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Persona 4 golden9/21/2023 ![]() In your new rural home town of Inaba, a string of mysterious murders start after your arrival. While video games as a whole tend to abide by the notions that bigger is better and more is a necessity, I’ve grown to really appreciate effective brevity, and Inaba has that in spades.With the upgrades solely being graphical and quality-of-life improvements, the classic tale of the 2012 Persona 4 Golden remains the same. While I love an RPG that makes me feel like I’m going on a globe-trotting odyssey, there’s just something about the compact nature of Inaba that really resonates with me. It also helps that Persona 4 released in 2008, just after the launch of the first iPhone and right on the cusp of smartphones becoming ubiquitous in the world, which again feeds into the notion of this world being a relatively small place. Her excitement whenever she hears the Junes jingle on TV is infectious, and it takes me back to a simpler time where I too found unadulterated enjoyment in trips to the mall and literally anything that was playing on TV. But there’s an innocence to the way Persona 4 presents these things, which largely has to do with the overwhelming goodness of your little cousin Nanako. Like I imagine many of you have, I’ve grown jaded and disillusioned with things like the rampant consumerism inherent in department stores and the mind-numbing nature of most things on traditional television. Speaking of TV, I love how Persona 4 uses the medium as a focal point of its story and presentation. These things all help Inaba act as the perfect foil to the non-grounded elements of the Persona 4 adventure, like the liminal space of the Velvet Room’s limousine and the dungeons housed inside the TV world of the Midnight Channel. ![]() Kanji’s introduction will shed new light on his mother’s textile store, and the same goes for the tofu shop run by Rise’s grandmother. ![]() As you grow close with Yukiko, you’ll discover more about her family’s Amagi Inn, which is one of the only tourist destinations in town. Persona 4 also does a smart job of letting you discover new bits of the town as they pertain to the party members you meet along your Scooby-Doo adventure to solve a murder and ultimately save the world. And of course, there are the semesters spent in Yasogami High School, whose quiet classrooms and sun-baked hallways exemplify the peaceful mundanity of Inaba as a whole… minus the whole serial killer thing. Given the fact that the story of Persona 4 plays out over the course of a year, we also see Inaba transform throughout the seasons, with the constant hum of cicadas in the summer replaced by the soft silence that comes from a blanket of snow in the winter. There are basic things, like how a building that houses a general store during the day turns into a lively pub at night, or how the tranquil shrine gains an air of menace under the moonlight. ![]() Inaba’s identity has a great way of transforming throughout the game in various ways. ![]()
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