Will it be today we'll have Persona 4 Golden on Steam? Your body is ready? Recommendations, please

Running down the entire Megami Tensei franchise and its spinoffs would take all day; the games have been around since the late 80s and the series likely has more spinoffs than its similarly-aged counterparts like Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy. The majority of them have been released under the Shin Megami Tensei brand, although there are a number that aren't. Very few games have concrete relations to others in terms of plot, and even the modern Persona games (3, 4, and 5) only contain a handful of winks or nods to each other.

The 'traditional' setup for a (S)MT game usually involves dungeon crawling, turn-based battling, and fighting alongside demons you've recruited or obtained by fusing other demons together. Unlike the many franchises with Monster in their name which popularized the critter-collecting genre in the mid-late 90s, most of the games at least start on Earth (usually in Tokyo), revolving around religious wars (pretty much all the demons can recruit are mythologically-based, from just about any culture or religion you can think of) and apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic scenarios. Dungeon crawling tends to be from a first-person perspective (though the 3D games have moved away from this), and demon recruiting has a unique element in that you generally have to negotiate with them during battle.

The Persona series in particular shies away from the holy wars, instead using these demons to examine elements of the human psyche (hence the title), which is largely just an excuse to have a more expansive cast of NPCs. Gameplay revolves around high-schoolers exploring both dungeons and their home city, and rather than parties of recruitable demons, each character has one equipped (called their Persona), which can be used for special skills and impacts the character's strength and weaknesses. In the original Persona and the Persona 2 duology for the PS1, party members can freely switch the Persona they have equipped, and some elements of demon negotiation are still present; in the newer games, only the main character can switch Personas, while everyone else obtains their own through plot methods, and only Persona 5 has negotiation with enemies.

While the PS1 Persona games play pretty close to standard JRPGs, 3, 4, and 5 include serious time-management and relationship elements; the first and last date on the calendar are set, and you'll have to juggle between school, hanging out with friends, and choosing when to dungeon-dive, while trying to find time to earn a bit of cash or raise your social stats. Spending time with your friends and acquaintances allows their subplots to progress, and as your bond deepens you'll be able to create more powerful Personas of the class corresponding to the character you're bonding with. If it's your thing, yes, you're allowed to date some of the characters, but the consequences are fairly minor, and only Persona 3 Portable has the option to play as a female character. Certain plot events, including boss battles, are set for specific dates, so you can't simply focus on school life versus dungeon crawling for too long, and trying to do a bunch of grinding on one calendar day isn't ideal either.

As for what Persona games are worth playing, and in what order? It's debatable. 3/4/5 all take place in the same universe at different times, but I don't think there's anything that really spoils any of the earlier games. 1 and 2 should probably be played in order, but I really don't think you miss much if you skip the first one or come back to it later.

I would argue that Persona 1 is the most skippable - it's grind-heavy, slow, and probably has the weakest overall plot. Persona 2 is actually pretty damn good despite still playing like a mid-90s RPG, but it's also pretty frustrating in terms of release: The first half (Innocent Sin) only had its PSP port translated, which added censorship to some stuff late-game that probably could've been reverted for the US release (although I'll admit the sunglasses are actually an improvement), and the second half (Eternal Punishment) didn't have its PSP port brought overseas, leaving players with the less-than-ideal PSX localization.

Persona 3 and upwards are all M-rated, and sometimes Persona 3 feels like it got dark just for the sake of being dark, with some laughably over-the-top results. The plot's not bad, the music is second only to Persona 5, and it's probably got some of the best character arcs of any of the newer games. But it lacks a lot of the quality-of-life features from the later games - the calendar is pretty unforgiving, party members can get too fatigued to battle, your bonds with characters can break off if you spend too much time ignoring them or answer questions the wrong way, and only the PSP version lets you control characters in battle. The PSP version is a bit better about some of that, and even includes a female character route, changing some of the plot and social links. On the other hand, thanks to the PSP's limitations, everything outside of dungeons gets simplified to moving a cursor around flattened 2D maps, rather than actually moving around the school/city/etc., and the postgame Answer expansion was dropped entirely. It's a shame that rumors have pointed to P3P eventually coming to Steam rather than Persona 3 FES, in my opinion, but it's better than nothing.

Persona 4 (alongside the updated Vita port, Persona 4 Golden) is probably the most accessible entry in the series; it manages to keep a decent balance between lighthearted elements and the darker points of the plot. The music is a bit more pop and upbeat than other entries, and initially I spent a lot of time thinking it was far too cheery compared to its foreboding, dark predecessor. But it's got emotional beats that it nails really well, especially later in the game, and the overall improvements make it a lot less frustrating to play. The calendar is less suffocating, and it does away with the endless-random-dungeon element of P3 while making it a little less frustrating to grind in general. The extra elements in Golden clearly feel tacked on at some points, but it also adds a pretty nicely done 'bad end' that wouldn't quite have worked in the original. It gets a lot of flak for being heavy on the humor, and for being the source of endless bizarre spinoffs (including, somehow, a whole franchise of rhythm games), but it's exactly that cozy, simple feeling that makes it easier to dive back into. Being that Golden has been exclusive to the Vita, which got pulled from shelves years ago and has no viable emulator, I'm actually not that displeased about this one (allegedly) being the first on Steam, rather than P5 or P5R.

Persona 5... is a game that exists. Maybe Persona 5 Royal is even a decent one, though I don't have a PS4 to check it out. Look, the soundtrack is almost entirely excellent, and it's the first Persona game (including the PS1 games) where the dungeons actually feel well designed. The battle system has a bit more depth, and it even brings back the classic enemy bartering system that's been the staple of the Megami Tensei franchise since the beginning. But Jesus fucking Christ, the plot is insufferable and long as hell, and despite all the others being decent the longest dungeon in the game is possibly the worst in the entire franchise. From the start, the game tries to show you it's going to tackle real, mature, issues like physical/sexual assault and suicide. And that's going to turn a lot of people off, which would be fine... if they actually managed to handle it at all. What do we do about the abuser? Just magic the problem away! How do we handle the suicide survivor and their healing process? Who cares about them, just write them out of the story! This is just the first chapter, mind you; there's another half-dozen poorly-thought-out issues to tackle before we're done here. The game also seems to think it's clever about how it handles revealing a main villain, by making them incredibly obvious from the first quarter of the game to the player, then waiting until about fifty hours down the line to reveal that maybe the player characters aren't complete blithering idiots. And somehow there's still another 20 hours left in the plot after that, none of which are any better. It also brings back the long, game-spanning dungeon format that P3 had, this time as an underworld called Mementos. It's already a throwback to the worst parts of the last two games, but what makes it more miserable is that it has one 'song' in its soundtrack, which is an annoying 10-15 second loop, which you will listen to the entire way down. It's so awful that despite Smash Bros. featuring a stage based on this dungeon, not a hint of its track made it into the game. It's entirely possible that the monotony is the point, but that doesn't mean I want to listen to it on loop while blood drips from my ears.

And if you want recommendations on any other SMT games... well, it took me over an hour to get the stuff above typed out, and there's a bunch of great SMT games just on the PS2 and DS/3DS alone; I don't really want to be here all day, so go give that stuff a look. Hopefully if P4G sells well, Atlus will be interested in bringing at least some of the PS2 stuff to Steam.

i've only played 2 on the PSX and enjoyed it greatly because at the time it was unlike anything i'd ever played before. i'll be interested in seeing what this ported Persona has to offer, and from what i've read it's a series a lot like Final Fantasy in the frame that you can generally play them standalone if you want and aren't missing anything.

ITS FINALLY HERE GUYS

I've only played P4 Golden. You'll need more than a hundred hours in order to achieve satisfying results in the game (hundreds if you want an NG+) now reflect that on the previous entries in the franchise and see where you stand and if it's worth it to you.

got a vita for p4g and danganronpa back then can't wait for more to come to pc !