Persona 4 Revival is already a confident and stylish remake, and I'm excited to play more

I'll be the first to admit it - Persona 3 Reload disappointed me, when all is said and done. Yet despite this, I've remained mostly positive on the idea of Persona 4 Revival. Don't get me wrong; there's an argument for it being the best way to play Persona 3 nowadays, but it came with far too many asterisks for my liking. Not least of all, was the hope that a Persona 3 remake could split the difference and make a truly definitive version of Persona 3 that incorporated the elements of both FES and Persona 3 Portable. That didn't happen, and to add salt to the wound - the FES content was itself sold as a separate DLC, to boot. 

Persona 4: Revival never had that baggage. Persona 4 Golden's issues come down to visuals, something that a remake of the same scope as Persona 3 Reload would be sidestepping entirely; the added story content for Golden also wasn't something that could be neatly stapled on as DLC, either. You either had to design the whole game around it, or skip it entirely. So, when recent trailers made it clear that Golden's content - including Marie - was being included, suddenly I found myself far more interested. I couldn't wait to go hands-on with the remake for myself.

Earlier this month, SEGA held a Gamescom halo event in Los Angeles, California, offering the chance to play their slate of upcoming releases; including an hour of Persona 4: Revival, across multiple segments of gameplay. We got to play a segment showcasing the protagonist's Persona awakening and the battle against Yosuke's Shadow, a dungeon-crawling segment through Yukiko's Castle up through Chie's Shadow boss battle, and a much more in-depth segment, allowing us to play several days uninterrupted once we'd gotten our bearings.

As you might expect, what we've got here is Persona 4 with the same updated presentation as Persona 3: Reload. You have camera control while exploring Inaba, instead of the locked camera angles of the original; the new anime cutscenes are, so far, quite well done - though I would say the 3D-animated cutscenes and facial expressions across both the 3D models and 2D portraits are a massive upgrade on their own. We played the preview build on an Xbox Series X devkit, and nothing we saw indicated that we would expect any difference in performance compared to how Persona 3: Reload ran on consoles.

It looks gorgeous, and Atlus continues to be the best in the business when it comes to designing stylish user interfaces. During battle, things get even more flashy when making use of the new Prime Time feature. After filling up a meter during a battle, you can activate Prime Time, allowing you to bypass enemy resistances, use skills and baton pass for free, and more with up to 4 turns; finishing with a flourish from a selected party member. This lights up the arena with a bunch of neon lights and shifting colors; honestly, I'm not epileptic, but I do wonder how those that are would handle it. It's slightly dimmed, I imagine for mitigation - hopefully that's enough? I'm also curious how Prime Time will impact the game balance in the full release.

Truth be told, I don't exactly have many lingering questions here. Persona 4, despite its faults, is still my favorite in the series - and while the presentation for this remake is certainly much flashier, so far at least it doesn't seem to diverge too far from Persona 4 Golden. If that does end up the case, it means that we should already have a very good idea for how the full game will stack up, even if we've still got a few months left to wait.

The last time I properly played through Persona 4 was when I was in high school, eagerly seeking out games to play on my Vita - and if I'd already been feeling the itch for a replay, getting a taste of what's in store with Persona 4: Revival has me feeling ravenous. Stay tuned for more thoughts as we get closer to the game's February 18, 2027 release for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (Steam).