‘Trailer’ might be the wrong word for it as weighing in at 17 minutes, it’s more like an presentation, or an introduction to the new world and characters of Persona 4. Summary? It’s definitely more of the same. With no way to read the text and a complete lack of understanding of the language, from what I saw it seems our protagonist moves to a rural town, makes new friends and gets drawn into some bizarre occurrences. And, of course, everyone discovers a previously unknown ability.

The long-nosed ‘mentor’ and his entourage is back, riding in what appears to be a limo. School life again seems central as does making social links and discovering back-stories to gain abilities. We see some trotting around a typical looking Persona dungeon, the cards make a re-appearance and so does the disturbing mask-wearing gloop. Of course, now I’m just depressed that it’ll probably be a year or more until I see an English language version of this game (best case scenario – worse case, they don’t bother). *sigh*

Anyway, if YouTube don’t get bullied into taking it down (magazines really don’t like their exclusives plastered all over the interwebs, strangely enough), you can find the ‘trailer’ here.

Persona 3 was a great role-playing game for the Playstation 2. It’s the perfect blend of barmy (progression through social networking and dealing with the pressures of high-school life) and dark (John Q. Public transforms into coffins every night at the stroke of midnight and saving the world through placing a ‘gun’ to your temple). Featuring wonderfully stylised graphics and a top notch soundtrack, Persona 3 also wove a compelling storyline with a great cast of misfits.

Anyone who knows me knows I’ve always had a soft spot for Japanese RPGs but Persona 3 was a bit of a double whammy in that it also featured one of my other loves – Roguelike elements. If I was still running my old ‘Roguelike News’ website, I probably would have been raving about Persona 3 back when it came out. Ah, the joy of repeatedly revisiting the same randomly generated level countless times just to spawn that one creature you need… *bliss*

So what does Persona 4 have in store for us? Well, happily, more of the same it sounds like. Bigger, better, a murder/mystery theme in a rural setting where fog spells bad news for someone. Best of all, it’s still on the Playstation 2. Despite Microsoft’s mad-dash to get to the next generation of consoles after they failed set the world alight with the original Xbox, it seems Atlus were quite happy to stick to knocking out classics of the old PS2. Great news for the light-of-wallet among us, with a PS2 sat sulking in the corner.

Persona 4 is due for release in Japan on July 10th. No word on a US or EU release but they’d be mad not to. Fingers crossed and all that.

UPDATE : As some people are hitting my site through this article, apparently looking for Persona 4 reviews, I just wanted to point you towards two newer posts I’ve made that link to a series of reviews. They are…

• Persona 4 reviews-a-go-go!
• Even more Persona 4 reviews