Fourth Time’s Still a Charm

If there’s one constant in the world of gaming is that Shin Megami Tensei games are great. However, with each sequel, gamers become more fickle and reaching the same level of success becomes even more difficult. Considering the tremendous success of Persona 3, does Atlus pull off another hit?

Of course they do.

Persona 4 on the Playstation 2 has a story that starts out with a typical teenager moving to a new town for a while. During that process, he makes new friends. Sounds pretty boring right? Luckily, it then changes into a full blown Scooby-Doo style mystery, and a good one at that. Then there’s that whole midnight channel and TV world thing. It makes sense in game, but not much in reality, but who cares?. That’s where the gameplay comes in.

The main gameplay is a “life simulator.” You go about each day going to school and hanging out with various people in your small town of Inaba. These interactions with people are called “social links” and are very important to how well your characters do in battle. The murder mystery part is when you and your gang go into the TV world fighting monsters and saving people who were thrown in. The battle system may appear like your typical turn-based RPG, but there are some aspects that separate it from other traditional turn-based combat and make it very fast and unique. These include “1 more,” where if you land a critical hit or hit an enemy with their weakness you get to hit them again. This also applies to you as well, so watch out.

The graphics in the game can be labeled as “anime,” but it isn’t your typical one. Shigenori Soejima has one of the best and original art designs ever. From the cut scenes to the in-game graphics, everything is nicely done and spot on with no clipping or annoying cuts. Although some of the enemy designs may be a bit weird for some people (one of the bosses looks like a giant frog and another has what looks like a banana for a head), that’s one of the things that make the Shin Megami Tensei games so unique from other RPGs.

One of the best things about this game is the music. From the opening song (Pursuing My True Self) battle theme (Reach Out to the Truth) Shoji Meguro is up there with the best out there in the industry today. You’ll be humming these songs long after the game is done. The best part is that the game does come with a bonus soundtrack, so you can listen to the songs outside the game.

There are a few drawbacks to this game. It’s over 80+ hours long, so you need to make one huge commitment if you want to complete it. Unlike every other RPG, if the main character dies in battle, it’s game over. There’s also the fact that the game is very hard, even at the beginning. One of the main reasons for this are the lack of decent personas at the very beginning, the bosses (besides the fist two) have no weaknesses, and there are enemies with instant death spells. This is considered “normal” for a SMT game.

Despite its flaws however, Persona 4 is one of the best RPGs to come out in recent years. With a great story, setting, battle system, and gameplay Persona 4 is an instant classic.