It's 2 a.m in Japan now, and that means Persona 4 is ten years old. Persona 4 released on July 10th 2008 in Japan on the PS2. The follow up to the very successful Persona 3 in 2006, Persona 4 once again follows a group of high school students as they navigate their daily school lives over the course of a year while this time they try to solve a series of murders that begin occuring in their small town that affect them personally. Along the way, these kids awaken to their Personas, entities that come into existence once one stops denying a deep truth about themselves.
Persona 4 begins with the 16 year old nameless protagonist, in later years established officially as Yu Narukami, being forced to move to the small town of Inaba when his parents have to take a job overseas. Yu is then set to live with his Uncle Ryotaro Dojima, a police detective, and his six year old cousin Nanako. The town of Inaba is not the bustling city, and its residents are all in a constant state of unease with the opening of the large shopping chain store, Junes, which has begun to put many small businesses out of business, random and stranges bouts of rain and fog, and to top it all, a string of murders where women are strung up in ghastly poses on telephone poles.
Yu ends up going to Yasogami High School where the murders are the talk of the town, along with a strange rumour about being able to see your true love at midnight on a tv. Yu meets Yosuke Hanamura a fellow former city kid, Chie Satonaka the martial arts movie fan, and Yukiko Amagi the heir to the Amagi Inn. Yu and his friends end up visiting Junes one day, going into the tv display section where out of nowhere, his hand enters the TV. Going all the way in, he and his friends end up in another world in the TV called the Midnight Channel, infested by strange creatures called Shadows and a strange teddy bear like being named Teddie. While also there, the kids awaken to their Personas, their true selves that they keep denying, in order to protect themselves from the Shadows. The group manages to figure out that the TV World is being used as the murder weapon that killed the victims and set out to catch the murderer themselves as they feel like the only ones capable of doing it. Along the way, they meet and recruit others to their cause, like Kanji Tatsumi the delinquent son of a textile shop owner, Rise Kujikawa a pop star who has gone on hiatus and hiding in Inaba, and a strange detective named Naoto Shirogane who has also been recruited by the Inaba Police Force to help solve the murder case plaguing the town.
The game was first revealed in Famitsu's March 2008 issue. The game's development started right after Persona 3 was released, and its mystery style plot was directly inspired by stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Seishi Yokomizu. Inaba, the small town featured in the game and the place the player is largely locked into was based on towns on the outskirts of Mt. Fuji, and was also chosen to save on development time and resources. The party's Japanese mythogical Personas were chosen because of this setting. Shoji Meguro largely composed the game's score while Shihoko Hirata performed vocals on several songs. The game's two main songs, "Pursuing My True Self" and "Reach out to the Truth" were written based on knowledge of the game's plot and the conflict going on within the character's and their identities.
Persona 4 was released later that year in December 2008 in North America, and March 2009 in Europe and Australia, to rave reviews. It managed to cultivate a very strong fanbase with its popularity, enough so that Atlus began development on several Persona 4 themed spinoffs along with other multimedia projects:
- Persona 4: The Animation, a 26 episode anime series adapting the game's story, aired 2011-2012
- Persona 4 Arena, a fighting game developed for the PS3 and Xbox 360 by Arc System Works released in 2012
- Persona 4: Golden, an updated rerelease for the PlayStation Vita released in 2012
- Persona Q: Shadows of the Labyrinth - A Etrian Odyssey inspired games released for the 3DS in 2014
- Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, an updated rerelease of Arena with new characters and a new story, released in 2014
- Persona 4: The Golden Animation, a 12 episode anime series adapting the content added to the Vita relrelease that aired in 2014
- Persona 4: Dancing All Night, a rhythm game remixing many of the game's tracks, released in 2015 for the PlayStation Vita
The Persona 4 cast also managed to appear once again this year in BlazBlue CrossTag Battle fighting oppenents from other franchises.
The legacy of Persona 4 is well cemented. Despite how one might feel about the trajectory of where Atlus has taken these characters and this story, that very late PS2 game is still there and well regarded for its quality of writing, characters, atmosphere, setting, music, and y'know, pretty much everything.
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