Retreview: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3

What a mouthful!

I must confess, Persona 3 is my first foray into the Shin Megami Tensei series. I'm choosing to play it on PSVita (which makes it P3Portable technically) though as my first play through it is, for all intensive purposes, the original Persona 3.

In Brief: 
Persona 3 was released originally on the PS2 in 2006. A jRPG, Persona 3 it made the headlines as a game where you shoot yourself in the head to summon a powerful Persona that will fight for you. This is true, but aside from that one odd design choice Persona 3 is a near perfect dichotomy of two games.

By day you're a high school student, talking with friends and forming relationships. By night you're fighting "shadows" that threaten to harm the day-to-day life of the citizens of Iwatodai.

This, ultimately is what Persona 3 is about.

Enjoyment:
I always like it when I can't put a game down. Doesn't matter what system it's on, a good game is like a good book.

You find yourself daydreaming about it. You can't wait to finish what you're doing to get right back into it. You just want to get through one more part. Persona 2 has been like that.

I consider myself a seasoned RPG player. I spent a long time with such games on the SNES and Playstation and it's part of the reason why I haven't played one in a long time.

It's a pretty stale format. Add to that generally uninteresting storylines or the predictability that comes with being derivative and there hasn't been a real reason for me to revisit the genre in a long time.

I'm loyal to Square for the joys they brought me in Final Fantasy 6 through 10 but I haven't purchased anything from their flagship line in years.

Somehow, Persona 3 cut through all of that and got me hooked again.

The game thrives on choice. You must choose when you pick your battles, who you hang out with and how your character will grow. Perhaps more so than any recent RPG I've played do I feel the weight of consequence in this game.

Summarised, your choices in the real world change how effective you are in the Shadow World. So who my friends are and how strong your "Social Links" are effect your own battle prowess.

But you can't be friends with everyone. Get close to a girl and you may find another one doesn't want to know you. Or spend too much time with Swim Club and your Student Council responsibilities will suffer.

It sounds mundane - we've all been to school - but somehow it's not. The characters are real enough that you want to know more about them and the tedium of actually going to school is kept brief enough to be interesting.

I also felt it captured the feeling of going to high school extremely well, in addition to the awkward time that high school was. Talking to girls was always a bit nerve racking and in Persona 3 it's still the same. The reward is different but you're hoping that you get it right.

This is all tied together by Tartarus, an immense tower reached in the shadow world. A randomly generated dungeon you ascend and take the fight to the shadows themselves.

The turn based fighting system is pretty cut and dry from most other games of the genre. It has it slight tweaks but turn based fighting is pretty much the same everywhere.

This part isn't what I'd call fun but there are people out there who love this sort of thing. If you like turn based fighting, levelling up to get better stuff and doing it over and over again then this half of the game is for you.

Overall the parts of the game that I enjoyed the most were advancing the storyline, getting to know the world and the characters and weighing up my choices knowing they have a consequence.

So many games now give you an illusion of choice but if you spend enough time at the game those choices are pointless. You can work past them by being stronger or faster or smarter. Not so in P3. You can only join one club, have one girlfriend and you can't fight all the time. This management makes the game thrilling in itself.

Accessibility:
Persona 3 has been re-released twice, once as P3:FES which had a number of modifications to the game and P3Portable which is what I was playing. So copies of it are available quite easily if you ferret it out online.


This game is also available for download on the PS Network Store. You can get it for your PSP or your Vita or so if you want to play it get a hold of it. It's also on special this month from the US PSN is you have an account so I definitely recommend picking it up if you enjoy RPGs or dating simulations or both.

Time:
So.... there are over 250 levels to the Tartarus tower. Once I found this out my heart fell a little in my chest. I don't think I'll ever get to the top, I just don't have the time.

But then again I'm 70 floors in now and that would have seemed like a bridge too far if I'd known before I picked the game up.

I think you'd probably comfortably invest 50-60 hours into this game and not be close to 100%. I know for a fact a friend of a friend has done that after 8 playthroughs. I do not know how much time he put into it but I salute you, o time-gifted, devoted gamer you must be.

I've put in about 25-30 hours now, I'm thoroughly enjoying the character development of my in-game friends and I'm curious about how I'm going to stop the shadow threat.

In Closing:
I'll keep climbing the tower, it's a chore now but I have to keep going to stop the enemy. Really I just want to know more about the people I sit next to in class but the shadow threat never rests.

I think this is a game I'll finish my first playthrough of and come back to play as the girl down the line. But I don't know where I'll find the time.

If you have a few hours spare give this game a go, you'll know pretty much instantly whether it's for you. Be prepared to put 50 hours into it if you want to see it through. You may not have played a game like this before but I bet you haven't forgotten what it was like to be a teenager.

This game gets that. Sometimes you feel like you're the only one you can rely on but P3 makes you acknowledge that even when you can't do it all yourself it's not so hard to ask others for help.