PERSONA 4
The Persona series completely changed tracks with Persona 3, and while that was an excellent game, it wasn’t until Persona 4 that Atlus truly began to perfect their new formula (making even further improvements with 2017’s Persona 5). Persona 4 was a game was heart, boasting one of the best ensemble cast of characters you will ever see in a video game, a jazzy, catchy soundtrack, and a story that kept players hooked from start to finish. It was a game that twisted and turned almost constantly, a game that made you laugh and made you tear up, a game that made you so thoroughly invested in its setting that, within this world, you actually looked forward to the day you could go to your part-time job, just so you could increase your social stats. Unfortunately, though, it was also a game with terrible, terrible dungeon design. In fact, it had no dungeon design. All dungeons in Persona 4 were a procedurally generated collection of narrow corridors, and it was as if the game wasn’t even aware that they sucked, because they were all also very long, making the act of getting through each of these an exercise in patience, and an absolute chore. Persona 5 would go on to address these issues by having dungeons that were hand crafted, and while the quality of those is still a hotly debated topic, at least there can be no doubt that they were a definite step up.
