The game I´ve been waiting for so long!! And it fullfilles every little thing that I had hoped for. Better battles, better social link management, better serious relationships, more characters, enhanced battles. The list goes on and on without me being able to stop anytime soon. At least that´s how things feel at this moment when I´ve been playing for like 30 hours with no end in sight for a long time.

For starters, I´ll let you see the opening sequence. One of two versions. Watch it and then we´ll talk.

To me, starts of with a nice catchy tune, incredibly good looks and from that on it just blows me away. Characters are introduced in outlined form with their strong poitns(could you call it that?) being shown followed by some short scenes with them in full glory. I got caught up with Chie this way and it was not untill lately when I was introduced to Rise that my feelings started to swift. But I´ve started with Chie so in this playtrough I´ll grab a hold of Chie and never let go.

Battles

Battles were enhanced I said in the intro and boy yes they have been enhanced. You take the basic from P3, almost all enemies have a weak element, if you use it you knock down your enemies. This is where the first enhancement comes into play: If you know down a enemy with a multi spell like Maragi(Fire elemental light damage that hits all enemies) and some are weak against it but not all enemies you might want to use the same spell again. The reason, the enemies you knocked down stay down and they get yet another status: dizzy which makes them unable to act for their first turn. In P3, hitting a knocked enemy with anything made it raise up on it´s feet again and able to come at you.

Another thing that is way better is that if you keep at it with your social links for your friends then they get more abilities, they get a special attack that randomly activates when you knock down enemies. The ones that I´ve seen knocks down one enemy, if you just used a multi-hit spell and there is only one enemy left standing this is great. A free knockdown which leads to the classical “All out attack” where you join in on one big brawl with the enemy.

You can also be protected by certain death skills, the characters that you´ve gotten to know better knock you out of harms way as to say. One other ability is that they heal your status like knocked down, muted or just about anything but dead.

The one thing you don´t really like with all this is that is accurs randomly, so don´t bet that it´ll happen. My favorite skill so far that I´ve seen my friends use? Chie´s Galaxtic Punt that instantly kills one enemy There is a big smile on my face whenever she asks to handle one of the enemies.

For the final level of the social link the characters aquire the ability to withstand a death, they are left with 1 HP if they are lucky. But it only works once in every battle.

Social Links

Much about this game, as P3 was is about making connections with the people around you. These are called social links and are a crucial part of you´re success, as leveling a s. link up means a lot of things, for some:

• Your friends that participate in battle get more abilities
• When you have a lot of weak personas you fuse them into something better, having a good s. link with that arcana means the finished Persona get´s a boost in EXP, giving you access to a lot of powerful and nice skills(maybe) from the very start so you don´t have to level up with that Persona.

There are more, but these are the two that I remember and are really important.

How do you increase these s. links you ask? Simple. Just talk with the person of your prefered arcana, this starts you of at a ordinary conversation or a level up event where if you pick the right choices are given a level up along with a deeper understanding for that person.

Once again I´ll use Chie as an example, she´s a tomboy and best friends with Yukiko, the perfect lady basically. But Chie is protecting Yukiko and wants to her to have a smile on her face. Her biggest problem is that she only thinks of herself and tries to carry everything herself without understanding that she has friends that are able to help her carry the burden.

She also loves kung-fu movies and loves to kick things… add this up with a nice temper that can become pretty angry fast and isn´t late to throw a punch and you might understand why I like her. A sporty chick with an attitude? Oh give me

Her weak point? Cooking… combine her and Yukiko and everyone around is going to run to the hills. “Mystery Food X” was their version of curry, everyone who tasted it fell down. Comic relief hell yes but oh so funny.

Characters

As you can see from the image above with all the characters there are some cliche´s and all. I don´t mind with this. They all have a certain Arcana and it shows with their personalities and how they act. I do now know that much about the Arcana, but I´m guessing they are really well matched.

They all have their own stories, Yosuke came from the city to the little town of Inaba, being used to some stuff they don´t have in a urban city like Inaba made him long for something so he could be in the spotlight. Being a managers son also gives him this.

Chie has lived all her life in Inaba and is best friends with Yukiko. Dark feelings are starting to drift trough her though…

Yukiko is the daughter of Inaba´s famous inn and is up to inherit the inn one day. Not being good at understanding people she brushes of boys who confess to her easily, leaving them in depression without a second thought. But she also have some issues with “personal lessons” and more adult stuff.

Kanji is a case of his own, acting all brute and tough but on the inside he´s not sure of himself and is afraid of girls since they just go for looks instead of even trying to understand who he really is.

Rise is an idol who got tired of her idol life and being Risette. So she took some time of from being an idol and entered into Inaba, not knowing who the real her is she faces hardships thanks to this.

Naoto is the young superstar detective that everyone finds good looking, calling him a detective prince, but as he is found of solving mysteries he also feels a bit lonely thanks to people only calling for him when there is a case to be solved.

Teddie is the sole inhabitant of the TV-world before everything started, being hollow made him wonder about who or what he is.

Like said they all have their personal problems that are shown in the game along with an Arcana they take as their own. They all have their way of doing battle and such. Chie as guessed is more in the way of physical attacks and while not useless in magic, it´s way below any other of the characters that have magic, only winning over Kanji basically. Her element is ice. Yukiko being the soft girl she is has way more magic potency than any of the other ones and can clash out amazing fire related damage as well being a potent healer.

It´s the classical cliches for battles. The main hero arcana is the Fool, which gives him unlimited possibilities, even in battle.

Story

A pretty simple case. Our main Hero moves to the urban town of Inaba where he is going to live with his uncle thanks to his parents working over seas. When he arrives mysterious and gruesome murders start taking place. Dead bodies are found on a foggy day after it has rained and noone knows who or why these murders are taking place.

There is also a rumour going on: If you sit in your room on a rainy night and leave the TV of then at midnight you´ll see an image of your soulmate. But as it turns out it is actually the people who show up on this Midnight late show that are murdered… It starts getting serious when a close friend and co-worker of Yosuke gets killed and Yosuke promises to find the murder to avenge his co-worker.

Our main hero gets dragged into this case him and his friends promise Teddie to solve the case.

That´s basically it, the main hero gets dragged into solving this special case which even the police can´t do anything about.

Finally, a motivation for why

With all this said, I give this game my GOTY seal for outstanding quality. Valkyria Chronicles was close to grabbing this title, but after having played this title there is only one game that can be the GOTY for me 2008 and it is: Shin Megami Tensei – Persona 4.

The reason is simple, with all the social links, cute girls that have their own personal problems that I get to solve and then if I play my cards right I can end up in a serious relationship with them along with a dungeon crawler where you actually has a chance of surviving the instant death spells that the enemies have and aren´t afraid of using.

This mixed in with some cool movies, nice dungeons(8bit retro FTW) a long with a lot of characters to interact with, all from your uncle to that nurse that so wants you to your tomboy Chie or friend Yosuke. They are all nice persons to make a conversation with.

Add this to a big game. I´ve played 30 hours and I´m not seeing this game end anytime soon also adds to why this is the best game I´ve played this year.

I recommend anyone who has an interest in the genre RPG to get this game. It is that good!!