User Review : Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4

“Face your true self”

Vexx’s
P4
Persona 4 Review

Platform - Playstation 2

No. of Players - 1

Genre - RPG (Japanese RPG)

(Vexx’s) Classification - Its Scoobie Doo in Japan except the high school kids have strange powers and there is a Serial Killer on the loose….and people go inside T.V’s.

Time played - 80 hours 2 minutes (in game) but more like 82 hours of reloads and other stuff

Date started/completed - 8/14/09 - 10/10/09(12:30 am)

Well.. I must say this is one of my favorite Japanese Rpg’s ever made. P4 ended up being a hell of a lot better than I thought.

The story well in a nut shell, you are this kid that moves from the city to the rural country side town of Inaba in Japan and go to school for a year with your Uncle and little cousin but, as soon as you get there a string a serial of murder cases start to happen and thus this wild story begins…

Pros

There are a lot of pros. The story is excellent and plays out so well that in all honesty you can see some stuff coming but most of the plot is surprising and refreshing.

The characters, Ok I rarely RARLY play a game where I like how all of the characters are developed and respect all of them the way they act this game is one of those games. Saying that you don’t like one character in this is impossible in my opinion.

The combat system, Wow since it being my first Persona game and apparently the one with the best combat system its pretty freaking good. You hit the enemy with their weakness? Well hit there ass again! You dazed all of the enemies on screen? WELL DOG PILE ON THEM AND EAT THERE FACE! No really its kinda like that.

The Soundtrack well its done by Shoji Meguro aka the Shin Megami Tensei Music guru. This guy is amazing with all the music he does and this sound track is no different, perfect in my opinion and it comes with the game no less!

The graphics are very good for a recent PS2 game nice effects and it runs smooth. There were anime style cut scenes and there were a good amount of them, put in excellent places as well.

Warnings

Well this part of my review is a word of warning that do not reflect my score of this game but just some stuff that I think people should know before playing this

1.) It earns that M rating - Seriously this game has such a potty mouth to its not even funny I have never heard this much cussing in Japanese Rpg before.

2.) If you don’t like the Japanese language don’t play this - No seriously this didn’t bother me at all because I hear Japanese all the time now a days but this game uses most of the Japanese suffixes like -kun and -chan and it uses the formal address to people like Sensei and Senpai.

3.) If you never played a Persona game before… - Persona is part JRPG part life simulator I mean you’re a guy in High school in this game I mean there are questions you got to answer you got to study I mean you hang out with friends interact with people and later even date some of the girls in the game.

Cons

Well the cons this time around the Cons fall under 1 category and pretty much my only problem with this game. Its TOUGH…T-O-U-G-H and it falls into 3 reasons and 3 only.

1.) No powering through - You can grind in this game but that’s more less wasting time even if you do one major mistake can screw you up. The first dungeon in the game in all honesty for me is the HARDEST in the game because of the strength of the first dungeon boss.

2.) Main character dies, Game over to the title screen - This is probably my biggest pet peeve in the game if your character dies it's over better hope you saved. Even if you had revive items or a revive skill and your allies were alive but if you die it immediately ends. I understand the reasoning behind it though. You are the leader and in the game they listen to direct commands to you so if you die the whole plan falls apart I get that realism aspect but in this kind of game its just a pain.

3.) Sp(Skill points the equivalent of MP in this game) recovery items are non-existent - Yup even the item shop only sells HP recovery, status recovery and revival items. The only SP recovery items are these cans of drinks in vending machines but the healing amount is so miniscule(5 sp) that it is pointless and you can only buy 5 of them a week (in game) I mean there are some in dungeons and treasure chests but the most they ever recover is 50 SP. Now in the beginning recovering 50 sp is amazing and even later in the game its good but they only come up every once in awhile.

Overall
P4 is an amazing game and Atlus hasn’t lost their touch with their highly successful Persona series.

Score

9.0

Graphics

10.0

Sound

9.5

Gameplay

9.5

Fun Factor

Overall

9.5