Late to the party: Persona 4

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by bluestarultor

The voice acting is also kind of meh, which is a shock, because there's some good talent on this thing.

...Really?
I mean if there's one thing I absolutely positively adored about Persona 4, it was about 90% of the voice acting. Everyone was top-notch, minus maybe Rise (her shadow's voice was excruciating, and her regular ol' voice wasn't horrible or anything, it just was annoying insofar as it involved the character saying the same damn lines during every battle.)

And a few of the supporting NPCs (those you can befriend who do not join your party) are pretty terrible, but they don't have very many voiced lines.

I love Persona 4 and I love it a bit more than I loved Persona 3, though I will say that when I started Persona 4 I was still coming off a Persona 3 induced high and I subsequently had some high expectations coming in that weren't immediately met. Because Persona 3 leaves you on such an awesome note -- and since you've spent something like 80+ hours with those characters -- it's difficult to adapt to Persona 4's characters insofar as they can't by definition appear as developed and nuanced as P3's when you're just beginning. You've had a long time to grow to like P3's cast, so you'll need to give P4's an equal investment.

Also, I will say that P4's plot initially feels somewhat underwhelming compared to P3. You're going from (MAJOR Persona 3 Spoilers) sacrificing yourself to destroy an otherworldly evil born from human angst and apathy that threatens to destroy an entire world, killing everyone you care about to solving what appears to be a serial murder case with victims kidnapped into televisions.

P4 just doesn't quite match the enormity of scope or seriousness of P3 (and when it eventually tries to, it falls somewhat flat by comparison.) P4 is endearing for entirely different and somewhat more lighthearted reasons, involving characters who are much more realistic and (in my opinion) ultimately more multifaceted and likable. Both games succeed in terms of their narratives for very different reasons, with P3 sacrificing character depth and intimacy in order to concoct a more epic and emotional plot, and P4 taking the opposite route and sacrificing plot intensity in order to let the cast shine through genuine moments that expose them as something less than "heroes" and more like "regular, albeit extraordinarily lovable, teenage kids."