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| Memento Mori. |
The story follows our silent protagonist as he joins Gekkoukan High, a high school in contemporary Japan. Things seem ordinary at first, until the "Dark Hour"-- a period between one day and the next-- occurs, where times stops and everyone turns into a coffin. Only you and a select group of students can see past this phenomenon and on top of that, can summon a "Persona", a magical being and manifestation of one's self. Shortly, you join a group called "SEES" and must work to solve the mystery behind the dark hour by exploring the newly emerged tower, Tartarus. Confusing premise aside, the story was a pretty somber one. There were many sad and downright depressing moments that you and the characters will go through over the course of the story-- that's not to say it's a bad thing, as it's anything but that. It was an enjoyable, thought-provoking narrative with themes of death, life, and friendship playing a central role in the story.
From the laid-back Junpei to the strict and uptight Mitsuru to the quiet and stoic Aigis, I found the main cast to be memorable and well-written. Even secondary characters like your classmates and the various people you meet were interesting and had great stories to share. You can become closer to them by triggering their "Social Links", which are basically events and conversations where you can deepen your bonds, granting you gameplay benefits like the ability to quickly level up and fuse stronger personas. It's worth noting that you won't be able to advance through them early on, as certain characters are available in specific days of the week and some won't talk to you unless your characteristics such as charm and intelligence are at a high level. Worse yet, you can sever these bonds by dating multiple people or picking bad dialogue choices, just like real life!
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Odd at first, the story was a roller-coaster of
emotions with the ending being bittersweet.
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Persona 3 is a turn-based RPG with sim elements. The game is split into two parts: school life and dudgeon crawling. In the former, you'll attend school in daytime, studying and hanging out with your classmates, even joining some afterschool clubs. After that, you'll have some time to forge bonds with people via social links, accept requests, buy equipment, or just explore around town. You'll be back at your dorm at night, where you'll be able to explore Tartarus, the main bulk of the game. I really liked the school segment as it nails the feel of being a high school student and I enjoyed some of the moments where you're just hanging around with your school or going on trips with your friends and messing around.
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Attend school and hang out with
friends during the day.
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Starting out as a series of randomly generated floors, Tartarus is home to creatures known as "shadows", the game's main enemies. You control your MC while only issuing commands for your party members, as they're AI controlled. These range from going full assault to focusing on healing and support. Granted, the AI has a tendency of doing the things you don't want it to, like attacking an ice-blocking enemy with ice attacks and wasting items when they're not needed. Sure, it adds an element of randomness in each battle, but it's a pain in boss fights-- that and I prefer to be in full control in battles. Anyway, you can control more than one persona though you can acquire new ones after battling enemies in the form of a card shuffle. One aspect that I didn't like was how repetitive and boring exploring Tartarus was. Yeah, there were neat treasures and slight variations layouts to keep things exciting, but it just felt boring in my opinion.
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Battle shadows and explore Tartarus
with your cool personas at night.
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Each shadow comes in different shapes and sizes, meaning that you'll have to constantly scan for their weaknesses and strengths, and use the appropriate personas to exploit them. Hitting an enemy's weakness will reward you with a "1 more" turn to continue attacking. However, knock down all enemies and a character will shout for an "all-out attack" where all of your party attacks the enemies at once, often killing them instantly. Both were fun mechanics as they rewarded strategic fighting and planning instead going out all gong-ho. That being said, you'll have a harder time with the game's tough bosses, which can range from manageable to outright frustrating as you climb higher floors. Exploiting weaknesses will only get you far as you'll have to rely on buffing/de-buffing and skipping an all-out attack to waste their turn to get up, which are paramount strategies to winning.
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Bosses and group-based enemies are brutal,
so make sure you level up constantly!
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Obviously to win against the tough bosses, you must fuse your current persona with another one to create higher leveled, more powerful personas. By heading to the blue door in Tartarus, you'll meet the long-nosed Igor and his assistant, Elizabeth, who will offer to fuse your personas and register your current ones if you plan on using them later. You can fuse two personas or up to five if you really mean business. If you've maxed out a social link that corresponds with a persona's type, then you'll receive bonus experience from the fusion and your persona will learn new skills. Also, you can accept various requests from Elizabeth such as bringing her a specific persona or item found in Tartarus in exchange for money and the like.
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Fuse new and more powerful persona at
the Velvet Room.
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Persona 3 is no doubt a beefy game and the additions in the FES edition extends the game's runtime even more. The game now feature a new story epilogue called "The Answer", which takes place weeks after the finale of the game. Packing a harder difficulty, new character, and dungeon, it's a 30-hour ride that sheds light into the behind the scenes moments of the story and characters' pasts. I found it to be an okay addition, as I enjoyed the added plot elements, but I felt that it ruined the game's ambiguous ending. That and much of the expansion was just repetitive as you'll be beating boss of after boss with little to no breathing room like social link events. I ended up playing 10 hours of it before dropping it and watching the rest of the cutscenes on YouTube, which I haven't regretted. Other additions to FES include gameplay tweaks like new social links, more personas, a hard mode, new cut-scenes and quests. It's the definitive version to get if you plan on playing P3 on a console.
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The Answer offers some needed story
insight though it's a challenging affair.
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Persona 3 is almost over 14 years old, so it's no surprise that it looks old. The character models and backgrounds look basic by today's standards, but the art-style and ambient blue color choice has held better than expected. The cut-scenes were nice and fun to watch, despite being low resolution. The voicework is top-notch, with good performances all around. However, the soundtrack composed by the legend himself, Shoji Meguro, steals the show. Featuring many pop, rock, and yes... even rap-based tracks, Persona 3's soundtrack was varied just as it's memorable. It's definitely up there as being my favorite soundtracks, behind Final Fantasy VII and Persona 4 (also composed by Meguro). Some standout tracks were the iconic opening "Burn My Dread", catchy battle theme "Mass Destruction", tense boss theme "Master of Shadow", and the tearful ending track "Memories of You". The Answer also packed some great tracks as well.
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| The stylish anime cinematics were a nice watch. |
All in all, Persona 3 was an engaging ride and throughout the 80+ runtime, was a lot of fun. The story was gloomy yet gripping and the characters were great. The gameplay is solid and sure, it lacks the refinements of later games, but there's a lot to enjoy if you can gloss over some of its issues. Persona 3's stylish visuals and stellar soundtrack gives it a ton of charm, which makes it standout in the sea of RPGs. The FES edition is the top choice if you're looking for the full story experience so I recommend checking it. Fans of the series have most likely played it already, but newcomers will still find a lot to love in Persona 3 FES. It's a blast!
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