Persona 4 Golden: Review

I am pleased to announce... that I have finally (after 3 years) finished persona 4!!!!!!!!!! Wow it's been a long time coming! I began the game back when I was 18. I'd just got my hands on a ps2 and obviously persona 4 was THE ONLY GAME I WANTED TO PLAY. But ps2's need a tv and I didn't have one of those. Limiting my play time to... well... whenever my parents were out. My parents who work from home. Playing during those times or having to play with your dad sitting in the room asking why you’re chasing black things is difficult but I made my way past the castle, through the bathhouse, to brave the strip club. I even got through the video game to the secret hide out... only to give up completely when I started university. (ahaha 1 hit KO’s). Last year I got a psvita and decided to retry on a portable console, which has been ten times easier. Although I started on normal mode it was taking me too long to repeat all of the dungeons I'd already beaten. So, after I finished my exams I switched to super easy and whizzed through the game. As you can see my playtime ended up at almost 40hrs. Considering my first ps2 playthrough is at 30 and my first vita is probably at around 20 this puts me up to just under 90 hrs which is uh... shameful. but Anyway I have no finished the game and would like to type up some thoughts!! 

So here is my review of sorts!

Story

A**** for story. I loved P4's story, all the horrors of a town dealing with murder with a fun scooby doo feel!! GO INVESTIGATION TEAM! If I hadn't been spoilt on who the killer was early on I don't think I would've guessed them! The aspects of school life were well balanced with dungeons I think which was good too (unlike p3 and never ending tartarus) the school trips added to the feeling of the characters being a group of FRIENDS too, not just people in the same dorm. I just wish the tarot cards had been explained, or why Yu never faced his own shadow? Apparently this is dealt with if you hit no to save a new game + but I didn't do that ;;

Side note: Persona's

I really enjoyed the mythical references of persona's names this time round Yukiko's being ameterasu, Yu's being Izanami! Calling Rise's persona Himiko was FANTASTIC NEVER FORGET QUEEN HIMIKO. Naoto's as Yamato Takeru was... um... questionable but I'm gonna let that slide (whats next genji?)

Characterisation 

I love persona 4. I love it so much more than Persona 3 and I think I know the big reason. The characters. Don’t get me wrong the characters in persona 3 are great but they don’t... seem like friends? at least not believable friends. They act like they HAVE to put up with each other. You got Yukari rolling her eyes at Stupei (actually you have everyone rolling their eyes at stupei) while Mitsuru tries to keep it together and Akihiko just eats meat. The protag just dates everyone and anyone while Ken cries and Aigis follows her around. They just didn’t seem like friends. I think persona 3 was too heavy for a strong friendship to form between these characters it went from bad to worse and I felt like there wasn’t enough character development when it came to interacting with one another.

But Persona 4 characterised perfectly! I'm usually not a fan of silent protagonists (unless they're Ludger) but I didn't mind being Yu Narukami if I got to spend every day with his amazing friends. I wasn't a big fan of them in the beginning, but I feel like their social links really helped me to understand them and gave them really great character arcs! I was really impressed by Yosuke's arc, for a game with such heavy themes (murder duh) Yosuke really portrayed that well. His whole arc was about his grieving process and I really appreciated that, he started off with a silly idolising crush and then learnt to accept it for what it was and not treat it as a bad thing and he made friends along the way it was great! Other social links I enjoyed were Yukiko's, Rise's and Kanji's. I think Nanako's could've been a tiny bit better, Chie's was pretty eeh and I didn't like Naoto at all. I feel like she joined the game too late for me to love her. Also that trope about girls needing to be boys is so overdone now. 

Golden add Ons

I wasn't very impressed with these at all. The TV thing was cool, it fit in with the theme of Persona 4 nicely but it really wasn't needed. Marie's social links made me cringe so bad I just stopped bothering. Okina city was nice (I enjoyed buying all those outfits too! I think I used the cheer set and the butler set most!! OH AND THE DRAG SET THAT WAS AMAZING). Hmm what else is there? going out in the evening was a nice way to gain extra social link points! It really added to that feeling of friendship

I play games for the story more often than not so I'm not really going to comment on the game play, it was functional and enjoyable so I have nothing more to say really. 

I really enjoyed persona 4 and I'm glad I've completed it. I cannot WAIT for persona 5. -bounces-

The spirit of exploration has been stirred

I finally got round to playing more of Tales of Zestiria! It’s a game I’ve been really excited about since its announcement a year ago. The character designs and settings are beautiful, the animation is, of course, flawless (if we ignore Slay’s fat feet in that one cutscene), and the story looks like it’ll rip my heart into tiny pieces (I still haven’t recovered from the damage inflicted by Tales of the Abyss). I finally gave in and bought a Japanese copy a couple of months ago but I haven’t had much time to play it since it arrived! My playtime is around 4-5 hours now, there isn’t much furigana so its a little hard but I found a subbed walkthrough on youtube! 

luckily my desk set up is perfect for playing Japanese games, I can basically do duel screens, one side the game and the other a subbed walkthrough. I’m trying to see how much I can understand so I’ve been playing the walkthrough a little delayed. I keet my notebook near so that I can write down kanji I want to look up and words to translate. Of course my textbooks are on the shelf just above my desk so any grammar I don’t know I can google

Some useful resources for playing rpgs in Japanese if you’re not fluent!

• A laptop close to your tv – god, you need this. I don’t know how you’re going to do it otherwise, unless you’re fluent in Japanese.
• hand written kanji search – I’m assuming anyone playing a game in Japanese will actually know some kanji, and will know basically how to draw kanji (stroke order rules, y’know start from the top left in general etc).
• Denshi Jisho – the best Japanese dictionary I’ve ever used, even with sentence examples! you can type in English, hiragana and even romaji! its perfect!
• A subbed walkthrough if you can get find have one, rpg’s usually use made up words or kanji that are pronounced differently (for example hyoma in Zestiria) it can be confusing and having someone else’s for reference helps so much!
• A dictionary of Japanese grammar – it’s expensive but its so worth it, I only have basic but it’s just… ten times better than a textbook because you can search by grammar.
• Maggi-sensei – this is turning into an all round how to Japanese, but Maggi-sensei is the best for searching grammar and getting a clear explanation if you don’t recognise anything!

The game itself, as I’ve mentioned is beautiful. I really like some of the new aspects introduced like using artes on the world map, party members walking with you (not disappearing into nothingness when you travel) and of course the battles playing out on the world map! That last one was especially useful the second time I fought lunaru (Lunarre?) I managed to back him into the wall!! It looks like they didn’t carry dash over from Xillia 2 which is a shame (sob) that was so useful but I can live without. it

So far I’m really enjoying the story I’m a sucker for bright eyed protagonists ready to go into the real world. Slay’s story kinda reminds me of Luke’s and the world building too, Slay’s Shepards costume looks a little like the order of lorelei’s! I remember when it was first announced everyone translated 導師 as fon master and I got really excited ;;; but oh well. I think adding anything more to Abyss would ruin how perfect it is. I have some theories about how Zestiria is going to play out. Looks to me like becoming the Shepard will kill Slay or at least affect him horribly in some way. … ah yes, getting my heart broken is my favourite pasttime.

-aggressively refuses to refer to Slay as Sorey because its a stupid romanisation-