about overcoming a society that forces its own expectations onto you, but almost all of them end in "actually I'm not LGBT and we're not gonna talk about how people would react if I actually was" or "actually society's plans for me are good and I will stick with the status quo". It's good enough when you're actually watching the scenes, but trying to analyze anything too much left a bad taste in my mouth. Also, social links as a whole are too heavily relied on for character development. Characters in this game get about one scene to themselves when they first join your party, then everything else for them gets shoved away into a social link. The optional, nonlinear nature of social links makes it so that the main story cannot effectively use any of the development that occurs within them, which makes any development that comes from social links feel kinda fake. As a result this game's entire main cast feels rather one dimensional, even if the scenes of them hanging out with each other can be entertaining.
The combat just feels like a step down from 3. Going to the Midnight Channel costs time that you could spend with social links, which heavily incentivizes doing all the dungeon stuff in one long stretch, side quests included, rather than being able to spread it out over several shorter sessions like with 3's dungeon crawling. I think this really hurts the pacing a lot, honestly. This would be less of an issue if I enjoyed the combat more, but I don't, so that's where we're at.
The atmosphere in the original P4, which I've actually played, is amazing. A masterful balance between catching a serial killer and enjoying small town life with your friends. I think Golden really tips that balance too much towards the latter half. You can't go more than a week or two without having some special Golden only scene of the friends doing something silly together. It's not that the scenes themselves are badly written, but I think their presence makes it too easy to forget the other half of this game's story.
The game's still okay, but compared to Persona 3 it feels like a huge step down.