PS Vita

Persona 4: Golden - Solid Gold Premium Edition

An enhanced rerelease of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 (2008) featuring quality-of-life improvements, gameplay enhancements, new locations, balance tweaks, online functionality, new difficulty options, an additional side character storyline and a changed endgame. Persona 4: Golden - Solid Gold Premium Edition box contents.

Role-playing (RPG)AdventureVisual Novel

Time to beat: about 130 hours
Plays offline: Yes

Overview

Persona 4, released outside Japan as Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4, is a 2008 role-playing video game by Atlus. It is chronologically the fifth installment in the Persona series, and was released for the PlayStation 2 in Japan in July 2008, North America in December 2008, and in Europe and Australia in March 2009. It was one of the final major exclusives for the system. An enhanced version of the game, Persona 4 Golden, was released for PlayStation Vita in 2012 and received ports to Windows in 2020, and Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S in 2023.

The game takes place in a fictional Japanese countryside in 2011 as a player-named protagonist moves into the town of Inaba from the city for a year. During his year-long stay, he becomes involved in investigating mysterious murders with a group of friends while harnessing the power to summon physical manifestations of their psyches known as a Persona. Much like Persona 3 before it, the game features role-playing and simulation elements: the protagonist progresses through a cycle of days, explores dungeons while encountering enemies, and can forge relationships that can improve their Personas' strength in battle.

Persona 4 blends traditional RPG gameplay with simulation elements. The player controls the game's protagonist, a teenage boy who is named by the player, who comes to the town of Inaba for a year. Gameplay is divided between the real world of Inaba, where the protagonist carries out his daily life, and the mysterious "TV World", where various dungeons filled with monsters known as Shadows await. With the exception of scripted events, such as plot progression or special events, players can choose to spend their day how they like, be it participating in various real world activities, such as joining school clubs, taking part-time jobs, or reading books, or exploring the TV World's dungeons to gain experience and items while progressing the story.

Persona 4 takes place in the fictional rural Japanese town of Inaba, which lies among floodplains and has its own high school and shopping districts. Unexplained murders have taken place in the small town, where bodies are found dangling from television antennas with their cause of death being unknown. At the same time, a rumor has begun to spread that watching a switched-off television set on rainy midnights will reveal a person's soulmate. The game also follows the main characters into the TV World, a fog-shrouded realm filled with monsters called Shadows, which can only be accessed through TV sets.

As reported by the game director Katsura Hashino, while "ideas [had been] thrown around earlier", development on Persona 4 in Japan did not begin until after the release of Persona 3. The development team consisted of the team from Persona 3 and new hires which included fans of Persona 3. Atlus intended to improve both the gameplay and story elements of Persona 3 for the new game, to ensure it was not seen as a "retread" of its predecessor. Hashino said that "to accomplish that, we tried to give the players of Persona 4 a definite goal and a sense of purpose that would keep motivating them as they played through the game. The murder mystery plot was our way of doing that."

The game is also noted for a portion of its story revolving around sexual themes. One of the playable characters given attention by reviewers is Kanji, who is considered to be one of the first characters in a mainstream video game to struggle with their sexual orientation, and Atlus has been commended for the inclusion of that character. Atlus USA has stated that they left Kanji's sexual preferences ambiguous and up to the player; however, there has been no word from developer Atlus Japan concerning the matter.