If you've been following Japanese role-playing games over the past few years, it's likely that you've heard of a series called, Shin Megami Tensei. This series of games unabashedly caters to hardcore RPG fans who lap up each serving that comes their way. Atlus' Shin Megami Tensei series is notable for its mature storylines that rely heavily on demons, philosophical concepts, and mythology. Within this franchise, there are several sub-series of  games -- the most famous being Persona.

In recent years, the Persona series has gained a sizeable audience, due to its unique gameplay mechanics and distinctly Japanese nature. Its complex battle systems may appease rabid RPG fans, but what really draws them in is its setting. Unlike most RPGs, Persona completely ditches fantasy settings in favor of realistic modern environments. However, Persona doesn't just take place in the modern era -- it focuses specifically on Japan. For that reason alone, the Persona series is quite appealing to those who are interested in the Japanese culture.

Many individuals were introduced to the series with Persona 3, so it's likely that some fans are unaware of the Persona franchise's humble beginnings on the original PlayStation. It's about time then that Atlus dug up the thirteen-year old Persona from its grave.

Sometimes it's best for the dead to remain buried, but Atlus paid this advice no heed. Instead, the company listened to its fans' pleas by resurrecting the original Persona. Atlus could have simply re-released the title on PSN, but instead, they decided to go the extra mile and revamp Persona for the PSP. But would these new additions make Persona the fans' messiah?

For fans of the original, the answer is probably yes, but newcomers will likely come to a different conclusion. Your average PSOne Persona veteran will probably appreciate this PSP remake, because of its wealth of new content, but this might not be enough to win over players new to the series.

Persona PSP's additional content puts most Square-Enix remakes to shame. Atlus didn't skimp on content here -- instead of adding one measly dungeon, they included a brand new soundtrack, an additional quest not featured in the original North American version that comprises nearly a third of the game, and a new localization.

The new soundtrack is quite a departure from that of the original -- it's more in line with modern Persona releases such as Person 3 and 4. Some fans of the original will likely cringe at this J-Pop heavy soundtrack, but fans of Persona 3 and 4's music will probably love it. Personally, I'm not much of a J-Pop fan, but I thought that Persona's upbeat tunes fit its school atmosphere just fine. Still, I felt that these songs were occasionally misused.

One incidence where these pop tracks were misused was in battle. Atlus decided to include a song with vocals as the main battle theme, so as you can imagine, this tune featuring nonsensical lyrics quickly became repetitive. Most of the player's time is spent in battle, so on average, a person will listen to the same J-Pop tune upwards of twenty hours. If you're like me, you'll probably want to put the game on mute while grinding.

Atlus may have made some poor song placement choices, but fortunately, this didn't ruin Persona's great soundtrack. Besides featuring plenty of upbeat J-Pop tunes, it also includes themes that represent a variety of emotions. Persona's soundtrack has some great ominous, sad, and light-hearted pieces, so most players will likely be satisfied with its music as a whole. It's unfortunate that many of the game's best songs are seldom used, but I suppose that enables players to appreciate them even more.

Atlus not only created a new soundtrack -- they also included a new quest that was part of the original Japanese Persona. The original Persona had two main quests: The SEBEC quest (the American version) and the Snow Queen quest. Even though the Snow Queen quest isn't quite as long as the quest American Persona fans originally received, it's still a sizeable offering that drastically increases Persona's replay value. Fans will be pleased to know that they're finally getting the true Persona experience.

The Snow Queen quest is certainly a major addition, but it wasn't the last step Atlus took to make this remake true to the Japanese original. This final step involved properly localizing the game. Persona titles rely heavily on character dialogue, so this seemingly small improvement is actually quite important. Atlus did an excellent job in capturing the characters' personalities with their new localization, and they even changed the character Mark back to his original Japanese appearance.

See, when Persona was first released in the U.S., Atlus thought that they needed to westernize the game, so they pretended that it wasn't set in Japan, and they even made a character named Mark, black. With the remake, Atlus decided to no longer deny the game's Japanese setting, and they also included the original Mark. Some fans of the PSOne version may cry foul at this change, but most will likely approve, as it is truer to the original.

Clearly, Atlus employees worked overtime to deliver a solid localization, but what about the visuals and the gameplay? The visuals look nearly identical to those of the original -- with only minor changes to character portraits To put it simply, this game is downright ugly. Whether you're traveling in first-person perspective in dungeons, or are examining your surroundings from an isometric perspective, the graphics are as bland as a robot's monotone voice. Persona's rudimentary visuals looked poor even back in 1996, so don't expect the game to win a beauty pageant.

Even though it's now 2009, Persona's lack of visual detail didn't really bother me. I've enjoyed games with mediocre visuals before like the original Suikoden, so I was willing to look past its blemishes. In fact, I usually prefer remakes to look similar to the original, so I'm glad they didn't drastically change the title's appearance.

Atlus may not have altered Persona's appearance, but they did streamline the gameplay -- to a certain extent. In Persona, the majority of your time is spent battling, so Atlus wisely decided to give the combat a much-needed tune-up. Before describing the changes, I'll attempt to describe Persona's complex battle system.

In Persona, you control a party of five that is invisible until you enter a battle screen. Once you enter one of the game's numerous random encounters, you'll find yourself in charge of a seemingly standard turn-based battle. Persona's combat system may appear simple at first, but after examining your characters' options thoroughly, you'll realize that Persona has one of the most complex combat systems to ever grace an RPG.

What makes it so complex is that your characters can attack with both melee weapons and firearms, they can negotiate with demons, cast a variety of spells, and they can run from battle. Besides this, there are numerous options to change the pace of battles, which I'll detail later.

In most RPGs characters can only equip one weapon at a time, so being able to equip a ranged and melee weapon is something that sets Persona apart. Not only can these weapons hit targets of varying distances, but they're also only effective on certain types of enemies. For example, some enemies will cry out in pain when you strike them with your sword, but if you try riddling their body with bullets, they'll reflect them right back at you. Finding enemy weaknesses is a process of trial and error, but any Persona player will soon realize that it is necessary for survival.

Sometimes, enemies can't be fazed by any type of weapon, so you'll have to rely on magic. Before explaining spell casting, however, it's important to note how to obtain spells.

To learn spells, Persona requires you to negotiate with demons. Each of your characters has a set of unique commands that can be used in dialogue trees with demons. For example, the character Nanjo can choose from "Pontificate," "Bribe," "Sarcasm," and "Condescend." Depending on the enemy's type (Wise, Foolish, Gloomy, etc.) you'll have varying degrees of success with certain commands.

Each time you speak with an enemy, it'll elicit a different response. For example, if you responded to a wise enemy's question with "Invite," he'll see through your ploy and won't respond favorably to you. Depending on what you say, your enemy will react in one of four ways --  your foe will become angry, scared, interested or happy. Ideally, you want the enemy to become interested in you, because then you have a chance of winning its spell card. If you're a skillful conversationalist, you should be able to obtain an enemy's spell card after making four dialogue choices.

Even if you manage to gain an enemy's interest, you're not guaranteed to win its spell card. To win these ingredients that are essential for persona production, your characters have to be of a higher level than your opponent, so pursuing these useful items is a fruitless endeavor for the underequipped.

Once you've obtained two spell cards, you can fuse them together in the nearest Velvet Room. Fusing two cards and an optional item will land you a brand new persona. Persona represent one's inner demons, but they're named after a variety of mythological creatures. Their purpose is similar to Guardian Forces in Final Fantasy VIII -- they boost your stats, and they teach you moves you can use in battle. What's different here is that you'll still equip body armor, gauntlets, and shoes in addition to your persona. The persona can drastically increase your characters' stats, but you won't know the effect a certain persona has on a character until you equip it.

Each of your characters can carry a max of three persona, but only one can be used at a time. Once you pick an optimal persona and bring it into battle, you'll be able to use its magic attacks. These magic attacks range from healing spells to multi-target fire spells -- you know, standard RPG fare. It's important to regularly use your persona, because the amount of experience they gain is based on how often you use them. If you want to rapidly learn new spells, you have to make your persona do the dirty work.

By now, you've probably realized that Persona's battle system is quite complex. Sometimes, complexity is a good thing -- especially if you're a someone who likes your games to have endless customization options, but with Persona, I'd say that its level of depth is a double-edged sword. I appreciate Persona's flexibility that rivals that of a yoga master, but unfortunately, it's marred by poor design choices. The worst of these is Persona's negotiation system.

I already explained the process of negotiation in Persona, but I never mentioned how tedious this trial and error system can be. When negotiating with demons, there are over twenty ways to answer each of their questions, and usually only one or two of them is correct. Oftentimes, I would answer their questions incorrectly, even when I thought I understood their conversation style. Failing to contact a demon often results in a negative status effect being cast on one of your characters (or your entire party), so you can quickly be sent to the Game Over screen if you fail to answer a powerful monster's question correctly.

Unfortunately, Persona's troubles don't end with its negotiation system -- its endless random encounters and cheap enemies are equally painful. As I stated earlier, Persona thrusts you into massive dungeons that you must complete from a first-person perspective. Each step you take comprises an entire tile, and usually you'll run into a battle every third or fourth tile. This means that you'll be going from encounter to encounter in less than five seconds. That kind of gameplay may have been acceptable in the NES days, but it was a nuisance in '96, and it's inexcusable now.

If you're like me and despise this level of grinding, you have no choice but to accept it. There are two reasons for this: Persona rarely lets you flee from battle and you'll never stand a chance in later dungeons if you don't fight. I don't think I've ever played a post-8-bit RPG with such a broken running system. In Persona, you'll sometimes have to survive through eight turns before being able to run. The fact that running often fails can be devastating, because sometimes you're forced to fight enemies that can nail your entire party with a status effect.

Running is not only another route to an early grave -- it can severely cripple your party if done regularly. As in most RPGs, it's important for your characters to earn experience, so they can gain levels. When characters level up, their base stats will increase (and you can actually modify the main character's stats), so fighting regularly is essential. Still, it's important to note that just fighting the enemies in your path is not enough. In Persona, dungeons feature significant difficulty ramp-ups, so even if you gain ten levels in the previous dungeon, chances are that you'll be fighting enemies with an eight to ten level advantage. As a result, you're often forced to grind for a period of two to four hours before moving on to the next dungeon.

A significant amount of my time with Persona was spent grinding, due to its numerous death trap dungeons. Apparently, killing four hours of my time wandering around in circles wasn't enough for Atlus -- they also threw in cheap enemies that could wipe out my entire party instantly with status effects.

Sometimes when I'd enter a battle, I'd encounter enemies that'd charm or paralyze my entire party before my turn even began. This gave me no chance to survive, as they'd keep casting that particular status effect while wailing on me at the same time. Situations like this were made incredibly frustrating due to infrequent save points during certain parts of the game.

One time, I defeated a difficult boss, then was slain by a standard enemy immediately afterwards. Cheap battles like this bring back my not-so-fond memories of Final Fantasy II for NES (JPN) where enemies could kill players instantly by turning their entire party to stone. Even in 1988 this was considered cheap, so it's completely unacceptable now.

Unfortunately, Atlus decided to leave these design flaws intact, and instead opted to speed up Persona's poky battles. The PlayStation version was notorious for its slow battles and animations, so Atlus wisely included options to auto-battle and skip spell animations. This made the battles much more manageable, but in no way does it make up for Persona's archaic gameplay mechanics.

Despite these egregious gameplay flaws, Persona does have a few redeeming features: its soundtrack, , its Japanese schoolyard dialogue, and its plot featuring inter-dimensional travel. Since I've already discussed Persona's music, I'll briefly mention its dialogue and storyline.

Persona's dialogue is one of the best aspects of the game, as it does a  great job of capturing the spirit of high school. Each of Persona's characters has a distinct personality, and they all have fears and ambitions that any high school student could relate to. For example, some characters are solely concerned with popularity, while others care more about their education. There's no dating-sim aspect to Persona, and the characters aren't as developed as they could have been, but the cast of characters and their interactions still manages to entertain.

As with Persona's dialogue, the story is another of the game's strengths. You begin the game as a student at St. Hermelin High, who is assigned to check on an ill student, when suddenly, chaos ensues. Doors are no longer where they should be, and demons have invaded the place. You soon discover that this invasion extends to more than the hospital -- it even reaches another dimension. Part of the fun with Persona is discovering the nature of this other dimensions, and how this disaster occurred in the first place. Despite most of the game being a dungeon crawl, there's still an exciting story underneath.

Sadly, I wasn't able to see the resolution. I'd reached the final boss of the SEBEC quest after grinding for four hours, but that just wasn't enough. Most likely, I'd have to spend another four hours to emerge victorious. Ultimately, I decided that it just wasn't worth it. I'd had it with cheap enemies by that point, so I didn't feel like wasting another four hours of my life.

Persona has its good qualities, but I have to admit that my first experience with the series was a disappointment. I enjoyed the humorous character dialogue and the plot involving demons and inter-dimensional travel, but the archaic battle system and endless dungeon crawling ruined the experience for me. Normally, I'd agree with a company keeping a remake true to the original, but in this case, I think some more tweaking should have been done with the battle system. There's just no excuse for being ambushed by enemies who can instantly wipe out an entire party with a status effect. Poor design decisions like this make Persona a title that I can only recommend to fans of dungeon crawlers and the PlayStation original. Everyone else will want to dodge this sucker punch.

Score: 6.0

Pros:

• Finally the true Persona is available in English!
• The soundtrack includes a variety of musical styles
• Excellent character dialogue provides for humorous moments
• Includes an interesting inter-dimensional storyline
• Admirers of mythology will recognize many demon names
• Persona's battle system provides endless customization opportunities
• You can now speed up Persona's poky battles

Cons:

• Features visuals that are ugly even for a PSOne game
• Some players of the original might not like the inclusion of J-Pop in the soundtrack
• Cheap enemies that can wipe out your entire party with status effects
• Random battles occur every three or four steps
• The game's first-person dungeons feel like miniature prisons
• The negotiation system feels random
• Good luck getting through the game without a FAQ