Persona 4 Golden FAQ

What is this?
This is a speedrun of Persona 4 Golden, in which I will attempt to get the "Golden Ending" as fast as possible.

What's required for the Golden Ending?
Basically, all dungeons must be beaten. To unlock the Hollow Forest optional dungeon, you must max Marie's Social Link, so you'll see me do that as well.

Isn't this game super long?
The best time is about 10:38 hours: I expect to finish somewhere between 10:30 and my PB.

So is this on Very Easy or Very Hard?
Neither actually; as of right now, most competitive runs are being done on Hard. Traditionally, SMT speedruns are done on highest difficulty, true (or in this case, truest) ending. However, for Persona 4 Golden, the two hardest difficulties, Hard and Very Hard have only two differences. In the case of a death, you can restart from the start of the floor as if nothing happened on Hard; you must load a save in Very Hard. In theory, you don't die in the run, but this does make the run much safer (I'd honestly prefer if this weren't the case; Persona 4 is very tense because this mechanic is not present). However, the other difference is a 2/5 multiplier on all EXP and Money. This would do nothing but artificially increase the time of the run by increasing grinding, so both myself and Mulsqi do the run on Hard mode. I do Very Hard on occasion, but it's much longer without much benefit beyond laughing at me.

What is the WR?
http://www.speedrun.com/Persona_4_The_Golden

What are the differences between Persona 4 and Persona 4 Golden for a speedrun?
Persona 4 Golden has an extra dungeon, the ability to fast forward cutscenes, an easier grind thanks to Gold Hands, a completely reworked exp system, and bosses have slight differences between versions. We also max an extra social link to unlock a dungeon, don't max Yosuke's social link and a few other slight differences. Basically, the run is slightly easier, with more content and shorter because cutscenes take much less time.

Why aren't you playing in Japanese?
Language for this game is personal preference. There is no difference between English and Japanese in a speedrun to our knowledge. All text is instant. I do have a Japanese copy and will likely do runs on it in the future, however, I need to explore and memorize item/spell names before I can do this.

Why do you keep going up and down the stairs?
If it doesn't seem like there's a reason, it's likely because I'm underleveled and will not be able to fuse the correct personas to quickly win the next fight. In this case, I am reloading the floor and trying to find Gold Hands, enemies that give many times the exp of a normal fight, due to their "difficulty" in killing.
Alternatively, if I'm on the first floor of Yukiko's castle, I am trying to get a specific set of Personas to continue (Angel, Slime, Ukobach, Pixie, Apsaras). If I don't have these basic personas, I will not be able to fuse the correct personas to continue.

Are there glitches in this run?
There's one. You can underflow Makaracorn in a quest to end up with 99 of them. It's a time saver, but not as large as you might think. (An underflow is a trick in a computer program where the number of a variable is pushed to -1. Due to the way numbers are stored in a computer, the program reads this -1 as an incredibly large number. Since it has to be displayed by the game, it will only show 99, and lock in to the display upon being put there.

Do you have a route?
Mulsqi, who did far more work on the route than I did, has all of his notes here: http://pastebin.com/XPDy1qLk

What are the hardest fights in this run?
The run in general is much easier than Persona 4; we are higher level and the game was made easier when it was ported to Vita, despite us being on an "equivalent" difficulty. Some fights of note: the first conquering knight, with my strats, is only a 60-70% fight, Shadow Yukiko can kill you if she wants (although it's very rare), Shadow Mitsuo wins if he ever rebuilds, and the final boss is a nightmare where every small bit of damage has to be accounted for. Shadow Kanji and Shadow Teddie can be tricky, but they should not be lost to.

Who's your *****?
This is how this sentence will appear in chat to everyone else. The word is banned. It's overused, not funny and completely ruins all healthy character discussion. No.

Isn't this game very RNG heavy?
Yes and no. There is luck; enemies need to spawn, I can't miss every attack, etc. However, the game is also fairly execution heavy (See how much fast menuing can save. It's remarkable), and the routing is there to mitigate luck. The game is a ton of fun, and has more than enough merit for me to continue running it.