Persona 4 Golden is an Incredible Experience

Just a few days ahead of the exciting reveal of Persona 4 Golden on Steam, I finished my own playthrough of the original Vita version.

I’d intended to play Persona 4 for quite a while, but I wanted a physical copy, and… well…

So when one of February’s Celebrating All Things Romantic contest winners picked me playing P4G as his prize, I finally relented and picked up a digital copy the next time it went on sale.

I’m happy I did, because Persona 4 Golden is incredible.

I loved Persona 5, which was my first Persona game, and it has some definite gameplay improvements I preferred to the systems in Persona 4 Golden – P4G’s dungeons have randomized layouts (although each still has a central theme and aesthetic), and most social links aside from the party members don’t provide any gameplay benefit.

However, overall I like Persona 4 Golden better, and considering how much praise I heaped on 5, that says a lot.

Persona 4 Golden begins with the protagonist temporarily moving to the small town of Inaba, just as the normally-peaceful area is shaken by a mysterious murder. He and his friends learn they have the power to enter a strange world and summon Personas to fight, and they begin investigating the murders together.

I love a good murder mystery, so the story had me hooked from the start, and it never let me go. Even though I unfortunately had part spoiled for me ahead of time (and I would have loved to experience it without knowing that particular detail), I was excited to see everything unfold.

At times it was dark, at times it was funny, and at times it felt like the most 2020-iest game I could have possibly picked to play. I enjoyed every minute of it.

The cast of characters is fantastic, too. I liked the characters in Persona 5, but I really loved this group (except Teddie, but even he grew on me after a while) and they all had their own personal struggles to overcome. Even the social links I disliked at the start turned out to have more depth than was initially apparent.

And of course, Persona 4 Golden has that ridiculously addictive gameplay loop of social activities and dungeon exploration. Every time I played one of the daily life segments, I enjoyed spending time with social links, working on improving my stats, and trying to manage my time wisely to get as much done as possible. It was way too easy to say “just one more in-game day” and not stop playing for hours. Then I’d get to a dungeon and want to complete it in a single run to avoid wasting time, and if I wasn’t in a daily life segment or a dungeon, that meant the plot was progressing and I had to see what happened next. So in short, there was pretty much no part of Persona 4 Golden where I wanted to take a break instead of pressing on.

Don’t get me wrong about my gameplay comments earlier, either. While it doesn’t have those improvements, the gameplay is great! Aside from one annoying dungeon near the end, I found the combat fun, and I particularly liked “Shuffle Time,” a mechanic where you select rewards – or penalties, in exchange for being able to choose more – after battles and get a bonus if you clear them all.

By the time my staggering 120-hour playthrough finally came to an end, I’d managed to max all the social links and felt sad saying goodbye to these characters I’d gotten to know and love. Far from feeling burned out, I just wanted to play even more Persona!

But for now, that will wait until another day.

The timing of the P4G Steam version worked out well for me, because now I can encourage people to play this fantastic game without checking to see if they have a Vita first.

Have you played Persona 4 Golden? What did you think of it? And if you haven’t, what are you waiting for? Let me know in the comments!