Persona 4 Golden mod turns it back into your granddaddy's Shin Megami Tensei, fixing the gravest aesthetic crime of its non-PS2 version

P4 Fog Restoration - Persona 4 Golden mod - YouTube

Persona 4 is, for reasons almost entirely to do with the legendary Endurance Run, a profoundly important game to me. So important that when its whizzbang Golden version finally got its PC release back in 2020, I put a hundred hours into it in the blink of an eye.

But something felt a little off, and now I know what it was. Turns out, Persona 4 Golden had some distinct visual differences from the game's original 2008 PS2 release. It was much clearer, for one thing. Where the base game was bathed in a sickly fog, P4G was cleaner, sharper, more colourful. I've never been sure if it was an aesthetic choice or an accommodation Atlus made for Golden's appearance on the itsy-bitsy screen of the PS Vita—where it first released—but I knew it felt kind of wrong. It wasn't the Persona 4 I knew.

Well, good news: The Persona 4 I knew is being painstakingly restored by fans with precisely the same kind of obsessively weird brain I have. Meet P4 Fog Restoration, a mod from BrawlerAce that restores the glorious aesthetics of the PS2 era to P4G's sharpest, 4K-est PC version.

Per its GameBanana page, P4 Fog Restoration is actually only 40% done, and the plan is to eventually cover the entire game. As it currently stands, "All dungeons present in the original Persona 4 have received full visual overhauls, including to normal and boss battles, to match P4 PS2 as closely as possible." It's also touched up the Velvet Room and a few assorted other areas, though it sounds like P4G's exclusive dungeon hasn't been touched yet. Inaba itself—P4G's overworld—hasn't been affected yet either.

It's very well done, I reckon. It'd be easy to go overboard and cover the game's dungeons in a thick yellow soup, but BrawlerAce and co have shown clever restraint. The result is a bunch of screenshots that look exactly like the PS2 game I remember, just at a higher res, and Marie is there for some reason. While you're at it, why not plug in the OG Chie Voice Replacement and really take things old-school? It's not really Persona 4 if Satonaka-san doesn't sound like a 35-year-old who got held back til she passed her exams.

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.