Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3

"Oh dear, what happened?"

Persona 3 was anticipated by many during its release. Mainly for its original setting and storyline as far as RPGs go. Sadly, originality doesn't count for much. What we have here is a somewhat original story, surely. But of course, the tale follows the standard RPG route. This isn't a problem despite what apologists who constantly clamor for originality will tell you. However it's good to dispel illusions that people might have about the game. The problem of Persona 3 is that it's storyline is ludicrously stupid and the gameplay is unabashedly silly.

The story is that as an exchange student, you move to the island of Gekkoukan and attend Gekkoukan High. Of course, this is all too mild. Naturally weird things start to happen. Eventually you learn that at night, monsters called shadows prowl the streets during the Dark Hour. During this Dark Hour, everyone is snoozing away without realizing it. There are a few exceptions however. Some people randomly experience the Dark Hour and are usually killed instantly. The others are Persona users, superheroes who can kill shadows and fight evil.

Yes, the main character is a Persona user. And yes, he's also really freaking good at it. It comes as no surprise then that Gekkoukan High's club for exterminating shadows, the SEES, wants to recruit him. You also learn that at the Dark Hour, the school is turned into a tower called Tartarus where shadows roam all over the place. The objective of the SEES is to get to the top of the tower and figure out what's going on while also taking care of shadow problems that randomly occur in the city. During the way, you learn about a whole bunch of conspiracies involving Tartarus, SEES, the characters, and lots of other stuff. In other words, this storyline isn't original, much as it hurts those novelty apologists and Atlus's obnoxious advertising.

The characters are a bunch of obnoxious high school brats. They all have their own little angsty existential issues to deal with. The problem is that none of them are very interesting. Yukari has issues with her parents, Junpei has an inferiority complex and is smitted by a girl whose intentions are none too swell, Mitsuru has trust problems, etc, etc. There's really not much to their personalities besides these problems. Sure Junpei serves as the happy-go-lucky comic relief character but considering that this is a high school, his behavior is ludicrous and definitely doesn't convey a realistic high school student. Instead you might want to punch him in the face. Mitsuru is the arrogant, sexy, and smart girl. Of course given the absurdity of RPGs, instead of acting like a real kid, she talks extremely sassy and in terms that no kid would ever talk like. She says, "Are you planning something unscrupulous under my supervision?" in one scenario involving snuffing out shadow problems in the city. No one talks like that. And if they did, they would be laughed at. This game stays true to Japanese social structure so Mitsuru is very much respected by her peers. But even then she still wouldn't be respected for saying idiotic crap like that. She comes off as a pretentious little brat more than anything. The same problems apply in variances to the other characters.

A little note is that this game is very true to Japanese social conventions, particularly in the translation. Some characters will each other, "Yuka-tan," or "Junpei-san." Used with English sentences and words, it's too funny. Atlus is basically appealing to idiot American teenagers obsessed with Japan. Keep that in mind before buying this game.

There are other storylines too. This game is very open-ended to an extent. It's kind of like a dating sim. So you can interact with a lot of people and their lives. But this interaction is limited and novelty of freedom and the different types of people you can interact with wears off FAST. For example, one storyline involves a kid who has a crush on his teacher. Another has some little dictator type going around spitting on everyone because they won't confess they put a cigarette butt in the urinal, even though he has no evidence to go by in the first place. The real problem here though is that basically these storylines involve sucking up to these characters. That's all.

Oh and to summon their Personae, kids blow their brains out with fake guns. It's pretentious garbage because the imagery is symbolic but that doesn't change the fact that it's pretentious symbolism. Yeah, seeing the characters do that all the time wears on your patience too.

The graphics in the game are terrible. These graphics look like an upgraded Final Fantasy VII more than anything else. Not much else to say here. Oh and there are also anime cutscenes. But Atlus should be ashamed of using this anime style. It's barebones and bland. The actual cutscenes themselves don't have much in terms of content. For example, often there's a zoom in of a character's eye for several seconds and then something else similar happens. Totally unnecessary. And of course the anime cutscenes are shown at important plot points. Unfortunately with how poorly animated the cutscenes are and the little that is actually shown, you often don't care. There are only about two or three cutscenes that actually show something really important.

The music is unintentionally humorous. There's tons of Japanese rap and rock. But it loops over and over again. And it gets tiresome very quickly. Not to mention the compositions are so bad they're funny. An example is for the battle theme that opens with, "Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby!" then proceeds to a guy whose voice is amplified really low to sound black like a real rapper. It's funny at first. Really funny. But soon you find yourself muting the game. The only real good song is the boss battle song for when you fight a boss involving snuffing out shadows in the city and the final boss battle song.

Last but not least is the gameplay. The gameplay is standard turn-based Megami Tensei fare. For the uninitiated that involves turn-based combat that has you zoning in on enemies' weaknesses. Doing this will give you extra turns in battle. Naturally the enemies can do this to you too. In the end, the gameplay becomes extremely simple and repetitive. All you do is use spells or attacks that are opposite the affinity of an enemy and you've pretty much won a battle. The exception are boss battles. Those usually require a lot of level grinding more than anything else. Bosses fall in two varieties: Super easy and super cheap. Yes strategy can be used with bosses too. But oftentimes it doesn't amount to much as your characters' AI is painfully idiotic. Sure you can adjust the AI as you please but it wouldn't have hurt Atlus much to simply tune the AI to be really good in the first place would it? It gets boring constantly retuning your allies' AI so Character A won't use an earth spell on an earth enemy that you've fought a gazillion times already. But even then, the AI leaves something to be desired.

A major part of the gameplay involves Tartarus, the evil spooky tower of the Dark Hour. It's purpose serves only as a source of level grinding. Every floor is randomly generated. At the top of each section of Tartarus are barriers to prevent you from going through until you've reached certain points in the storyline. Your time in Tartarus is also limited as characters get sick or tired, impairing your battle performance. But a little note is that on days before certain plot points, you can level up in Tartarus as much as possible without getting sick or tired. Why doesn't Atlus make this for all the situations going to Tartarus? Beats me.

The other facet of the gameplay involves the Personae, your main form of combat. Your character can change his Personae as much as he wants because he's the main character. And given his wide areas of expertise, Atlus decided to make the little dating sim sidestories correspond to this. By doing well in the sidestories, it gets easier to make and level Personae. Incentive to deal with the mind-numbing tedium. The other part of the gameplay involves being a good student, a good charmer, etc. You can build these stats up by going around town playing karaoke, dancing, hitting on girls, etc. As said before, the novelty wears off fast. But these all play a role in doing well with the other sidestories. Some of them have prerequisites dealing with being a looker, a smart guy, etc. It all comes back down to doing really well with your Personae. Suffice it to say that you do get a certain level of accomplishment by completing these sidestories. But after all that, couldn't there be something more than just helping gameplay wise? Perhaps some completed storylines could overlap with the main storyline. Things of that nature.

In the end, Persona 3 had a lot of potential. Unfortunately that's all it has. Unused potential is like a lump of clay. It's there to be molded. But if you submitted that for an art project, you'd be laughed at. Likewise, Persona 3 deserves to be laughed at for that same reason.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 01/22/08

Game Release: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 (US, 08/14/07)