Persona 4 Golden is a game from Atlus which is a turn-based JRPG that contains visual novel elements somewhat reminiscent of Pokémon. To describe for a newcomer to the Persona series is a little difficult but I'll do my best to give a general gist. The general plot follows a high school student in Japan who moves to a new town to live with his uncle. While attending school, your character discovers a series of grisly murders occurring in this little town and discover that an urban supernatural legend known as the 'Midnight Channel' is possibly related to this. With your friends, you set out to find the truth about yourselves and the murders.

(+) The Good
• Great soundtrack
• Gameplay is fun, requiring you to manage your social life, school work, after-school jobs, clubs, and hunting down the serial killer with your friends.
• Game is huge. I'm talking an average of 40 to 80 hours, let alone all the side quests, social links and more that you can complete.
• Develop meaningful relationships with people all over town
• Fun anime cutscenes interspersed with the game
• No need to have played any other games in the series to enjoy this one

(-) The Bad
• The dungeons can be a bit repetitive
• Grinding for specific items/personas in dungeons can be annoying
• For a newcomer to the series, it can be slightly overwhelming and confusing on what you can accomplish, especially without a guide

(-) The Ugly
• Honestly, there's nothing I can really point to as 'ugly' in this game. It's damn good.

As I explained above, the game is a turn-based JRPG that is similar to Pokémon. You will encounter creatures in a nether realm found inside of a television channel known as the Midnight Channel. These creatures are called personas. Some personas have physical attacks, whilst others can have fire or even ice abilities. Given whatever you're battling, you may need to target a fire persona’s weakness by summoning an ice persona to your side in battle. On top of this, you're joined by a host of friends who have their own personas and abilities that can help swing the battle in your favor. However, the dungeons are only a part of the game.

Beyond this, your character has to manage their daily life. After all, they're a high school student. You can get an after-school job which can improve certain abilities like your courage. On top of this, you need to make sure to study for upcoming exams and sometimes you'll be called out by a teacher and be forced to give them an answer. If you get it right, your knowledge in the game increases.

The biggest thing to keep in mind about Persona 4 Golden is that Social Links are core to develop during your playthrough. You'll meet a host of characters during the game's story and depending on what you choose to say and do, you'll be able to develop closer relationships with your friends and many other people. These relationships are important because they can affect certain story elements and possibly give you bonuses to your combat. However, you do need to dedicate time to hang out with these folks. By hanging out with them, you'll advance the in-game time and miss opportunities to do other things. It's a bit of a tightrope walk, but that's all part of the fun.

Each Persona game focuses on different ideas, and the main idea behind this game as two general points:

• Investigating a serial murderer with a detective theme
• Confronting one's fears about themselves and understanding their 'truth'

Essentially, this game deals with people lying to themselves. Many people you'll encounter are in denial about the abusive relationships they're in, or perhaps something more intimate. The point is, your character is tasked to find the 'truth' about the world and as you explore this town, you begin to find that truth is something very difficult to discover. This is where personas come in. Personas are physical manifestations of one's inner demon. By refusing to acknowledge your own failings, you're giving power to the persona to protect the hidden truth about yourself.

And what's the truth? In a non-spoiler way, the truth is that everyone has dark parts about themselves. The question is if whether or not you can accept this part of yourself and learn to be a better person, or run away from the truth and cause destruction to hide this. Persona, for all its anime-weeb design, is a fairly mature examination on what it means to be a human being. Sure, on the surface you're investigating a serial killer who is using a supernatural weapon known as the 'Midnight Channel' to kill their victims. But underneath this, the game is attempting to examine what it means to grow up in a world where nobody is perfect.

The music is phenomenal. It has pop, rock, and jazz elements from Shoji Meguro. None of it is distracting and while it can be slightly repetitive, it always informs the scene. The voice acting is great and while you're able to play in both Japanese or English, the English VAs are excellent in their delivery.

Visually, it's slightly dated but the game still looks great, especially considering this came out originally in 2008. It's an anime visual style and while it doesn't get wacky very often, it's always fun to watch those scenes.

I personally haven't experienced any bugs or glitches but the game has crashed twice for me. However, this is fairly rare and the only issue I'm hearing from the community is some lag in the cutscenes.

Persona 4 Golden isn't a perfect game; for me, I'd still consider Persona 5 Royal to fit that category. Looking back at this game, I can see where Atlus improved on certain mechanics and polished the gameplay in later games, but this doesn't mean this game isn't worth exploring. In fact, if you're at all curious about this game, I'd highly recommend you to check it out. You're bound to discover something truly special, especially if you venture into the Midnight Channel.

The computer specs that I used for this review are listed below:
- CPU: i5-6600k CPU @ 3.50GHz
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080, 8GB
- RAM: 16.0 GB

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