Do you join in the investigation? Of course not: You're just a high school student, after all. Your character goes to school each day, and this is where you'll meet most of your party members, complete quests and learn skills that you can use in other areas of the game.

Don't be fooled by the passing similarity to traditional role-playing games. Persona 4 is a much more subtle experience. The skills that you learn aren't the standard Dexterity or Constitution — more like boosting your courage so you won't freeze up while talking to a pretty girl, or your knowledge so you don't flunk your midterms.

That's one half of the Persona experience. The other is when you are beckoned, in Poltergeist style, into a mysterious foggy other-world by entering a television set. Your team of teenage warriors find themselves tasked with saving the people who have mysteriously disappeared from Inaba. To do that, they'll have to wander an immense dungeon rife with demonic foes — not the least of which are oversize boss characters that represent the worst parts of your friends' psyches.

You can see all of the monsters as they wander the world, looking for a fight. The slimelike Shadows stumble aimlessly through the fog waiting for you to get too close. Once spotted, they make a beeline directly for your party and attempt to initiate combat.

If you've ever played a Japanese RPG in the last two decades, you'll feel right at home in Persona 4's combat sequences. Combat in Persona 4 is the perfect example of Atlus not altering gameplay traditions if they still work well. All combat is turn-based: To initiate attacks or use one of your magic abilities, you simply select the proper maneuver from a simple list. By using such a time-honored system, Atlus has ensured that Persona 4 is as accessible to those who have never experienced a role-playing title as it is to those who have Final Fantasy posters decorating every blank surface in their bedrooms.

There is one key twist to the Persona series, however, and that is the Personas themselves. These otherworldly spirits are like Pokémon for grownups: You can collect over 100 of them, and each offers your character a unique set of abilities, statistical upgrades and attack animations. Collecting them is addictive, even if it's not strictly necessary to catch 'em all. Later in the game, a character named Igor will help you fuse your Personas into more powerful ones, letting you acquire even more powerful partners to help you in battle.

Persona 4's gameplay walks a fine line between complex and intuitive. You'll never find yourself consulting the manual for hints on how to use certain attacks, but there are easily 50 or more hours of entirely optional content found throughout the game's optional quests and Persona-fusing.

The soundtrack is excellent, especially the battle music. Normally I find Japanese pop music grating and annoying, but Persona 4's tracks are almost uniformly listenable. Even those who consider gaming music to be a mere background annoyance will find themselves humming along while playing or enjoying the soundtrack CD -- which publisher Atlus has kindly included with each copy of the game.

The truly stunning thing about Persona 4 is that it just doesn't have any glaring flaws. Even though it doesn't stand up to the graphics of the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, the clever art style makes up for that. Those who despise reading large blocks of text in games will be pleasantly surprised by the solid voice-over work applied to almost every conversation. Even those with an aversion to anime-style characters will enjoy the darker, almost comic-book style that Atlus has applied to its character and world designs.

It's easy to say that Persona 4 is the best PlayStation 2 release of 2008 this late in the console's life span, but even if it had been released during PS2's heyday it would have earned a place among the system's finest software titles. Role-playing fans will find hours of enjoyment in Atlus' world, but even those with only a passing interest in the genre should play this.

Images courtesy Atlus

WIRED Gorgeous art style, stunning audio, epic storyline

TIRED It's for an old game console and looks it

$40, Atlus

Rating:

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See Also:

• Review: Persona 3 FES Amazes With Style and Value
• Persona 2 Reprint Comes and Goes
• Videos: Persona 4's Webisodes
• No Re-Release Planned for Persona 4
• Dress Up In Persona 4's Love
• Atlus Teases New Persona For DS