The release of Persona 4 Golden on Steam marks the series’ debut on PC, and there’s a very high chance that it will not be the last entry in the series to release on Steam, as Atlus Japan lead the development of the port.
The game’s ending credits revealed that the port’s director is Daisuke Yajima from Atlus Japan who has been the series’ programmer since Persona 3. Art Director Sachie Tousuji is also from Atlus Japan and he worked on the interface design for both Persona 4 and Persona 5. Interestingly, the actual development work was handled by Japanese multi-platform company Preapp Partners.
The fact that a Japanese developer worked directly on a console-to-PC port is extremely unusual, as most ports are handled by non-Japanese teams. This could mean that Atlus is serious about its PC commitment, and more games from the publisher could be released on Steam in the near future.
Persona 4 Golden on Steam comes with improved visuals, unlocked frame rate, and a few other improvements.
Coming in at a size of 13.63GB, this PC port of Persona 4 Golden offers remastered visuals that go above and beyond what the PlayStation Vita could output on its 544p display. The majority of the improvements are in the unlockable framerate and character models themselves. From what I could tell, the still images for dialogue and menus remain the same from the PlayStation Vita release with only some antialiasing touch ups to make them look better on full HD displays. The environmental textures and signage are cleaned up but so have a fuzzy and muddied look compared to how much the character models stand out. Cutscene videos also seem to suffer a bit of compression. Persona 4 Golden might not be the prettiest JRPG to grace PC’s in 2020 but the style and presentation still hold up more than a decade after original release.
Persona 4 Golden is now available on Steam worldwide. The game is also available on PlayStation Vita.
