text by David Cabrera

★★★☆

“LIKE GOING TO HIGH SCHOOL IN THE SENSE THAT DAYTONA USA IS LIKE DRIVING A CAR.”

I spent my high school life in a basement obsessively playing Japanese RPGs. Realizing that my education was soon coming to an end, and suddenly nostalgic for miserable old times, I spent the last week of my last summer vacation from college obsessively playing a high school simulator which happens to contain a Japanese RPG as a minigame.

Playing Persona 3 is like going to high school in the sense that playing Daytona USA is like driving a car: the reality of the situation has been eradicated, and in its place stands a wonderful dream reality, familiar yet wholly alien, in which everything feels just right. Such is the charmed life of Cross Docking (this is what I named him: it is who he is), leading man of Gekkoukan High’s Class 2-F. The hardest thing in his life is how he can warp from his classroom to Naganaki Shrine, but, when he is done making his daily brain-enhancing offering to the gods, he has to take the train back.

Everything the protagonist gets to do in this game is either extremely special or painlessly simple: sometimes both. The game’s fast and breezy flow skips the mundane and puts you through all the parts of high school that make you look cool. Even the teen angst is glamorous: in this game, you summon your Personas– spirit beings that act like summoned monsters in a typical RPG or, more accurately, like Stands in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure— to attack by shooting yourself in the head. This is, after all, a Japanese RPG. But let’s get back to high school!

Cross Docking is, by default, the most extraordinary and superior human being in existence: this is regularly confirmed in dialogue by everybody around you. Join a sports team: you’ll take it over at the second practice. Girls fall all over you: one girl thinks it’s a medical condition, and even the robot girl was apparently programmed with the hots for you. You get the idea. The school day is played in fast-forward, slowing down only for highlights like answering a question for your buddy. After school, you have free reign to run around town doing whatever you like, ranging from no-committment extracurricular activities to eating food to raise your stats. How videogamey! How charming! You’ve got to manage your free time, though, because you will be tested: midterms, finals, and of course, a monthly boss fight. And of course there’s a dungeon to explore!

That part comes in by night: you see, your high school was built on an ancient Indian burial ground– it’s okay that I revealed this plot detail because it is false– and it happens to transform into a randomly-generated dungeon of obscene height and questionable foundations. Up in Tartarus, you run up stairs and kill things and pick things up until you get tired and have to go to sleep. Exploring Tartarus is ostensibly the game’s long-term goal, and the game explains outright that even your social interactions are in service of strengthening your summoned Personas for use in battle. However, in terms of actual player experience, the dungeon RPG is in service of the high school sim: whether you like it or not, you will spend far more time with the latter than the former. As such, I will not recommend this game if you simply want to run up stairs, (you can’t even run down stairs because when you run up stairs, they cease to exist) kill things, and pick things up. The way the system works, you can’t ignore high school in favor of the dungeon, nor can you ignore the dungeon in favor of high school. There are plenty of dungeon RPGs on the market, and none of them are secondary to an emo-haired Tokimeki Memorial. Of course, if you’re like me, an emo-haired Tokimeki Memorial is exactly the hecking videogame you want to play.

Yes, Tokimeki Memorial. I mentioned briefly that the player’s summoned Personas are strengthened by his level of social interaction. All of your important acquaintances correspond to a Tarot card, and the Tarot cards all correspond to Personas. If you hang out with a classmate (or date, in the girls’ cases), Personas of that type will become far stronger than they would have through simple leveling. Needless to say, your social life becomes extremely important. You can only hang out with certain people at certain times, and since everybody wants to hang out with Cross Docking, you’ve got to let people down easy sometimes too. Other people won’t hang out with you if you’re not smart enough or cool enough or ballsy enough, so you’ve got to steadily work on improving yourself when you’re not hanging out with somebody. Not to mention keeping your Sundays free for home shopping and MMORPGs: your plate is overflowing with meaty, delicious gameplay chunks, and you have to juggle them all into your mouth.

Your social life becomes a goal and a motivation unto itself: if you play your cards right you can be best friends with everybody in the world and serial-date every chick in school. The dungeon RPG is quite a complete and well-made game in and of itself– this is Megami Tensei, after all– but it always feels like a hell of a lot more is going on outside of it. It helps, of course, that the school-sim formula is a lot fresher than the dungeon RPG formula.

The game feels lopsided at first, especially the long, linear exposition section at the beginning, but the flow soon establishes itself, and both the game and the player quickly settle into a groove. Once you’re in that groove, the game’s really got you: I haven’t been hooked on any game lately, short of Picross on the subway, the way I’ve been hooked on this game. God help me, I’m playing a game that advertises itself as 70+ hours long and I am loving it: not only am I loving it, I want Atlus to translate the currently Japan-only expansion pack. I want more of this. I only play arcade games anymore, man. This is a feat.

O dedo chega a coçar pra não dar nota máxima pra esse jogo, mas infelizmente ele não merece. Eu não sei nem o que dizer, é provavelmente a história mais cativante que já acompanhei na minha vida. Todos os personagens são maravilhosos, a história é simplesmente a melhor de todos os Personas, todo o simbolismo que já era comum de ter em Persona foi elevado lá pra casa do caralho.
É um jogo lindo, cativante, que eu nunca vou me arrepender de ter passado o que passei pra poder ter essa experiência.

Infelizmente não dá pra passar pano pros diversos problemas que esse jogo aqui tem. Os membros da party não serem controláveis é uma escolha no mínimo imbecil. A gameplay é extremamente maçante, com todos os andares e bosses da Tartarus sendo extremamente repetitivos (além de que o jogo te obriga a farmar, o que eu odeio). A maioria dos social links são bobos e as vezes até irritantes, e o inicio da história anda como uma lesma, se passam 30 horas de jogo e absolutamente NADA acontece. Em quesito batalha mesmo, o jogo é um dos melhores da franquia pelo simples motivo de ter uma boa dificuldade e um bom balanceamento. Todo boss da Tartarus requer uma boa estratégia, e isso era viciante pra mim.

No mais é isso, eu sinceramente não sei direito como expressar meu amor por esse jogo em palavras.

memento mori

This is a review of the base Persona 3, or the Journey of FES. I will review the Answer and Portable separately.

Persona 3 is the JRPG definition of "trust me bro, it gets good." Unlike Personas 2, 4 and 5, the pacing is unimaginably slow after the beginning arc for a lot of people until a few months from the end of the game. You grind 264 floors of similar-looking levels with probably the least fun battle system in the series until the story gets better. Fortunately, I am fine with slow-paced stories if I am intrigued and see the ambition.

Persona 3 lacks an issue I have with Personas 4 and 5, too. The social links in this game do add to characters, true, but unlike 4 and 5, the characters have arcs after their introductions in the main story no matter what. You don't have what I call "optional character development" that is completely skippable in 3.

Still, though, some of the music is definitely my favourite in the series (the final boss theme is the best, especially when it's a remix of an iconic track), the MC has a reason to be a silent one out of all the Nusona games, the tediousness of Tartarus and other aspects of the mid-game make sense thematically near the end, and the last part of the game stands out from most other games I played in terms of how thematically appropriate and satisfying it is. Most importantly though, Koromaru is a good boy and way better than Morgana or Teddie. Aigis is my favourite mascot, too.

This game was of course the stepping stone for the following games, but that's just it for me.
It has fantastic music and great aesthetic. My issue with this game is it's story and gameplay. Story wise the pacing is all over the place with a lot of uninteresting filler added to pad out the game, the writing itself is alright and really shines towards the end. Gameplay wise this is a mess, Tartarus mixed with the fatigue feature is a nightmare I'm glad future games removed this for much more interesting dungeons and no fatigue.

Peak modern persona for me.
It is the only modern perosna game where I could really imerse myself into its setting and World. It really resonates with me and feels relatable in a very specific and personal way I can not tell because of anonymity and I also do not feel comfortable writing it in the review. However the gameplay is a other thing on its own. Firstly I want to say I really like the Gameplay, but it is really punishing. I could see someone that can not power through it giving up in some point because the life sim aspect unfortunately is affecting the Rpg side and it can make a playthrough really annoying and punishing. But I still really like that the life sim aspect is realistic in a specific way because I think it help me care more about the characters and their struggles and personalities. For me Persona 3 has the best cast of any modern Persona game. Besides that I actually want to talk about the dungeon crawling aspect and the actual combat. The dungeon crawling is unfortunately the weakest part of the game and kind of a series wide problem of the modern era of the persona series. The combat in the other hand is actually great yeah even if you do not give your party any direct orders. I could work well with the tactics menu. The Ai is dumb sometimes but for me it is not that bad. At the end I just want to say that Persona 3 is a game that is really important to me as a person. It means so much to me. It really felt like I found something that understands me. Like the only games that come to my mind is The World Ends with You and Flower, Sun and Rain. I thankful for this 70 hour game teaching me to value my life, my friends and just in general people that are in my life. Everthing ends at a certain point but there is enough time to enjoy life to its fullest. I am greatful to live. Even though this game dealts with heavy subject matter. It's still a game full with joyish moments. It shows all the beautiful things about life. Even how badly life treats someone you are never alone. People are always by your side. Man this shit just resonates with me. I know I said that I won't be personal in this review but I think it's appropriate to mention that.