Persona 4 Golden: Finding My Way


I've been dabbling in Persona 4 Golden off and on for a few months now.  It hasn't truly gotten it's hooks into me but I find it an interesting game and I keep revisiting it.  But, it's still not a game that I'm super excited to get back to with every spare minute.

Part of my problem may be that this game was over hyped for me.  I've seen so many people say that this is the best JRPG ever.  Going into the game expecting that has definitely set my expectations at an unreasonably high level.

I really like the core of the game.  The story and characters are interesting.  They're what keep me coming back.  I love the relationships that develop between characters and the social links that I get to form.  The fact that the social link system is so central to the game is really cool.

In my opinion, the battle system and dungeon design are the weak points of this game.  The battle system has some typical elemental oppositions and abilities, but it's not super engaging for me.  Fusing personas and choosing different personas for different situations adds some variety, but it's not enough.  I also think the dungeons get repetitive.  Each setting is unique and interesting for the first floor... but there are many floors... and it just gets tedious.

Luckily for me, most of my time with the game has been spent with the characters and story.  As I said, that's where the game shines.  They are what keep me coming back for more.

And the music!  I can't believe I've written this much and not mentioned the music.  It's amazing!  It's not what I would ever think of as typical JRPG music.  Every track is fantastic and some of them get stuck in my head for days.  This is going in my top JRPG music games right next to the Final Fantasy and Chrono series.  It's not typical JRPG music and that makes it extra good.

As of right now I've done a the first couple major dungeons and I'm in late May on the in-game calendar.  As far as I can tell, the game takes place over the course of an entire year which started in April, so I'm not even 1/6 of the way into this game yet.  That's kinda intimidating since my playtime is over 10 hours already.

At this point the characters have truly started to grow on me, so I plan on continuing to play the game.  I'm not sure if I'm in it for the long haul.  Based on my rough estimate of my current place and time... I would guess this is probably a 60+ hour game.  But as long as I'm having fun I'll keep putting time into it.

Comments

  1. This was the first JRPG I'd played in any length since Final Fantasy 6/Chrono Trigger (I made the mistake of picking the N64 in the first gen of consoles, and progressed onto the XBox 360 and PC gaming from there, so I missed most of the JRPG's Sony had to offer) and even at a similar point to where you are I ranked it up there along with FF6 as maybe my favourite JRPG of all time. Once I finished it, I was pretty confident it may have dethroned it. Simply an awesome game that I was glad that I bought a Vita for, and even convinced me to pick up a PS4 in preparation for Persona 5.

    I look forward to seeing how you get on with the game in future :D

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    Replies
    1. I've played even further since I wrote this post. I'm loving the characters more and more.

      The combat and the dungeons are still just kinda serviceable, but not fantastic. I think I would like this game just as much without the combat. But, I really like it overall.

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