Persona fans debate whether Persona 4 needs a remake by Carlos (Automation West)
After the success of Persona 3 Reload, fans are starting to wonder which of the other Persona games would deserve a remake. One popular debate that is going on right now is whether a Persona 4 remake done similarly to Persona 3 Reload would be viable at all.

A new article in Automation West described an online debate over whether Persona 4 needs (another) remake. I have documented in the pages of The New Leaf Journal that I am a fan of Persona 4 and of the modern Persona series as a whole. However, count me as being on the side of “some [who] would like Atlus to focus on new projects, such as the hotly anticipated Persona 6.” Persona 4 received an excellent and much needed deluxe (so to speak) version in Persona 4 Golden and that game is readily accessible thanks to its availability on Steam and other platforms. I do not think that modern visuals or game play tweaks (which may only make Persona 4’s unfortunate declining difficulty curve worse) are worth the effort. Persona 3’s reboot (which I have yet to play) is justified in large part thanks to the game’s best version, Persona 3 FES, not being so easily available (especially with the upcoming Answer DLC). Instead of re-making Persona 4, Atlus can apply some lessons from Persona 4, namely its best-in-series social links and character writing, to a whole new game. (I suppose it can learn from the proper difficulty curve in Persona 3 FES).

The video game magazine Game Informer was shuttered on short notice after having been in business for 33 years. I have written about reading classic game magazines around the turn of the century including Nintendo Power, Expert Gamer, and EGM. Sure enough, I also read Game Informer back in the day (I noted in one post that I remembered the great hatred of some of its reviewers for the early Mario Party games). While I have not been a regular Game Informer reader for about two decades, I did have a specific, self-interested take on the story. I eventually plan to write an article analyzing the Ai Ebihara social link from Persona 4 (idea previewed here). One of my inspirations for the post  is an excellent 2012 Game Informer article by Kimberly Wallace (Wayback Machine link). While all of these articles can be found in the Internet Archive, it would have potentially been annoying to dig up without the URL. Fortunately, I had already saved the URL along with a Wayback archive snapshot in Zotero. (Whew.)