It’s been a number of years since I final performed Persona 4, and I really feel like a number of my most vivid recollections of Atlus’ supernatural homicide thriller RPG are about issues that the almost twenty years for the reason that recreation initially launched in 2008 have made me worried to revisit. For lots of gamers, Persona 4’s story feels dated, and fails to stay as much as its personal themes of accepting oneself because it throws the very characters who’re working via their very own shit underneath the bus. So after I received an opportunity to play among the early segments of the Persona 4 Revival remake, I used to be pleasantly shocked to see how a lot some elements of it nonetheless maintain up.
The roughly 45 minutes I performed had been from Revival’s first “episode,” by which protagonist Yu Narukami, his greatest pal Yosuke Hanamura, and a sentient bear mascot named Teddie have entered some sort of alternate dimension inside a TV at Junes, the native equal of a Walmart or Goal opening up within the small, easy city of Inaba. Inside, they discover a distorted model of their boonies hometown, and in it they hear ominous echoes of the locals gossipping about their senior classmate Saki reverberating via the city. Saki is the daughter of one of many native liquor retailer house owners and has been coping with a number of scrutiny and stress about working at Junes whereas her household’s enterprise is struggling underneath the large chain’s newfound dominance within the city.
What the teenagers discover in Persona 4’s TV world could also be an exaggerated distortion of the reality, however its brutal, disagreeable, accusatory voices and imagery replicate the reality nonetheless. Saki’s personal spiteful voice booms all through her household’s retailer, confessing her contempt for Yosuke, who had been harboring a crush on her. It stings, however Yosuke is pressured to simply accept it. Saki isn’t in Persona 4 for very lengthy, however she manages to seize among the recreation’s ugliest truths. She feels simply as trapped as anybody else caught in Inaba. She additionally feels a stress to help her household, however fears being caught on a sinking ship, and is on the lookout for a lifeboat. But all there actually is for her to do is figure for a similar company that’s killing her household enterprise.
At first, Inaba is portrayed as a captivating little place the place individuals stay easy little lives. It’s the platonic splendid of the small city you retire to or escape to once you wish to go off the grid for some time. However those self same podunks can really feel like prisons, and big firms will descend upon them with decrease costs and the temptation of comfort and suck the life out of every thing its residents have constructed. How Persona 4 Revival will deal with the TV World’s numerous distortions, particularly the later ones that get rather more thorny and sophisticated than Saki’s visions of a satan’s deal made within the soul-sucking company clutches of anime Walmart, stays to be seen, however after almost twenty years of fan discourse and criticism concerning the unique recreation’s clumsy tackling of sure key points within the PS2 days, it certain seems like Atlus is no less than toying with dealing with them considerably otherwise this time round. These early sections, although, a few younger woman being torn between dwelling and heartache, want no adjustments. Saki’s strife is timeless, and for all the unique recreation’s stumbles, Persona 4 nonetheless is aware of set a stage.
That stage that Yu and the remainder of the Investigation Workforce struggle Shadows on is as glossy because it’s ever been. Persona’s chain-centric turn-based battles are again, and given the remake’s trendy Persona 5-esque touch-ups that put it in keeping with Persona 3 Reload, Atlus’ skill to show even a easy random encounter right into a spectacle stays unmatched. Revival riffs on Persona 4’s TV theme in cool ways in which make it really feel distinct as Atlus modernizes a PS2 basic. The staff pushes a digicam away throughout their victory pose prefer it’s following their dungeon-crawling and projecting it onto the Midnight Channel for the individuals of Inaba to look at. When the sport transitions from a battle again to the overworld, it pans right into a tv and briefly reveals the display screen via a 4:3 facet ratio, as if it had been being watched via the CRT TVs a number of characters are proven having in Inaba earlier than widescreen HDTVs had grow to be commonplace.
Even outdoors of the TV motif, Revival dials up the unique’s vivid yellow coloration scheme to seize the identical clean transitions and character portraits that made Persona 5’s menus a brand new commonplace again in 2017. Seeing Persona 4 realized via this contemporary lens is pleasant, and I’m curious to see if the unique recreation’s small-town, rustic really feel nonetheless comes via when trendy Persona’s flashiness is dancing on the edges of the display screen.
What I performed was pretty early into the sport, and even late-game Persona isn’t that advanced mechanically, with the problem usually coming from unpredictable one-hit kills that may solely be blocked by the facility of friendship and navigating via your assortment of Personas to seek out and exploit your opponent’s weak point. In that manner, Persona 4 Revival feels principally unchanged, although new mechanics just like the Primetime mode that grants you just a few free turns of resource-saving magic casts and a strong “ending” transfer no less than offer you new assets to fret about. Most Persona fight is about chaining talents collectively to most effectively exploit weaknesses, swap between teammates, after which let loose a team-wiping All-Out Assault. Revival isn’t breaking what doesn’t want fixing in that regard, no less than.
No matter Persona 4 Revival finally ends up doing to a few of Persona 4’s extra unsavory components, the remake is probably going going to trigger a firestorm in the neighborhood. However what I used to be in a position to play did make me assured that Revival understands the issues the unique recreation received proper, and which can be nonetheless simply as poignant as they had been in 2008.
Persona 4 Revival is coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Sequence X/S on February 18.