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In my TV room at home, I have a 46-inch HD TV, a new surround sound system, and an entertainment center with a PS3, 360, and Wii all hooked up and ready to go at any time. And yet, lately, I’ve found myself in my office, sitting two feet away from a smaller standard-definition television, resurrecting such relics as wired controllers and memory cards. That’s right, it’s now nearly 2009, and I am regularly ignoring my next-gen systems to play my PS2. I feel like this happened once before—oh, that’s right, it did last year, when Persona 3 came out and blew my mind. Now Persona 4 is trying for a repeat performance.

I really didn’t think I was going to like this game as much as I liked Persona 3. It’s not that I thought Persona 4 was going to be bad—actually, I was really looking forward to it—but Persona 3 was my favorite game of 2007, so that’s not an easy thing to live up to. Now, it’s still way too early to tell whether or not this will be my Game of the Year when all is said and done (I still have many, many hours until I can even think about making that determination), but so far, there is a lot to like. The story is genuinely interesting, as well as being pretty effing weird, which is exactly what you would expect from a Shin Megami Tensei game.



In Persona 3, the cycles of the moon determined when major story moments occurred, but this time around, it’s the weather that controls the plot. Instead of taking place in a major city, Persona 4 is set in the sleepy Japanese country town of Inaba, where our silent protagonist has just arrived for a yearlong stay. Within a week of his arrival, a mysterious fog covers the town, and several residents are murdered. Before long, our leading man and his friends are drawn into the mystery. Like the other games in the series, most of the main characters are high school students, and I was pleased to find that the Social Link system that worked so well in Persona 3 is still intact.

Also making a return is the “one more” battle system that I absolutely loved in Persona 3. For those who haven’t played the last game, the fights are turned-based, but exploiting the weaknesses of your foes in battle plays a big part in the game. Alternately, you need to protect yourself so that your own weaknesses are not displayed. You can give supporting characters orders in battle (including taking a mortal blow for you, once you have earned their loyalty) or just take over their actions yourself, which is a welcome feature. Characters no longer shoot themselves in the head to use their personae, though, which is too bad.

Even though the characters, location, and storyline are different, the game shares many similarities with Persona 3, which is natural because they do belong to the same series. The graphical style and character models are comparable, as is the soundtrack; I found myself really happy to hear the familiar “Velvet Room” theme. Time is split between school, social activities, and dungeon-crawling, and the game follows one full school year, just like the last one.

It’s entirely possible that Persona 4 will be the last new PS2 game I ever buy, but judging from what I’ve seen so far, it may also be one of the best. Fans of Persona 3 won’t be disappointed, and if you haven’t jumped into this series yet, you might as well do so now. Persona 3 was the first MegTen game I played, but now I’m kind of obsessed. I just hope that I end up loving every single hour of Persona 4 just as much as I did with Persona 3. The game has a lot to live up to, but so far I’m optimistic.

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