Something in me snapped a few weeks ago and I decided I should finally watch the 99 hour and 59 minute infamous Giant Bomb Persona 4 endurance run. A few episodes in and I thought to myself “you know, I really should finish Persona 3.” Sadly I think I have made about three attempts at playing it, twice with regular Persona 3 and once with FES. So I stared at my two copies of essentially the same game and said to myself “nah, I should get Persona 3 Portable.” So I did
In case you’re unfamiliar, Persona 3 is that Japanese RPG that came out a few years ago for the PS2. It’s probably most well-known as that game where the high school kids shoot themselves in the heads to release “Personas,” which, to put in Final Fantasy terminology, is pretty much a summon. It’s also well known for, as folks like to put it, combining a JRPG with a dating sim. This isn’t exactly true, but you do live two lives in this game.
Let me explain the story so you can better understand your two lives. You’re a transfer student and on your way to your new dorm, you see some crazy stuff, like a green moon, blood on the street, coffins where people used to be, etc. Somehow you think nothing of it and get to your dorm. Well it turns out all that weird stuff was called the “Dark Hour,” which is 60 minutes that happen every midnight that only certain people, like yourself, can see. Seeing this either causes people to become mindless drones, a condition known as “apathy syndrome,” or it means they have a special power they can unlock called a Persona that they use to fight the evil that comes out at night called “shadows.” Since the former would make for a really boring game, you’re fighting the shadows. While it’s possible for the shadows to pop up anywhere, their home turns out to be your school, or rather a building that, each night at the dark hour, takes over the place where your school should be.This place is called Tartarus and it’s an extremely tall building with lots of floors, most of which are randomly generated.
Battling is pretty much what you’d expect from a turn-based battle system in a JRPG, except you’ll be using your Personas way more than you’d be using, say, a summon in a Final Fantasy game. There are weapons and other types of equipment too, but still Personas will be your primary way of battling. Each Persona uses SP, which is essentially you’re magic in this game, a different value depending on what spell they’re casting. If it’s a physical attack it’ll actually cost you HP to use.
Of course each enemy has weaknesses to certain elements or types of attacks, and if you exploit that weakness, you will knock them down for a turn or two, and you’ll get the chance to attack again. So if you know an enemy’s weakness, and you have a Persona with the ability to cast whatever it is they’re weak to, you can easily get through battles using just one character. Knock everyone down and your team will join up and perform an “all-out attack” which knocks down a significant portion of each enemy’s HP, usually wiping them out completely.
Outside of Tartarus, you lead a pretty normal life. You go to school, you hang out with friends, you play sports, get involved with clubs, go to the mall, etc. Each thing you do either enhances a quality that will help you build social links, or will create a social link. A social link is a fancy way of saying “making friends with someone” and is essentially a way of powering up your Personas. Each person or group represents a different class of Persona, so it’s important to focus on building up the types of Personas you use rather than just going around and making friends with everybody.
As I said, to make those social links you need to build up certain qualities, like courage and charm. You can do this through various means, some of them not making much sense. If you drink a certain type of tea, your skin clears up and you earn charm. Signing karaoke causes your courage to build up. There are certain things you can’t say unless you have enough courage or charm, and those things may lead to social links, so it’s important to boost up these qualities.
Another quality is academics. During class on some days you’ll actually get asked random questions from different categories such as history, science, etc. Get them right and you’ll earn academics or other qualities. Get them wrong and you better pay attention to the right answer when the teacher gives it because you might be tested on it later. Remember, high test scores can lead to popularity, and as we learned from Persona 4, popularity leads to intimacy.
The land that kind of bridges these two lives for you is the Velvet Room. In there, Igor and his assistant will give you the chance to fuse Personas. As you earn Personas through fighting, which is done by playing card shuffling games after certain battles, you can then take those Personas and combine them with one to two other Personas and get what hopefully ends up being an even better Persona. Also available in the Velvet Room are quests which will give you monetary and item rewards.
The game is pretty awesome, and honestly I think what was causing me some trouble the first few attempts at playing this was not understanding the Persona system. I’m kind of a sword and shield type guy so summons aren’t my thing. Once I understood the Persona system, I fell in love with it. The story is interesting, the characters are all good, and it is also very Japanese, in the way people say The World Ends With You is very Japanese. They make no attempt to localize this except for the language. Otherwise, this is straight up Japan.
This is also an incredibly aesthetically pleasing game, sporting some of the absolutely best menus you’ve ever seen. That might sound crazy, but they just have this really hip, artsty, modern style to them that are very appealing and easy to navigate. The music is also decent, with an interesting selection of genres, mainly a lot of pop-type songs. Even the battle music is something you’d find off a J-Pop or hip-hop album.
So, for those of you who know what Persona 3 is and just want to know what’s different about Portable, here’s the part where you hopefully skipped to. First and foremost, you can play as a different character who is female, which gives a new and unique perspective on the game, but the core of it is essentially the same.
There are also now five difficulty settings, which is great for me because I’m pretty horrible at everything. Also helping the game be a little easier, you can now control all the party members decisions in battle, just like in Persona 4. Very awesome. Speaking of P4, when out and about you can hit square to pop up a menu that will show you all the locations you can go to. This really speeds things up and eliminates another annoyance I had with the original version.
This brings us to one of the things that is half pro and half con for me. The maps of each area are much easier to navigate because it’s just a static picture and you are represented by a cursor dot. Highlight a person to talk to them or a building to enter. Much more convenient and fast, but nowhere near as pretty. Honestly I am quite cool with this, as I’d rather move around more quickly than actually control a character walking around. You will zip through the game much faster because of this.
Sadly one feature they did remove are the animated cut scenes, which were some of the best parts of the game and really enhanced the story telling. Some of the more important ones are in there, but don’t expect them through most of the game. Also I guess you can say the new content from Persona 3: FES isn’t there, but hey, this is Persona 3 Portable, not FES Portable. Oh, and one last thing, you can now save at your school desk. So there’s that.
Overall this is still Persona 3, and Persona 3 is a great game. Sure it’s missing “The Answer” and those animated cutscenes, but it’s still telling the story, and when it comes to gameplay, this is truly the definitive version of the game.
Did I mention you can save at your school desk now?
