Shin Megami Tensei Persona 4 is a Japanese Role Playing Game taking a more classical turn based outlook on the combat instead of Japanese Action Role Playing Game like Kingdom Hearts and The World Ends With You.

Persona 4 takes place in a small town in Japan called Inaba. You play as the protagonist which you name at the start of the game and move into Inaba with your uncle, Dojima and your cousin, Nanako from the big city to Inaba for one year while your parents are off on a business trip. You arrive in Inaba on April 11, 2011, taking place about a year after the end of Persona 3: FES. While on your train ride to Inaba you fall asleep and meet Igor and his new assistance, Margaret (Different then Persona 3 where you met Elizabeth) in the Velvet Room which is a small room inside of your mind which you'll constantly visit during the game. Igor promises that while in Inaba you'll solve a mystery and then you wake up. The next day, April 12, 2011 you spend you first day of school in the first day of the school year. You meet your awful teacher, Mr. Morooka and your fellow classmates, Chie Satonaka, Yosuke Hanamura, and Yukiko Amagi. You hear a rumor from your peers about a special channel called, The Midnight Channel where on rainy nights you'll see someone in your TV at exactly midnight.
That day your kept after class because a reporter for a local news station was found dead earlier that day after fog disappeared. Soon after that a fellow classmate, Saki Konishi, daughter of a local liquor station goes missing. In the following days she's found dead in the morning after fog is disappeared again. One night when it's raining you try going through the TV and you actually almost phase through it, but you pull yourself out. With these strange murders happening you, Yosuke, and Chie plan on solving these mysterious murders. The pair goes through a TV at the local shopping center, Junes and you fall into a mysterious looking TV set where you meet a bear called Teddie. Teddie then tells you that someone has been throwing people into the TV in which they die by meeting there other self which is there closed of personality kept from people revealing there true feelings. Not excepting part of yourself will end up powering your shadow thus then killing you. If you do expect it you'll face your Persona which then can be summoned by using a magical card.

A card of Persona...

After further investigating the mysterious murders your local classmate Yukiko ends up being kidnapped after being seen on The Midnight Channel. After saving her you form a team with you four and promise Teddie to find who is throwing people into the TV and stop them. The story at first is insanely complex and hard to describe to someone the story (Which is why I've had so much trouble writing this review), but when it comes right down to it and you progress through the game the plot becomes much more predictable. There are some moments in the beginning and towards the end where the game will completely shock you.

The cutscenes are great, they are what you would see in an actual anime. They bring much more emotion to the story so they are a delight to view. It is a much better way of telling the story compared to in-game scenes because the game is on the Playstation 2. The problem with the cutscenes, is the amount, there aren't many throughout the game. They are usually used through key plot moments, but there are times that they could be used. They are very quirky and give the game much more of a interesting story.

Characters are highly rememberable. These characters really give the game a fantastic story. The characters can be seen as the opposite of stereotypical, there's a pretty dense crowd of characters from your run-of-the-mill super natural shadow and a tough, but sensitive guy. The interaction with characters is also amazingly good, without characters like these the long story would just be boring.

The story is fantastic and way more interesting then other Role Playing Games because it takes place in a small town, you're not some famous hero or a god. It grounds you in a small location living a normal life while still dealing with paranormal events and twist. The story will take any where between 50 to 60 hours depending on your activity throughout the game. A lot can be done in the one year that the story takes place.

Persona 4 is a turn based Role Playing Game, each character during combat will have as much time as needed to plan out a strategy to kill an enemy. The game does not just focus on dungeon crawling, it is also heavily focused on open world elements. You have normal stuff like Hit Points (HP) and Spirt Points (SP), but there is much more to the game.

The game starts off very linear and quite boring at first. You'll just go through tons of dialogue and not control anything for a while. Soon after then the world of Inaba will become free. This is one of the many differences seen compared to Persona 3. There's a lot to do from attending school, hanging with friends, dungeon crawling, and way more. It really pays to be more active and the results are shown from the strengthening of your group's determination to your character's ability in the game.

Rich colours makes Persona stand out

Persona 4 like other games focuses on skills you upgrade by progressing through the game. In the real world you'll have five skills to upgrade, Courage, Knowledge, Expression, Understanding, and Dillegence. These skills each have five levels, upgrading these skills will open up dialogue and relationships. They are upgraded by taking part-time jobs, answering questions correctly, and part taking in clubs and sports, which also open up new social links. Then there are skills for the TV World in combat for your Personas. These skills are Strength, Magic, Endurance, Agility, and Luck. These are upgraded by leveling up Personas.

The game focuses on a very unique subject that everyone deals with, time management. When the game starts opening up and your free to spend time however you like you'll be given a dead line on when the fog will appear and a new body will be found if that person is not yet saved. You'll have around two weeks to save the person you saw on The Midnight Channel. You can save them the first day your able to or even the last. This gives the player a ton of freedom to decide how you'll play the game.

Persona 4 is split up through each day then that is split up into each day. There are four time slots for each day, morning, school, after school/afternoon, and evening. School is very different compared