Persona 3 was a new experience for JRPG gamers, introducing a new style of play that was radically different anything seen before it, in a world where everyone waits to copy the new Final Fantasy Atlus dared to ask themselves “What would WE find fun,” the result is Persona 4.
Persona 4 continues the style of Gameplay introduced in 3, though it is a lot more polished. Each day your character attends school, you can study to increase knowledge, read books to increase other traits, work to increase diligence, hang out with friends to increase social links or you can go dungeon crawling. There is a very apparent routine for the majority of the game, that is each event pops up within 2–5 weeks and must be finished within that time, you can finish it before the deadline and have the remainder of the time to spend on other stats or grinding if that is your thing. Social links are most useful as each Persona is attributed to an arcana, as is each social link. The higher your level in that social link the more XP your persona gains when you fuse it. To put this in context, throughout the game you will gain “Personae”, basically they are monsters which you use to fight (think pokemon), to get higher level persona you can fuse two or more together, this will carry moves over from your current persona.
Storywise, you need not have played Persona 3 to play Persona 4. There are references to the previous game though they do not have any effect on the overall plot. If you like murder mystery, detective stories, high school drama and scifi/fantasy you will love this, in my personal opinion it is the best story in any JRPG.
In conclusion, Persona 4 is a great game, if you do not buy it you are missing out on one of, if not the, best JRPG on the ps2 and perhaps ever. If I could give it 10 stars I would!