Happy New Year, Readers!

Hope you've enjoyed your holidays. Me? I've been enjoying my import copy of Persona 4 Golden. Pretty late but I didn't decide to get a PS Vita until I ran out of decent JRPGs on the PS3 ^^;

I've got quite a few things to say about the PS Vita's design (mostly bad things) but that's another story. It was probably a combination of Gravity Daze/Rush and having an updated copy of Persona 4 that gave me the extra push towards buying one.

Anyway, I thought I'd share the notes I made while looking up various guides. It's pretty much impossible to get a platinum without some guide. Here are some pointers on how to obtain the platinum trophy for this game which still plays brilliantly despite being 4 years old.

First Playthrough

Level all your "human stats" as they'll also be carried over to your second playthrough. For myself, I decided to max out Mari and Adachi's new social links since they were new content so I got those trophies first playthrough.

Since you'll be busy level grinding be sure to keep asking Rise for advice to hear 250 lines from her for the "Hardcore Rise Fan" bronze trophy. Maximising her social link helps as she will automatically analyse enemies at the start of and during battles. What counts as different lines? She can say, "There are x number of enemies" or "X has been x" etc so switch between party members. I got mine in the new dungeon towards the end of the game.

It's also best if you focused on collecting and reading all books for this first run. Yes, READ! If you don't finish reading them, it doesn't count. Don't know why this is bronze when it's actually missable and requires a lot of time to collect. You don't really need to start reading until August 4th which is when you get the speed reading book that helps you read 2 chapters at a time so up until then you can work on your social links. Getting the books read this playthrough means you don't have to wait until August before maxing out the basketball/soccer club members for the second playthrough.

Most books can be bought from the shop but some are via quests and social link events. DO NOT level Kouji/Ken (Sports) to Rank 4 or higher before August or you'll miss the following 3 books that they give you when agree to hangout with them over the phone!

• 5/29
  Choose "I'll Take It" to get the "Witch Detective"
• 7/15
  Go to your room at night, accept invite -> 7/17, Choose "Can't do" to get "Fun with Numbers"
• 8/10
  Accept the invite and choose "I'll have it" to get "The O-Cha Way"

Quests you need to get the others are...

• #18, book exchange for "The Youdou"
  You should have got the White Peach from Teddy(Kuma) at Yukiko's Castle
• #20, feed the cat to get "The Gaidou"
  You can either fish or get fish from Tanaka Net TV
• #34, get hard boots to get "Pest Book"
  Sauna, 5F-8F. Dancing Hands... They're pink and come with muscle guys. Quite rare. Took 2 hours to get 5 skin drops. Sell at the shop and buy the hard boots. They're a weapon for Chie.
• #40, Get a nice plate to get "I Love Puzzles!"
  Rise 9F. Lightning and Wind Balances. Not as hard to encounter and collect as the Dancing Hands. Get 3 pretty saucers then go back to hand them over.
• #45, Remember book contents "Know A Lot book"
  Questions about the books you've read - Answers "Effectiveness of skill", "Witch Doctor Comes With Illustrations", "1 Insect on Page 2", "Me"

There is also one book "The Noodle Way" that you can only get by eating at Aika 8 times. Eating there raises your social stats so it's another reason why you should focus on maxing out social stats and reading all books first.

You can worry about everything else for the second playthrough such as mastering all social links because your social stats are carried over. You have to play through the game a second time to fight Margaret anyway which is another trophy but if you're interested in the new dungeon, max out Mari's link before December.

At the end of this first playthrough, the quiz mini game becomes available in the TV Listings menu via the title screen. Win the most points out of 20 questions and you win. You need to play through 3 times to get the Miracle Quiz trophy.

I played this on Normal which took 60 hours.

Here are the trophies you can't miss during the first playthrough.

And the other side bronze trophies you should get along the way providing you explore everything enough.

Second Playthrough

Tip - Hold triangle or press start twice to skip dialogue and Anime cutscenes.

The bad news is levels don't get carried over so you'll have to level from scratch. However, if you got the 250 line "Hardcore Rise Fan" trophy already, you can just play safety mode and grind less. More money and XP per fight and, you'll need the money for fusing all the Personas later. During the fights, focus on choosing any new Personas you don't have and skill cards if you didn't manage to get the 100 skill cards trophy during the first play through. There are over 100 cards so you can get the "Card Collector" trophy easily.

If you didn't manage to get the max all social links trophy the first playthrough, I highly recommend using a guide because you have to get it exactly right.

You can try the English one at GameFAQs which I haven't actually tried...
http://www.gamefaqs.com/vita/641695-persona-4-golden/faqs/64630

Or Google translate the JP one here which is aimed at getting the trophy the first playthrough leaving only a day's time for beating each dungeon.
http://www34.atwiki.jp/persona4_g/pages/141.html

Don't worry if you don't get the same results or end up with one or two social links behind (which happened to me). If you follow the guide, you'll have January and early February free to catch up any that didn't work out the same way - with the exception of Adachi and Mari of course who will have to be maxed out to 6 and 10 before Christmas Eve respectively.

Now the reaper. Unlike in P3 where the reaper stocks the corridors, here he is locked inside a random chest so be sure to count how many you open while inside Mayonaka TV. Once you hit 20, warp out, save and go back to the dungeon. The next chest will trigger the familiar chain sound and then it's a lottery whether you get him or not. If you don't reload and open 2 chests again.

For the fight against Margaret fight you must max out her social link. Make sure you defeat the extra tough enemies that appear after each Shadow boss has been defeated for each dungeon (from Yukiko's dungeon until Nanako's dungeon). Next, go for the true ending then just after speaking to the man at the gas station, go into the Velvet Room for a challenge invitation. You can then find her at the top of Nanako's dungeon.

The addition of skill cards and safety mode makes this easier than the original game. Cards of interest will be...

• Hell Angel (Executor) - Absorb Fire
• Isis (Empress) - Absorb Ice
• Lucifer (Judgement) - Absorb Lightning
• Horus (Sun) - Absorb Wind
• King Asura (Sun) - Immune to All Status Effects

They're not cheap at 300,000 per skill card but most of the higher level Personas such as Yoshitsune (Tower) will have enough immunity already that you don't have to buy them all.

My last trophy was defeating Margaret and a lot of time was spent looking at the guides to see how to fuse the Personas I was missing to complete the grimoire.

This took an extra 30 hours to finish.

And so, the final trophies you should get are (in no particular order):

Further Reading

If you need more information, you can checkout the following English and Japanese guides. The English one is actually based on the Japanese site anyway:

• http://gameclear.org/p4g/ (Japanese)
• http://www.ps3trophies.org/forum/persona-4-golden/179593-persona-4-golden-road-map-trophy-guide.html (English)

Thoughts

This is my second copy of Persona 4 (or not if you don't count remakes with extra content in them). I ended up importing the Asian Japanese version so I don't have to pay a fortune to import it from Japan. I would have gone for the digital download version except the PS Vita doesn't let you have multiple region-locked accounts like the PS3 does.

The remake looks sharp so it doesn't look like a lazy port. Persona 3 Portable was a mixed bag because they had to rip out the Anime cutscenes due to space issues whereas here, they didn't. It's great they decided to let you view them again at leisure which I think all games should have as a feature to enjoy the story without spending 50 hours or so level grinding. It even includes footage from the live concerts and trailers including ones for the older Persona games which I thought was a great bonus. That said, the new opening is horrible with all those flashy colours.

New dungeon is quite a challenge because you have 1 day to do it with all your possessions stripped and your SP halved every battle although I wouldn't want to see this being a long-term dungeon design... It would just be too frustrating to play through.

There's a new "social bubbles" feature that records what you do and also let you see what other people did during the game which I didn't find very interesting. There's also an SOS feature I haven't tried but, over all I enjoyed replaying the game.