SweetieGames

As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m currently playing Persona 4 Golden in anticipation for Persona 4 Revival, the remake, coming out in February next year. I always prefer to play the original games before a remake so I can compare the two; it’s my favourite way to play a remake.

While I’ve been playing P4G, there are definitely some moments that demonstrate that this game was originally made in 2008, i.e. some parts have not aged particularly well. Thankfully it’s not a lot, but there definitely have been some scenes that have left me sat at my desk with a grimace on my face, and my first thought is immediately that this scene will most likely be left in the past and edited or removed for Revival.

Something that many people, and now myself included, would have been interested in adding rather than removing was a romance path for the protagonist’s close ally Yosuke Hanamura. When I started playing the game myself, I could see where people were coming from; Yosuke refers to the protagonist as his “partner” basically as soon as they start working together and they have a great level of chemistry. I was actually left struggling to decide which of the female characters to pursue a romance route with purely because I felt that Yosuke was a better fit, even though he’s not an option. Fans even datamined a scrapped Yosuke romance from the Persona 4 game files, which really gives context for his closeness with the protagonist in the parts that were kept in. Plenty of fans have made their wishes clear and it reached ATLUS themselves, but the news is not what they were hoping for.

Persona 4 Revival producer Kazuhisa Wada spoke at the recent Gamescom 2026, and told GamesRadar+ that Yosuke will not have a romance pathway in the remake. He acknowledged that fans were eager to see it, but reasoned that in order to make a romance route for Yosuke, all the other male characters would require the same treatment, which would be ” a lot of work” that would not fit into the development schedule.

This excuse did not surprise me. This was the same company that told us that adding the existing female protagonist from Persona 3 Portable into Persona 3 Reload would be “too expensive”. It’s definitely frustrating to have fan wants acknowledged but then promptly ignored, especially when a remake of a game is an opportunity to add things that fans have wanted for a long time.

In my opinion, I wouldn’t be offended if only Yosuke was added as a romance option and none of the other male characters, especially as nobody else really wants that, either. When I played Persona 3 Portable, not all of the male characters had romance routes for the female protagonist (for reasons that became clear later) and I didn’t bat an eyelid. This wouldn’t be any different! It would only involve adding the small scenes you get with female characters on events like Valentine’s Day; romance choices never really make a huge difference to the plot of Persona games. Is adding a few extra lines of dialogue so much work? It doesn’t sound like it!

Like many fans, I’m also disappointed by this statement. I would have loved to see a different take on a romance route in a Persona game, and to have the first canon LGBT relationship route in the franchise since Persona 2 back in 1999. Sure, there’s plenty of subtext in previous titles, but I want something concrete! As do many fans. Hopefully, Persona 6 in the future will offer us a mixture of both same-sex and opposite sex relationship options.