This one will stick with me for a long time, maybe forever.

It might be because of the strange overlap between the protagonist’s life and my own, where I spent most of 2009 as a third-year high schooler with strikingly similar hair, working in a local cafe and trying to figure out how to connect with others. It might be because — at least at the time — I was deep in the throes of depression without the vocabulary to properly describe how desperately apathetic I was about everything. People saw me as charming and intelligent and mysterious, and I saw myself as a blurry non-entity. I simply was, although I did not want to be. Looking at Makoto was like looking into a mirror. Uncomfortable until affirming.

Above all, Persona 3 is about time. How long will you dig your heels in before considering forgiveness? How long does it take to open up to someone new? How long do you even have left? The answers are never clear, nor should they be. Our relationship with the time we spend alive is, at its core, marked by the assumption that there is more ahead of us — for better or for worse. We can delay or we can strive, both in service of “then” instead of “now.”

But Persona 3 revels in “now.” Every day of the calendar is another opportunity to push outside the boundaries of who Makoto believes himself to be. Work at the cafe every day, and the added pocket change is just a backdrop to the human element. After weeks and months of toiling away, dealing with customers somewhere on the spectrum from hostile to jovial, you’re slightly more charming than you were before. These experiences, mundane or not, add up. A change in our being and a change in our outlook takes tremendous effort, and — of course — time and repetition. What came before builds us into who we are, and what comes next will build us even higher upwards upon that foundation.

Makoto is not alone, the dormitory building he finds himself in is inhabited by a group of students all struggling with their own internal crises. Healing takes help as much as it takes time. Over the course of the school year, these tenuous acquaintances blossom into a magnificent fellowship — the bonds between them feel lifelong, unbreakable. The more Makoto begins to find his own reason to push forward, the more he finds the power within himself to come to the aid of others around town. An elderly couple who lost their son, a disgraced monk who ran away from his family, and a woman who retreats into the virtual world of an MMO to escape her sadness are all looking for those same two things: More time, and a little bit of help to find it.

It’s through these relationships that Persona 3 finds harmony between its exploration of theme and gameplay. As the aptly named “Apathy Syndrome” takes root amongst the population, the collection of misfits within Iwatodai Dormitory need to strike a balance between saving the world at large and saving their own personal worlds. Nights spent climbing the seemingly infinite tower of Tartarus are occasional otherworldly skirmishes sandwiched between exams and days spent playing games at the arcade. The human experience is all-encompassing, and sometimes everything feels like navigating a tower of nightmares.

But the funny thing is, just as time heals, time also paves the way towards making the tower of nightmares more manageable. Tartarus starts as a metaphoric and literal burden, but ironically grows into a place of comfort. Before long you’ll bump up against the limitations of how high the tower will let you climb and you may — curiously — find yourself disappointed there are no more floors left to ascend for the night. You’ll just have to wait until the next full moon.

And the cycle repeats. Spend time with others, push yourself to be better, handle the hard stuff as best you can, keep moving forward. It all works in such perfect unison that I find myself days after the finale missing the world of Persona 3 deeply. But as much as I miss it, I’ve found myself carrying it with me all the same.

Because I could keep going on about its narrative and how fluid its battle system feels, and I could sit here and tell you exactly what Persona 3 is trying to say about our lives, but it’s the hours I spent living Makoto’s that continues to resonate.

You need to live it to feel it.

You need to put in the time.

Nocturne is the game that signaled a profound change and revolution at Atlus, and it's one of the developer's most important titles. Many of the systems in this game returned in subsequent games, and many of the themes and even the structure of what came later resonate with what Nocturne established. We even got a soft sequel in V, 18 years later.

Considering this, it was expected that when they remastered it, they would take more than minimal care to perhaps modernize one thing or another, but that didn't quite happen. After all Atlus does quite a lot to change their games in re-releases. Indeed, visually, the game has aged very well and looks even more interesting at higher resolutions. The addition of voice acting was a good choice, and eventually, they added a mechanic for inherited skills via patches, like in modern games. But beyond that, this release was pretty barebones, with obvious problems like the framerate not exceeding 30fps and the soundtrack using the same hyper-compressed tracks from the PS2 version.

But that's not a problem, as dedicated fanbases often save this kind of inadequate re-release, and that's exactly what happened with Nocturne HD Remaster. Unlocked framerates, HD audio for the OST, and a myriad of QoLs can be found in the Quality of Death modpack. Some options modernize the game, others make some things that are overtuned in the original less overtuned, and others are sensible changes like Focus (as we didn't had Concentrate yet in this one) and Pierce working with spells. Best of all, everything is modular, so if you think something will change the spirit of the original too much, you just delete the specific .dll file, and that's it.

As for the game itself, it's Nocturne. It's still that completely transcendent experience, still that wonderful phenomenon of unconventional but intriguing narrative, full of nuances, multiple paths, and that maximalist, complex, varied gameplay, both in the battle system and in the quantity of dungeons, bosses, and memorable moments.

And of course, the unbeatable pacing, the danger around every corner of those corridors, the dangerous and sometimes infuriating Fiend bosses, the head-scratching labyrinths and while I have some reservations about the Amala ones in particular (especially the backtracking on the third and fourth Kalpas), aside from that, only Wild Arms rivals it in dungeon quality. Some places like the Amala Temples and the prison were the most immerse I was in any videogame I've ever played. The remarkable, alien, enchanting soundtrack, and a completely unique visual style, from the characters to the monsters to the environments. It's hard to mistake a screenshot from Nocturne; you know it's Nocturne. It feels like the game had a laser-focused intent in practically everything related to gameplay. In a really new formula at that time. You'll always will catch or be close to fusing that necessary monster that will be the perfect counter for that next tough boss. It's so impressive how they nailed so many things so meticulously, even though the game was a soft reboot of the series and the first truly 3D game in it.

And of course, we have the Press Turn System here. I don't believe anything will ever engage so many gears in my brain while playing video games as this system. It should be mandatory for every turn-based JRPG developer to at least know about press turn. Not necessarily to copy it but to understand what is the best in JRPGs when it comes to combat.

Nocturne really has it all. It's been five years since I finished Nocturne for the first time, and being someone who spent my childhood and adolescence obsessed with Digimon (and to a lesser extent, Pokémon), Megami Tensei as a whole was there, ready, just waiting to be discovered by me. Even after all this time (and so many games played), it still remains the best this series has offered me and the only game that rivals Legend of Dragoon as my favorite game of all time. And now it's in a better, modernized, eternal version. Just as this game deserves.

This is the game that introduced the press turn combat system, and everyone agreed it was good enough that every mainline should use it from then on (and every spinoff should use some variation of it).

The combat in this game is very good but, unsurprisingly, very hard. Sometimes I'd go into easy mode for a bit just to give myself a break, especially when the random encounters got to be too much (although never for bosses). Unlike earlier games in the series, you can't really auto-battle your way through random encounters unless you're way over-levelled since you need to take advantage of press turn if you want to get anywhere in combat.

The story hits you like a brick out the gate. You're a normal student for all of 5 seconds and then suddenly the world ends with very little buildup. It's pretty ridiculous but that's not necessarily a bad thing. From then on, the story is fairly minimal and only occasionally pokes its head into your gameplay up until the end.

The post-apocalyptic overworld is fine although it gets samey and old after a while. I thought the dungeons were pretty good, ESPECIALLY the Diet Building which I think is one of the best dungeons in the whole series. I also thought the Labyrinth of Amala was very good, feeling like a dungeon from the earlier games in the series translated to 3D.

Everyone online said you should go for the True Demon Ending so I did and actually regretted it. I mean, the bonus content you do to get the ending was all really cool, but the conclusion to the story felt unsatisfying. I actually fulfilled the requirements to get the Freedom ending if I hadn't gone for TDE and kinda wish I had just done that instead. None of the other endings appealed to me really, I couldn't really see why I would go for any of them unless I was just trying to get them all. Especially Chiaki's, fuck Chiaki (I won't spoil why but there is really good reason to hate her).

Also, SO Many of the iconic demon designs from the series originated in this game. No longer bound to pixel art, Kaneko really knocked it out of the park with this one.

We are forever cursed to wonder what a definitive version of Persona 3 would look like. To echo the sentiment of everyone: the decision to not include the female protagonist from P3P or other additional content from P3 FES was bizarre, and it's a decision that haunts an otherwise incredible remake.

I finished Persona 3 FES on PS2 a few years ago, and warts and all, I found it to be a really profound experience. I'm really happy more people will get to experience this narrative, and I hope they find it to be even half as cathartic as I did.

It's a game centered around death that makes the case our lives are beautiful because they end, and that the day-to-day moments where we find small joys and connections amount to something in total we have no words for.

If you enjoyed P4G or P5R, definitely give this one a chance. And while you're at it, maybe play FES and P3P too. Perhaps it's fitting we now have three versions of 3.

What an absolutely goated game. I recently watched a youtube video essay about the amount of detail that was put into the overworld of this game - about the amount of effort the devs put into parking lots and inside areas of building no one was ever going to visit. I just think it was super interesting how (sometimes) things like that can be reflections of the love and effort that was put into the game overall. You could argue that one thing takes away from the other - nice details in the overworld vs good gameplay for example. You usually can't have both, but this game is weird because it really gives you the best of all worlds. This game has great gameplay and it is a great joy to play AND you can see the 3D modelled coffee cups inside gas station dinners in the game.

It's probably just my nostalgia speaking though idk.