So I platinumed Persona 4 Golden... Again.
Back in February of 2021 I was in a little bit of a gaming slump and wanted something comforting to play and maybe complete. I had recently gotten a PSTV so I figured why not Persona 4 Golden? It's one of my favorite games ever and I figured that if I'm going to platinum several other games twice each, then this one deserves at least a once over. Boy did I regret that decision. P4G is an amazing game. The story is great, the characters are amazing in every sense of the word and I'd literally nuke a small country if their leader said something negative about Nanako. All in all the trophies needed to get to the platinum aren't bad and there's only 4 that I'd call tedious. There's one that makes this whole process absolute ass, but I'll get to that. There's the standard stuff that a trophy hunter would be familiar with at this point; finish the story, beat secret bosses, etc. However because the persona games from 3 onward mostly function on a calendar system that means there's A LOT of stuff to pad out gameplay and there's literally no way to platinum a persona game without doing 2 playthroughs minimum. "Oh but Xorles, there are people that can do max social stats and social links in one run, plus all of the extra stuff, I'm sure it can be done in one!" Nope. Every single one of these games has at least one trophy that requires you be in New Game+. For P4G it's got 2. You've gotta be in NG+ not only to fuse Izanagi-No-Okami, but you have to be in it to fight Margaret. Neither of these are really that difficult, P4 is actually incredibly easy on normal mode and a joke on lower difficulties, it just sucks getting to this point. In any case I was able to get the platinum in 3 runs when I did it a couple of years ago. I didn't optimize at all and I basically did almost everything in the first run except read all of the books, the next run I did all of the social links and the compendium, and then the last run was just reading books when I had to and doing the "Hardcore Risette Fan" trophy. Oh my god, whoever decided that trophy needed to exist should be ritualistically sacrificed to the elder gods of Lovecraftian lore. Holy. Fuck. It doesn't look daunting just from the trophy description but doing it was one of the biggest pains in the ass I've ever dealt with. The trophy reads "Hear 250 of Rise's navigation lines" Persona games always have a lot of talking in and out of battle so you'd think that maybe you just have to do a little grinding but nope. Turns out there's MAYBE 30 unique lines for bosses that she says. Everything else is just standard combat lines that you have to keep track of and I hated every second. It was so bad that I needed a literal google docs checklist just to kind of keep track. That said I got to the grind and made a mistake by doing the party social links before doing this trophy which made everything infinitely worse. It's weird because it's like playing the game efficiently actually hurt my chances of doing this trophy easily. Whatever, it was a grind, I finally got it, and I popped off harder than a smash player when they find out that they don't need to shower before their tournament starts. All's well that ends well. I get my platinum, post to Reddit and get the dopamine rush I ever so desired for all of like a day.
Fast forward to 2023 and SURPISE! Atlas F I N A L L Y decided that we should be able to play two of their most popular games on modern consoles! I had a $10 coupon and P4G went on sale so I decided to go ahead and scoop it up for $5. I was thrilled. THEN I got broken up with from probably my most serious relationship ever and I was destroyed emotionally. So naturally I went to one of my comfort games and started playing persona 4 again. It wasn't often but the game did do a very good job at making me smile when I definitely didn't want to. I was talking to a friend and then one of my darkest moments came to pass. He uttered the phrase that sets my soul ablaze and tickles my asshole in a frankly horrifyingly effective way. He said, "I bet you can't platinum it again. Bitch." That was it. Over the course of 110 hours I went through every trophy all over again. I spent the first playthrough doing E V E R Y T H I N G. I read all the books, I fused literally every persona I was able to before NG+, maxed all the social stats, got the hardcore Risette trophy again, grinded out over 2 million yen for the next run through, read all the books. NG+ came around and all I had to do was all the social links, fuse the max link personas at the end as well as Izanagi, slap Margaret around a little bit and then revel in the glory of getting played like a cheap kazoo. Only the I didn't feel as accomplished as I did the last time I got the platinum. It's not because I fell for the obvious trick that my friend used on me in an attempt to get my mind off of my break up, it wasn't because I didn't enjoy my time with the game again, hell it wasn't even because of the Risette trophy. I honestly think that it's just because speeding through the game is a bad way to play it. The last time I did this I had somewhere around 200 hours for the save file that I used and I almost cut it in half this run. Tbh I probably did cut it in half technically, but I have this bad habit of leaving games idle while I do dishes or something so the times tend to get inflated a little bit. I know that the phrase is more associated with 5 but it works just as well here too. Take your time with persona games. The fun comes from spending your time with the game and it's characters. The comparative mundanity of the social links vs the story in P4 is probably it's biggest charm, so doing what I did and fast forwarding through everything makes it so much less fun.
Persona 4 Golden is a personal 10/10 game for me and it's platinum is an 8/10. Literally the worst thing is that Hardcore Risette trophy and if you can do that then all you have to do really is just enjoy the fun game you bought. If you like trophy hunting then give it a try, and if you don't then just do yourself a solid and jump into the town or Inaba for a few dozen hours and enjoy the ride. Am I going to do this again? Fuck no, if I have to hear Rise say "It's weak to ice! Cool!" one more time then I can't be held responsible for what I do next. This whole thing started out as me wanting to vent about how annoying the game can be to platinum, but I think that over the course of typing it out I've accidentally reinforced how much I love this game. That said the next time I pick this game up I'm definitely reading every line of dialog. No matter how tedious.
Thanks for sticking through to the end of this. I want to get into reviewing games and potentially getting into games journalism. I figured talking about a game I love and a gaming process that I routinely go through and enjoy would be a good start? If you have any recommendations on how I can go about this a little better I'd love to read them. I've got 50 other games that I've platinumed and too much free time on my hands so maybe I'll do this again soon. Be good and go play some games. <3
