A Critical Comparison of Persona 4 and Persona 5
The ultimate JRPG smackdown
The much overdue release of Persona 4 Golden on Steam has finally provided an opportunity for the legions of JRPG fans to play this landmark release. For many, including myself, Persona 5 was our introduction to the Persona series, and, to put it mildly, it’s been hugely gratifying to not have to buy a PlayStation Vita in order to play the definitive version of Persona 4. Having completed my playthrough of P4G some 60-odd hours later, it’s only natural that I’d want to compare it to Persona 5 (and the subsequent Persona 5 Royal). This isn’t to disparage the flaws of one game or to put the other one on a pedestal — both games are absolutely fantastic, and each one is a watershed title in the genre. Releasing new games in a series over time goes hand in hand with iteration in game design, so there will naturally be elements that will objectively improve as the series matures. With that being said, the intent of this piece of writing is to compare and contrast the strengths, weaknesses, and intentions of Persona 4 and Persona 5.
Gameplay
Let’s get the easy comparison out of the way first — on a purely mechanical level as a JRPG, Persona 5 is a complete upgrade and refinement over Persona 4. The core gameplay is the same — the turn-based combat revolves around exploiting enemy weaknesses. If one of the party members you control exploits an enemy’s weakness, it will be knocked down, and the character will get another turn. Knock all enemies down and the player can initiate a powerful “all-out attack.” That said, in Persona 5, the player has more options in battle (with the addition of new elemental attacks, meaning more potential weaknesses that can be exploited) as well as a plethora of quality-of-life options to make battles feel snappier and smoother, such as the ability to automatically target an enemy with a skill that hits its weakness with a single button press.
In terms of level design, the vast majority of dungeon crawling in Persona 4 relies on traversing through randomly generated corridors that have superficial differences in appearance depending on which dungeon the player is currently in. Persona 5 improves on this by having the story dungeons now take place in handcrafted levels with fixed design. Not all of them are equally fun, but it’s clear that plenty of work went into the design of each dungeon in Persona 5. Having custom-tailored dungeon design for each main antagonist allows Persona 5 to take more liberties with game mechanics in these dungeons (for instance, the teleporting paintings in the art museum dungeon or the codebreaking mechanic in the bank dungeon). Plus, fans of the random level design can still experience this facet of gameplay in Persona 5’s Mementos area, which functions very similarly to Persona 4’s randomly generated dungeons.
The iteration on the series’ formula doesn’t just extend to the combat and dungeon-crawling. The other half of the Persona series’ gameplay revolves around spending your daily life forging relationships (respectively called “Social Links” and “Confidants” in Persona 4 and Persona 5) and performing various tasks to improve your character’s social stats. Persona 5 improves upon these mechanics from Persona 4 by making it more clear which individuals you can spend time with on any given day, as well as giving the ancillary Social Links tangible gameplay bonuses when you improve your relationships with them. All in all, Persona 5 is a hefty improvement over its predecessor when it comes to the “playing the game” part.
Verdict: Persona 5 handily wins.
Story
Let’s get to the interesting bit — the Persona series can be seen as half traditional turn-based JRPG and half visual novel/social simulator, so it’s only natural that the story of each Persona game is a major factor when gauging the quality of a series entry. Each one has a similar general conceit — your player character moves into a new town at the beginning of the story for a certain reason, and must stay in this town under a temporary guardian for a year. In their new residence, they become a second-year transfer student at a local high school. The player character makes friends as they deal with the supernatural happenings occurring in their town and master their power over their “Persona,” a ghostly being that they can command in battle to great effect. The devil is in the details here, so let’s dive a bit into the the story of both games before making any judgments.
In Persona 4, your main character (usually referred to as Yu Narukami in the game’s various spinoffs, and the name I will use henceforth) moves to the quiet rural town of Inaba to live with his uncle. Yu soon realizes that Inaba is plagued by a serial killer who attacks when the town gets foggy. Yu builds a network of friends around town and, with a group of high school students with whom he allies, delves into the mysterious Midnight Channel, a world within the televisions of Inaba that has a connection to the serial killer’s victims, in order to ascertain the identity of the murderer and prevent any further killings.
Persona 5’s main character (usually referred to as Ren Amamiya in spinoffs, and likewise the name I will choose to use) is forced to move to Tokyo under probation, courtesy of an unjust run-in with the police. At his new high school, he is soon subjected to the wrath of an abusive member of the school’s faculty. Discovering the power to steal an evil person’s metaphorical heart in order to reform them, Ren and a team of youths establish themselves as the “Phantom Thieves of Hearts,” using their powers over Personas to reform evil adults around Tokyo, becoming folk heroes in the process.
I’ll start off by saying that I think that Persona 4 has the stronger central narrative. Persona 4 is low-key by nature of its intimate setting and the comparatively low stakes it sets forth throughout the story — a small-town serial killer is not as big of a deal as some of the antagonists faced by the Phantom Thieves in Persona 5 (for example, a mafia boss, the CEO of a multi-billion dollar conglomerate, and a candidate for prime minister of Japan, to name a few). The small scope of Persona 4, while not as grand as its sequel, allows for a focus that positively serves the narrative — the game is a murder mystery at its core, and having a lone central antagonist drive the game makes for a more captivating narrative. Persona 5 is massive in scope and very episodic by nature (picaresque, even), bouncing between multiple antagonists before the final battle, and thus can feel like the game is juggling multiple plot points at once to its detriment.
Likewise, Persona 4 has stronger themes that tie together all the individual subplots. Each character’s struggle in Persona 4 revolves around how it’s difficult to face the truth — whether it be how you see yourself, or how you interpret the actions and beliefs of others, seeing reality is not always an easy feat, but can be made easier by accepting yourself and forging genuine connections with others. Persona 5 is a little weaker thematically, centering around how embracing one’s inner strengths and spirit of rebellion can allow anyone to break the shackles of society’s oppression. While the message of Persona 5 is clear, I found it harder to relate to compared to the core of Persona 4, and also think that Persona 4 did a better job of weaving its core theme throughout all facets of the narrative.
That said, Persona 4’s narrative isn’t without fault — the story often goes for long periods of time with nothing of note happening in regards to the central mystery, and thus has somewhat inconsistent pacing. Persona 5’s narrative isn’t as single-threaded as its predecessor, but it always feels like something is happening, even if the result can feel somewhat disorganized. It feels more consistently paced throughout. Likewise, Persona 5’s narrative reaches higher highs than Persona 4’s (the Kamoshida and Sae arcs trump anything from Persona 4) but also hits much lower lows (the Okumura arc is the weakest section in either of the games). Persona 5 is bombastic and over-the-top in ways that Persona 4 isn’t, making it a game of extremes.
Verdict: Persona 4 has a more effective central narrative, Persona 5 more strongly executes its narrative.
Characters
This section won’t be quite so cut-and-dry — Persona games each have dozens of characters, and building relationships with them is an integral part of the series, so it’s tough to make any sweeping conclusions here. I can’t say that one game objectively has the better cast, but I can detail my feelings.
For starters, Persona 4’s main cast of characters (the Investigation Team) feels more cohesive as a group compared to Persona 5’s Phantom Thieves. Perhaps this is a result of all but one of them going to the same high school, but the Investigation Team hangs out together more, and it’s much easier to recognize the dynamics of not just the group as a whole, but also the dynamics of subsets of characters within the Investigation Team. They feel more believable as a group of friends who play off of one another compared to the Phantom Thieves, who often feel like a chaotic group of clashing personalities. My pet theory is that because Persona 4 was released before the advent of the smartphone, the group text, and the LINE chat app, the Investigation Team is forced to meet each other in person when they want to talk, whilst in Persona 5 the main cast has countless discussions over text, resulting in less intimate face time for the Thieves.
However, the members of the Phantom Thieves have stronger individual personalities, befitting the over-the-top nature of their game. I recognize that this is a matter of taste — the Investigation Team largely feels like a group of real people, with the exception of Teddie (due to his supernatural origin) and Naoto (due to her relatively outlandish career choice). Persona 5’s characters are far more outlandish in both design and personality, which made a much stronger impression on me. I found Ann, Yusuke, and Futaba’s personal arcs in particular to be more impactful than any of the internal struggles displayed by the main cast of Persona 4. That said, Yosuke’s relationship with Yu in Persona 4 is the strongest 1-on-1 relationship in either game.
When comparing side characters (Social Links/Confidants), it’s barely a contest — Persona 5 wins this one. I consider a successful side character in the Persona series to be one that I am excited to spend my limited in-game time with. Persona 4 had far too many Social Links who were comparatively ordinarey schoolmates of Yu’s. The majority of the remaining confidants are fairly run-of-the-mill townsfolk who, while each having fairly engaging individual plotlines, don’t leave enough of an impact to drive me to continue their storylines. Persona 5’s side characters are far more colorful in regards to both design and backstory . Granted, this also has to do with the difference in setting and presentation between the two games (gloomy rural town vs. a sprawling megacity), but I found it much more interesting to hang out with the likes of a disgraced local politician and an ex-Yakuza turned model gun salesman, among others, over the small-town personalities that Persona 4 has to offer.
Verdict: Main cast-wise, Persona 4 has the better group dynamic, Persona 5 has stronger individual personalities. Persona 5 handily wins in the supporting character department.
Music
I’ll lead off what is perhaps the most subjective section with a disclaimer that I’m not particularly musically inclined, so this section may come off as haphazard. Both games have absolutely stellar soundtracks from top to bottom, courtesy of the wonderful Shoji Meguro. I’ve heard it said that Meguro is a master at composing music that you’ll listen to for hours and hours and never get tired of, and I find that to be true in the case of both games. Yet in spite of having the same composer, each game has a distinctive sound.
Persona 4 sticks to a more traditional J-Pop sound, with bouncy beats, upbeat vocals, and rapped lyrics complementing scenes, battles, and dungeon crawls. Persona 5, on the other hand, uses an idiosyncratic acid jazz soundtrack that’s punctuated with keyboards and funky bass lines.
While the best tracks from either soundtrack can go toe-to-toe with each other, Persona 5’s soundtrack is, for lack of a better term, more of a vibe. The sounds between each different track feel more cohesive, yet they’re all distinct. The beauty of Persona 5’s OST is how inimitable it is among its video game peers — nothing else sounds remotely like it in any game. There’s simply an indescribable magic when the player roams around the virtual Tokyo on a rainy day with the special arrangement of Beneath the Mask playing in the background.
Verdict: Persona 5’s unique sound takes it.
Setting
The last facet of each games I’d like to compare is the settings their narratives are set in. Persona 4 takes place in the fictional city of Inaba, a rural town with little to its name outside of a small handful of tourist attractions and a compact shopping district. Persona 5, in direct contrast, puts players in a lovingly recreated version of Tokyo, a very real and very recognizable place. More than any other aspect, the setting of each game is the biggest difference between the two — a pair of locations that could not be more different from each other, aside from taking place in the same country. Each setting is successful in different ways since each game’s narrative attempts to tackle different questions, and the games’ respective settings are perfect thematic fits.
Persona 4’s story is an intimate and personal one circling around dealing with the difficulties of facing one’s inner insecurities and opening up to those surrounding you. The story of a murder mystery fits the atmosphere of Inaba perfectly — it’s a gloomy, foggy, and downcast place in the middle of nowhere. The second you walk into town, you can tell that the populace at large is unhappy. A town like Inaba where it feels like you could know the entire town’s faces makes perfect sense in a story where you, the protagonist, spends much of their time getting others to come out of their shells.
Persona 5’s narrative, on the other hand, is more bombastic and large scale, and as such takes place in the largest city in the world. In this game, the player is challenged with moving the hearts of the masses, and the game’s themes center around powerful individual willpower being able to surmount the corruption and apathy of the collective society. As such, Persona 5 elects to cast you as a small fish and proceeds to throw you into the biggest pond in Japan.
As with music, judging something like a setting leans more towards the subjective end of the spectrum, especially when Persona 4 and Persona 5 make such differing decisions in this regard. Persona 4 does the more convincing job of building and fleshing out a world from the ground up, while Persona 5 is just as successful at putting you in a convincing replica of one of the world’s largest cities. Personally, I had the better time exploring the world in Persona 5 — Tokyo might be my favorite place in the world, and I never tire of exploring it, whether it’s for real or in a virtual setting.
Verdict: Slightest edge to Persona 5, but it largely comes down to what you’re looking for (an original location vs. an expert recreation).
I don’t intend to close this piece with a definitive declaration of which game is objectively better — both Persona 4 and Persona 5 are absolute masterclass JRPGs and worth your time, and I can completely understand the rationale of anyone who would prefer one over the other. That said, if you haven’t figured it out by now, my preferences are pretty strongly inclined closer to Persona 5. Gameplay-wise, it outpaces its predecessor, being a more polished product that simultaneously checks all my aesthetic boxes. If you have only enough time for one of the two games I’ve discussed, Persona 5 would be my recommendation, but my deepest hope is that if you’ve stuck with me for this long, you’ll try both.
