About this series:

I write game reviews for the University of Missouri-Columbia's student-run newspaper The Maneater.  However, the process usually goes something like this:

1) Write review.
2) Squash it down to under 600 words for the paper.
3) Feel unsatisfied with the final product.

So I'm taking this opportunity to share my full, un-edited reviews with you guys, complete with every facet of the games that I feel are worth discussing.  Hope you enjoy!

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(Note: this one is extra extended, which I apologize for.  Turns out I had more venom to spew about this game than I realized.)

When it comes to video game franchises, spinoffs typically do nothing but tarnish the reputation of a core series.  Persona stands as one of the most prominent exceptions - a spinoff of the Shin Megami Tensei series that went on to become more popular than the main SMT games themselves.

Such is the tragedy of this reintroduction of the original Persona on the PSP.  Sure, when compared against its more popular successors, the original doesn't stand a chance.  No merit exists with that comparison anyway.  Whereas Persona 3 and Persona 4 emphasized balancing a high school social life with demon-slaying excursions, the original sticks to a much more traditional fighting, fighting and more fighting RPG formula.  The original Persona is the Indy 500 to P3 and P4's Tour de France.

No, the shortcomings of Persona on PSP don't exist solely because of its successors.  It's just an antiquated, unpolished and overly confusing game in its own right.  What Atlus pitched as a re-make feels more like a port.  Not a "quick n' dirty" port, mind you; the developers put some genuine care into localization this time around.

The original PlayStation game, Revelations: Persona, awkwardly danced around its Japanese heritage in the U.S. version; this time, the game takes place in Japan as originally intended.  In other words, Mark isn't black anymore.

Whereas P3 and P4 displayed a mastery of the art of character development, the voiceless, emotionless story of the original shows no traces of the later games' charm.  You still assume the role of a nameless high-school student and befriend many of your school peers, but with the constant focus on fighting and adventure, there's simply no opportunity to get attached to the characters.  And without voice acting, their personalities come solely through their static portraits and your interpretation of their dialogue.

Relating to the fellow students becomes impossible when the game doesn't have time to display their traits and faults through their everyday lives.  Without this character development, these fellow students might as well be the same cliché group of ragtag misfit teenagers with magical powers in every other RPG.

Still, there's something appealing about the concept of average high school kids, already busy with just growing up, receiving the ability to summon monsters with their minds and preventing the extinction of humanity.

Unfortunately, reintroducing a hardcore PlayStation RPG from 1996 in 2009 requires more than just a fresh translation job.  To put it bluntly, the game just aint fun.

Remember random encounters in RPGs?  You'd be walking along, just trying to get to the next town, when the screen freezes for a few seconds and suddenly thrusts  you into a turn-based battle with several layers of menus.  Yeah, remember how stupid those were, and still are?  Most developers have long since acquired the sense to allow players to pick and choose their fights in RPGs.

The random encounter mechanic can still work if executed properly, but the system implemented in Persona feels incredibly intrusive and frustrating.  Four seconds seems like the average amount of breathing room in between minute-long battles.

Think about that for a second: every four seconds, you must give all five of your party members a command, watch the moves (which require loading times!) execute, cycle through two or three rounds of attacks to finish off the enemies, then reacquire your bearings on the world map.  Repeat ad nauseam.

And this is with all of the speedy options turned on!  Oh, and the "escape from battle" option has a 25% success rate, so forget about skipping them entirely.

Sure, Persona isn't the first RPG to have an unfairly high encounter rate, but at least those other games had the sensibility to lock those monsters away in dungeons.  Fights can break out literally anywhere in Persona, including the overworld map.

Just finished off a tough boss?  Expect six random encounters for your exhausted and weakened party to endure before reaching the closest save point.

Need to buy more items?  Another six battles.  This incredibly annoying and interruptive mechanic drags out what should be a 40-hour journey to an excruciating 75-hour endurance run.

I'm not just ranting against the entire notion of random battles, either.  RPG veterans always know in the back of their minds that those battles are necessary for powering up your characters.  My beef with Persona's encounters comes purely from their implementation.  They just feel like they're getting in my way.

That feeling gets compounded by the maze-like layout of the dungeons.  Navigating these labyrinths full of dead ends and trap floors in first-person perspective is just no fun.  It's one thing for random battles to pop up when you know exactly where your destination is, but when you're straight-up lost and those battles mess up your bearings, the whole experience is dreadful.

Staring at that PSP screen for such extended periods of time also causes some serious dizziness.  With Persona 4, I felt compelled to play for long sessions at a time because I wanted to.  Here, the only thing driving me to play for so long is the promise of a save point so I can turn the damn thing off for the night.

The combat itself, while perfectly competent, leaves just enough data hidden to the player to make the fights unpleasant.  There's no hope of determining the order in which the characters will execute their moves, for example.  The biggest nitpick is that the game is very selective about what to tell you about enemies in terms of their resistances and weakness.

It's a byproduct of having dozens of different attack types available in a game where the screen can only display so much.  For example, an analysis of a particular enemy might display that one nullifies wind attacks and takes extra damage against gun attacks.  But that same enemy is actually also weak to nuclear attacks.

It's just something you're expected to try and remember for yourself.  The same applies to your own party members' Personas, who may have weaknesses you weren't aware of until a boss knocked them out in one hit from full health.  Were we expected to take notes or something?

Even with full knowledge of an enemy's capabilities and weaknesses, the ever present element of luck always plays a factor.  Enemies can "ambush you from behind" occasionally, giving them a head start before you can make your move.  Some enemies are also fond of self-destruct maneuvers that bring all of your party members down to one health point, allowing the remaining baddies to send you packing by just laying a finger on you.

There goes a half-hour's worth of progress down the toilet, and since humans can't see the future, there was nothing you could have done to prevent it.  Some people have an affinity for this sort of challenge that includes strict death penalties, but Persona has the capacity to try even their patience.

I do admit, however, that the option to engage in conversation with the enemy makes for a unique and intriguing alternative to brute force.  Every party member has four negotiation tactics (Persuade, Taunt, Dance, Joke, etc.) that will cause enemies to react in anger, eagerness, happiness or fear.

Eagerness is the ultimate goal, since fully eager enemies will give you spell cards (items required to make new Personas) and end the battle outright.  Making them too angry, however, can make things worse for you than if you had chosen to just shut your trap.

Some interesting combinations can arise from this negotiation process; an enemy who is both happy and scared may get inflicted with the Charm status, causing them to attack their allies.  Demons that feel simultaneously overjoyed and pissed off will leave, but not before getting a quick strike in.

Clearly, negotiation is the true "escape" option; if your party is on the brink of death, you have a better chance of convincing the enemies to yield than trying your luck with running away.  Hell, you might get some money or cool items out of the deal.

While undoubtedly fun to experiment with, there's simply no rhyme or reason to the negotiation tactics and your enemies' reactions.  Every enemy has personality traits to steer you in a general direction, but just because the "Lie" tactic worked on a "Foolish" demon doesn't mean the option will yield the same favorable results on a demon who is also "Forceful" and "Haughty."

Would you have guessed a troll-like creature with red eyes and sharp fangs to cooperate with you after choosing to "Condescend" it?  Eventually the process becomes akin to blindly throwing darts at a wall until hitting the bull's-eye.  Even worse is the fact that once you use that card to get a new Persona, you'll have to re-negotiate with that same demon if you want to use it again.

Once again, Atlus severely overestimates the long-term memory of video game players.

Time has not been kind to the graphics of PlayStation games, which makes the lack of any sort of graphical upgrade to Persona all the more jarring.  Textures still look blurry, and character sprites are too small to even distinguish facial features.  Graphics are usually first on the list of things to upgrade when deciding to remake a game, and these visuals only reinforce the vibe of a port job.

I got some honest headaches from staring those outdated graphics on that tiny PSP screen for so long.

With no voice acting, the only audio you'll get out of Persona besides footsteps and battle grunts is the music, and it too falls short of series standards.  Long-time series composer (and producer of this particular game) Shoji Meguro recorded a whole suite of brand new tracks for this reincarnation that fall more in line with the J-pop and techno sounds of the more recent entries in the series.

Unlike the catchy and somewhat coherent themes of those games, however, these just grind my soul into a fine powder.  The most common ones have Japanese vocalists speaking English lyrics, and I've yet to figure out the reasoning behind this.  Almost no one in its native country understands English, and the lyrics are just way too "Engrish" for any of us Americans to reasonably understand.  No one ends up happy.  I've heard that main battle theme at least a thousand times, and I still can't understand what the hell that lady is saying.

I found two out of the fifty-plus songs worth listening to - the final boss music (the only instance in the whole soundtrack where Meguro gets to show off his guitar skills), and the Satomi Tadashi store theme.  Yes, that perplexingly catchy jingle that sings about which items recover HP, which ones cure Paralysis, and so forth.  I can't help but enjoy its bizarreness, especially after getting similar "WTF?" reactions out of my party members while in the store.  I think what broke me was when Nanjo started to sing along.

Talking such slander about a Persona game eats me up inside.  I know from P3 and P4 that those guys at Atlus have some seriously talented designers, writers and voice actors, and the last thing I want to do is drag them through the mud like this, but after experiencing the genesis of this series, I can't help but feel like a complete sucker.

Absolutely none of the positive aspects of P3 and P4 - the masterful pacing, the memorable characters and world, the indescribable charm - can be found here.  Even on its own merits, this is just an outdated RPG with very few redeeming qualities.  Guess the joke is on me.