Persona 4 Anime Review

I saw that ealier this week! As a Persona 4 fan I was compelled to disagree with him, but I was forced to admit he had a point; as an adaptation geared towards P4 fans it was great, but as a stand-alone adaptation it could've used some work Ah well, it is what it is; I prefer replaying the games anyways

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Oh, it was definitely geared towards people who had played the game entirely, hence why things like Naoto are not made such oh-so-big secrets... then again, I never thought it was a secret in the game either. Wait, I was supposed to be shocked?

C-A

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Probably not meant to be shocked, the reveals stopped being surprising and started being foretold around Kanji's time. What with his whole "You sayin I like dudes?!" thing before he's kidnapped. Likewise with Naoto's voice, that really doesn't hide her gender much.

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Well, I guess I was supposed to be surprised. But then, nothing in Persona 4 really surprised me. The indentity of the murderer? Kind of obvious... like, early on. As for Naoto, well, I've said it before: I was playing an undubbed version, so I had Romi Park as Naoto's voice. And that made it... a little ambiguous. Since Romi is known for voicing young men. But it was overall still pretty easy to figure out... like, second time Naoto appears, when she's talking to Kanji, I think, I kinda figured it out.
The appearance does not help in making her look more manly.

C-A

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I was actually didn't see the twist coming, but now that you mention it, I feel like I should of with all the clues pointing in that direction within the game. First of all, there's the voice; it was somewhat feminine/boyish sounding to begin with, even pre-reveal. Secondly, there's the appearence; I can imagine some boys pulling off the hat and the coat. but you CANNOT tell me that those striped leggings are manly, I'm sorry Lastly, there's just common sense; 'he's in the OP with the rest of the team, so he MUST have a secret part of her that he'll have to face. What could that secret be?' Considering the first two things, it shouldn't have been too far a stretch Yet I didn't really consider it; don't I feel silly

That said, I feel like her scenario and character was well-written and played out, even if the 'big reveal' wasn't so shocking for everyone Personally, she's my favorite female P4 character, and the one (yes, I said one ) that I usually end up dating by the end of the game

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Much as Naoto is cool - I love Romi Park's voice - I always dated Rise. I dunno, she seemed the only one in the game, party or non-party female Social Link, who seemed to have a legit interest in Narukami outside of the romance route. One that I could actually think could work out in the long run.

My problem with Naoto's romance route is... she is obviously not feeling very happy during it. You making her wear feminine clothes, although she obviously doesn't feel comfortable with them, making her use "Watashi" instead of "Boku" (or, English translation, have her speak in a higher than her usual voice)... it just seems like you are forcing her to be a woman, when a good, decent relationship would actually be, "If you feel comfortable that way, that's fine by me. I'm not going to force you."

Also... can I just say that I hate Ebihara? When I started playing P3P, everybody told me that I'd hate the Moon Social Link guy in the male route. But when I went through his social link, I wasn't nearly as pissed off with him as I was with Ebihara - and that was only during the 5th Event! Actually... I wasn't annoyed at that fat bastard at all! I don't remember his name... but Ebihara.. God, why do I have to prevent her from committing suicide!? Let her!

C-A

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http://m.ign.com/articles/2014/02/25/persona-5-confirmed-for-west-coming-in-2015
Atlus has announced to bring all 4 of the recently revealed Persona games to the West, including the western release of Persona 5 in 2015.

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Persona 4 is alot of fun , it has the same gameplay as persona 3 except you can have control over all your team aswell and the story is better paced and alot more interesting , If you have a ps vita persona 4 gold is the version to buy it plays the same as persona 4 for ps2 but has alot of extras and another ending ontop of the 4 you already can get.

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Yeah but I've also heard people complain about Golden... Okay, my problems with Golden are the following...
* No costumes for Rise? Yes, she's Mission Control Navi, but she DOES appear in-battle now, I goddamnwell want her in some goddamn costumes!
* Gardening added. What?
* Motorcycle Bikes. Where you learn skills. SKILL LEARNING ON MOTORCYCLES!
* More fanservice scenes like a second hot spring scene and such...
* Marie. She serves NO purpose to the plot, her entire being sounds like "I'M A MARY SUE! I'M SPECIAL!" so really, if I weren't FORCED to do her goddamn Social Link and dungeon to get the Golden Epilogue, I'd pretend she never existed.
* The OTHER added Social Link (Listed under Spoilers)
* Option to choose which skills to inherit while fusing... maybe it's just me, but I LIKED not being able to do that. I liked having that somewhat randomized and NOT being able to create the MOST POWERFUL PIXIE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD because I fused her with some stuff.
* Skill Cards. I never used them in P3P. Also, above point.



What I DO like... is that they give us an option to skip scenes. I think that 2 hour long fucking intro of nothing but cutscenes and NO gameplay until I get to the first freaking dungeon, is the ONLY reason I dread starting Persona 4... I love my PS2 version, I love my undubbed one. (Also reason why, the only way I'd play Golden - if I had a Vita and all - is the Japanese version. I don't like the English cast... PS2 or Golden version)

C-A

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I don't know how Naoto hides her breasts. Concerning the scene in the hospital, how is it she's able to do that. Tape!?

I think the term was "sarashi" yes, it's basically a type of binding done with those white long bandages to make them smaller and your chest flatter. But I would not say that Naoto's breasts are that big. After all, given what I learned about Lightning, they say her breasts got bigger and I didn't notice anything - then I read that she was changed to the equivalent of a, I think it was, Japanese C Cup, which for us is a B Cup.

C-A

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Even so, you can't make them entirely flat. Besides, if you look at the portrait:



Yeah, they're out now, but binding it back would (probably) not only hurt, but would make it really hard to breath. Right?

GUYSGUYSGUYSGUYSGUYS!!!!!!!

PERSONA Q US TRAILER!

PERSONA 5 US TRAILER!

PERSONA ARENA ULTIMAX US TRAILER

Man I am still so hyped for Persona Q! I love that theme!

Though shame the voices ain't updated yet, Junpei seems to have lost his voice entirely this trailer XD

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Gm... We are slaves? Slaves of what? Depending on how freedom and captivity are interpreted, we could be said to be slaves of a great many things. We are slaves of our Personas (i. e. the "selves" we present to others), perhaps? Going off of what was meant with the main theme of Persona 4, that would make some sense.

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It was already explained that the theme will be about people unsatisfied with their lives, chained to their fate. So we are slaves of society who often crush all our ambitions (so true it make me feel a little sad). Also hyped that PQ is comming this fall, but sad that we'll have to wait a year before the english release. Oh well, at least it ain't that far and it is on PS3.

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I find it kinda weird that they're putting it on PS3, not on PS4. Atlus. If you're reading this...

DON'T. MOVE. TO. PS4.

I WILL get a PS3 eventually!

Well ,P3 and P4 were on PS2 when PS3 was already out. Also, the advantage to take your time on a generation is that there is a much bigger range of player than on the new one, since a lot of them are waiting for more game (or money) to come. Anyway still just great I don't have to buy the new console now, I'll wait when there will be enough games (and money).

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"Slaves to society," ah? I can't say I didn't see that one coming. On its own, the term "slave to society" is kind of a vague way of putting things; it can mean something very specific or it can be a much more overarching term. The whole concept of freedom is something I've been pondering a lot lately, so the real message of a game that deals with it is something that I'm interested in.

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From what I remember the P5 trailer is no different in American than Japanese, but I'd assumed it's a slave to social conventions. Given the success of Persona 4 I'd say it's down to people being oppressed by society and trying to break out of that to realise their 'true selves' much like P4.

Course it's so vague they could probably do anything with it.

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there was an interview done awhile back talking about the game ill just post the image links for the persona 5 portion of the interview. :P
http://31.media.tumblr.com/0ec5eebb9a3539b20d8a20736100df4c/tumblr_n0gxryj2p71rlc5f9o1_1280.jpg
http://25.media.tumblr.com/ca261058886efc78ec91ec6309e5fe31/tumblr_n0gxryj2p71rlc5f9o2_1280.jpg
http://25.media.tumblr.com/97c6d14b89d6379e16d0b4b7a6fc939d/tumblr_n0gxryj2p71rlc5f9o4_1280.jpg

Gm... The interview sort of answers my question, but not entirely.

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I know I'm late to this discussion, but I wanted to contribute.

As for the additions made in Persona 4 Golden, overall, I think they're pretty good.

---For the stuff I like---

-First off, with the gardening, it pretty much serves as a means to easily obtain some rarer items, such as Chest Keys and Physical Mirrors and such. Granted, I pretty much abused it for Chest Keys, but it's there and it's not like it hinders anything.

-The Bug Catching thing I think is really what the game needed. It really improved vastly on the fishing mechanics in Persona 4 and gives you better control on what you need to catch to complete the various sidequests. Top it off with some new books and it makes it less frustrating overall. Although there's a much tougher Guardian to catch which I swear still took me 20 minutes due to luck, but hey, catching everything else is less of a pain, so I like it.

-The addition of nighttime outings is great too. You get time to actually get closer to draw closer to social links so you have a better chance of ranking up the next day. It's useful when you need it, and like the gardening, it's not a hindrance and it's there if you want it. In my opinion, I'm glad they brought this in.

-The motorcycle bikes, I never really used them, but I suppose it's there if you want to give your party members skills they wouldn't learn otherwise.

-As for the option to choose what skills to inherit, I was completely against it at first, but I've really grown to like it. I don't have to spend HOURS upon HOURS for the Persona movesets I want (seriously drove me nuts), and Margaret's request don't eat up your time. The more I played Golden, the more I appreciated it.

-As for Skill Cards, didn't really use them much, unless there was a Persona with a useless ability and I wanted to give it one of the Auto skills or something. Again, with me it's like the gardening. It's there if you want it, but it hinders nothing.

-Changes in how Gold Shadows work. I think it's a good call and makes grinding easier. Granted, in this game, Gold Shadows, I find, are much tougher. They have no weaknesses, are resistant or immune to nearly everything, but they dish out great EXP and Money if you can beat them before they run away. I quite like it and it saves lots of time grinding for levels and makes a first playthrough of going through a dungeon in 1 day more manageable.

-As for 3rd Rank Personas, which you get if you pursue the True Ending, I'm iffy on those. Some abilities I think are great, and some are too overpowered, but considering the high SP cost, I guess it's alright. To make up for this though, they did remove the immunities the party's Personas would get upon changing, mainly everyone aside from Yukiko and Teddie, which I really don't have a problem with.

-This one is also a give and take, but specifically how Naoto is in battle. In Persona 4, she was near but useless for me, especially on bosses. In Golden, they changed up her abilities a touch, lowered the cost on the Almighty abilities, and made her more useful, albeit, probably the most broken party character in the game. I for one enjoyed using her in Golden, but I did feel she was a tad overpowered, then again, so was my main so meh.

-I enjoyed some of the new scenes, such as when they threw a concert and the whole snow mountain area. Seemed to fit in quite well with the universe and was fun to see. Had some funny moments, so I can't complain. Also, those new moments with Nanako! Why do you have to try to tug on my emotions with her game?

-The ability to fast forward through dialogue and skip cutscenes is really amazing!

-I also overall like the little bonuses you earn in the main menu from playing the game. They're neat.

---For things I didn't really care for---

-Level up Rise enough, and she really does tend to take the challenge out of some battles with her assists. While I don't find that bad, I do consider it beats the challenge at times. The only thing I like is it does save me from wasting turns using SP restore items on bosses, so I guess it depends on how you look at it.

-Adachi's Social Link, overall it was cool and had some neat scenes, but I didn't really feel too compelled to finish it up. I think it was needed however and I'm glad they added a new ending, but it didn't really touch me like other links do.

-Marie. I really don't like her character much. She has some funny moments in the game, but that comes more from the character interactions, mainly Rise and Kanji, rather than her.

-The new dungeon dungeon, I thought, was a neat concept which I enjoyed a little bit, but it was overall too easy. I really didn't care to see a fanservicey scene after completion.

-Some of the added dialogue, especially when mixed in with the original. I especially noticed this heavily wearing earphones during the final boss, some major sound dissonance with the original and new dialogue. It's usually not noticeable as the two aren't usually together, but when they are, geez! One is too quiet or one is too loud!

-As for some of the new voiceovers, I'd like to address Kanji and Naoto specifically. While I don't think the new actors do a bad job (liked them enough in P4Animation), you can easily tell when it's the old voice actor and the new one. They do good jobs sounding like them for the most part. With Kanji though, although I feel Matthew Mercer does a decent job at voicing Kanji's new lines, he just seems to lack that oomph that Troy Baker brought during Kanji's rage moments. They just felt empty to me. They weren't bad, but I just couldn't get a feel from them. Same with Naoto.


I still think P4G is a vast improvement over the original, though it took me some time to feel this way. Probably due to nostalgia or whatnot. I am finding myself nitpicking at some parts. I do feel that watching videos won't do justice and you really got to experience the game for yourself. Seeing it and playing it (as with any game), I feel, are two completely different things and mindsets can be changed from those different experiences. Again, this is just my personal opinion on this. By no means do I consider P4G a perfect game, but I do consider it a really good improvement on the original, and the original was fun in and of itself.

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They had better have good reasons to be dissatisfied with their lives... I don't want a whole party of Yukiko's, whose reason could very easily be solved by simply opening her damn mouth to her mother for five freaking minutes.



Those are the things that I feel just completely take away the challenge in the game. I can get Chest Keys easily now (Physical Mirrors and such I never really used), instead of having to fight a certain monster to get that item or hope that inside the chest was nothing too great.

The Golden Hands seem to have been increased in spawn - and remember, they had no real weakness in the PS2 version either, it was pretty much critical hit luck of defeating them - so now I can get tons of EXP and Money, no real need to grind.

I dislike the option of choosing skills because, as I said before, I liked that, it prevented me from creating an overpowered low-level persona with which I could wipe the floor. Then again, I guess I'm the only person that disliked this change, but I do like the little difficulty it added. I only attempted Magaret's Social Link once, on my current PS2 version, and I'm stuck on the last one, because I need to level up Taotie a bit so I can get Mind Charge for Trumpeteer. Haven't played in months!

And again, Rise's added skills... no challenge.
It seriously feels like Golden took all the challenge out of the game and replaced it with, "Look! Look! So many new features, yay~!"

C-A

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I think it will be more like, "why the fuck can't I get a super nice job! My CV is great and all!" and in the end, learning that while he must content with a shitty job, must not lose her ultimate goal. Or something in the line of someone bragging about how much great project he have in his head but for some reason (lacking time, having a family to support, lacking skill or simply by lazyness) doesn't do it. Those scenario feel very ralatable and can be interesting if handled well.

On another note, I just found that in PQ you can have both protagonist in your team! Now I can finally have my dream team!

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That does hit close to home... except I can't even get a shitty job!

C-A

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To be fair about the chest keys, I think you only get a few from one quest and that's it. They took away getting them from other quests and you can't find a group of 3 in chests. You rarely find them in shuffle time and crack wheat is the only way to obtain them. They still feel as scarce throughout most of the game as they did in the original for me. It wasn't until I had reached Mitsuo's dungeon where I felt I had a small surplus, which was about the same in P4 when I got there in that game.

About the Golden shadows, they behave differently. They run away from you instead of towards you and can be a pain to catch at times. If you don't catch them, they disappear. You're wrong about them not having weaknesses too. While that's true in later dungeons, it wasn't true for the first several. I distinctly remember, and even the wikia says, that in Persona 4 vanilla, they would have one weakness that you could exploit. Yukiko's Castle ones were weak to Zio. In Golden, even in Yukiko's, they have no weaknesses. I believe Heaven is the first dungeon in P4 where they wouldn't have weaknesses. While it's true you can grind them, I found it VERY luck based on trying to kill even one early on in the game. Also, their spawn rate feels pretty much the same as they did in P4. I'll be honest too, I've had more Gold Shadows run away than I was able to kill, so to say they're abusive is subjective. It's more dependent on your luck than anything else. Critical hits are the ONLY way to knock any of them down, whether it's Yukiko's castle or Naoto's dungeon.

Also, I will say this. If your biggest complaint is the difficulty, then that's nothing. Where P4 has 3 difficulties, P4G has 5, with an easier intensity than the easiest one in the original and a harder one that than the hardest in the original. While I feel and agree that the basic default difficulty is easier than the original at some points, there are much harder difficulty options to make all that null and void.

I'm not, by any means, saying you must play this. This is all just opinion and I still think P4 is a great game, it's just my opinion that I feel P4G feels like an improved version, that's all. I suppose if anything, we can agree to disagree. I can understand where you're coming from and your stance makes a lot of sense to me too. In fact, I held some of those opinions myself for a while. =)

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The whole deal with these people being discontent or depressed could be tied to something serious, which is something I want injected into my Persona game. Like...your girlfriend is raped, or...you boyfriend is murdered/kidnapped, something more serious than "I don't want to inherit my family's inn" (Which I had no problem with that being the case).

I dunno, whaddya think?


I also want another Female main character. Maya was cool...

I imagine they'll go the route of P3P and give you an option.

Though they sorta ran the "girlfriend is murdered" plot with Yosuke for a bit...at least in his eyes.

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Yeah, but that's too cliche.

I don't think he ever saw her as his girlfriend. As a hopefully-to-become-one and most definitely his crush, but not really a girlfriend...

C-A

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Yeah but the effect is probably the same "loved one is murdered" yeah.

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Are you sure Kanji and Naoto got new voices in Golden? I thought Mercer only took over for Kanji in the second half of the anime because Troy had some scheduling conflict, and Naoto sounded the same to me.

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Hey guys, March is next month, you all wanna join me in listening to 3/31 on the 31st?

For those who haven't heard it.

Yeah, though I read up on it sometime ago before its release. I had read that Mercer for sure wasn't able to record for Golden, the Anime, and P4 Arena because he had just gotten married and was on his honeymoon and such. I want to say the other voice for Naoto took over on the same parts as well. I know for sure it's a different voice in the anime. It does sound pretty similar though, so I have no qualms with it. Just sounds a bit more feminine to me.

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Who the hell is Nama-Oh right that guy. He's so... easily forgettable, you wonder why the hell Inaba seems sooooo strung up about this stupid affair. Who cares about their stupid affair, they could fuck a hole in the wall and I wouldn't care.

C-A

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Small town where everybody knows each other? Big news. It makes sense especially if the person gets involved with some big celebrity.

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Even if it's a small town, I'm wondering why they would care.

C-A

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...Because it's a local neighbour becoming something of an icon and being involved with a big TV personality?

That's gossipworthy in a small town...was that not clear?

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