Within the last few weeks I completed my second playthrough of Persona 4, this time the Vita remake subtitled The Golden. In spite of my general disinterest for anime and high school settings, I absolutely adore the game and it’s predecessor. I love them so much it actually got me into it’s parent (and superior) series Shin Megami Tensei, of which it holds some of the best JRPGs ever made to it’s name. For me though, the Persona series is quite the enigma. Persona 3 and 4 feel themselves feel cobbled together from different genres, a mishmash of visual novel, simulator, and dungeon crawler, all of which feel underdeveloped or inferior to genres it attempts to emulate and combine. So why do I find myself enjoying them so much?
The obvious answer is because I find it fun and endearing in its own saccharine, Japanese-y way, but I at least like to put on airs that I try to be more critical about these sorts of things. For those who aren’t quite caught up to speed, the Persona series is a modern day spinoff of Shin Megami Tensei, which involves demons, angels, Law, Order, and the people who get caught up in it.
Persona has up until this point always been set high school, where groups of students gain the ability to summon the titular Personas as allies in combat, most of which are the demons from the main series reimagined as the inner reflection of the user wielding it, hence the name “Persona”. However, Persona’s 1 and 2 are quite different from 3 and 4 and I have not completed the former despite my efforts. 1 and 2 are both considerably older games that stick far closer to the main series formula, warts and all. This also means they haven’t aged particularly well. So when I refer to the Persona games, I mean specifically 3 and 4.
The Persona games are memorable from the very start because few other games highlight “Slice of Life” better. Persona follows most a calendar year as the protagonist goes to high school. Yawn. I’m not even half a decade out of high school and I am in no rush to return, much less glorify it in media. Early on in this year, the protagonist – which I should mention is different between 3 and 4 – encounters a paranormal event that grants them not only the ability to use Persona, but also the ability to fuse them together to make new ones, a feature carried over from the main series and exclusive to the protagonist. The person who grants them this power, a mysterious man named Igor, master of the cryptic non-answer, resides in a metaphysical location known as the Velvet Room. Okay, now things are getting a bit more interesting, but paranormal high school stories aren’t exactly in short supply or particularly interesting.
Yes, the juxtaposition of the literal unknown to the uncertainty most high school students exhibit about self-discovery and their place in the world is is an apt parallel. I know, I went to high school. And if you’re reading this, odds are you did as well. I am ready to admit that at times it did feel as though the world was coming down on me from all sides and that something far greater than I could ever imagine, something awesome and powerful, must be responsible. Except that high school wasn’t a big deal and that my fears were derived from ignorance and a limited world perspective. High school students tend to come to this realization the minute they leave high school. I guess what I’m trying to say is that a high schooler’s problems are easy to relate to but something most people would have gotten over by the time they were 22.
The one thing Persona does have on it’s side though, in this case anyways, is that supernatural high school isn’t a common setting in video games, which does help it to stand apart, especially in the realm of JRPGs. Also, it’s location in the real world helps ground the game considerably, especially as it’s fantastical elements are segregated for most of the game. In fact, the game gets better the further away from these elements it gets.
What one would think is the main tenet of the gameplay is the dungeon crawling, where the combat and RPG elements are at the forefront. In the dungeons you level up, increase stats, collect demons, fuse new ones, and fight monsters. But almost anyone who plays a decent number of turn based RPGs could tell you, the Persona games’ dungeon crawling is absolutely pedestrian. Flat and boring, the dungeons rarely involve more than just wandering through similar looking corridors with the occasional locked door that may require backtracking. When compared to other games in the series, Nocturne or Strange Journey for example, the dungeons are pathetically underdeveloped. The dungeons are randomly generated, having a maze-like quality but an immediately accessible mini map makes this all moot. The only trouble from the dungeons comes from finding where the next floor is. This would be tolerable if the combat pulled its weight and for the most part, it does.
But even Persona combat falls short of its’ parent series. In SMT, the combat system is known as the “Press Turn” system. Each turn, you get one action for each member of your party. Exploiting a weakness or scoring a critical hit will give you a second action off of one of those actions. Essentially, a perfect turn would involve you having twice as many actions as you have people in your party. But missing an attack takes two actions instead of one and if you attack an immunity, like using a fire move on someone who is immune to fire damage, you will lose all your remaining actions that turn. These rules apply to both you and enemies. It may sound simple, but it is an absolutely ingenious method for combat and one of the best. By comparison, the Persona games use a “One More” system, where exploiting a weakness or scoring a critical hit will give the user one more action, which can continue if they continue to exploit the weaknesses of different enemies until all of them reach a “knocked down” state. Atta’scking an immunity loses you your turns but not the other members of the party. Its a fine system though lacks some of the nuance of the “Press Turn”.
Then there is the fact that fusing personas works almost exactly the same as fusing demons in the main series. I’m fine with this aspect, as demon fusion is a staple of the series and works well in every iteration that I have played, but it does nothing to explain why the inner reflections of the character’s psyche are various deities from numerous world religions. It makes sense in SMT, less so in Persona, a game meant to take place in a relatively grounded real world.
So it’s the social links, right?
Kind of. The Persona game’s draw and appeal is obviously taken from the social elements, wherein you spend time after school with fellow classmates or people around town. Each person you spend time with is bound designated by an “Arcana” or different class of Tarot card that also applies to a group of persona. By strengthening your relationship with them and in doing so increase the strength of that group of persona. It’s a novel idea that ties together the normally divided RPG gameplay and the cutscenes. This is also where a lot of the character development occurs. During these portions, you become privy to the lives of the others around you, making them feel like people rather than NPCs. The writing is anime as fuck – you’ll hear the words “bond”, “friendship”, and “friends” so much they may lose all meaning – but I wouldn’t call it poorly written. The fact that most are high school characters goes a long way towards making there matter-of-fact attitudes and discovery of obvious life lessons a bit easier to swallow.
Though this doesn’t account for the fact that the Social Link process is just about as inorganic as it gets. Relationships apparently have ten levels of trust and it takes about two weeks to earns someone’s trust fully. After that, you can never lose that trust. I recognize that all video games can essentially be boiled down to numbers, but it’s the onus of the developer to try and mask that as much as possible if that is the intention. Social Links are as brazen as they could possibly be, having everything except an experience bar that fills up the more time to you spend with people.
None of the elements of the Persona games hold up entirely on their own. The dungeons are subpar, the combat a step back from it’s parent series, and the game’s social aspects are a mixture of decent writing and very apparent “game-y” systems. So again I call into question what exactly it is I love about these games?
The answer came to me during my playthrough of Persona 4 Arena: Ultimax, the fighting game spinoff starring characters from 3 and 4. While in the midst of a lengthy cutscene involving Kanji and a fake Kanji arguing with one another over who is real while Yukiko watches with comically concerned look on her face. It was a humorous situation involving characters I had come to know very well over the course of several games reacting to new situations. I may have been drawn into the series by the promise of more difficult combat, but that’s not why I was here anymore. Sure, I still enjoy the combat despite it’s simpler design. I like the sense of place each game gives and I love the feel of the games, from the excellent soundtracks to the lived-in feel of the worlds.
Persona, at least in it’s current rendition, is all about the characters. Not you, the player (Though the script of Persona 4 definitely makes you the center of attention) but the characters that surround you. It’s about Chie being jealous of Yukiko or Kanji coming to terms with his sexuality. It’s about Yukari’s strained relationship with her mother. It’s about Akihiko and his lost friend. It’s the normally shy Naoto regularly being pulled out of her comfort zone.
With the amount of time I spent criticizing the Persona games compared to my light praise near the end, I may sell you on the idea that these games are bad. Far from it. I love these games and think they represent some of the best from the genre in years. It definitely rings of a game that is greater than the sum of its parts. Except for the characters, they hold up all by themselves. More so than any other game, Persona feels like a long-running TV show that I have been watching for years and can’t get enough of. And so far, we haven’t had those later season slumps yet. And though it may seem disingenuous to call these near the pinnacle of a genre when it’s greatest strength could be replicated in almost any other medium, I don’t want Persona in anything else except games. Trust me, I’ve seen Persona 4: The Animation. It was terrible.
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