Reviewer: JustPlainViewtiful
to school in America, there are six school days in a week, and some activities will only be available at certain times. This comes much more into play during time management so compared to other games the management is very important and still enjoyable.

There are random events that keep gameplay fresh like unexpected calls from friends, days off from school, and field trips. These events are random so the randomness is nice and events are realistic.

Besides from the open world aspect the game is at its core a dungeon crawler. Throughout the course of the game you'll go into the TV world to save people seen on The Midnight Channel, each person you save will bring an original dungeon with multiple floors and a huge hall for each level. Each dungeon is around 8 to 11 levels. When entering a new level the whole map will be shrouded until you visit the whole level. Different again from Persona 3 is that each time you enter a dungeon it's randomized so it keeps things fresh. Every dungeon includes a mini boss towards the end of the dungeon then to cap it off with a boss fight.

Interesting cartoon styling

Combat has been brought over from Persona 3. It's broken down into Attack, Spell, and Guard. There are other aspects including learning enemies pros and cons and changing your persona you're currently using. When dungeon crawling you'll be able to bring three other people with you. There's a ton of flexibility over the controls of your group you can directly control them or let them be free. It's best to bring along one healer, one attacker, and one mix.

The game puts a heavy focus on exploiting an enemy's weakness. One use of the exploit will knock down the enemy, a second will make it dizzy skipping a turn. There are enemies that do not have a weakness and just require brute force to kill so there still is a challenge. You'll have to find a enemy's weakness through trail and error. Knocking down all enemies will allow your group to activate an All Out Attack bringing about a wacky rumble which causes massive damage.

After winning a battle certain times you'll be able to gain a new person. Several cards showing a Persona(s), a Blank Card(s), or Penalty Card(s) will shuffle and choosing the right card will give you the Persona shown, depending on your level the amount of Personas you can hold will increase. Sometimes you'll even have to match cards to gain the Persona which keeps things cool.

Certain times after a shuffle or matching a Arcana card will appear and chancing weather it will be upright or downward after spinning, upward a positive effect, downward a negative effect.

Also after a battle you'll gain experience possibly leveling up you. your Personas, or your group. Leveling up Personas will gain new moves and leveling up yourself will gain you HP, SP, and the amount of Personas held at a time.

While combat is great the biggest problem with all of it is the bosses. Each dungeon holds a boss and they are extremely difficult. They require major grinding, similar to what we've seen in MMOs and Final Fantasy. Grinding quickly becomes repetitive, but is needed to progress in the game. The boss battles are also hard because they have no weakness so you'll constantly need to pound the enemy while still healing characters. If the protagonist faints then game over.

Once you've gotten a few Personas you'll start to fuse your Personas creating more powerful ones. At the start you'll be able to fuse three at a time, then later in the game you'll be able to fuse six creating a powerful Personas. Depending on the day, Margaret will show you the Fusion Calendar and depending on the day if you fulfill what was needed then your Personas will become stronger.

Yosuke, one of the playable characters

At the beginning of the game Igor tells you that making Social Links which are relationships with people. These relationships strengthen allies in combat and increases experience when fusing Personas. Building stronger relationships with people especially comrades will strengthen there determination in battle and new skills are learned till finally the last level, level 10, will level up the Persona.

Each character wields a corresponding weapon, the protagonist carries a sword, Yosuke holding kunais, Chie using her shoes, and Yukiko wielding a fan. Weapons in this category can be made my collecting items in the dungeons then sold to the local black smith, then finally made into weapons where you can buy them. You can also buy armor gaining defense, and you can carry an accessory like a ring or head band with an effect gaining a stat or ability.

Management is original and truly magnificent in the game. Dealing with two worlds is amazing and challenging, but a good challenge. There were issues found in the previous game, but this time around most of the problems have been fixed.

It seems as though Persona 4 is one of the last great games for the Playstation 2, while there are still surprisingly games still releasing, the system is dead and Persona needs to make the leap to the Playstation 3. The game runs at a nice pace and the creativity of the Personas is wonderful. There are dozens upon dozens of Personas each wonderfully designed.

The open world is nice, it's a decent size, but nothing compared to games like GTA and Shadow of the Colossus. The designs of characters are decent, but they don't compare anything to the spectacular of the art work for cutscenes and during dialogue.

You can only imagine what a Persona game would look like on Playstation 3. The animated cutscenes are fantastic are far better then what would happen if the cut scenes were all in game.

The sound track for the game is included when you buy a new copy of the game. There are 24 tracks, some ranging from just small tracks replaying over and over this is used for when hanging out with friends, key plot moments, and when dungeon crawling. Each dungeon has a specific song similar to what the dungeon looks like. The main song is amazing, see it as extremely catchy pop music.

The voice acting is far better then other games, it sounds real and is it not to dramatic. The majority of the is actually text based which is a bit annoying. Characters will never utter your name, but will call you Senpai or Sansei, I would rather just be given