Are you ready now?

This brings us to the second problem, a review outlining the major changes between Personas 3 and 4 will wrap up in about ninety words. There aren’t a great deal of them. The passing of time returns; social links and their benefits return; school returns and brings with it exams; randomly generated dungeons and the Persódex also make an appearance.

This time around you’re thrust into the pants of Silent Protagonist 4. He’s not as effortlessly cool as Silent Protagonist 3 was, but is still far cooler than the guy holding the controller, so is perfectly adequate. He journeys to a new town, Inaba, in search of somewhere stable he can study for a year, moving in with his uncle and young cousin. This stable environment lasts for about half an hour out of an introduction that lasts three hours (those without patience need not apply). A body is found, things start getting weird, and before you know it you’re saving the world, one person at a time.

As in Persona 3, you spend your days making friends and hanging out at local establishments; however, it’s not quite as fun. In that game you could find completely random, unique social links wherever you went. Here, the majority of them are connected to the story in some way, or you’re specifically pushed in their direction, and it really suffers for it. With a limited number of social links to go round, most feel wasted on stories that could easily have been incorporated into the main thread of the game. These social links are much less memorable as a result and it’s a real shame because as a mechanic it has endless potential.

Your social life is, of course, interspersed with dungeon runs. Rather than fighting bosses during full moons, you have until the next fog sets in, usually about two weeks from the date a situation arises. Preparation for bosses is made easier with the removal of Persona 3’s much maligned 'tiredness' mechanic, which makes exploring for long periods a far more pleasant experience. While the dungeons are similar in layout to Persona 3 and to each other, they feel far more distinct, with significantly different themes depending on the personality of whoever is trapped inside. One dungeon in particular (number four, stat fans) combines the coolest visuals with the most perfectly fitting tune in RPG history, and is an absolute joy to spend time in.

Almost, that is, because there are some problems with the battle system. The first problem comes before a battle begins, when a pre-emptive strike is attempted. When within a certain range, even if they aren’t facing you, enemies detect you and you have a split second to strike them. Do this, and you might earn a pre-emptive strike. Success or failure feels entirely random, and you can never be quite sure, until the battle begins, whether the game will look upon you kindly. To contrast this, enemies have absolutely no problems with pre-empting you, whether you’re facing them or not.

The battles follow a similar pattern to those in Persona 3, though a welcome change comes in the ability to directly control all members of your party. No more will your healer use Diarama on themselves when they should have bleeding well used Media on everyone! This makes the battles substantially more pleasurable to play. Unfortunately, a few other changes seek to negate this. Previously, using a hit-all attack on the enemies’ weaknesses would give you an extra go, providing you hit the weakness of every enemy. Here, hitting even a single enemy with a hit-all attack will grant an extra go, regardless of whether other enemies avoid,block, repel, or absorb it. This makes most battles far too easy, while also leaving your party wide open for a freak back-attack that wipes you out before you’ve even had a turn.

Perhaps the biggest problem is the inconsistencies, however. Striking an enemy twice causes the 'dizzy' status, forcing them to miss their next turn. On bosses and stronger enemies, though, this has no effect and they are able to act again straight away with no penalty. The game changes its rules at a whim and this means that when you’re given the choice to perform an all-out attack, it’s often a no-brainer. There’s no weighing up of pros and cons anymore - there’s no strategy - you just say yes. There are also far too many enemies with no weakness here too. It’s a problem far, far worse than the same problem that plagued Persona 3 on occasion, also working to remove strategy from a battle system that should be able to pride itself on just that.

And now for the absolute most important point of the review: none of the above really matters. However similar, comparing the game to Persona 3 just isn’t fair: there are few games that hold a candle to it. Despite the flaws, the battle system is still better than many other turn-based efforts, and, for many, it will be a case of enjoying the system you play first (it’ll certainly be hard to return to Persona 3’s lack of ally control). As for the social links, they’re not as memorable as those in Persona 3, but did they even stand a chance? One thing is certain: they do have one massive factor working in their favour, something that can make you forget any flaw in the game.

Persona 4 contains the most consistently funny, affecting, emotional script ever committed to a videogame. Teddie, who in any other game would be “the irritating one with the annoying voice,” is, frankly, amazing. His voice fits his character, every line is delivered perfectly, he produces genuine laughs almost every single time he speaks, and he just gets funnier and funnier. The game has absolutely no right to make you love him but it’s unavoidable. To dwell on the emotional moments isn’t fair on anyone that hasn’t yet experienced them; but, revealing nothing, there are a number of scenes that will be remembered for a long, long time after completing the game, helped in no small part by the near-perfect accompanying soundtrack.

Persona 4 has its flaws. Some carried over from Persona 3, and some of its own creation. Initially it’s hard to look past these and the game feels a shadow of its predecessor. The more time you give to it though, the more you get from it. For a game in a genre revolving primarily around communication, the script was always going to be the selling point, and, based on its script, Persona 4 deserves to sell an awful lot.