Welcome to Persona 4. The basic story here is nothing we haven't seen before in some form. Our nameless, silent protagonist is a second-year high school student from the city who transfers out to a quiet, rural town where nothing exciting ever happens - oh, wait, until now. People in town start getting kidnapped and (eventually) murdered. The protagonist and his misfit gang of friends decide to take it upon themselves to solve the mystery since the police are, of course, hilariously inept. Standard.

   That's Persona 4 in the smallest of nutshells, but like religion, good New York pie, and, apparently, the Matrix, Persona 4 can't really be explained; it has to be experienced. Even if you've played Persona 3, which shares many similarities, Persona 4 very much still has its own thing going.

How far the rabbit hole goes...

   I promise that'll be the only Matrix line I use.

   What makes Persona 4 such a unique experience is that it employs levels of depth and immersion usually reserved for PC RPGs. Days fall off the calendar counting down the time you have to rescue each of the respective kidnapped victims before they are shipped to the Campbell's Soup Company in little chunks. To solve the mysteries you not only have to get through a number of deceptive puzzles and chop your way through a bunch of dungeons, but also take care of your "normal life" responsibilities. You go to school, study for and take tests and exams, participate in clubs and events, and spend time with your friends. I know what you are thinking: "oh for the love of god, I'm in high school again." It's fun this time, though; trust me.

   Going to school while people are getting kidnapped is not just a meaningless waste of your time, because all of these social events, in one way or another, contribute to the progress of your "Social Links." Increasing these links will make you and your allies more effective in battle as well as help you get to know each character and find out his or her personal story, which (work with me, will you!) ultimately helps you solve the mystery. There's practically two whole games here. Interacting with your friends and watching the character's stories unfold to the atmospheric music is just as engaging as the dungeon-crawling aspect of the game. It's just like having friends for real! Not that I need to pretend to. Crap, did I just say that out loud? Damn you, tongue, damn you.

PRO TIP: Frequently saving your game greatly reduces the risk of controller breakage.

Red Warrior needs food badly!

   The game's combat is turn-based and requires a decent amount of strategy. Even if you powerlevel, many enemies have immunities and will require you to strike at their weaknesses to do even a minimal amount of damage, so you can still get caught with your pants down. Persona 4 also focuses heavily on health and magic management. Physical damage techniques cost health to perform, and you'll need magic to heal yourself for their use (on top of getting pummeled by enemies). Even though you probably won't beat most dungeons in one shot and will inevitably have to do a couple dry runs, make sure you are well stocked up on healing before heading into a dungeon. If you don't, you might start suffering some Gauntlet flashbacks where you are going crazy looking for healing items while the stupid wizard horks all the food even though he doesn't need it because he just hangs in the back grabbing all the loot and when the jerk finally decides to do something he manages to blow up the damn haunch of meat you were about to get! Oh, how you torture me, childhood memories! Ok, moving on then...

The unbearable lightness of repeating

   This sandbox-like setup which allows you to spend your game days as you see fit while the game nudges you in the direction of the ultimate goal is what makes Persona 4 what it is. And what it is, most of the time, is deep, challenging gameplay. Occasionally, however, it can lead to tedium. Like when the answer to a particular mystery is so blatantly obvious to you that you start yelling at your slack-jawed comrades on the TV screen. Unfortunately, for most of the game, figuring things out before everyone else indeed results in you impotently staring at the TV waiting for some action. Wait... that came out wrong...

   Luckily, those instances aren't too common (and happen to every man occasionally, besides). Most of your yawns will instead come when doing the side quests, many of which are little more than mere fetch quests of the "kill monster X and bring me item Y" variety. It wouldn't be so bad, except that unless you're going through the dungeons at the most leisurely pace the game allows, you'll likely be getting these quests at the point when the monster you need to kill is in a dungeon long since beaten. Maybe it's just because I always beat the dungeons as soon as they were available and tried to do it as fast as possible so that I could focus on social activities, but this is the one area where I found the pace of the game awkward. I'd be off pursuing a potential love interest with one of my female teammates (not that I need pretend love - okay, yeah, I do), and the next day three people from school would ask me to find each of them some physically impossible item that they're not even confident I can find, and that they themselves don't even believe truly exists. The conversation would go something like this:

   "Hey, could you find me a 'Strawberry Alarm-clock?' I'm not sure where'd you get one. So I don't expect you to be able to find it, but you know, hypothetically, let's say you were able to find one in a [insert a suspiciously accurate clue pointing you to the requisite dungeon] you could bring it to me, if you find it, but I don't expect you to. What's that you say? You already made your painful way through that very dungeon eons ago? Oh how sad for you. Well, I guess if you don't want this not-so-amazing- but-still-kind-of-really-useful reward, you could just pass on it..."

How about you just play it?

   All in all, though, Persona 4 is terrific game well-worth the gaming bucks of any jRPG fan. It's a deep, multi-dimensional experience with many redeeming qualities like a great soundtrack and an engaging story which will keep you hooked for days. Now get your scrawny ass to GameStop and see for yourself.

       ... Eric Venezia