Recent reviews by Redbrand

the ai has been godawful and unplayable since the update, don't play until they fix it

still not optimized and every update is worthless

Thank you for this masterpiece GIGA

Terrible characters, it's like talking to chatbots who're only programmed to mince words and repeat the same three sentiments that they paraphrase depending on the situational context. The story is also the worst of all the Personas. It doesn't help that these characters and this story are kicked down your throat with an ungodly amount of filler dialogue, that statistically, takes up more than 40% of a players playtime. Combat is flashy and so is the art direction but in simpler terms it's nothing more than a polished yet bottom-of-the-barrel basic JRPG with a stylistic user interface. The player is stupidly powerful to make the game as accessible as possible and you will rarely if ever find yourself pondering a strategy. Admittedly, the game starts off with strong foundations (like the other neo-personas) but like its predecessors, fails to pan out over the 90+ hour timespan the game takes to complete. The only pro is the OST

Persona 4 is criminally underWHELMING if you set your expectations even halfway as high as the positivity rate for the game. Narratively, the pacing is inconsistent and the substance is trite. If you're not a fan of traditional JRPG feel-good surface-level storytelling, where romancing prepubescent childlike characters is the the only boundary the devs are willing to break, then by all means steer clear of this 70-90 hour bog that ultimately doesn't have an emotional payoff worth the investment the player must commit.

And if you haven't noticed, you'll see that the only people that truly enjoy this narrative and its characters are people who will settle for absolutely anything to fill the void of companionship in their lives. If you're expecting nuanced and properly developed characters and compelling villains, you also might want to avoid this title, as again, it cannot escape the tropey JRPG influence.

The intangibles aside, there isn't much to say about the gameplay. Bosses are genuine damage sponges, and strategy is hardly ever employed because of how the lack of a healthy gameplay loop allows the player to quickly ascend to superiority. Not to say the systems in place even *allow* for much strategic potential in the first place. It gets worse though! The randomly generated dungeon format in this game is probably the most mind-numbing I've ever encountered in gaming, considering it in relation to the duration required to complete them. They honestly would've been better off sprucing up a 2D format for dungeons, because it's more than evident that the range of capabilities for this multimillion dollar company are very limited when working with a 3d game environment; It honestly feels so primitive that I can't even rack my brain for a game old enough to compare this to. Again, that's not even a bad thing in itself, but it's an established boundary that atlus is **never** willing to break or experiment with.

I could go on all day, but please understand that you're not buying a game that warrants an overwhelmingly positive reception. I understand that I'm judging this with hindsight and modern gaming standards ingrained into my very muscle memory, but for what is supposed as the peak of JRPG mountain... you should temper your expectations for this sorry genre as a whole if that statement somehow holds true.

However, it's still the best persona game.