• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

LttP: Persona 4 - The Golden (no spoilers please)

J

Jachaos

Member
viciouskillersquirrel said:
What I love about it is that it captures the gut-wrenching nervous feeling of teenage romance perfectly, where you're trying to make a move, but your nerves and inexperience hold you back from saying what you need to say and make it all come out totally wrong. Then there's the tentative first kiss at the end, and it's never a great kiss, but fills you with a mixture of relief, joy and a tiny bit of trepidation. Several times during the run uo, I was like "It's alright, just breathe. It'll all be okay," the performance was that convincing.

The voice actress for Yukiko absolutely killed it.
Click to expand...

Yep, the voice actors in general did a great job on this game
 
V

viciouskillersquirrel

Member
Rescued Naoto. I suppose I saw the twist coming. Maybe I was over levelled, but he was much less of a challenge than the kid who murdered Morooka.

Yukiko keeps wanting to hang out. Is there any benefit to doing so now that her s-link is at maximum?
 
L

LiveFromKyoto

Member
viciouskillersquirrel said:
Nanako is very cute. The actress who plays her does her job well. It may be down to the fact that I'm a father myself, but I really disapprove of her dad. Dude should have made a career change when his wife died. I know he's probably doing his best and maybe there aren't a lot of jobs to be had, but damn, there's more to life than work and you're missing out on your daughter's childhood.
Click to expand...

This is Japan. There are no real jobs that don't take up your entire life, pretty much every dad misses their kids growing up. I mean, I guess he could have opened a store and lived above it or something, but that's about it.

Plus, mid-life career changes rarely happen in this country, people think there's something wrong with you. If you're over 39, good luck getting hired anywhere else.
 
V

viciouskillersquirrel

Member
LiveFromKyoto said:
This is Japan. There are no real jobs that don't take up your entire life, pretty much every dad misses their kids growing up. I mean, I guess he could have opened a store and lived above it or something, but that's about it.

Plus, mid-life career changes rarely happen in this country, people think there's something wrong with you. If you're over 39, good luck getting hired anywhere else.
Click to expand...
I'm starting to understand him better now that his story is opening up. I get it though. It's not like there's much call for security or private detectives in Inaba.

I hung out with Yukiko again and it seems all she wants to do is go to the MC's room,which made me giggle. Not that it's a terribly high bar to clear, but the MC's getting a lot more action than I did in high school, that's for sure.
 
K

Kthulhu

Member
viciouskillersquirrel said:
I'm starting to understand him better now that his story is opening up. I get it though. It's not like there's much call for security or private detectives in Inaba.

I hung out with Yukiko again and it seems all she wants to do is go to the MC's room,which made me giggle. Not that it's a terribly high bar to clear, but the MC's getting a lot more action than I did in high school, that's for sure.
Click to expand...

Yu is pretty hot TBH.
 
S

SolidChamp

Banned
I should have just posted in this thread instead of trying to generate discussion on my dusting off P4 after nearly two years of leaving it with only 15 hours invested.
 
1

1upsuper

Member
AquaWateria said:
I guess I'm the only person who found Yosuke dreadful....
Click to expand...

You're not. Honestly, I think the cast of Persona 4 is substantially worse than Persona 3's, but the characters of 4 have great chemistry with each other. I think it's by design, but the characters of 3 do not feel like they would have been friends if it weren't for their circumstances which necessarily drew them together. In contrast, the friendships of 4 feel relatively natural.

But yeah, Yosuke is insufferable. Kanji is the best.
 
V

viciouskillersquirrel

Member
Kthulhu said:
Yu is pretty hot TBH.
Click to expand...
I said before that she is exactly the sort of girl I would have crushed on back in high school. Winnie Cooper to the max, you know?

My actual wife though is a lot more like Chie personality wise, which makes me wonder if the writers started with particular basic personality profiles and wrote appealing characters based on that. There are a lot of psychology references peppered through the game. Are each of the playable characters different archetypes (is that the word) that happen to be popular? I don't know enough about it to say for sure.

The MC being a blank slate works well in that respect. Each person will find different aspects of the story, different characters and different s-links appealing.
 
V

viciouskillersquirrel

Member
Just watched the onsen scene. I was cackling throughout the whole thing and especially later on when they break into the wrong room, the teacher and Hanako proposes a six-way and they all just nope out of there.

Yosuke is such a horndog that I could see him biting if it were just him and the teacher. Teddie too, but I don't know if he's anatomically equipped for it.
 
J

Jachaos

Member
viciouskillersquirrel said:
Just watched the onsen scene. I was cackling throughout the whole thing and especially later on when they break into the wrong room, the teacher and Hanako proposes a six-way and they all just nope out of there.

Yosuke is such a horndog that I could see him biting if it were just him and the teacher. Teddie too, but I don't know if he's anatomically equipped for it.
Click to expand...

Oh boy, thinking about how far along you are, I'm really looking forward to your next post
 
K

Kthulhu

Member
viciouskillersquirrel said:
I said before that she is exactly the sort of girl I would have crushed on back in high school. Winnie Cooper to the max, you know?

My actual wife though is a lot more like Chie personality wise, which makes me wonder if the writers started with particular basic personality profiles and wrote appealing characters based on that. There are a lot of psychology references peppered through the game. Are each of the playable characters different archetypes (is that the word) that happen to be popular? I don't know enough about it to say for sure.

The MC being a blank slate works well in that respect. Each person will find different aspects of the story, different characters and different s-links appealing.
Click to expand...

I think you're misunderstanding. Yu Narukami is the canon name of Persona 4's protagonist. He is kinda hot.
 
V

viciouskillersquirrel

Member
Kthulhu said:
I think you're misunderstanding. Yu Narukami is the canon name of Persona 4's protagonist. He is kinda hot.
Click to expand...
Oh. Hahaha, okay, yeah, I see what you mean. It's even acknowledged in-game that he's a looker, which is why he has the ability to date all the girls.

Sadly, the only time I ever felt as handsome as the MC was when I visited El Salvador as a teenager. In Australia, I'm average height and have the wrong look for most women to really notice me (not a racism thing - I just don't fit into a "type" that's popular here). In El Salvador though, I'm a full head taller than the average bloke and I more fit the preconceived image women have of what a potential partner looks like. Plus, it seems people are more forward over there in general, it seems.

I was way too much of a dork to take advantage of it, but every other day I was getting openly hit on in the street, noticed heads turning when I walked past and one time even lived through a scenario out of a Lynx/Axe commercial, where on a standing room only bus, a girl stood up against me face to face and she copped a feel of my chest every time the bus moved or hit a bump. This continued all the way until her stop, even though by the time this happened the crowd was much thinner and she really didn't need to.

At the age of 16, it was a huge boost to my confidence. Then of course, I went home to Australia and went back to being invisible.
 
D

daevious

Member
viciouskillersquirrel said:
There are a lot of psychology references peppered through the game. Are each of the playable characters different archetypes (is that the word) that happen to be popular?
Click to expand...

You could argue that the main party consists of anime archetypes that choke under the pressure of being labeled those archetypes by society.

A good example is Chie; whom you could summarize as being "the tomboy"; energetic, athletic, a contrast to traditional ideals of women being motherly types. Yet her insecurities about her femininity complicates the tradition assumptions surrounding that ideal, and by inviting that insecurity the game invites you to push past your initial evaluation of her character and look deeper into how she acts.
 
V

viciouskillersquirrel

Member
daevious said:
You could argue that the main party consists of anime archetypes that choke under the pressure of being labeled those archetypes by society.

A good example is Chie; whom you could summarize as being "the tomboy"; energetic, athletic, a contrast to traditional ideals of women being motherly types. Yet her insecurities about her femininity complicates the tradition assumptions surrounding that ideal, and by inviting that insecurity the game invites you to push past your initial evaluation of her character and look deeper into how she acts.
Click to expand...
I could see that. There's a running theme of trying to break the mould, being your own person and not just living up to people's expectations of you. I haven't seen enough anime to notice though when I'm looking at a stock character type.

I do know what tsundere is though and Marie is definitely that.

I went into the TV world on a random rainy day in October and explored some of the dungeons I already cleared for extra snuff souls, mission items and the like. I forgot that each of the dungeons gets an extra boss, which was a nice surprise, so I have now cleared three of them and making my way to the top floor of Void Quest.

Between the discount the fox gives me now, the amount of money I bring in by megidola'ing golden hands, having a Cerberus with Invigorate 3 and shuffle time I can stay in the TV world pretty much indefinitely now. It's a far cry from having to do Yukiko's dungeon over four days because I kept running out of SP.
 
J

Jachaos

Member
viciouskillersquirrel said:
I could see that. There's a running theme of trying to break the mould, being your own person and not just living up to people's expectations of you. I haven't seen enough anime to notice though when I'm looking at a stock character type.

I do know what tsundere is though and Marie is definitely that.

I went into the TV world on a random rainy day in October and explored some of the dungeons I already cleared for extra snuff souls, mission items and the like. I forgot that each of the dungeons gets an extra boss, which was a nice surprise, so I have now cleared three of them and making my way to the top floor of Void Quest.

Between the discount the fox gives me now, the amount of money I bring in by megidola'ing golden hands, having a Cerberus with Invigorate 3 and shuffle time I can stay in the TV world pretty much indefinitely now. It's a far cry from having to do Yukiko's dungeon over four days because I kept running out of SP.
Click to expand...

Yeah doing a whole dungeon in a single day is a challenge early on, but when you get all these tools you don't have to worry about it. Thing is some people don't do the fox quests, don't have Invigorate 3, etc. so it is a bit tougher for some but you have it good.
 
G

Geido

Member
I just finished the game after about 1,5 months of playing it and wow... I love everything about it!

Well, maybe not the dungeon crawling and battling (pretty repetitive and shallow gameplay there), but everything else? At a loss for words. It went straight into any best of gaming list I'll ever post anywhere.

Just needed a place to say that ;)
 
T

TMaakkonen

Member
Very weird, someone else finished this game in about 1.5 months aswell.

Besides classic RPG missables problem, P4G was really amazing.

And while Marie seemed kinda forced, the February event music made her worth it.
 
V

viciouskillersquirrel

Member
I beat the Heaven dungeon yesterday. This game really gets easier toward the end, especially regarding your SP budget. I have Invigorate and Null Phys on everything and something that repels, drains or nullifies most of the elements. The boss of the dungeon couldn't touch me during the sequence where he controls your allies. Bringing him down felt good, like finally beating Von Karma in the first Ace Attorney game.

This game does have the best writing I've seen outside of those visual novel sort of games. It's not a story I'd have picked up a book and read about, but it nonetheless drew me in with surprising speed. It is something special.

The rest of the time I've spent trying to jack up all my s-links. There are a bunch I'm sure I've missed entirely, because I could never get Naoto or Kanji to trigger theirs and there a additional ones that I keep seeing while fusing personas that I haven't seen either. No way I'll unlock the "true ending" at this stage, but that doesn't matter. I like the game enough that I do plan to do a replay... Though maybe not right away.
 
J

Jachaos

Member
viciouskillersquirrel said:
I beat the Heaven dungeon yesterday. This game really gets easier toward the end, especially regarding your SP budget. I have Invigorate and Null Phys on everything and something that repels, drains or nullifies most of the elements. The boss of the dungeon couldn't touch me during the sequence where he controls your allies. Bringing him down felt good, like finally beating Von Karma in the first Ace Attorney game.

This game does have the best writing I've seen outside of those visual novel sort of games. It's not a story I'd have picked up a book and read about, but it nonetheless drew me in with surprising speed. It is something special.

The rest of the time I've spent trying to jack up all my s-links. There are a bunch I'm sure I've missed entirely, because I could never get Naoto or Kanji to trigger theirs and there a additional ones that I keep seeing while fusing personas that I haven't seen either. No way I'll unlock the "true ending" at this stage, but that doesn't matter. I like the game enough that I do plan to do a replay... Though maybe not right away.
Click to expand...

You can still do Naoto and Kanji I think, they should be out and about. Kanji you should've been able to start his S. Link for a long time now, I know you can find him in the practice building but you might also need to talk to some NPC in school first (who tells you where he is amongst other things).
 
K

Kthulhu

Member
viciouskillersquirrel said:
I beat the Heaven dungeon yesterday. This game really gets easier toward the end, especially regarding your SP budget. I have Invigorate and Null Phys on everything and something that repels, drains or nullifies most of the elements. The boss of the dungeon couldn't touch me during the sequence where he controls your allies. Bringing him down felt good, like finally beating Von Karma in the first Ace Attorney game.

This game does have the best writing I've seen outside of those visual novel sort of games. It's not a story I'd have picked up a book and read about, but it nonetheless drew me in with surprising speed. It is something special.

The rest of the time I've spent trying to jack up all my s-links. There are a bunch I'm sure I've missed entirely, because I could never get Naoto or Kanji to trigger theirs and there a additional ones that I keep seeing while fusing personas that I haven't seen either. No way I'll unlock the "true ending" at this stage, but that doesn't matter. I like the game enough that I do plan to do a replay... Though maybe not right away.
Click to expand...

Make sure you look up a dialogue guide for December.

Kanji should be in the building with the clubs, and Naoto requires max courage in order to begin her s link.
 
V

viciouskillersquirrel

Member
Kthulhu said:
Make sure you look up a dialogue guide for December.

Kanji should be in the building with the clubs, and Naoto requires max courage in order to begin her s link.
Click to expand...
Thanks. Do I only have to have started the s-link in order to trigger the best ending or do I need to max them all?
Jachaos said:
You can still do Naoto and Kanji I think, they should be out and about. Kanji you should've been able to start his S. Link for a long time now, I know you can find him in the practice building but you might also need to talk to some NPC in school first (who tells you where he is amongst other things).
Click to expand...
Thanks. I'll keep a look out.
 
K

Kthulhu

Member
viciouskillersquirrel said:
Thanks. Do I only have to have started the s-link in order to trigger the best ending or do I need to max them all?

Thanks. I'll keep a look out.
Click to expand...

If you want to get the best experience you will need to max everyone out, but only one specific character in the game needs to be maxxed out for the best ending. If you want the best persona in the game you will need to max out all the social links. One of the social links when maxed out unlocks a secret boss and another unlocks the worst ending.

This spoiler free thread on GameFAQs helped me through the end, but you probably haven't figured out who the killer is yet and hopfully haven't been spoiled like I was. The P4 spin offs have massive spoilers about the killer's identity, so don't even look at the trailers.

BTW that thread is as spoiler free as possible, but it might be too much for you. You might want to make a second save in case you don't get the ending you want.
 
V

viciouskillersquirrel

Member
Kthulhu said:
If you want to get the best experience you will need to max everyone out, but only one specific character in the game needs to be maxxed out for the best ending. If you want the best persona in the game you will need to max out all the social links. One of the social links when maxed out unlocks a secret boss and another unlocks the worst ending.

This spoiler free thread on GameFAQs helped me through the end, but you probably haven't figured out who the killer is yet and hopfully haven't been spoiled like I was. The P4 spin offs have massive spoilers about the killer's identity, so don't even look at the trailers.

BTW that thread is as spoiler free as possible, but it might be too much for you. You might want to make a second save in case you don't get the ending you want.
Click to expand...
That is very detailed and has no spoilers at all! It's perfect!
 
V

viciouskillersquirrel

Member
Got to the final dungeon thanks to the guide Kthulu posted. Got the choice wrong twice before I stumbled upon who the real killer was. First I picked Yosuke, then Dojima himself, but then I remembered some weird coincidences and his
tendency to complain about how boring it was in the country
and I picked him out of desperation.

It all made sense after that.

I finished Marie's s-link to get the best ending and am on the last dungeon now.
 
V

viciouskillersquirrel

Member
Professor Beef said:
Why would you pick Yosuke!?
Click to expand...
He has a strong connection to Saki Konishi. I guess I thought maybe there was a Dr Jekyll / Mr Hyde thing going on.

I don't know! It made sense at the time.

The next suspect was Dojima because I figured the cops had access to everyone and everything, but Adachi couldn't scheme his way out of a paper bag. Turns out I was wrong about that.
 
V

viciouskillersquirrel

Member
I just triggered the final boss battle. He did the whole "this isn't even my final form" thing. I'll report back once I'm done.

I suppose the game doesn't just stop afterwards, right? I keep hearing about Christmas and next Spring, so the game has to last until at least March, I suppose? I haven't even started the Naoto or Kanji s-links yet.
 
N

Narroo

Member
viciouskillersquirrel said:
Got wiped out in the latter stages of the final boss fight. Looks like I'll be doing a bit of grinding for a while.
Click to expand...

You mean the eyeball?
Need a hint to avoid grinding?
Party wideBuffs and debuffs all around. Trumpeter is amazing for most of that fight if you get debilitate

Also, fun fact: There wasn't a trace of Marie in the original game. Keep that in mind if you don't like her.
 
V

viciouskillersquirrel

Member
Narroo said:
You mean the eyeball?
Need a hint to avoid grinding?
Party wideBuffs and debuffs all around. Trumpeter is amazing for most of that fight if you get debilitate

Also, fun fact: There wasn't a trace of Marie in the original game. Keep that in mind if you don't like her.
Click to expand...
I don't have Trumpeter and Goho-Ms aren't working for some reason, so I can't seem to get to the Velvet Room.

I've been buffing the party, but don't have anything that debuffs him or raises my defense.
 
D

daevious

Member
viciouskillersquirrel said:
I don't have Trumpeter and Goho-Ms aren't working for some reason, so I can't seem to get to the Velvet Room.

I've been buffing the party, but don't have anything that debuffs him or raises my defense.
Click to expand...

???

Can't you go back to the main hub by using the save point butterflies or did they remove that from Golden?
 
N

Narroo

Member
daevious said:
???

Can't you go back to the main hub by using the save point butterflies or did they remove that from Golden?
Click to expand...

They removed it. I used Treastos to go back. I'm not totally sure how to get back from the end floor there. have you tried going back to the hole, jumping down, and going back through that way?
 
V

viciouskillersquirrel

Member
Narroo said:
They removed it. I used Treastos to go back. I'm not totally sure how to get back from the end floor there. have you tried going back to the hole, jumping down, and going back through that way?
Click to expand...
Jumping down the hole did the trick. Regrouping and fusing personas for the moment. Seeing if I can't get Margaret's s-link up a little higher.

Thanks for the help.
 
N

Narroo

Member
viciouskillersquirrel said:
Jumping down the hole did the trick. Regrouping and fusing personas for the moment. Seeing if I can't get Margaret's s-link up a little higher.

Thanks for the help.
Click to expand...

Magret's final S.Link is actually Trumpeter with Mind Charge, at least in the original. I don't know if they changed it in Golden.
 
X

Xliskin

Member
Great game enjoy it

Kthulhu said:
The ending makes me cry everytime. P5 has big shoes to fill.

Look up a dialog guide for December. 'Cuz you'll need it.

Make sure you max out all of the social links for the best ending (and cuz the cast is awesome)
Click to expand...


That is a bad ending
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Witcher 4 Dev talks about Ciri fan reaction: "Ciri is called a witcher in books", "we're not suddenly making up stuff just because we want to", etc
News Game Dev 2 3 4
177
10K
Gonzito replied
What makes Persona and Metaphor's character designs so compelling? Atlus designer: "In a word, it’s sex appeal"
Analysis Game Dev 2
65
4K
ShadyAcshuns replied
Korean Netflix Show Review: Mr Plankton *SPOILERS*
12
15K
near replied
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2’s Japanese artist went above and beyond to make sure there was nothing foreign about their depiction of Medieval Europe
Game Dev
15
2K
Zacfoldor replied
  • Locked
  • Poll
Does Wokeness effect your will to want to buy a game?
3 4 5 6 7
348
12K
Salmonboy replied
Top Bottom