I am thinking of Persona 4 again
I think the appeal of this game vs the other persona games is how fleshy and real it is. The characters really do get hurt, they have to hide their armor under their clothes, they get tired and have to skip school when they go too hard in the tv world. In Persona 3 and Persona 5 there's a big to-do about "the other world" and how it's kind of rooted in or projected from the subconscious but in Persona 4 they have to uncover that the tv world is the subconscious reflection of Inaba and connected to the larger subconscious of humanity. Whereas in Persona 3 and 5 it's made clear from the start that "the other world" is connected to human psychology. In Persona 4 it's a mystery that needs to unraveled and the kids are doing this while being chewed up and destroyed for real in the tv world, their lives are unequivocally in danger.
I think that's why players respond to Persona 4 so much there's so much implied agony and bodily harm in the game that just isn't there in 3 and 5. I really hope that the HD remake doesn't screw that up.
Of all the persona protagonists Yu is supposedly the one that experiences the least amount of angst, which gets pointed out a lot, but he's also the protag that a lot of players respond to the most
and I think it's because of that the implied isolation and abandonment. Yu has to rise to the occasion, he doesn't have an easy time making friends and he's in an environment that could turn on him really easily (the stress of having your shadow exposed and put on display for public entertainment) whereas other protagonists are more like from superhero movies almost. They do have aspects that players can connect to obviously but I don't think they're as obviously human as Yu is. Minato is mired in depression and trauma, Akira has the mystique of being a Phantom Thief, and then there's Yu who is just...some guy. The right man in the right place at the right time.
Like despite him having the "banchou" reputation he's still the one that hurts and bleeds the most through out the course of the game. His losses and struggles are a lot more personal because of the grounded setting where the world is not at stake. Yu has a humanizing lifeline in the form of Nanako and the game makes it clear that he takes after his uncle much more than he does his mother or his biological father. By giving Yu a family that he grows closer to over time the audience connects to and humanizes him (and that's why they did the "found family" thing again in Persona 5. Not a criticism because Futaba and Sojiro are great characters and I love their dynamic with Akira, it's just important to note that Persona 4 discovered how well that works.) Despite the Investigation Team winning the day there's the implication of tragedy undergirding the whole thing. Yu is destined to be separated from his family and the people he loves the most except this time he has to be the one to leave instead of being left behind.
Persona 5's ending makes me cry every time but it's also clear that the gang is going to stay in touch with Akira. And then Persona 5 Strikers shows they're dedicated to keeping up with him and even take him on a road trip where their world expands quite a bit meeting an adult persona user and such (I still haven't played Strikers). Whereas for Yu, his isolation crashes back into the setting on the heels of his triumph. He is forced to leave Inaba. Thankfully the sequels have him coming back to visit so not all hope is lost but it's not the same as the Phantom Thieves rescuing Akira from the doldrums of his home life (whatever they may be, whether his parents are abusive, clueless/checked out, or just people that we didn't get a read on during Persona 5.)
Persona 4 has a theme of sadness and loss under everything where you can sense the doom even while there are victories. Nanako is saved, Adachi is being prosecuted for murder (and eventually has character development in the Arena games), and Yu has made a family from his friends and uncle + his cousin. But no matter what happens the year will end. Yu has to go back to Tokyo. Nanako's mother cannot come back to life, Adachi's actions cannot be undone, and Namatame will have to live with the fact that he put several people in danger and put Mayumi Yamano in the spotlight that lead to Adachi fixating on her, to the point Namatame had to watch her die and could do nothing to save her.
That's why the first anime is so incredibly perfect and I'm still in lesbians with Kili's analysis of it up on AO3. Because Kili decoded how important the anime is to Yu's development as a protagonist in the eyes of fanbase.
The final episode where Yu faces down Izanami demonstrates his conflict in full: no matter how perfect and tough Yu may seem, he is still a wounded and lonely young man that is terrified of being alone and losing everyone he loves, because he has suffered through it before. And then he watches his friends die in front of him and he ends up being put under by Izanami because he is the scapegoat for her wrath from a betrayal that happened thousands of years before he was born.
Like there are consequences and terror in Persona 4 that doesn't exist in the other Persona games. Not that P3 and P5 don't have their horrifying moments like when the Phantom Thieves are wiped out of existence and they have to watch each other melt. But that's also a bit of a one off in P5 unless you deliberately get the bad endings. In Persona 4 the fear, terror, and emotional/physical violence are always present. And the Investigation Team has to actively choose to go back into the tv world to face those horrible consequences. In Persona 5, there's always an insistence that a lot of the danger they face is a projection of psychological problems, just given a metaphysical form thanks to the fuckiness of urban fantasy. Violence in 3 and 5 is carefully segregated.
Persona 4 is just a different beast. The emotional and physical violence are out of focus until Nanako is kidnapped but that just makes it hit harder because the tv world and its consequences have finally broken through into the waking world. There is no more separation between them, no wonder the fog starts leaking into their every day world and the Investigation Team has to watch Inaba descend into paranoia, fear, and malicious cruelty. Inaba is effected over the long term and it takes the Investigation Team a while to put everything right, they have a series of battles and fights, not a big climactic battle soon after the bleed through like in Persona 3 and Persona 5. It takes time to put things right, they get hurt and take painful hits along the way, Nanako almost dies, Adachi's nihilism wants to open a hole into the screaming subconscious of mankind so that humans are eaten by the truths that they hide from as those truths (the Shadows) come crawling out of the tv world.
And I think that's why players respond to Persona 4 the way they do. There's just no other game like it.
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