Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 | List Price: $49.99
Discount Price: $44.98
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Platform: PlayStation2
Brand: Atlus
Binding: Video Game
Release Date: 2007-08-14
ESRB Age Rating: Mature
Features: - Each copy comes with 52-page Color Art Book, Soundtrack CD featuring 18 songs and outer Collector's Box
- Engaging Social Link system - build intimate relationships with friends and love interests alike
- Never the same game twice, with over 20 Social Links and a complex storyline encompassing a full school year
- Intense, strategic battle system - Find and exploit enemy weaknesses with the help of your allies
- Highly stylized designs with beautiful 2D character portraits, detailed 3D animations, and heart-pounding cut scenes
Game that keeps on giving. [Posted on 2008-04-07]
This game is great! It has plenty of mini-quest,if you don't finish them all you can play the game again and try to do them all.
Great Game with only a few minor hang-ups [Posted on 2008-04-25]
Persona 3 follows the same formula as the previous persona titles, with significant shifts to the setup and story. The main character and his allies can manifest Personas, which are essentially the core of their characters given phsyical form. These forms only appear during the Dark Hour, a period of time occuring at midnight. The Dark Hour is alos host to hordes of monsters that roam the empty countryside killing anything they find. Periodically people fall into the Dark Hour. Those who do usually die, and in the real world, their bodies are reduced to a catatonic wreck.
The main character arrives at a school where an ominous tower, named Tartarus by those investigasting it, appears during the Dark Hour, and is found to be able to manifest multiple Personas after calmly walking through the Dark Hour time frame. The character, after being exposed to this, embarks on a quest to determine where the Dark Hour orignated, and how to save the Lost Ones who die within it.
The entire main storylnie is entirely voice acted, which is long and well thought out, though certain points of deus ex machina plague it from the beginning. The voices of the characters are actually capable of voice acting unlike even some PS3/360 games (Dynasty Warriors/Samurai Warriors anyone?). The characters personalities are definitely in line with main Japanese culture, and the school system is Japanese to a T, though that should come as a big surprise.
Sidequests abound in Persona 3, and the benefits of pursuing them give the player access to more powerful personas and nice storylines with various NPC's. Many of these feel like storylnies from various mangas and animes, but are charming and a nice distraction from the slogging fight scenes that make of the rest of the game. You do actually ahve to pay attention in school, as there WILL be tests.
The only real detracting factor is also in the sidequests. Some can only be done on particular days t particular times, and unless you know what to watch for, they're very easy to miss. Certain elements are overdone and others underused, especially the timing system. Once you head for the bedroom, the days over, no repeats allowed with reloading. Certain side quests require specific items that are infuriatingly annoying to find, such as a particular brand of soda.
Probably the only thing that makes me a bit ill is the magic system. While the system is very well done, with great graphics and an intuitive style, the games designers should've rethought a setup where the characters appear to be blowing their brains out every 30 seconds in a country with a disproportionatly high suicide rate. Bad form.
Overall, this game is incredible, and will require at least two run throughs to play completely and get all of the potential side-quests, which are worth it just to hear the stories. Also, being a Shin Megami Tensei game, its also a worthwhile investment, as there won't be enough, and eventually it'll be above 100 bucks on Ebay. Get the FES version now though, as its been updated and upgraded.
A couple of original ideas can't save this failed experiment [Posted on 2008-05-04]
First things first: Persona 2 is one of the greatest RPG's of all time mixing a mature story with interesting characters, amazing music, and fun dungeons. However, Persona 3 mixes a childish story with cliché characters, awful music, and one long and boring dungeon (255 floors of nothing). So, knock off a few points right there.
Next, knock off a few points for the sheer tedious nature of this entire game. You basically are doing the SAME EXACT THING for 40 hours (don't believe the reviewers that say this game takes 60-80 hours or whatever; they must have talked to every single NPC character 10 different times every single day or something). Nothing ever changes. It's just the same grind, with no secrets to find, no new places to explore, and no characters to get attached to. It's as pure a dungeon crawler as a dungeon crawler can be, with a little bit of high school drama thrown in as well.
Yet strangely, it's addicting in spurts. Atlus made a very interesting design choice by removing towns to explore or secrets to find: this way, you only focus on the story and battling. However, the story is boring and filled with annoying characters, and the battling is unbalanced. I don't mind not being able to control anyone but the main character, but why are all the other characters so stupid? They'll always cast the wrong spell at the wrong time no matter what you do. Take a boss battle early in the game where you absolutely MUST kill both bosses at the EXACT SAME TIME or one revives. There is no way to get the other characters to do that. Also, if your character dies, the game ends; pretty frustrating when every single enemy on the last floor uses insta-death spells to your entire party and it usually just kills you. However, as I said, it's addicting to level up for at least the first few hours of the game, and the "character interaction" (i.e. dating) part of the game is pretty fun until you realize how easy it is to make everyone like you. Also, speaking of tedium, the music... ugh... it just makes me cringe. Very questionable and repetetive rap and pop songs.
This game is not without merit, as the cinemas are actually cool (and I usually hate cinemas) and the character design is usually pretty good. There were a few surprisingly plot points that were intriguing and some of the later boss battles are fun. The game goes by quite quickly -- but it leaves you feeling rather unsatisfied. They almost made a great game, but the game just has too many tiny flaws that all come together to make the game unbearable for most of its play-through. As a game, it's a little below mediocre. As a sign of things to hopefully come in the world of RPG's, it's pretty inspiring. Someone else can take the advancements put forth here and put them to good use hopefully.
One of the Best I've played so far [Posted on 2008-05-22]
Anyone who knows me knows my video game library consists of mostly RPG, strategy, life-simulation and any game that allows you to 'play god'. This game is an excellent blend of role-playing, strategy, puzzels, simulation, and classic turn-base fighting. You get to basically customize your character by who he interacts with and how, what he does in his spare time. How Smooth do you want him? How Smart or Confident? Depending on your level in these areas will depict how much interaction you can have with certain NPCs. Even the in-class lectures and questions are fun (probably because I knew all the answers, they aren't that hard). If you find that the latter sounds boring, don't worry, as they are few and far-between; maybe one or two a game-month, save for Final exams. The after-school clubs you join will determine your strength and skills in using certain personas (monsters you summon for battle). You can also combine your collection of personas to create different ones. Depending on who you choose to be friends with, and what skills you increase with your activities, will unlock different 'species' of persona, ranging from classes of angel (Principalities and Judges to name a few) to nasty-looking monsters, so there are plenty of choices to please anyone and their choice battle strategy.
One thing I really enjoy is that you get to choose when and how ofter you want to venture to Tartarus (enemy's 'castle') to fight and increase your level. Except for the mandatory bosses that show up on the Full Moon of each month. The enemies aren't easy either, providing an increasing challenge throughout gameplay that requires both strength and strategy.
The characters aren't that original in my opinion, but have enough depth to make them interesting and create a desire to form better bonds with them. The voice acting is quite good, and there is a great deal of it which always makes me happy. I don't understand, however, why they chose firing a special gun in the characters' head the summoning ability. It is definately unique and different, rather than a simple conjuring sequence of pretty colors like other games. While not graphic or bloody, it may be a bit disturbing to younger players simply due to the visual act.
One complaint - there isn't enough time given in your day to do several activities. After school lets out you can go one place and do one thing, then you go back to the dorm and have a choice of going to one more location, studying or going to bed early. No biggie though, it only contributes to the difficulty of raising your skills.
Overall, its one of the best RPGs I've played to date and I highly recommend it to any RPG fan and gamer.
Now this is how to do a JRPG... [Posted on 2008-08-10]
It's a true dungeon crawl though, so be wary of this fact before you push the buy button. It mixes in highschool antics and teenager romance to boot!
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