Persona 4 for the PS2 is the latest game in the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series of games. While it may be late in the ps2's lifeline, it's one of the best RPGs in the entire console's library.
It's good. Oooooh, is it good. You guys really need to play this RPG, it's the best one I've played in quite a while. It isn't related to the other games storywise, so you can just jump right in.
This game is a mix between a realistic social experience based on high school life, and an alternate shadow world where people are being sent to die. Your character and his friends have to save these people. I don't really want to go in depth with the story because any minor bit can be a spoiler, so I'll talk about the gameplay.
In the real life portions, a few hours into the game you will be given freedom to explore the town you live in and your school. In the morning (from Monday - Saturday, a typical japanese school week) you have classes, and sometimes you have to answer a question or two but it's very brief. After that, you have to manage your time according to the weather, joining clubs, talking to people, and visiting the shadow world to save people.
When you enter the shadow world (by jumping into a tv screen) you're presented with a dark version of your home town, with dungeons that you have to explore in order to level up your Personas (the spirits that determine the skills your character can perform) and gain items. This plays like a typical japanese dungeon crawler, with Final Fantasy-Like gameplay. By default, the AI controls your party, but you can set each member to manual, or keep one or two on AI. However, you cannot make AI control your character. Enemies have weaknesses, and if you hit the weaknesses you deal more damage, and "knock down" your enemy. Once all of the enemies are knocked down, you can perform a full party attack on all of the enemies, usually killing them all. If this does not happen, the battle is played out like an ordinary RPG. You have to mind your personal character the most, since if he dies, you lose. It all works really well, and can get pretty hard at times, but you will want to keep trying. When you win a boss battle, you really feel like you accomplished something.
It's a very deep RPG with an engrossing story and addicting gameplay. Save points are frequent and once you get the hang of managing the in-game time, the struggles will be second nature. If I REALLY had to give this game a review, I'd give it a 9/10. The only thing keeping it from a perfect score is the excessive amount of dialogue, which is mostly voice acted, and interesting nonetheless. The graphics are aged, but that's only because it's a ps2 game. Everything else is spot on. I hope you guys dust off your PS2s and give it a chance.
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