When comparing Persona 4 Golden vs The Escapists 2, the Slant community recommends Persona 4 Golden for most people. In the question“What are the best low-spec PC games?” Persona 4 Golden is ranked 53rd while The Escapists 2 is ranked 85th. The most important reason people chose Persona 4 Golden is:
With the supernatural murder mystery that overtakes the town of Inaba, the friends you make are each forced to face their dark sides, or their Shadows. These are the parts of their personalities that they don't want to accept, such as one character's disdain toward her friend for being more comfortable with boys, and another's fixation on her audience's voyeuristic obsession over her body as a sexual object. Some of the themes can get quite heavy, but they're all intriguing in their own ways, showing how the group of friends encourage each other to accept their dark sides and push forward as a unified group.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Intriguing story about helping your friends conquer their "Shadow" selves
With the supernatural murder mystery that overtakes the town of Inaba, the friends you make are each forced to face their dark sides, or their Shadows. These are the parts of their personalities that they don't want to accept, such as one character's disdain toward her friend for being more comfortable with boys, and another's fixation on her audience's voyeuristic obsession over her body as a sexual object. Some of the themes can get quite heavy, but they're all intriguing in their own ways, showing how the group of friends encourage each other to accept their dark sides and push forward as a unified group.
Pro You get to collect and control many types of demons and angels as your Personas to fight in battle
Your Personas are demons and angels that you summon to use their spells and special abilities in battle. Fusing different Personas together lets you create stronger ones with better abilities. You can switch your Personas in and out of battle as needed to exploit enemy weaknesses you come across. And there are hundreds of different types of demons and angels with their own fitting designs and relevant mythological lore, ranging from familiar names like Shiva, Lilith, Valkyrie, Phoenix, Raphael, and many many more.
Pro Building friendships with characters through Social Links gives you an edge in battle
There are all sorts of characters to get to know and befriend through the Social Link system. You can make friends with your classmates, your party members, and a few other characters in the community of the city you live in. Spending time with them gives you a contained, and often touching story where you get to know them more and help them solve a personal struggle. After reaching the end of their Social Link, you're able to fuse special and powerful Personas that can help you tackle some of the game's hardest challenges. It's a neat system that gives you a gameplay incentive for building relationships.
Pro Fun and rewarding turn-based combat that focuses on exploiting enemy weaknesses
The battles in Persona 4 Golden are fun, especially once you get the hang of the system. You fight with your Personas and your party members, who have their set Personas of their own, aiming to pinpoint your enemy's elemental weaknesses and exploit them. Once you find the weakness, you and your team are rewarded with an extra turn; if you keep landing the right attacks, then the game lets you chain a finite number of turns one after another. If you don't look up a guide, then finding weaknesses is a matter of trial and error.
But this also applies to your enemies -- if they exploit your weaknesses, then they get extra turns instead. The bosses are pretty hard since they hit for a ton of damage, so you absolutely need to take advantage of gaining extra turns. And as you get farther along in the game, you get access to buffs to your party's attack, defense, evasion, and more, as well as debuffs to debilitate your foes. As you get better with the combat and earn some tough victories, the sense of satisfaction you get helps you to keep pushing forward.
Pro Cool and modern sense of style with the visuals and soundtrack
Everything in Persona 4 Golden is stylistically on-point. The recurring yellow in the eye-catching menus and UI, and text boxes gives the game a distinct aesthetic. The character designs are also really cool, with slender forms and a modern yet laid-back sense of fashion. And the trip-hop/hip-hop soundtrack blends classical, rock, pop, and synthwave sounds together in such a unique way that no other game really comes close to. Despite all the different ideas, it all comes together as a cool and cohesive look.
Pro Features some nice bonus additions over the original Persona 4
Persona 4 Golden is the definitive edition of the game, with lots of great improvements. Aside from the slightly updated graphics, there are a ton of gameplay bonuses, with new Social Links, stronger Personas to collect, new ways to hang out with your friends, fun school events, an extra ending, and a new Golden epilogue that you earn from completing the optional dungeon.
While going for the True Ending and/or Golden epilogue, you also get to play through an extra month and a half or so in the winter, with new music to go with the time of year. The quality of life improvements make gameplay smoother as well, making this an excellent option for both new players and longtime veterans.
Pro Encourages experimentation and creativity
There is no right or wrong way to do anything, and it's entirely a risk vs reward scenario for anything you want to try. You are only limited by your creativity in escaping, as each prison has almost endless possibilities and encourages the player to make the best use of their inventory and be creative in handling every situation.
Bed sheets can be used to cover cell windows from the prying eyes of guards, desks can be moved to reach out of reach vents, crafted tools can be used for various purposes such as breaking through walls or doors, and shovels can be used to dig holes. You can try to sneak around guards, or opt to hide in vents until they're out of sight. If you're feeling especially brave, you can even attempt to fight the guards and take their keys allowing easier access around the prison.
Pro Good balance of game systems make for a rewarding simulation
Taking action in the game uses up your stamina, so you'll still have to make time for things like eating and sleeping if you want to have energy for things like digging through walls, fighting other inmates, or cutting through vents and gates.
Items such as shovels and cutters have limited durability, so they can't be used endlessly. Raw materials can be found around the prison to craft items, or you can buy items from fences using money earned by running fetch quests for other inmates. No matter how you acquire them, crafting materials and finished goods are limited so you'll have to use your items wisely.
Time is an important factor that has to be managed too, with certain activities having to be done at certain times. This limits the amount of time you have to roam the prison, since you have to show up for meal times and roll calls. Free time can be used to craft, roam the prison to determine the guard patterns, or finally put your ultimate escape plan into action.
Juggling each and every one of the various aspects of the game results in a very deep and rewarding simulation experience.
Pro Solid progression of difficulty
The difficulty increases as you progress, with each prison becoming just a little more intricate and more challenging to escape from than the previous. The prisons themselves get more complex with more obstacles to overcome such as tougher guards which results in more ways things can go wrong. The progress feels good and natural, as you're always building on what you learned in previous prisons to escape from the newest one.
Pro Great pixel art style for retro fans
If you enjoy a more retro style, then this game is pure eye candy. Simple but charming, the pixel art is colorful, with the sprites having a nice variety in animations when they're shoveling, searching, running around, fighting, or partaking in any kind of activity that would require movement. The tile sets for the game world are nicely detailed, colored and shaded. You won't get tired of looking at the same tiles over and over due to the sheer amount and variety of the art assets created for the game.
Pro Lots of replayability
No two games will play out alike. Each prison is an open sandbox, so it's definitely not a linear experience with a defined escape blueprint. Prisons can be replayed over and over to beat your previous time, measured in how many in-game days it took you to escape, which leaves plenty of room for trying new things on each successive playthrough.
Pro Co-Op multiplayer mode adds a new depth to gameplay
Working together creates a whole new experience with loads of possibilities. In co-op mode, you play with up to 3 teammates either online or locally as you work towards escaping the prison together. This adds a whole new dynamic to gameplay as working together creates experiences that just aren't possible when playing solo. Someone could distract the guards, while another searches rooms for crafting materials. One player could run around collecting items, while another scopes out the guard's patrol patterns. Some can complete quests to collect money while others are working on digging tunnels.
Pro A couple of alternative prisons add a change of scenery
Tired of bricks, cold floors, and cement cells? For those who want a change of scenery, there is a prison set in the wild west, and even a futuristic space prison. This adds a little bit of variety to the look of the game while keeping the same gameplay mechanics. It's a nice touch and gives your eyes a break from staring at the same tilesets over and over.
Cons
Con Takes a long time to get going at the start
There's a good two or so hours of story exposition and tutorials that you have to sit through before the game picks up. It's a lot of reading and hand-holding, and explaining story concepts over and over again until you absolutely understand what's going on. If you decide to pick this up, be prepared to spend those first couple of hours on rails.
Con The murder mystery is repetitive
The story in Persona 4 boils down to a "flavor of the month" mystery, with each of them playing out mostly the same. You find out that a character is in danger of being murdered, so you go around town asking people for more information about the person to learn more about them. And then you go save them, fight a boss battle, the character faces their Shadow self, and then rinse and repeat with someone new. Things don't really switch up until later on in the game, which makes the story feel formulaic, especially if you don't care for the characters.
Con The story gets weighed down by cheesy anime tropes
If you dislike anime because of the tropes, then Persona 4 may not be for you. You have your standard, blank slate main character who's loved by everyone just for listening to their problems like a reasonable person, a cast of characters who fit squarely into stereotypes, and a typical anime and JRPG plot where you defeat a god with the power of friendship. It's nice that this game has such a cheerful tone, and that the characters are likable for the most part, but a lot of it is pretty tropey and predictable: love it or hate it, basically.
Con If your main character gets hit with an instant kill spell, it's game over
The most frustrating part about the combat is that there's a certain degree of unpredictability and randomness to it because of instant kill spells. There are light or dark spells that, if they hit any of your characters, there's a good chance that they will die in one shot. If they have resistances to light or dark, then they stand a better chance. But if your main character gets hit, and they die, it's an automatic game over, possibly throwing hours of progress down the drain.
Con The new Persona 4 Golden character, Marie, is insufferable
It would have been better if the writers had left this new character out. Marie doesn't quite fit in Persona 4 Golden, with her personality that's constant angst and anger, all the time. She has her reasons for being like this, yes, but you won't learn these unless you complete her entire Social Link and the optional dungeon. Before you learn of her motivations, she seems one-note in a way that clashes with the game's happy themes. It's hard to find anything to like about her.
Con Getting caught by guards can be overly punishing
It's frustrating when you spend several hours grinding quests for other inmates, collecting items, crafting, and carefully planning your escape, only to get caught by guards and lose all your items or killed. This effectively means you have to start over, wasting hours of your own time and days of in-game time.
Con Can feel grindy at times
Running around doing fetch quests for other inmates, or searching for crafting materials for hours on end can get stale after a while.
Con Tutorial doesn't cover much
The tutorial will only walk you through the barest of basics, resulting in the player having to learn the game's various mechanics on their own.