A quick Google search reveals how risky it is to label a PS2 game as the console’s swansong – the term has been levelled at so many games it’s becoming cliché. So, let’s just call this yet another fantastic addition to the little black console’s ever-growing library, and almost certainly the best RPG the PS2 is likely to see this year.
Persona veterans may feel slightly out of place as this instalment of the series ditches the traditional city location for something a little more rural. You play as a transfer student (insert chosen name here), who has been moved to the sleepy town of Inaba, where the top form of entertainment is hanging out at the local Food Court. Luckily, things are about to get interesting.
Your new home is with your uncle Ryoutarou Doujima and adorable little cousin Nanako. Doujima’s a detective investigating the murder of a prolific news anchor: a woman at the centre of a national scandal who had been staying in Inaba when she was killed. You become more drawn into proceedings when a second body is discovered – one of your schoolmates.
Naturally for this type of game, what seems like the work of a serial killer in fact carries a supernatural twist, all surrounding the peculiar Midnight Channel. Your classmates discuss a rumour that on rainy nights, looking into a television at midnight will reveal the face of your soulmate. When you decide to try this out, however, you find yourself watching far more harrowing scenes, linked somehow to the murders.
Oh, and you also discover that you can go through the television.
Thus begins a year of adventures, spent half-and-half between the real world and the world inside the television – a place where victims are sent to die. Together with your classmates—the boisterous tomboy Chie, the shy, beautiful Yukiko, and ex-city boy Yousuke—you venture into the TV world after school in order to prevent further victims succumbing to the same fate.
In the process, each character must confront “shadows” of themselves: representations of their darkest inner secrets. The secrets revealed here will give you deeper insight into what your friends are really like, which is usually nothing like the façade they display in everyday life. One character must deal with his fear of isolation; one must deal with the secret inner joy she receives from being envied; and one must deal with her secret desire to find a man who will sweep her away from dreary Inaba. After each character comes to terms with their shadow, they gain the ability to use “Personas”: otherworldly creatures that imbue the characters with skills and abilities for battle.
The final character worth mentioning is Teddie, a bear you meet in the TV World. By his own claim he has always lived in the TV World, but has no idea what he is or what is going on. Nevertheless, he wants you to find out who’s been throwing potential victims into TV World and gladly acts as your tour guide and battle cheerleader. Teddie is a cute little mascot who is fond of making bear-puns (and some are bear-y cheesy, trust me). He is fortunately very likeable, and offers much of the comic relief in TV World.
What is this emo s***?
The plot is sufficiently dark but is balanced by humorous moments of levity. Your daytime school lessons with crazy teachers (such as the history teacher who shows up dressed fully in ancient Egyptian gear, or the home room teacher who is forever lecturing the perverted boys to stay away from the girls) are always funny. You’ll grow to love the way your little cousin repeats the jingles to adverts when watching TV every evening. And the interactions between the group, such as one time after school when the boys accidentally gobble up all the girls’ noodles, will bring a smile to your face.
The slowly drifting plot (there is a whole year to cover, after all) is helped along by these interactions with very fleshed out characters. As you play through, you’ll continue to learn more and more about your in-game friends and soon start to feel you know them very well. It helps that you don’t just see them in dramatic moments, but also mundane ones, like in class, or out grabbing a meal. The end result is that the characters feel like real people worth caring about.
So it’s the after-school segment of the game where you can enter the TV World (if you want to, that is). During these times, you’ll work at completing a dungeon with multiple floors, ultimately trying to save the next victim who is trapped there. You don’t have to clear the whole thing at once: you typically have a few weeks to work at it (the victim is killed after a few days of rain in the real world, so keep an eye on the weather forecasts). In total there are nine dungeons to clear in the year, each differently themed. The dungeon’s floors are randomly generated, which means that they’re pretty much a set of generic corridors, though the theme of each dungeon is adequately varied.
The time limit to complete each dungeon adds some tension, but isn’t too restrictive. There’s enough time to venture into the dungeon for a few days, leaving enough days to vary your afterschool activities. Grinding is also limited by your SP (the currency for using battle abilities in this game) – you can’t regenerate it once in the dungeon, so once you run out, it’s time to leave for the day. The game tries to make sure you don’t spend every gaming moment visiting the dungeon and grinding.
Battles are initiated by attacking—or being attacked by—enemies on screen. This then takes you to a battle screen, with an advantage given to whoever struck first. Fights are turn-based but fast paced, with short but fluidly animated attacks keeping the flow brisk. You can leave the other characters in your party to do their own thing, give them general tactics, or control them outright.
Each character’s Persona gives them a list of abilities they can employ in battle. Your character, meanwhile, can swap his Persona mid-battle, in order to pick the list of abilities most suited to the current enemy.
The most basic tactic is to exploit the enemy’s weakness: attacking with the element they are weak to will knock them down, granting you an additional attack. Beware, though, as the enemy can exploit your elemental weakness in the exact same way. Luckily, the game gives you the option to “guard”, which will raise the character’s defence and nullify any of their weaknesses, at the expense of actually doing anything that turn. If all your enemies are knocked down, you gain the option to “dogpile” them, where all the characters gang-rush the enemies in a flurry of smoke and comical Batman-style onomatopoeias for heavy damage.
Additional Personas are gained after battles through a little minigame called “Shuffle Time”. Using memory and timing you must pick one of the facedown cards shuffling across the screen, that may contain a new Persona for your collection, may just be a blank card, or may be a penalty card, which robs you of any items, Yen and experience you had gained from the battle. Personas can be levelled up through use, just like your characters. But fusing different Personas is an even more efficient way of creating brand new, high level Personas. Fused Personas inherit some of the abilities of the Personas used to make them, but not all, so you must be careful when fusing that the outcome is desirable. On the whole, though, experimentation with fusing is fun and encouraged.
My chemical bromance
The rest of the game is essentially a life sim. When you’re not in the dungeon, you’ve still got your school duties, sports clubs, music/drama clubs, dating, jobs and going out with friends to attend to. This may bring to mind the tiring task of keeping cousin Roman happy with bowling, but this stuff is far more interesting and helps you out in battle, too. Interesting, because there are a number of subplots that spread from these activities, and they help you get to know fellow characters better. And useful, because there’s stats to be raised in the process.
The game requires you to build social links with various characters in the game, which are then strengthened by doing activities with those characters. Each social link applies to a certain class of Persona. The stronger the social link, the stronger you can make Persona of that class during fusion. You also have a set of personal attributes, such as diligence, expression, understanding, courage, and knowledge, which you can boost by doing activities such as attending clubs, practicing drama, caring for friends, eating scary food, and studying, respectively. These attributes will help you out when interacting with characters: a high courage stat is required to ask a girl for her number, for example.
Social ties also have a more direct effect on battle. Strong friendships with your allies unlock in-battle benefits. For example, if Chie and Yousuke like you enough, they’ll take a killing blow for you in battle. Now that’s friendship, for you. The overall flow of the game after the first few cutscene-laden hours is very open. Each day is essentially free for you to spend as you wish, in terms of after school activities. There may be a small plot bite cutscene at certain moments (a conversation on the way to school, a phonecall received at home), but overall, once you’re set loose, you really are free to roleplay as you wish. There are variations to the daily grind, for example class trips, and the chunkier plot pieces come when there’s a new victim to be rescued, and after you’ve rescued them. But, sometimes, entire days can pass where all you did was go to school, go to sports club afterwards and then study at home before going to bed. If you’re someone who needs plot driving your actions constantly, this might be too much freedom to handle.
Graphically, it’s a PS2 game through and through. The 3D graphics are functional, but the art style and landscapes of the rural Japanese town are beautiful. The 2D artwork used for characters and the cartoon cutscenes are vibrant and high quality. The voice acting is cartoonish, which fits the look of the game, but it is also a joy to listen to. You can set the dialogue text to autoscroll, which means that you can watch the characters talk to each other without having to tap X after every sentence. The soundtrack is a surprising mix of different genres, and used to great effect. The different songs stand up to repeated listening and you’ll be pleased to know the game comes with a soundtrack CD included. If you don’t think a funky J-pop track suits a deadly dungeon, just you wait till you’ve tried it.
The game has a gorgeous, vibrant yellow interface, with some of the coolest menus I’ve ever seen in a game. Persona 4 oozes style with its modern, slick look, and TV-themed aesthetics. All the characters are too-cool-for-school, as you’ll instantly glean from their cocksure fashionista poses during the iPod-advert-style intro sequence. Well, they are Japanese teens, after all.
This game is a fantastic follow-on to Persona 3 and is highly recommended for any RPG fan who still has access to some kind of ancient hardware that can play this. It perfectly suits a busy lifestyle with its drop-in gameplay: if you have an hour or so free you can just fire the game up and clear a couple of days as you please. The story is fresh and exciting, far from the standard “save the world” business, and is helped enormously by a large cast of deep, fascinating characters. The number of activities and stats to manage may become slightly daunting for new players, but this is one of the easier games in the Persona series to get into. Plus, you get to date super-hot cartoon Japanese chicks, if that’s your thing.
Another great addition to the PS2, then. Just don’t call it a swansong, eh? That’s what Persona 5 is for!
Hmm, tempting. Very tempting. I've been so close to buying this twice already, just put off by the fact I don't really have the time to invest in an RPG opus at the moment. Oh, but it's so cheap!
Still need to finish the first Saw. Got stuck on an utter bastard of a puzzle (time limit, it wasn't a mind bender)).
T'was mostly shite, but it almost got a few things right....
Bungie vows never to follow the Activision route and charge extra for online multiplayer
(1) (30/07) 
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#1 - repairmanjack - on 12/04/2009 at 20:35 wrote:
#2 - Syrok - on 13/04/2009 at 09:03 wrote:
Nice review, too.
#3 - mal - on 14/04/2009 at 16:34 wrote:
#4 - Syrok - on 14/04/2009 at 16:50 wrote:
#5 - NewYork - on 14/04/2009 at 18:29 wrote: