"Hi, my name's Dave and I play games on their easiest difficulty setting". "Hi Dave"! Heh, well I used to, and Persona 4 is the game to get back to that headspace. You see, ever since I started the current incarnation of this channel 6 years ago (I've been doing this for 6 years?!) I made the decision to play games on either normal or the default setting, so I could get the "intended developer experience". I thought this was needed to be able to purposefully talk about the game. Before the channel I would play games on their easiest difficulty setting because I wanted the least friction in getting through them. I rarely completed video games because too many of them outstayed their welcome. Even with cheat codes and walkthroughs I felt too many games outstayed their welcome. Heck, part of the reason for starting to critique games on my channel instead of just my impressions videos is I thought it would force me to actually complete some god damned video games. And it has. In the past year I've completed Dark Souls, Planescape: Torment, The Witcher 3 with its DLC, and Deus Ex among others. Some of these games I've been playing the first hours of over and over again for years. Funnily enough, one of the games I did complete back in 2011 was Persona 4. On the Ps2. There was something about this game that had me returning to it daily, and even if I only spent 20 minutes to grind up some levels so I could get through the next boss, I kept going. Despite how obvious it actually may be, when the game asked me who I thought the killer was and then after thinking about it for a hot minute, I came up with a suspect, picked them, and turned out to be right, well I will forever cherish that memory. Persona 4 was a special game, and even though I wanted to initially play through and write about Persona 5, Atlus is dragging their feet on a PC port if such a thing will ever happen, so I decided to play my PC copy of Persona 4: Golden, and make a video on that instead. Persona 4: Golden. The game that taught me that difficulty is only an impediment to a game's experience. Let me tell you about it.
Why I chose to play on ‘very easy’
I started my playthrough of Persona 4: Golden like any other game on my channel. I picked the normal difficulty option, and started playing. It was a little ways after the first dungeon, when Kanji was about to get thrown into the TV, that I started rethinking what I was doing. Now a quick recap for how time is structured in Persona 4. Once a dungeon opens up, you can enter it to rescue the person thrown in. If you're strong enough, you can even do it in one day of game time, but that's not the experience most first-time players will have. After a few floors or less, you'll run out of SP, won't be able to heal anymore, and it's time to exit the TV and rest. You can always come back tomorrow. But can you? Suddenly the game is asking you to join a sports club and a culture club. The friends you're making want to hang out after school, and it's important to dedicate time to all of this because by increasing your social links, you'll be able to fuse stronger personas which makes surviving the dungeons easier (such as your party members gaining bonus abilities that can trigger during combat). I found myself torn between wanting to rescue Yukiko from the dungeon, and maxing my social links. Now this is by design, but in the end I had to ask myself if I was enjoying this push and pull, in a game that's steeped in the fear of missing out.
Part of this fear is not knowing the right way forward. Each fight needs experimentation to find the enemy's weakness, and mistakes can be costly (in terms of healing items, SP, and just your patience). Meanwhile there is an optimal path in each social link scenario to gain the most points for unlocking the next social link. Often this will have to do with telling the person what they want to hear, but not always. It's never easy to know the right thing to say in the moment, and saying the wrong thing can waste multiple days of hanging out with the person in question instead of being able to level up the social link optimally. If you really stuff up, you can move back down the social link scale, and then with the female characters, there's the added minefield of dancing around the romance options which often branch off to their own scenarios. There's a year of in-game days to solve the game’s mystery and to max as many social links as possible. Here I was in month 2 and I already felt like I was playing suboptimally. I wasted far too much time in the dungeon (let alone having to fight the boss more than once), and it felt like I was constantly saying the wrong thing while trying to max my social links. I was playing sub-optimally, and because I didn't feel adequately rewarded in my time with the game thus far, the knowledge that things were just going to get harder as time went on (because that's how games work), caused me to despair.
So because I was playing the Golden version of the game, I had a radical notion. Why don't I start over on 'very easy'? I'm only 8 hours in, and if I follow a day by day guide, I can attack the dreaded ‘fear of missing out’ on two fronts (damn FOMO). I was hoping I'd be able to curbstomp the enemies in the dungeons, while perfectly navigating not only the social links, but the ways to boost my stats (as it turns out many of the social links use stats as gates for progression). So did it work? I mean I did end up beating the game on this difficulty, so it must have right? Well I know none of you are in suspense so I have to throw a curveball at you. Yes it worked, but not in the way you might expect. The game's design rebels against the notion of a perfect playthrough, so I had to contend with that, but most importantly, playing the game on 'very easy' made me love what Persona 4 has to offer as a game even more.
An aside on the annoyance of levelling social links
You know how I mentioned that some of the social links are gated through stats? Well the levelling of stats features a degree of randomness. Eating at the Chinese diner, reading a book, studying, folding origami cranes...this all will level up a stat, but sometimes the game will throw a bonus in there, and in the case of the diner, the stats that are levelled up are random as well. To get around this the guide that I was following recommended saving before any stat boosting activity, and to reload the save until the maximum stat boost is achieved. Fuck that. I mean yes, later in the game I kept reloading a save so I could catch the Sea King without wasting more than one day on it, but that's different! What this means is that for some of the social links, I was behind where the guide needed me to be, and then things just kept snowballing from there. It didn't help that once Nanako gets taken, the ability to increase the social links of Nanako and Dojima are taken away until right near the end of the game. I was able to max them after that point, but for the longest time I had thought my window for finishing their stories was over and I would have to complete the game not knowing how they ended.
Keeping on the social links for a moment, I was not able to max out every social link. I got close. I only left two on the table, Ai, and Maree. I was close with Ai too. I didn't prioritise Maree because during December in-game, I didn't know I got January to wrap up loose ends. I thought I needed to rush all the social links before the final dungeon. At that time I had Naoto, Maree and Ai left (with Nanako and Dojima out of commission). I thought that if I couldn't finish any one of these, I might as well get as far along with all of them as I could. I had no idea Maree left in early January. Yet another thing the game doesn't tell you. I at least got Naoto's story done. I like the character and was never able to max out the social link on my original playthrough (largely due to how anyone is meant to solve those riddles without a guide). Yes I even maxed out the Fox, Margaret, and uncovered the Hunger arcana. I was able to focus so much on the social links (my favourite part of the game), because now everything else was a cake walk.
How ‘very easy’ makes combat exciting
Now returning to choosing the 'very easy' difficulty, how did that impact my experience playing the game? Well for starters, the dungeons were now fun. One of my favourite elements of any RPG is returning to an early area late in the game, and rolling over everything with how powerful my party is. I could now experience this all the time. For the first dungeon I clicked the rush button and my team would just hit the enemies until they died. Resistences to physical attacks be damned! Later on when the enemies reflected physical attacks I relied on strong magic (usually the wind spell from Yosuke as he often went first or the almighty damage spell), because by that point with the money I was making it was easy to pay the Fox to regain any spent SP, and then when Rise started revigorating HP and SP after every battle, I didn't even have to worry about that. The only time when I actually had to plan out my attacks was in the final dungeon and then the secret dungeon, and even then it was more of a "this is the best way to get the fight over quickly" rather than a "This is how you survive to fight another day". The best part of all of this was getting to a dungeon miniboss, reading the guide on all its attacks and the best way to survive, and then just punking it with high-grade physical attacks for a round or two until it fell. Even though I think the power fantasy of Persona 4 isn't in its battle system, playing on ‘very easy’ made me feel powerful. Seeing a levelling up screen after almost every fight during the first couple of dungeons felt great.
And along with all that added experience comes added money. I never had to worry about summoning personas from Margaret, I never had to worry about buying new weapon and armour upgrades, and I could buy as many books as I wanted, alongside healing items from the shop. The only time that money was a concern was during the couple of game sessions I devoted to maxing Margaret's social links, and even then I was never in danger of running out, I just didn’t have as much in my wallet as I was used to having.
So I bet some of you are now asking, "Well, you've made the game part of the game 'very easy'. The dungeons aren't a challenge, you have more than enough money to deck out your party and summon the strongest personas. Since you're following a guide, you know how to spend your time, and what to say to further social links, so how does this all make the game even better than playing it "properly" on normal? It's because the gameplay of Persona 4 is its most tedious aspect. Half the reason the game is so long is due to how much time it takes fighting monsters and grinding out levels in the dungeons. Especially if you take more than one day to either rescue the person trapped, or if you're spending time going back to a dungeon to grind, or collect items for side quests. I've also spoken about how much time can be wasted if you don't know how to navigate the social links, or if your stats aren't high enough. Playing the game on 'very easy' and following a guide made the most tedious aspects of the game trivial, which allowed me to revel in and enjoy what I found so compelling about the game originally, and on this replay.
The power fantasy of Persona 4
See, the power fantasy of Persona 4 isn't in its combat system. Oh I've already mentioned how cool it can feel to steamroll enemies and recieve a new level after almost every fight, but that's not what made me feel powerful. No, the power fantasy of Persona 4 is 3-fold: having a positive high school experience, helping those around you grow and become better people, and having mastery over one's time. Now I know what you're saying, "Dave, you're so suave, handsome, articulate and amazing in these videos on the internet where you talk about video games. Are you telling me you didn't have a good time in high school"? Yes dear viewer, as hard as it may be to believe, I did not have a positive high school experience. There are many reasons for it, but one of the greatest is culture shock. Moving from the US to Australia hurt me in such a way that I wasn't even in a place to accept the difference of the Australian people until I was in university. Add to that the general attitude of teenagers to those who seem like oddball outcasts, and who aren't especially academically or physically gifted, and yes, I would say my high school days sucked pretty hard.
But in Persona 4 that's not the case. Having the special power of the Fool Arcana, Yu attracts people to him (and we'll touch on this more when we discuss the personal growth aspect of the power fantasy). Spend enough time studying, and your peers will marvel at your test scores. Sure most of your friends in the game are only attached to you through the Midnight Channel case but by the end these same people are literally willing to die for you, and the game takes many occasions to just have the group hang out and enjoy each others company in a series of vignettes. Some folks dislike these moments. They find them quote "too anime", and yeah, quite a lot of the humour doesn't hit for me, but some of it does. The game can be really funny, but most importantly, the game keeps reinforcing the bonds of friendship and how great your high school days can be, filled up with sports, culture, a part-time job, and spending time around those you care about. My dearest teenage memories are also linked to fun times with friends and family, and Persona 4 is able to make high school a comforting and positive experience.
The friends you spend time with, and the people you meet at your part-time jobs are how the social links start. There are 28 social links total. Not every link is a story where Yu helps someone grow past their trauma or what's holding them in place, but most of them are. People open up when they're around Yu, and as long as you say the right thing to them (mostly telling them what they want to hear), you'll be the sounding board that will help them grow. I've been trying to work on my listening skills for years now. I used to be a serial interruptor (and still am to some extent), but I want to work on my listening skills because I want to be able to allow people to open up when they're around me. I want to be able to react to what they say rather than try to give advice or immediately launch into a story of mine similar to what they just said (another thing I've been working hard to overcome). It was empowering to be that character in Persona 4. To be silent for the majority of conversations, and to only talk when my advice was wanted, and then to be able to say the right thing that strengthened our relationship and help them take the next step on their journey of personal growth. This is why social links are my favourite part of Persona 4.
Well almost. Taking one step back to the macro level, Persona 4 is about using one's time wisely. As we're playing a high school student, each day is mostly like the last, with the familiarity of classes and then plenty of time afterschool, in the evenings, and then on weekends. The game is in how the player uses this time. Without the guide I once again will say that I feared using my time suboptimally, because that's how I use my time in real life. When writing this paragraph, it's been about 2 weeks since I wrote the last part of this script. Sure, I was sick for a week inbetween, but I've often let weeks go by without working on a video project. That’s why these come out so infrequently. Time is not my ally, and most of my life I’ve been trying to find ways to wrangle it in order to dedicate daily practise to things I want to get better at, with often poor results. In Persona 4, if I want to max a social link, I can keep spending time with that person every day that they're free. If I want to increase a stat, I can dedicate a block of time to that until it levels up. Due to the segmented nature of the game systems, and that each block of time offers the choice of how to use it, even without a guide it’s easy to further the parts of the game the player is interested in. It won't be as efficient, but you'll always be making progress. I mean you can go straight home and go to bed, effectively wasting your blocks of time, but at least how Yu is spending that time has to be better than I am, whittling hours away on Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube.
Conclusion
And so through bypassing the aspects of the game I was disliking through the difficulty options, I was able to engage more thoughtfully and reflectively on the aspects of the game I love. I was able to hangout in Inaba, living an idyllic highschool life with friends, a part-time job, and lots of wacky adventures. All this while uncovering a dark tale of a shadow realm threatening our existence and the murderer that was using the realm for their own sick entertainment. When I did have to engage with the combat and levelling up systems, I was able to breeze through them effortlessly and go right back to what I enjoyed. When I played the PS2 version I often had to force myself to play because there'd be whole evenings where I would have to grind to get past a difficult boss, and I knew if I put the game down for a few days I would never pick it back up. This is a game I wanted to finish, and so I knuckled down and got it done. Such discipline was not required for this playthrough. It was all too easy to keep returning to Inaba day after day and I look forward to returning in the future, and yes it will be on 'very easy' again. Thanks for watching.
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