Media in Review: Persona 4 Golden
I love Persona 4, warts and all. Parts of it have aged like ass, most notably literally anything involving Kanji and Naoto, but I still find it compelling as hell and Nanako is still the best and most convincing child character in a game to this day. Prior to this, I had P4G on the Vita but never played it past like, Kanji's dungeon so I figured I would actually power through to the end this time and see what's new. And it's good!
The big one is Marie, and while her poetry can be uh, a little much, she's no more over the top than any of the main party members and her dungeon is honestly the best of any in the game. It's just Persona Q, and while that game sucked for a variety of reasons, the gimmick works much better when it isn't stapled to a pure dungeon crawler like the EO engine. Also, I don't know if it's because I was dating Rise or she's just always like that but she spent almost the entire time being catty as fuck toward Marie and it was hilarious.
The rest of the Golden additions are just more Persona 4. For every adorable scene between Kanji and Naoto, there's one where the horny dipshits try to peek on the girls in the hot springs. I personally think the new scenes largely skewed to the positive side, but it felt like Rise got a lot of screentime in them and I happen to like her a lot, so of course I would say that. Also, the new music for winter is really good! Marie's dungeon is one of the better themes and the field music is fine, if not an instant certified banger like Heartbeat, Heartbreak or Your Affection is.
And as for the rest of it, it's...Persona 4, and you (probably) already know how you feel about that. I think it's the strongest of the three modern Persona games, but I have admittedly not played Persona 5 Royal - even if the third semester is as good as everyone says it is, I am not in any mood to replay the entirety of Persona 5 to get there and see it. As for Reload, I can't say I'm super fond of P3 (it has pacing issues out the ass, among other things), so maybe Metaphor will be the one that really brings me back into the fold. For now though, I'm satisfied with leaving this one in the memory books.