⚠️ Disclaimer: Please ignore my Steam playtime. I played the game pirated back in 2020 when I was broke, and only bought it later to support the devs. I haven't completed it on Steam yet, but it already changed my life.

Oprindeligt skrevet af author:

Hours Played: 74 (and a lifetime in spirit)

Oprindeligt skrevet af author:

Recommended? More than anything else in my life.

“It’s not what you have or what you can do... Just being born, living your life... before you know it, you’re already special to someone.”
– Yosuke Hanamura, Social Link Rank 9

Back in 2020, when the world shut down, so did my will to function. I was stuck in 11th grade with collapsing grades, digital classes I didn’t attend, and the crumbling noise of my parents’ marriage dissolving in the next room. I had no friends. No girlfriend. No future I could see. And the pressure to crack one of the toughest medical exams in the country loomed over me like a death sentence.
And then I stumbled onto Persona 4 Golden. Pirated, because I was broke.
I didn’t expect much. The game looked weird, small, kind of old. But once I booted it up, 74 hours vanished before I knew it.

And for the first time in a very long time… I wasn’t lonely.


P4G wasn’t just a dungeon crawler or social sim — it was therapy disguised as a JRPG.
The suspenseful murder mystery kept me guessing. The turn-based battles, Shuffle Time, the All-Out Attacks — they hooked me. But what healed me was the social aspect. The people. My people.

• Yosuke wasn’t just comic relief — he was the kid who didn’t belong.
  
• Chie and Yukiko had lives and doubts I wanted to help them through.
  
• Kanji made me cry — this boy who was all bark but just wanted to be loved.
  
• Naoto, Marie, Dojima, Nanako (Nanako...) — they weren’t NPCs.
  
• They were my family. My friends. My reasons to keep going. Even Adachi — I didn’t want to believe it. I thought he was cool. Like a jaded uncle. I wanted to be wrong.

When I didn’t have anyone, they stayed.


Every day became a ritual.
Tanaka’s commercial. Bug-catching at the shrine. Singing the Junes theme with Nanako. Chatting with Dojima after dinner. Scooting around the riverbank.

I knew every corner of Inaba.

The playground. The hospital. The school roof. The shrine fox. The gas station where it all began. The train station where it all... ended.

When I left Inaba, it wasn’t just the protagonist on the train.
It was me.


At my lowest, this game told me I mattered. That I was special just by being alive.
I credit Persona 4 Golden with saving me from... well, from not being here.
It gave me back my will to live.

That’s why, when I got my first real money, I stopped pirating. I bought every Persona game available. Because people who make things that keep others alive deserve all the love, money, and respect in the world.

I don’t care if I sound cringe. Or weird. Or like “just another JRPG fan.”

This game didn’t just entertain me — it kept me alive.


If life feels grey... step into the fog.
There’s something waiting on the other side.
10/10
Would go back to Inaba in a heartbeat.


✨ "Every day’s great... at your Junes." ✨