Persona 3: FES

**B-rod** · June 5, 2008

Release: April 22, 2008 (NA)
Rating: M for Blood, Language, Partial Nudity, Suggestive Themes, Violence
System: Playstation 2

Where to buy: The original game is no longer in-stock and super expensive on eBay, but Persona 3: FES is a release with extra content and a sweet price. Plus, it's still in-stock at most stores! Though it's a recent release, game stores and websites would be better bets than big box and electronics stores. Check out the following for availability and price:

Gamestop
Amazon

In the Playstation 2�s eight long years of role-playing supremacy, many a title has lit up the land of the rising sun with quick battles and downright strange styling, but few of those games ever hit the North American shores. One title to break that convention was Persona 3, the latest in an offshoot series from the Shin Megami Tensei series. This particular edition was handled solely by Atlus, the company responsible for bringing outstanding, though obscure, Japanese role-playing games to American stores, including Disgaea, Trauma Center, and recently Odin�s Sphere. Persona 3 stands as this reviewer�s current favorite of Atlus� library, though, thanks to a slick melding of fast-paced battles and addicting high school role-play all supported by imaginative character design. It was released this year under the moniker Persona 3: FES, an expanded edition with extra content and lower price.

Atlus has earned a reputation for bringing in-depth, excellent Japanese games to American gamers, and Persona 3 is no different. The game is built upon two pillars, both of which add together into one quirky, addicting experience. After the first hour of gameplay, the reigns are given to the player to live out a day-by-day cycle of the Japanese school year, each day being an opportunity to build relationships with key and secondary characters. The player will spend each section of the day doing one thing or another, be it eating, playing, studying, talking with friends, practicing sports, or building relationships. Each relationship, as it flourishes under the sunlight, will power-up the player�s Personas, mental combatants brought forth from the teenager�s skulls using gun-like items called Evokers. Though the imagery is less than bubbly, it serves to bring about the second half of the game as night falls. While traversing Tartarus, the game�s randomly-designed dungeon packed with baddies, the player will use a wide assortment of Personas to unleash magic attacks to exploit weaknesses of said baddies in a quick-paced battle system. Only the main character is open to control, though one can give orders to the three remaining characters on the team, and the game puts turn-based battles on fast-forward. It�s really the star of the show, as each battle plays like a quicker version of Pokemon, setting up the right Persona to attack an enemy�s weak spot and knock it over, lining up the chance for an uber-attack, illustrated as a cartoon dust cloud as the characters go �all-out� on the bad guys. The battle system is quick and easy to grasp, but holds great depth as the player beefs up their Personas and fuses them to create newer, greater assistants. The remainder of the battling is simple fair, with each character sporting a weapon and some defensive equipment, all of which can be upgraded. The key draw is the fast-pace and the search for weaknesses in the enemy, and the player�s Personas, using different attacks and elements.

Also important to document is Tartarus itself, an old-school playing field sure to test any player�s endurance. Tartarus is a massive, towering spire built floor by floor by a random engine. Each level is randomly generated, with enemies, exits, and items spawning with little influence from outside forces. Occasionally, the floors will lead you to the exit in seconds whereas others will bring on a gauntlet of enemies. Unfortunately, this random-nature instills poor architecture and aesthetic design, as each floor will hold the same hallways and shapes as the one before it. Despite repetition, this fresh approach to level exploration will make the game a dream come true for die-hard RPG fans, as the battles and surprises in the tower will grow old much more slowly than in a traditional RPG.

With regards to the story and dialogue, the game has surprising quality for a Japanese-gone-English adventure centered around, yet again, teenagers with wonderful fashion sense. The player character takes the tried-and-true course of never speaking and standing nonchalantly amongst his peer, despite the monsters repeatedly going for his throat. Despite his visual apathy and his obvious lineage from other mute protagonists (think Link or any player�s Pokemon trainer), the player character holds a great deal of secrets and plays a great role in the story around him. Aside from him and his persistent MP3 player, the player will live in a high school dorm with numerous male and female colleagues, all adding to the �team� that battles dark creatures called Shadows. Essentially, it�s a �defeat the mysterious, evil creatures before it�s too late� story, though the characters are what bring the events to life. While each day brings the Dark Hour, a time buried in the midnight hour that only special people, mainly the game�s protagonists, can experience, it also brings the ominous tower of Tartarus, which houses the aforementioned awful monsters. Mystery-laden plot-twists come up frequently as the kids tear through Tartarus and meet new faces, each with their own link to the game�s back story and the others involved. What it all comes down to are the characters themselves, both big and small, who the player will come to know and enjoy through the game�s virtual months. The comedic, babe-hunting Junpei is always a joy, while serious-minded Mitsuru and haunted, though cheery, Yukari make each night in the dorm a humorous, or ominous depending on the day�s event, experience. Though a few bit players will come across as hackneyed or thin, the key players are endearing and worth the player�s attention and affection.

Supporting these characters and furthering to flesh them out are superb visual and audio entries. The game�s art design stands as one of its finest achievements, a surefire joy for any anime or manga fan. Characters speak with 2-D illustrations, each rendered with different emotions, outfits, and expressions. A conversation between key characters is exciting to read and hear thanks not only to developed illustrations, but also to grounded writing and shocking voice acting. The writers, for the first time in a long time, have actually managed to translate the Japanese script into a solid, remarkable work thick with real-life dialogue and charming mannerisms for each main character. Even the English voice actors, a guild notorious for heavy accents and cheesy skills, breath life into the game�s young stars and prove them to be full, rich characters. Their skill in their craft is quite surprising, though a few characters still suffer from poor acting and repetitive scripting. A young blue-haired student, met in the first twenty hours of the title, is the main offender, as she plays a constant speaking-role for all future battles. She stands as one of the game�s major annoyances and will prove to be a mental stress on any sane player. Despite this weakness, the game�s remaining characters are superb in representation, further supported by the monsters that both aid and attack them. While scouring Tartarus, the player will draw upon his own pool of wild creatures, of varying humanoid forms and graphic monster designs, to defeat the imaginative and often disturbing cast of Shadows. Walking gloves, vengeful statues, lions fused with Roman chariots, and other strange, occult-themed creatures try to cut up the teens as they fight upwards through Tartarus, with each battle a chance to meet, and defeat, a new and even stranger enemy. Artistically and visually, the game is worth praise for it�s originality and persistence in impressing the player.

Persona 3 is easily one of the PS2�s best games of the last year or so, and could stand toe-to-toe with the system�s other role-playing offerings. The high school sequences are a stat-building addiction fueled by a mysterious story and wonderful characters. On the other side of the coin, wonderful art design and a randomly generated dungeon buoy the quick-to-learn and quick-to-play battle system. The game sounds like a schizophrenic mess in description, but every piece pulls together in a marriage of addiction and lost hours. The title could easily take a skilled player upwards of seventy hours to finish, and that does not include the bonus content introduced in this re-release. At only $30, Personal 3: FES is the perfect reason for an RPG fan to give some more love to the monolithic Playstation and a wonderful opportunity to play a new, weird twist on the genre.

My choice: Buy it

The above is not a final verdict, but merely a consumer tip to summarize my feelings on the game. Based on my time with the above title, I'd either "Buy it," "Rent it," or just "Forget it" depending on the quality and how my time the game turned out.

**CapitalRadioTwo** · June 5, 2008

Great Review. The Playstation has so many damn RPGs it's near impossible sometimes to strain out the really good ones.

**DozenMarks** · June 5, 2008

Persona 3: FES is one of the greatest RPG's on the entire PS2, period, and is shaping up to be one of the greatest RPG's of the entire year so far.

It's EASILY 100+ hours, and that's not even counting those who want to really buff stats and levels and so on and do New Game Plus runs.... 100+ hours can go by in a flash just going through the game ONCE.

I seriously can't stress enough how superb I find this game... anybody who is a fan of RPG's should at the very least give it a rental to try it. For what you get out of a 30 dollar purchase, it's nearly impossible to find another game that is that good of a value.