Persona 4 Golden

This is my third Persona game. I began with 5, then played P3P when that dropped on gamepass. Finally got around to playing this one.

Overall, I enjoyed it. The central mystery stayed engaging throughout, though I feel like the way it wrapped up was a bit cheap. That is to say, I don't think there were many clues throughout the game to make the mystery's grand reveal rewarding. I never felt like a detective, or that I figured something out that other characters failed to see; it's all laid out for you.

The gameplay loop is still fun, though I found myself binging the dungeons and then spending the next two-to-three weeks or whatever just maxing social links. There isn't a problem with this necessarily, but the balance between dungeon-crawling and social simulation reached extremes in both directions and I never felt the balance that 3 and 5 had. (I feel like 3 handles this issue well with the "Sickness" mechanic).

I played on normal because I'm generally bad at JRPGs, and the difficulty started off hard but gradually got easier; the final dungeons were a breeze. I feel like, while it was easier than expected, I did get rewarded for the occasional grinding session, so I'm not sure what to think overall about the difficulty.

Now, as for the characters, I have mixed feelings. Some were really well written at first and got boring (Yosuke, Chie, Yukiko), while others were problematic at first and then got more interesting, but the character development never went full circle. The homophobia and trans-phobia is striking and obvious and has not aged well, though I know some (I found at least one academic article on the topic) have argued that while it isn't great representation, it's a step forward for representation in Japanese culture. But I don't know. I'm not Japanese.

The relationships with the Player character were ultimately un-engaging, though I think that has to do with the fact that your player character is pretty soulless, either saying TERRIBLE things to people or overly-polite/nice things. Why every female had the hots for my weird player character I may never know, the male fantasy is strong with this series and it's on display here more than any other Persona I've played.

To conclude, it's a fun game, and if you're like me and only sort of like JRPGs its a good time. However, the story and characters did not rope me in the way so many said they would. The most fun part ended up being those good ol' Personas leveling up and fusing into newer ones. Perhaps this means I should just play SMT, leaving the social sim stuff behind, but I find those games cold and dark in a way that is unappealing. I love, for better or worse, the heart of the Persona games, and their relentless dedication to wholesome stories about friendship (even if some of those stories have not aged well).