Played the old localized ps1 version on my ps2 console, had to put it down near the end after an absent-minded loss to a boss after about a 4 hour run of playing where I couldn't make it to a save tree. Realized I had to move on if I ever want to get to the more intriguing Persona 2 games(Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment, both having either fan or official translations for ps1). Saw how the story finished out, and I'm curious now about the alternate storyline, which to complete I would have to pick up the PSP version of the game, so if I ever return to this that's probably how I'd do it.

The rest of this is very aesthetically pleasing. It's interesting how this was the evolution of the series after SMT If... the characterization was more ensemble and casual, something that would continue on with future Persona games and SMT as a whole. The town map was the only thing hard to navigate at the beginning for me, and the dungeons too strain you to go on a bit to long with that slow, flashy sprite combat(another reason I couldn't trudge through after losing so much progress). Despite the slow pace and combat which is so true-to-form for this series, the strengths of the world still came through here in the personality of the world, the characters, the monsters(including a basketball ghost and a demon toilet), the gambling minigames in the shady mall, the twin-peaks inspired velvet room(with one of the more interesting methods for fusion), the charm of the ps1 textured marble floors in the corporate building, the memorable soundtrack, and the hokey parallel-world story that's just campy and kindhearted enough for me to still look up the finish. Though I'm moving on in this series out of necessity I can say definitively that I did enjoy my time with this one, and I'd recommend it to all curious SMT fans, especially if you have the patience to get on board with the more dated elements.

I've already made a review for the PS1 ver. of Revelations: Persona through the Google Review system, so I'll simply repost my review of the game here: Revelations: Persona is often lauded as one of the worst localizations of a formally foreign game ever, and the first Persona game often gets overlooked anyways. However, not only is the ignoring of this hidden gem un-warranted, but also, it's localizations issues don't hold much water. To begin with, there is no doubt that the localization hasn't aged well. It's full of 90's jank, and can be questionable and cring-worthy at times. However, this isn't game breaking in any way, and frankly, didn't take away from my personal experience at all. Also, the design and name changes made to the characters actually, at least in my personal opinion, help someone from the West assimilate into the earlier Persona games (With the exception of the name changes the enemies received, which take away any mythological connections they had). The game still has a solid, engaging, story, and a darker atmosphere I really appreciate in the older games. I also liked the philosophical questions the game would throw at you through the entirety of the narrative. The only real issue with this game is the outdated graphics, and the gameplay. Navigation can be a bit confusing at first, and gameplay, while it shares the fundamental basics of more recent Persona games, is a bit frustrating to assimilate to. However, I think this game is worth checking out for any fan of the Persona series, and the localization shouldn't scare anyone, as it isn't that bad. (P.S.: Also, if your like me, and give the protagonist your real name, and you happen to have a western name, your name is gonna fit in much better than it would in later Persona games, which does help with immersion)

played snow queen on psx. god i love this game, sure it's janky as hell but it's got something special. idk if it's the weird ass atmospheric ost or the frankly amazing graphics and design, but i'm completely sold.

revelations: persona is just so likeable. the sebec translation, while obviously cringeworthy nowadays considering how hard it wanted to be some working designs type localization, doesn't really ruin the game for me. what is a dealbreaker tho is the lack of the snow queen quest, which is an alternate storyline present in the game which for some reason has been left out. it is still in the game disc tho: you can re enable it with some cheatcodes, but none of the dialogue is translated. but trust me when i say there's some cool shit here they removed from the psp version. i love for example that the sqq final boss just screams the spells they're casting. like "MAHAZANDAIN!!! DIARAMA!!! MAHAJIODAIN!!!". it's so cool lol, while in the psp version it's just a boring ass grin.

if you want to play the original game, as the designers intended, i recommend playing the PS1 version with a walkthrough. yes, it's slow, yes the psp remaster has more animation, and yes, it does have some really weird design choices/mistakes corrected in the psp version. but still, the soundtrack is probably my favourite from megaten, and playing this on a PS1 is just magical man. it's no secret that i've had some sort of weird fascination with old, janky, and overly ambitious video games, which is why i'm so drawn to games like koudelka, phantasy star 2, megami tensei 2., or pretty much all from software games prior to demon's souls, but this game man. it's so different than all other rpgs of the era i've played, specially in the artistic design department. also the music is amazing, sometimes it sounds like something out of a modern indie game or something. in a way, revelations: persona is the anti rpg, it does absolutely everything to be annoying (slow ass battles, janky localization, maze-like dungeons, etc) but somehow it manages to charming and emotional, in a way which few games have made me feel. somehow, a lot of it's design is incredibly forward-looking, which is amazing coming from a game dev who was previously making the wizardry-like snes smt games.

in conclusion, i gotta say this game is among my favourites. it just hits something within me, idk what is it, but it completely fullfills my thirst for weird PS1 games. if you can play this on a real psx with a crt, definetly go for it, but don't expect a persona game, it's just not. it's not even like persona 2 or soul hackers, in a way it's a lot more old school, but in others it's a lot more modern.

i can't really say if you'll like this honestly, i think it's more approachable if you grew up with a PS1 or a W98 pc and played games of that era. all the hate for this game kinda reminds me of when i showed a friend from school, who said he loved re4, old resident evil 1 on my psx. he thought it looked horrible, he felt it was clunky, hated the tank controls, and said the music and dialogue were so muffled they were incomprehensible (keep in mind this was in the early ps3 era), and honestly i do understand him. but at the same time, all this jank just resonates with me in a way i can't explain. i'll leave it at that i guess.

i think when you play this game, you really have to go into it with a certain mindset. yes, the PS1 version's translation is dogshit (there are several typos and just outright awful translations, and some things were not vetted (i.e. the art director being listed as "Kazma Kaneko" instead of "Kazuma Kaneko")), there's a very large lack of conveyance for what the game mechanics are and how they function, and a lot of mechanics, such as demon/persona management and demon negotiation, are very, very rough here.

but, i still enjoyed it. i think a lot of it has to do with the fact that persona 1 lives and dies by its tone. there's a much greater emphasis on feeling out of place, on abandonment, on vulnerability (including the unwillingness to embrace it), and on human fragility. i don't think everything in the narrative is done perfectly, but for 1996? this is very complex, intricate, heady, and intimate.

i will disclose that it took me a while to warm up to this game. there were several points where i debated dropping it, and i'd be outright lying if i didn't state that it was one of the games i looked forward to the least in my game rotation for a good deal of time. i think a very large part of this is in the lack of conveyance i mentioned earlier. it felt like only about 75% of the way through the game that i actually got a competent grasp of the mechanics (mostly because the game never explains them to you, the translation is awful, and decent persona 1 guides are hard to come by).

that should also inform you of the fact that this game is very lop-sided with its difficulty. i was able to essentially brute-force my way through the lion's share of the game because SP recovers as you navigate in the overworld. this means that you can basically use healall (mediarama) in every fight and barely feel any cost. i can name the two instances where i saw a game over screen, but for the sake of keeping this review spoiler-free, i'll just say that they didn't feel like organic points of challenge and were sproadically unfair moments. i suspect that regenerating SP was a late addition to the gameplay formula because of how utterly broken it is and how it invalidates the need to use healing springs. i can't say i blame them. i shudder to imagine how much more agonizing navigation would be in this game and its dungeons without it.

also, this is an aside, but i extremely dislike the way this game distributes experience. instead of dividing it evenly amongst all party members, they base it on how active party members are and what they do during battle, but it's completely arbitrary and will just result in 1-2 characters being experience hogs while everyone else falls behind. it's very clunky, and although it's intuitive, it makes the game needlessly tedious. it's a missed opportunity. i could see them doing something similar to Final Fantasy II with it, but it's just not transparent enough for the player to figure out to be worth doing, at least in this state.

if you go into this game with "overlooked PS1 JRPG" expectations, you will probably enjoy this. again, it's very rough around the edges, but it's enjoyable, and it did a lot with very little. this game has a very specific feeling to it that a lot of games haven't given me, and part of it is probably 90s iconography nostalgia on my part, but it's also something unique in its favor. honestly, if the translation were better, i'd probably have bumped this rating up higher. all i can say is that i am now extremely interested in getting my hands on the PSP remake of this game, because i would love to see what this looks like with better execution.

possibly my favorite game of all time, the localization here is a meme so it's not exactly this version that i'm talking about, but everything about this game just comes together for me. it's got the most impeccable atmosphere i've ever seen in any game, and i think it expresses its themes better than any other game in the series, it just sticks in my mind and has done so for the past 2 years straight. and yes i even find the gameplay pretty fun.

it's the one and the only, Record of Another Goddess: Persona.... wish i lived in a world where it was called that and the PS1 version had a decent localization lol