It amazes me that in the course of six years, Persona has gone from this niche Japanese series in the West to the gold standard for JRPGs, standing alongside greats like Final Fantasy & Dragon Quest on the worldwide stage. Now, after years of rumors and watching from the sidelines, people who own something aside from PlayStation products or PCs can play Persona 4 Golden as the game is finally coming out for both Xbox and Nintendo Switch in what will no doubt be an exciting event for those newly invested in this series after the multi-console release of Persona 5 Royal this past Fall. A lot of people are looking forward to seeing where the series took root before the release of Persona 5, but it does come with some caveats, that being how much are you able to put up with design that was seen as standard in the late 2000s, and if that is a breaking point for you, then you might be best on looking up a Wikipedia article on the game instead.
The game takes place, not in the hustle and bustle of Tokyo but instead takes place in the countryside of Yamanashi. The pace present here is a lot quicker than I was expecting, given my personal history with JRPGs. You are quickly introduced to a large majority of your party within the first few in-game days. I like this fast-paced approach to the story, allowing you to get into the shoes of your virtual character without the stretching-out padding that is present in JRPGs nowadays. That and I like the Scooby-Doo-like tone that is present in a large majority of the story, mixing fun and colors with hardcore murders and serial killers. If you aren’t new to Persona, then this change in tone won’t come as a shock, and I liked the tone changes here more than I did in Persona 5.
Then you have the combat, which in return is bare bones basic when it comes to turn based combat. You have a list of attacks and moves that you are able to execute when it’s you or your party member’s turn. Though, to my surprise, I found a level of depth here, mainly as the game went on; I soon realized that spamming attack boost and attack wouldn’t get me far as I inched closer to the ending. I soon had to learn the enemy’s weakness and which of my many attacks would do the most damage. I was getting into the combat, though it was easy once I understood the systems and proceeded to break them like a twig.
Another aspect of the gameplay I found to be an interesting choice that being the dungeons are randomly generated. However, in the grand scheme of things of what we know now, I’m kind of glad that this was changed in Persona 5. It wasn’t annoying, but the dungeons lost their unique nature because of that.
But I think that the biggest hurdle that first-time players will have at the start. That being the art style and graphics because, at the end of the day, this is an upscaled PlayStation Vita version of a late PS2 game. But with that mindset in place, the game looks really good at the time of its original release, sure it may not be as stylish as Persona 5 ended up being, but it still has that unique style attached to it that I can happily call it Persona. That and I had game issues throughout my 60-plus hour playtime experience, and it shocked me how smooth it ran on my Xbox, especially when compared to more recently released games. Though it does have the advantage of being a 10 plus year old game, we thought the same of Grand Theft Auto III, and look how that one turned out.
In the end, I enjoyed my time with Persona 4 Golden. It surprised me in many ways that I wasn’t expecting, and I was able to push back the poorly aged aspects and finish an interesting murder mystery story. I do think this will be a game that will stay in my mind space for a while, then, in time, get pushed out and taken over by something else. But if you are on the fence about starting this after finally finishing your Persona 5 save that you started back at the start of October, then by all means, let this take over your life if you have the time to sacrifice, and remember to take your time.
Score: 9 out of 10
Reviewed on Xbox Series X