I hope Senpai notices me.

Do you remember your high school days? Hanging out with friends and doing part time jobs? Going into a TV world to stop a series of serial murders? Good times, good times.

I remember all these things, and they definitely aren’t from Persona 4. That’s just crazy, you’re crazy.

Maybe they are from Persona 4… Or are they?

Yes. They are.

So in Persona 4 you play as Yu Narukami… (you can name him whatever the crap you want, name him Butt Muncher, I don’t care. No one says his name and he doesn’t even officially have a name in the game, just the anime.) Yu is a new transfer student to Yasogami high in the city of Inaba. (I’m trying to see how many Japanese words I can get spell check to underline. So far I’m up to 4.) While on his train ride to Inaba, Yu’s subconscious is sent to the Velvet Room , a magical place where a long nosed man and his tappable assistant, (Mmm. She fine.) hang out. Nose Man, Hero of Noses tells Yu that he has some kind of destiny and he only has a year to figure it out. And that’s important for some reason… I guess I could have just left that part out… apologies…

After getting off the train at Inaba station, Yu meets his uncle Dojima (5) and his daughter Nanako (6). They tell Yu that they’re taking him in or whatever and now he’s stuck with this little girl and her old man harshing on the best years of his life, and also the murders, they’re harshing on Yu’s high school years.

One thing leads to another, and someone gets moidad. (I’m just going to glance off the murder. That’s unimportant.) The next day, Yu meets his three new friends, Yosuke (7), Chie (8), and Yukiko (9). The four chum it up and talk about the Midnight Channel, which is apparently a way to see your soul mate by looking into an unplugged TV at midnight on a rainy night. After seeing a picture of a pretty girl, Yu, who is an idiot, decides he wants to touch the pretty girl through the TV screen. And he pokes his hand right through there. Not content with being left out, Yu’s head joins the fray and goes right up in the TV. Yu is now stuck halfway inside a TV. The end.

The next day, Yu tells his idiot friends what he did last night. After his friends stop laughing at him for being an idiot they decide to hang out at Junes (It’s pronounced Joo-ness… I don’t know what the crap is going on over in Japan, it’s obviously multiple sixth months.) At Joo-ness Yosuke introduces Yu to his senpai (I already used that one, it doesn’t count) Saki (10) she dies right away… bummer.

She was also the person on the Midnight Channel. I guess I should have said that earlier.

Not content with Yu getting all the TV action, Yosuke decides they’re going to travel into the TV to touch the next girl on the Midnight Channel.

That’s where your quest starts. You gotta touch all the girls on the TV screen… Or save them from certain demise… But if you want to touch them you can, I guess.

But how does it play? Let’s go to the ruler. The bulk of the game is a high school life simulator. You go to school every weekday and then during the afternoons and evenings you’re free to YOLO around town with all your stupid teenage friends. During your time off you can work to earn money and skills or you can hang out with your friends to form bonds. These are important to do because they let you forge better Personas and also give your allies bonuses. And maybe if you get all the bonds you get the true ending. I don’t know, I haven’t gotten that far, the game is freaking 80+ hours long. But if you’re too cool for school, you can’t do anything about that. You’re forced into school. But, if you’re antisocial, you could just go into the TV every day and grind.

That’s the other portion of the game. TV killin’. Throughout the year, people will be kidnapped and thrown into the TV, you need to save these people before it becomes foggy. So you’re gonna want to be prepared, or play on Very Easy to skip literally every fight except bosses and still win. That’s for chumps. I play on Easy, cause I’m just cool like that.

Speaking of cool like that. (I’m bad at transitions.) The writing in this game is surprisingly solid, you would think an extremely Japanese game revolving around 8 highschoolers would be poorly written and filled with unlikable characters, and while there are sometimes where the writing can get cheesy and a couple clunky sentences, which are probably due to translation, the characters are genuinely likable and the voice actors do a very good job, it’s not like a typical anime that sounds all monotone and expositiony, like most, and the mystery keeps you guessing until the bitter end and makes sense in the grand scheme of things.

Also. The music is fantastic. It’s not something I would listen to ever but I love it so much.

Is Persona 4 Golden worth buying a PS Vita? Well it’s the entire reason I did, but I make bad financial decisions so why would you trust my opinion?

On a scale from homework to disappointing you parents; Persona 4 Golden gets a passing mark on the SATs.

It’s good though, it got a really good mark, like an A or something.

BUY THAT CRAP!