Backlog-- Persona 4 review (writing sample 3 of 3)

I'm going to start out by being completely honest here-- as a game, "Persona 4" is a failure. While there's still gameplay to be had by way of its RPG trappings and the degree of strategic thinking involved therewith, you spend a lot less time PLAYING it as opposed to watching it. It's extremely cutscene-heavy, and the most you'll ever do in terms of interactivity is move your eyebrowless avatar around and/or savor all the thrills of navigating a long series of drop-down menus.

So why then, is "Persona 4" so genuinely satisfying and enjoyable?

To answer that question, a little introspection may be required. If gameplay is your personal 'oh factor' for a purchase, then look elsewhere. If an intriguing story, refreshing art direction, richly developed characters and a unique approach to a tired genre are more important to you, then you really can't do much better. In some ways, it's closer to an interactive shojo anime than a game (or even to the adventure games that were once king in the old PC days), investing more in characterization and relationships than the combat aspect itself, and thanks to the unique medium of gaming, there's the time and pacing to develop these things better than its fully-animated TV counterparts.

Firstly, it's unique even in its basic premise-- instead of being set in yet another generic fantasy world (or in Final Fantasy's case, a world somewhere between Middle-Earth and Star Wars) with another generic wide-eyed or angst-ridden wannabe hero, it's set in modern-day rural Japan, and your protagonist is a silent but average high-schooler tragically born without a personality though irresistible to all the women around him (a HUGE leap from any given anime to ever exist, I know, har har). Together with a cadre of other teenagers who discover that they have the ability to wield Pokemon/Gundam hybrids called 'Personas,' you end up searching for a killer who's targeting people that appear on the mysterious Midnight Channel because adults suck and the police are incompetent, and as you go to save people you end up in bizarre worlds comprised of their deepest psychological fears and insecurities.

The end result is a bizarre fusion of "Silent Hill," Scooby-Doo" and just a dash of "Psychonauts," and surprisingly it works. Like the latter there's plenty of humor to be had, balancing out an increasingly sinister tone with some laugh-out-loud moments and while it occasionally leans on the wacky, it never goes full-on into the schizophrenic tone-breaking bullshit that plagues series like "Bleach." Unlike its predecessor, which involved a LOT of grinding the same massive dungeon with little difference between floors save the occasional color swap, the smaller dungeons of "Persona 4" offer a considerable degree of variety, ranging from steamy bath houses to 8-bit video game fortresses (complete with repetitive MIDI music), and the enemies themselves are refreshingly different too-- you'll fight everything from moving hands to sentient willow trees in kimono and even walking Lilliputian castles.

And while every JRPG and their mother feels it necessary to wax pretentious about the old standbys of love, destiny, vengeance and the like, the things "Persona 4" meditates on are considerably more interesting and challenging-- like sexuality, gender identity and outright nihilism-- and thankfully it seems content to pose these questions without offering any easy answers, or even letting them go entirely resolved.

But as interesting as the narrative itself is, the real draw of "Persona 4" is the characters. All the mains are remarkably believable and likeable, never coming off as stereotypes but as fully realized personalities with their own foibles and quirks. Even the incredibly minor characters, the ones that aren't even really involved with what's going on but you can talk to when running around town, are distinct. And they should be, since building relationships with the others who populate this fictional universe (through Social Links) actually forms the backbone of how you can create even stronger, more balanced Personas to fill your ranks with, or to make the ones for your team grow and change. Other than a few of these S.Links, you're free to get close to whoever you want and learn more about them, and the development of each character in their own unique ways provides a satisfaction and depth that you simply CAN'T get from the constraints of a half-hour anime. Even though your character has no personality, like Gordon Freeman he's merely a device to allow you to feel as if YOU are the one getting to know everyone else, and in this way utilizing a video game format really attaches you to the characters and to their trials.

Overall, "Persona 4" succeeds because it takes risks, abandoning the conventional and the familiar for something truly unique and special. And while there are many games that will readily sacrifice story for gameplay and the perfect balance between the two is very difficult to attain, it's really nice to see a game that makes the opposite decision and sacrifices gameplay freedom for storytelling. It's quite simply the best of its kind and great example of the potential of the JRPG.