Persona 4 Revival: The Good and the Bad of Our First Hands-On – Gamescom 2026
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Key Preview Takeaways: Last year’s Persona 3 Reload was a modern revamp of the game that wound up defining the core pillars of what the Persona would become. P3 Reload proved that Atlus could modernize its older Persona titles while maintaining its feel and identity, and now it’s Persona 4’s turn with Persona 4 Revival. Based on the PlayStation Vita’s enhanced “Golden” version of the game, Revival will once again see your small group of Persona users figure out the cause of a mysterious set of disappearances and murders taking place in the small town of Inaba, Japan. The demo I checked out dropped me into a few different points set during the early hours of the story, letting me get a sampling of the story, along with a taste of the new anime cutscenes from MAPPA (the same studio that did Persona 5 Royal’s opening), take on some Shadows, and even do a little exploring around Inaba. It’s been a while since I last visited the foggy town, and I was excited to check in and see how this new take on the RPG had changed things up. I opted to start my time with Revival getting straight into the action and exploring Yukiko’s castle. The dungeon felt largely as I remembered it from Persona 4 and Golden. The structure remains, consisting of tight hallways with rooms containing chests and shadows that direct you towards the boss room. New to this version was a sort of pathing graphic, resembling something like fairy dust pointing me where to go. I’m not sure if this was something strictly added to this demo to help me see content with the short time we had or if it is a feature that will be present in the Revival’s final release, but I hope that you can turn it off. I’ve always felt like the mini-maps in Persona 3 through 5 do a good job in keeping me from getting lost, so having a constantly-on breadcrumb trail telling me where to go feels a bit unnecessary. I’m fine with the assistance being in the game, I just would have an issue if it is always active. It’d be like having Teddie constantly talking to you with no way to get him to shut up. But what would a dungeon be without some baddies getting in your way and trying to take you out, and this is where I’m reminded that I have always been a fan of the modern Persona’s combat system. Revival adopts and brings over a very similar system to last year's Persona 3 Reload, which adapted some of the intricacies from Persona 5, which itself was expanded from the original 3 and 4 releases. The big bombastic notices when you hit an enemy’s weakness, knocking them down, the impressive all-out team attacks, and Persona 4 Golden’s approach to Shuffle Time (the post-combat selection that can net you new personas for the main character and other goodies to pick from) all return in the new remake. That said, Revival still has some new twists to look forward to as well. The big new combat feature in Revival comes in the form of “Prime Time.” Think of it as a sort of super-mode that you can activate after filling a special bar. Prime Time gives a character three back-to-back turns where all the costs for their skills and spells are reduced to zero, while also granting you access to a dramatic all-target special attack. You fill the bar by performing actions and taking damage, with things like hitting an enemy’s weakness filling more of the bar, making the whole thing feel a bit like Revival’s take on a Limit Break system. The demo had the Prime Time bar filling really quickly, just to give me a chance to check it out, even letting me get multiple triggers of it during a single fight if I wanted to, and I was promised that, come release, this powerful tool wouldn’t be something you could just bring out quite so willy-nilly as in this specific build. That said, I can only start to imagine just how powerful this will get when I start having personas with higher-level skills - a full stack of debuffs or buffs using Debilitate or Heat Riser for free and done all at once or hitting three Brave Blades without the health loss? Um, yes please! One caveat is that while in Prime Time you lose access to using the All-Out Attack if you knock down all enemies. It’s a small price to pay for something so strong, and I’m curious to see how well Revival manages to balance this new Prime Time mechanic, as it feels like it is balancing on a knife's edge and could easily slip into making many of the more challenging fights feel more trivial. Baton Pass also makes its Persona 4 debut, the nifty feature that allows you to switch to another party member if you strike an enemy’s weakness. First introduced in Persona 5, and with Persona 3 Reload incorporating a similar system with “Shifting,” it’s a powerful tool that has already proven its worth in previous titles, and it’s a welcome addition to Revival. Because of the demo taking place so early in the game, I really didn’t notice much else in the way of differences in how battles played out, which I’m perfectly happy with, since Persona 4 already had such a solid system to begin with! My time wasn’t spent just taking out shadows, though, as I got to do some light exploring around Inaba itself. Well, at least as much as you really can do at that point in the story, as most stores are all closed or or had some other given reason preventing me from going inside. I got to visit Igor and crew in the Velvet Room, fuse some Personas, and even start Marie’s Social Link. It felt good getting to check out the old stomping grounds like Junes and the Samegawa, and I even spotted a little Easter egg (I was told I was the first one to notice it during the event) of Kyouji Kuzunoha, a devil summoner and the (sort-of) protagonist of Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner, which released on the Sega Saturn and PSP. I can’t wait to walk around this new Inaba more and see what other goodies there are to discover. Meanwhile, Revival features brand-new voice actors for the cast alongside rerecorded music tracks, which will take some time to get used to. Seeing Yosuke’s portrait talking and not hearing Yuri Lowenthal’s voice coming out, even knowing it was coming, took me by surprise a bit. While I only got a very small sampling of the voice acting and new versions of the soundtrack, everything I heard, such as Yosuke’s new actor Paul Castro Jr., was well done. It will take me a bit to adjust to all of the new actors and tunes in Revival, but I’m curious to hear how the full soundtrack and rest of the cast come out. From a visual standpoint, Revival is definitely a step up from the vanilla and Golden releases of Persona 4, but I’m not sold on all of the changes. The new character models all look fantastic and are definitely up to the same quality as those in P3 Reload and Persona 5, but I find that the character portraits themselves lack some depth and shading. The battle portraits for the cast feel like a bit of a downgrade as well. In the previous editions, these were larger and colored on the side of the screen, while Revival’s are pretty small and black and white, with the only color seeming to be the character’s hair, and only when you are giving them commands. Persona 3 and its follow-up, Persona 3 FES, when released on the PS2, shone the light on the series and got a lot of eyes looking in its direction, but Persona 4 is where the series really started bringing in the fans. That growth continues on with the Persona series as a whole, with the franchise recently surpassing 30 million copies sold. 2027 is setting itself up as a really good year for fans of RPGs, and Persona 4 Revival will be leading the pack when it releases in February. I’m hopeful that things like the glowing objective trail being toggleable or some tweaks to the portraits and UI will be included, and I’m perhaps the most intrigued to see how Atlus manages to balance Prime Time during late game. In the pantheon of the Persona series, its fourth entry is held in high regard, and time will tell if this third iteration will prove to be the best of the bunch. The little bit I got to see is at least making it a pretty strong contender for that award, and it still very much feels like Persona 4. But anyone who has played it before knows it’s a very long game, so we will have to wait and see whether it's worth tuning in for or changing the channel. While you're here, check out these previews of other big upcoming games we've played recently! Scott White is a freelance contributor to IGN, assisting with tabletop games and guide coverage. Follow him on X/Twitter or Bluesky.
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