Trapped on a dead Sony handheld no longer: The ultimate version of Persona 4, the once Vita-exclusive Persona 4 Golden, launched today for PC via Steam. I’ve been playing it for a couple weeks now, and I have no new complaints.
Old complaints, sure. The fourth game in the storied series, originally released in 2008 for the PlayStation 2, had its share of issues. I was never a fan of Yosuke’s teasing of Kanji, a character struggling with his sexual identity. It’s a bit uncomfortable having the main character moving in with his police detective uncle at the beginning of the game, especially considering current events. But these are issues I’ve made my peace with over the past decade and change. Right now it’s just nice to revisit my old friends without having to dig my Vita out of… where the hell is my Vita?
That doesn’t matter now, when anyone with a half-decent PC can pick up the game for $US20 ($29) (or $US25 ($36) for the digital deluxe version with soundtrack and art book). It makes me happy to see that bright yellow stylised intro on my gaming monitor. Also good to see is a screen of PC-exclusive options, even if they are relatively limited.
The resolution can be set to a max of 1080p. That might seem low, but the PlayStation 2 only output the game at 480p and the Vita 576p, so this version has a lot more pixels. More than enough pixels to render a 12-year-old game with visuals that weren’t all that complex in the first place.
As with many menu-driven, turn-based role-playing games, Persona 4 Golden plays great with a PC keyboard. It’s a great game to load onto a laptop for portable play. Not as portable as a Vita, of course, but much less obsolete.
Atlus gave me a couple of weeks to play in advance of today’s announcement. It was probably too much. For one, news of the impending release leaked earlier this week. And this is Persona 4 Golden. It’s a legendary video game. We know how good it is. Kirk Hamilton and Jason Schreier discussed it at length when the Vita version dropped. If you’ve not played it, go play it. If you have played it, go play it again. I have faced my other self, and it was good.
Sorry, PlayStation 4 owners, Persona 4 Golden is PC-only at the moment, but that could change in the wake of this release. Hell, this is the first mainstream Persona game on PC. Can a Persona 5 PC port be far behind? How about the Switch? Hahaha. OK, probably not the Switch.
I’ve got nothing else. Go play. It’s a great game to play and a lovely platform to play it on. Remember kids, every day’s great at your Junes.
Comments
8 responses to “Persona 4 Golden PC Is The Definitive Edition Of A Damn Good Game”
Fingers crossed for P3FES, and the other earliar games being released as well.
As someone who has fit a few of the alphabet soup cans throughout my life, I don’t want to see games ‘whitewashed’ so that everyone is happy tree friends, except for the police who need to be unmitigated villains as alluded to in the article.
You really can’t go into how ludicrous someone having a positive role model on the police force is, without going into spoiler territory for the game. And I can’t see the spoiler tag button in the new comment system to put why.
I’ve never played a Persona game before since they weren’t on PC, but am kind of interested to check this out due to it being long-running and mostly well-loved (it seems like) series.
Am I going to be able to follow the story etc. of this one having never played the other games in the series?
Yes. It’s pretty much an anthology series, like Final Fantasy. The mainline games aren’t really connected in any way where you’d need to have played previous entries.
Yeah, you can totally go into this game cold. The Persona games are similar to Final Fantasy in the way that all the main games are self-contained (outside of a few cheeky references).
Thanks!
Also good to confirm than in addition to weird formatting, the new comment system doesn’t pop up a notification in the top right when you have a reply. Grr…
…really not a fan of how cluttered the new site design is, either.
That’s off topic of course, but it’s not like there’s anywhere else to discuss it.
In addition to what everyone else has already said, P4G is standalone and a remaster of the original, but then P4A, P4UA and P4DAN are all sequels to it, so you’d want to play P4G first. Which is only relevant if they port the rest.
In addition to that, P4A P4AU and PQ are all sequels to both Persona 4 AND Persona 3 (despite Persona 3 and 4 not being connected originally) and PQ2 is a sequel to Persona 3, 4 AND 5. And, according to Arlis, they are all cannon.
Wow, it went from Final Fantasy simple to Kingdom Hearts complicated real quick, huh.
All of the mainline Persona games are standalone – you don’t need to have played any of the other games. There are a handful of returning characters but you’re not missing anything if you don’t already know about them.