As I am sure you are aware, Persona 4 Golden is a port of the popular PS2 JRPG, Persona 4, with some additions here and there. There are actually a lot of additions which enhance the experience significantly. Golden features periodic anime cutscenes which are stunning and beautiful but the in-game graphics then pales in comparison (but which you will get used to). This is mainly due to the graphics not retaining the same bright and colourful palette of the anime designs. Things can seem a bit blurry with indistinct outlines and character proportions are off (bigger head than normal). To be honest, the graphics seems to be a bit below par from the average Vita game or at least what you think the hardware is capable of. Getting that out of the way though, it's all positives from here.
As mentioned, the anime cutscenes are amazing and it feels as if the game could benefit from cel-shaded graphics instead. The anime cutscenes are fairly frequent in the first hours and then it becomes more spaced out. I like the fact that it doesn't die off completely like a few other JRPGs that features animation. In addition, the voice acting is great. The voice actors put in a lot of emotion and expression in their lines which helps you immerse into the world. Seriously, Persona 4 Golden has some of the best voice acting I've experienced. The characters grow on you and you end up loving them. None of them are annoying and each has enough time to shine. As you are playing the role of one of the characters, you do feel as if the friendship you make are yours and that you're actually living through high school, taking on a secret adventure.
The beginning of the game starts off slow but after the first hour (in which it was one scripted event after another, with barely any direct control by the player), it picks up in the story. At its core, the story revolves around a mystery and it's your job to figure out the culprit of the murders that has been happening. The premise is weird but there will be a moment where you realise that it has sunk in and you accept it. It's intriguing and keeps you going, wanting to see what is going to come up next. There is a lot of humour, to the point whether I don't know whether to take the game seriously or not since the dialogue and character actions can be so funny. It gets better as the game progresses, whoever did the translation did a great job. The story escalates quickly and ends up being brilliant. The core story (i.e. mystery) touches on themes that could have been creepy but the way it was done felt mature and didn't send goosebumps up your arms or make you roll your eyes.
There are typical Japanese high school scenes here ranging from festivals where characters will be wearing yukata to open days where each class has to think up of a theme (e.g. restaurant). These will even touch on weirder stuff like cross-dressing. Again, it manages to stay on the right side of the line for the potentially creepy stuff and instead makes it really funny. As the game goes on, just when you think the story ends, it throws another twist at you. That said, the actual killer's identity was a surprise... but it didn't immediately slot into place when you find out. Post-game content is rich with two more dungeons to go, although it somewhat sucks that it's actually very easy to accidentally lock yourself out of them. There are some emotionally moving scenes in the final portion of the game and the "true" ending is very good.
Trust me when I say this, you will feel sad when the game has ended, it feels as if you are the character, leaving Inaba after one year. After so much has happened, you have to leave your friends that's been through so much with you. It doesn't help that the music is so emotional that will make you tear up a little watching the endings. Just like the story, the gameplay picks up from around the second hour where you get to dig into the dungeon crawling and the battle system starts to open up. The design of the shadow monsters can be creepy... but I didn't find the monster designs to be too inspiring. Granted, there were some cool looking ones but on the whole, they felt fairly bland. The game tends to reuse models with a different colour palette way too often and way too early.
The final story bosses were slightly disappointing in that they were nothing special and actually a bit easy (on Normal mode). Thankfully, there are some really tough end-game bosses to whet your appetite. Anyway, Persona 4 Golden has a turn based battle system which works well. Key thing is that you can use things call Personas, which are akin to summons (for FF fans), to help you get through these battles. Dungeon variety and scenery doesn't change much within each individual dungeon, each part/floor of the dungeon look the same, with the same corridor and doors, which can make exploring somewhat boring. Apart from dungeon crawling, there are the high school sim aspects. There are a wealth of stuff to do, you can live out your high school life, the way you want it to. You can join clubs, study, build relationships and eat out. It provides a great side distraction (although it is one of the core aspects of the game...) to fighting monster after monster, trekking dungeon after dungeon.
A slight negative is the fact that you're under a time constraint. Whenever you do something, time passes, and as days pass, a deadline also looms towards whether you can save a character in time. It is not tight enough to put great pressure onto the player but it just means that you can't get to sample all the activities in one go. The amount of stuff you can do can get overwhelming, managing your time is the key and you need to set priorities. There is not enough opportunities during each in-game day forcing you to pick and choose which things you want to do more. I won't say that it's annoying but you feel as if you won't have enough time to do all the things you want to do like raising your character's stats to be stronger or build relationships to get passive benefits.
You will end up feeling torn between wanting to the next victim to show up so you can grind the dungeons, fight a few bosses and advance the story; or doing other stuff to see where it could get you. The in-game world is constantly expanding, just when you thought that all the areas are opened to you, you end up getting to visit another place whether it's the beach or a nearby city. With each new area, more activities are added, the sim aspect is as addictive as the story, and before you know it, you end up falling into the trap of telling yourself to play through one more game day, or you just have to try this thing or do that and bam, 30 minutes has passed by. Another standout here is the music, more often than not, you end up noticing the music before of how good it is. I was surprised at the amount of vocals in the soundtrack which adds a nice touch. It's also quite cool that there are bonus content that you can access such as letting you play all the game's music tracks, view the game's animated cutscenes and even a quiz show mini-game.
Some of the trophies can be annoying in that you can easily and unknowingly miss a minor requirement on a certain day, meaning if you haven't backed up your save (or the last backup was a while ago), then be prepared to replay the whole story again. It's a long time, first playthrough can take anywhere from 50 to 80 hours depending if you read fast and skip the voiced dialogue. That said, there is some good replay value, you can enjoy the story again, select a few different responses to see a different scene than the first time. What's more, there are four endings to get. Persona 4 Golden is a very unique game in that it completely immerses you into the game world and ends up being something you don't want to end. Definitely one of the best games on the Vita, great value for money and addictive story.
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