Building comparison
head to head
Persona 4vsThrough the Darkest of Times
Neither is meaningfully harder - they pose close to the same test. The widest gap is execution, and it is a single point.
Persona 4
Optimization · Pure Optimization
Small-town murder-mystery JRPG balancing friendships by day and TV-world dungeons by night.
Through the Darkest of Times
Optimization · Pure Optimization
Risk-budgeting resistance actions against historical events and probabilistic crackdowns.
Persona 4 leans Optimization (Pure Optimization); Through the Darkest of Times leans Optimization (Pure Optimization).
Persona 4Through the Darkest of Times
Axis by axis
Execution1 vs 0
Persona 4 leans a little harder on execution, though the gap is small.
Persona 4
Menu combat; zero dexterity
Through the Darkest of Times
Turn-based planning with no physical component
Reads0 vs 0
Same score on reads - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Persona 4
Shadow bosses use scripted patterns
Through the Darkest of Times
The regime escalates on historical script, not by modelling you
Variance4 vs 4
Same score on variance - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Persona 4
Randomized dungeon floors and fusion rolls
Through the Darkest of Times
Raids, arrests and event outcomes roll against hidden odds
Optimization8 vs 7
Persona 4 leans a little harder on optimization, though the gap is small.
Persona 4
Social link scheduling and weakness-exploit planning
Through the Darkest of Times
Balancing morale, funds and member risk is a solvable system
A matching score does not mean a matching test. Two games can both sit at 10 on execution and demand completely different things of you - which is why the reasoning above matters more than the number beside it.