Persona 4 ended up being the last Persona game I chose to play when it came to the 3 "modern" titles. Still a five star experience, obviously. All of the strengths that 3 and 5 have that I've mentioned in previous reviews still stand. Great characters, story, gameplay, etc. Really just phenomenal stuff. All 3 games I could barely put down while playing them, which is really rare for me playing games nowadays.
The biggest difference between this game and 3 and 5 to me was that I felt like it leaned way more into the social link and story aspect of the game, and less so the dungeon crawling. I actually liked that and found it to really make this game stand out among the others in the series. None of the dungeons overstay their welcome and each one being themed completely differently and revolving around a pivotal character in the story was great. Much more engaging to me than just going to another part of Tartarus, which sometimes had a different design.
I do like the story a lot in this game, and I also liked the ending the most in this game out of the 3, especially the epilogue they added in Golden. I do wish Yu just stayed in Iniba, he really doesn't have any reason to go back to the city and it makes sense for him to stay with Dojima because he's family. I wish Joker stayed in Persona 5 as well, but I can see why logistically it would be weird for him to stay with Sojiro another year since they aren't related in any way.
I also wish Naoto dungeon was switched timeline wise with the video game dungeon. It does make sense in the story but it would be great for Naoto to join the team earlier and you easily could have changed the story to have Naoto help you find the copycat, it would be really cool for them to show off their detective skills in a way that directly benefits the team.
I also didn't enjoy the music as much as I did 3, and especially 5. However, considering 5 has the best video game OST I've ever heard with 3 not being too far off, this is not a slight at the game. The music still really fantastic. The graphics are also pretty dated, don't let the 2020 release date fool you. This is a port of a PS2 game at the end of the day. Definitely nowhere near too bad to enjoy today, but a remake makes sense to me. A lot of the quality of life stuff that 5 added to battles that also exist in 3R are sorely missed here, like the Persona menu being completely separate and not being able to see all of your backup personas attack type unless you memorize what they are or manually select them.
At the end of the day though these are all pretty minor nitpicks, especially the previous point I made (the game was made in 2008 the graphics aren't going to be amazing). The only major drawback I had with this game is Teddie as a character. I really wanted to like Teddie going into the game, and I actually found him endearing for the first couple months of the story. A little annoying abut endearing enough. But then, he comes to the real world and becomes really hard to like. Legit every scene he is in has him being weird and creepy and it gets old quick. Thankfully the other characters are constantly calling him out for his BS, but it doesn't make his inclusion in the story any better. The rest of your party members are really awesome though, with Kanji probably being my favorite character in the whole series, so thankfully its mostly overshadowed.
Looking at all 3 games as a whole, I'd rank this above 3 and below 5, and consider it an absolute must play, along with the other 2 games.
