From The Brady Bunch to Happy Days to The Wonder Years, there’s something entrancing about watching an idyllic re-telling of our teenage years.  Perhaps we enjoy remembering this time as a blur of exciting, 30-minute escapades instead of a never-ending cavalcade of awkwardness and boredom.  Atlus’s Persona 4  pays homage to this grand tradition by dealing with something we all did as teenagers – solving a murder mystery involving a bizzarro alternate reality inside television sets.

Ok, so maybe we didn’t all do that as teenagers, but to be fair, making a game about a guy that plays a whole lot of Diablo 2 alone in his room wouldn’t be very interesting.  Far from that, Persona 4 universally improves on the formula introduced in 2006’s Persona 3.  Players familiar with Persona 3 will be acquainted with the game’s basic flow of managing a high school social life in-between exploring a series of random dungeons.  While the experience is familiar, numerous tweaks and fundamental improvements make Persona 4 a real evolution of the series instead of a marginally improved sequel.  If you played Persona 3 and liked it, stop reading now.  Play Persona 4. You will love it.  For newcomers to the series, you will need a bit more explanation.

Persona 4’s story opens with the player-named main character (who will henceforth be named “Humpbert”) moving from the big city to stay with his uncle and niece in the country.  Rumors circulate about the “midnight channel” at Humpbert’s new school, stating that one can see their soul mate if they watch a powered-off TV at midnight while it rains.  This seemingly innocuous high school rumor turns more sinister once the people appearing on the midnight channel start disappearing – to be found dead days later, strung up on television antennas.  

After discovering the ability to use television sets as a portal to a twisted, Silent Hill-esque fabrication of the missing person’s psyche, Humpbert and some of his classmates discover that something or someone is luring people into this alternate reality where they are eventually killed by demonic shadows.  From there the game becomes an evolving murder mystery, with the protagonists attempting to rescue the latest prisoner of TV world before they are killed, while divining the identity of who- or whatever is causing all the mayhem.  The progression of the story is intelligent and reasonably believable.  Those looking to poke holes in the game’s logic will find them, but overall the story provides a great framework for character drama and development.  

While the game’s overarching story may be a bit fantastic, the characters involved are much more realistic.  Once a character is pulled into TV land, all of their insecurities and worries are manifested in a shadow doppelganger.  Characters display a lot of depth and subtle conflict when foiled against their shadow counterparts, and deal with common, identifiable problems, like adjusting to boredom in the country after moving from the city, or being jealous of a friend’s looks and popularity.  The characters deal with all the social hang-ups and insecurities we all experienced (or are experiencing) as teenagers – which plucks the heartstrings very effectively. Additionally, the supporting cast members that seem to just fill mechanical roles in the story also show surprising depth.  I didn’t even dislike the adorable little girl and cute teddy bear mascot characters I was prepared to hate.