Game Review: Persona 4 Golden
By: Rocco F
Persona 4 Golden was released on June 14, 2012, and was re-released on all recent consoles in 2021. It is a JRPG (Japanese Role-Playing Game). The game takes about 85 to 130 hours to complete on average, depending on how you play. It was released by Atlus and P-Studios. According to ratings in 2015, P4G (Persona 4 Golden) was the 53rd best game in the world, and it is the second best JRPG behind Persona 5 Royal.
Persona 4 Golden has a very different time system to normal games. It is dated throughout the year if you want to one hundred percent it you will have to do things precisely you have very little room for error that might sound intense but it isn’t that bad with a guide. The game has two different sections: the normal overworld and the TV world. The overworld is daily activities like school, social links, and raising social stats. Social links are hangouts with your in-game friends which raises stats of their persona and your social stats. There are five different social stats: knowledge, understanding, diligence, courage, and expression. To progress certain social links there are social stat requirements. In the TV world it is the place where you do combat. Your character is special because he can use multiple personas; these are the main source of power.
There are eight affinities Physical, Fire, Ice, Electricity, Wind, Light, Darkness, and Almighty. They are pretty simple once you learn them, there is a simple rule of thumb normally like almighty hits no weaknesses but no one resists it. Physical normally can be blocked but has high chance to hit criticals.There is another system in combat called a knock down that is used to get an all-out attack where your party attacks all enemies, or you can hit them when they’re down for extra damage. For attacking there are two things they cost HP or SP. HP takes health away and they are Physical attacks.SP is your magic there is a limited amount you have.There are two types of attacks: single target attacks and multi target attacks. Single target attacks hit one enemy and they deal more damage. Multi target attacks hit all enemies. There are buffs and healing spells. Buffs raise attack, defense, accuracy, and evasion. Healing spells are easy to understand; they just heal your health. Still there is one of the most important skills: passive skills. These can make you deflect effects, heal HP and SP passively, and deal more damage.
In the real world social links are really important. They allow your teammates to learn new skills or get better ability in combat at rank 10 their persona evolves and they learn more skills. When you raise other ranks of different arcanas you get more exp when fusing personas. Arcana is the describing factor for a character.
This is one of my favorite games of all time. It is worth the time it only costs twenty dollars on all the new consoles. The other games in the series are good too. The other games just have different gimmicks and colors. Persona 1 is purple, Persona 2 is dark red, Persona 3 is blue, Persona 4 is yellow, Persona 5 is bright red. You don’t need to play any of the other games in the series to play this one. The other games I recommend are Persona 5 Royal and Persona 3 Reload.