To Love Persona 4 Revival is to Love the PlayStation Vita
To Love Persona 4 Revival is to Love the PlayStation Vita
When Sony said "Vita means Life" it actually meant "Persona 4 means Life."
Sega and Atlus are putting a lot of push-power behind Persona 4 Revival, the modern day revamp of 2008's Persona 4 for the PlayStation 2. You can hardly blame them, given how the enormous success of 2017's Persona 5 has made the Persona name as recognizable as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest to the RPG-loving public. Persona 3 Reload, a Persona 3 remake released for PC and consoles in 2024, has sold over 3 million copies to date. Joker and his crew truly stole everyone's hearts with Persona 5, and the residual effects of the "crime" still echo as new Persona-pilled fans enter the RPG space every day.
With our minds now well-soaked in Persona love, here's some intriguing trivia: If you talk to an old-school Persona lover, there's a good chance they might wind up being the only person you ever know who owned a PlayStation Vita. Sony's ill-fated handheld, released in 2011, proved too beautiful to live. It was discontinued in 2019 following a very lukewarm sales run (estimated guesses of 13- to- 15-million lifetime sales haven't been verified by Sony), but it still amassed some dedicated fans in that time... including Limited Run Games. The Vita is a compelling handheld: In a market dominated by Nintendo past and present, it had a weight and presence all its own. But baffling decisions like proprietary memory cards kept customers away, which kept developers away in turn—barring a brave few.
'00s Atlus supported portable machines like Nintendo DS and the Nintendo 3DS by releasing great games on the platform, so Persona fans already knew they were walking in the right direction when Persona 4 Golden came to the Vita. Even if Persona fans didn't necessarily have the numbers to save the Vita all on their own, they still prolonged the proud little handheld's suffering—er, life. Persona 5 indoctrinated many new Persona fans, but Persona 4 Golden and the Vita should get some recruitment credit, too.
Several reviews written about Persona 4 Golden when the RPG first came out suggest picking up a Vita for it alone. No wonder, as Persona 4 Golden adds new story elements, beefed-up visuals, new character routes, new dungeons, and tons of incredible new music not found in the original PlayStation 2 game. The battle theme, Reach Out to the Truth, is a bop. Granted, it's no Mass Destruction from Persona 3, but to be honest, nothing is. (Other than Warriors in Valor from Metaphor, which is another Atlus game. Atlus just knows how to make a battle theme that gets your blood going.)
Persona 4 Golden eventually escaped the Vita and came to PC and consoles in 2020 and 2023 respectively. Its subsequent sales contributed to the 30-million count that Atlus confirmed for the Persona series earlier this month. If the hype train carrying Persona 4 Revival is any indication, Sega believes it can encourage newborn Persona fans who were raised on Persona 5 to try out Revival. It's a strong strategy, given Persona 3 Reload's success.
We can't predict the future, but we doubt Persona games will be shedding their popularity any time soon. As the series inevitably becomes bigger and more popular, don't forget about the little system that brought us one of its most influential and beloved entries of all time. And don't ever forget that Vita means "Life."