Recent reviews by Aidan Uzuki

Disappointing Your Parents: The game. Could have been a doctor instead.

I played this on Vita about 2 years ago and I wasn't sure if I enjoyed it by the end but this recent playthrough has really helped shape my overall opinion and fostered an insane amount of respect for this game. This review might be longer than I originally wanted to write about the game, but I think it's a good way to get my thoughts down.

One of the things I really liked about this game in comparison to Persona 3 and 5 was that the gameplay loop of going into the dungeons and going outside of them to improve your social links was a lot more rewarding. I'd say it was absolutely more fun to play than Persona 3 and probably even more fun to play than Persona 5. 3 had dungeons that got too repetitive and going back to the single dungeon of tartarus was more of a chore than something I actively wanted to do while playing. Persona 5 went all out and tried to be as "big" as possible by giving us palaces as setpieces for us to enjoy, but in doing that I feel like ATLUS got a little lost in the weeds and the palaces ended up overstaying their welcome by a fair bit. Persona 4 feels focused in its vision of creating new dungeons for certain story beats while maintaining the dungeon crawler feel of previous entries and I think it knocks it out of the park because of this. I found grinding in this game to be strangely fun and surprising considering the limited number of things you were allowed to do. The way the dungeon is structured also makes it much easier to manage when you wish to save which was a big issue for me in Persona 5 in which I lost hours of progress by not making it to the next save room or being unable to make it back to the previous save room.

Stylistically I'm pretty ambivalent on this title. It's not as moody as Persona 3 or Persona 5, and it might actually be a bit too bright for some people to enjoy. I think when people see the marketing material for this game and they see how bright and colorful it is knowing that the Persona games have some darker themes in them they might be offput by this game a lot. I wouldn't fret too much about that because I think the game's tone and specifically the writing in this title really help add to the experience. This game has a very sunshine pop kind of feel to it in the aesthetics, but if that doesn't do it for you then there's plenty of darker moments in the game that really contrast to this feeling and make those moments feel even more powerful.

The writing in this game during certain choices and sequences is hilarious. The main character often has a deadpan reaction to things that are going on and these reactions are explained to you in plaintext and I'll admit I more than cracked a smile on several occasions. This game has brilliant lines like "you feel as if your bowl is a portal to the meat dimension" and "I'm going to RENOVATE your ass." What I didn't like about the writing was that I kind of felt that the new additions to Golden over the original were kinda shallow and I've always hated the ending of this game for revealing the identity of the final final boss in the most trivial and silly way and I don't think my feelings have changed about it after all this time.

One thing that did change for me is how I viewed this game overall. You see I was always blinded by the ending of this game, because I thought it soured an otherwise fine experience but I guess I just never stopped to smell the roses. P4G was never about beating the final boss at all. It was about the friendships made along the way and the journey you took to get there. All of the character relationships you build are way more valuable overall to me than any sort of JRPG plot the game was trying to throw my direction. For a long time I thought that Persona 3 was my favorite Persona game which is totally about the ending more than what it took to get there, but now in retrospect I think I value my time I spent with P4 more than any other entry and I think that says a lot. I got a lot of laughs and some tears out of this game and I think that makes it at least $20. Hopefully ATLUS ports over more of their games because I think the success of this shows that fans are willing to buy their games again as long as they are willing to sell them. I don't write many reviews and don't expect this to be read by many people but let me just say that if you liked Persona 5 or 3 or have any burgeoning interest in the franchise I can safely say that I completely recommend this game.

(Fun fact this game lets you use WASD and arrow keys in menus and this was very handy when my controller died in the middle of the final boss fight. I would say this game is very friendly to those that may not have a controller)

I played a lot more of this game on PS4, but as a couch co-op experience I don't think I could have enjoyed myself more. There's usually at least 3 ways out of most situations in the game. Pro tip, if you are playing with 2 players then taking the Lone Wolf perk for both of you will definitely help things along if you are not really into games like this and you can basically two-man the whole game instead of needing a full party of 4.