Story & Playability

*rubs eyes* What year is this? What the hell is this on the back of my neck? What season are we in? Oh man I've neglected life for far too long. There are few games out there that require more than 150 hours of dedication. The two that come to mind are Elder Scrolls Oblivion and any Disgaea game (nothing like getting to level 5000). Add to that illustrious list Persona 3 FES. Prepare to kiss your personal life goodbye. But I'm guessing the fact you are reading this review probably shows you didn't have much of a personal life to begin with you shut-in you.

Reviewers Note: P3 FES is broken down into two sections, The Journey and The Answer. Also, I will save all gameplay discussion for the final section.

The Journey: There exists a time unseen by normal humans that lies just as the clock strikes midnight. For one hour, the world stops and everybody transmogrifies into a coffin. This is the Dark Hour. During this hour only the menace known as "shadows" and those who have the potential can roam freely. Those who have the potential are those who possess the power to summon a persona to combat the shadows. You play the main character (no default name given) and you have been asked to join an elite unit of shadow hunters; SEES. This group is made up of other students that attend Gekkoukan High School and all live in one dorm. Their aim is to eliminate the shadows and discover the truth behind the large buildng, known as Tartarus, that appears during the Dark Hour and to discover the dark truth behind the shadow's existence.

The Answer: One month has passed since the events of Persona 3. The Fall has been prevented and now life should be normal for the member of SEES. On March 31st, they are set to leave their beloved dormitory. To celebrate their victory over death and to remember their fallen comrades and their forged friendships, they throw one last party. As the clock strikes midnight, time skips and March 31st repeats itself. Soon after, a hole opens in the floor of the dorm and from it emerges another anti-shadow weapon who claims to be Aigis' sister. She tells them that they need to discover the truth behind this phenomenon by visiting a series of doors located underneath the dorm known as the Abyss of Time. This time it's up to Aigis to lead the team into battle and end these time skips so they don't starve to death, and to follow a mysterious shadow who seems all too familiar.

Grading the plot of P3 FES is a tough nut to crack. It's unlike most RPG's in that your whole focus isn't on the furthering of the plot by going from one locale to the next and fighting bosses in succession. Instead you have to explore Tartarus, discover the secrets behind the existence of shadows and the Dark Hour... and be a normal student. Essentially you have one big event every full moon and the plot progresses up to that point by the actions you take. You can choose to explore Tartarus or you can spend the night at Karaoke. You can spend your Sunday leveling up or playing a MMORPG to make friends.

That's what makes P3 FES' story so enjoyable. Even though you spend all of your time in no more than 10 places, the fact that you have to balance a regular life with this dark secret makes it engaging. You have to make friends and get to know your dormates. You have to take part in club activities and go on dates. It's like opening up a weekly planner and seeing the word "Full" on every single day. You purely have control over how your character develops between full moon events. By the end of the game your character will have been in love, made friends, taken exams and dealt with bullies, all the while leading your closest friends into battle countless times to save the world from a danger that nobody else knows exists.

Sadly, "The Answer" proves to be a glaring add-on to the Persona 3 experience. All the little things that made the game unlike other RPG's has been abandoned, and now you are forced to grind your way through hour after hour of battle. Essentially that is what "The Answer" is, nothing but battle with occasional bouts of plot. And since everybody has forgotten every skill they knew only weeks ago, you are back to square one. "The Answer" is only for completionists.

Rating: 9

Graphics

If you've played any other Shin Megami games on the PS2 then you should know what to expect. For the graphical nuts out there, P3 FES is nothing to write home about. Although it's come years after a game like FFX, it doesn't come close to matching that kind of eye candy. However, it does fit well with the dark atmosphere of the game.

Backgrounds vary between the sublimely creative to the drab and repetitive. On the good side you have well developed locales like the school and the mall. The are alive and teeming with life as people attend class or go to hang out after school. Also, when the Dark Hour hits, everything about those locations changes. It becomes dark and brooding with coffins and bloodstains carpeting the scenery. It has a very sinister feeling to it that engages the player in the moment. But, as I've said it's not all great. Tartarus is the biggest offender on the negative assault against your eyes. This tower is a 250+ floor monster with only 6 different backgrounds (7 in new game +). So when you go into Tartarus to spend a few hours level grinding, you are going to see the same backgrounds the whole time... just randomly generated. Note: Beware the 5th block, it's rainbow color scheme may make your life miserable.

The real impact in the game comes from character design and more specifically persona design. Character designs are nothing outlandish like most RPG's. There aren't crazy hairstyles or characters clad in a black cape, but instead you get normal styles suitable for a normal student (ok you do get crazy hair colors though). One of the nice additions is that nearly every character, minor ones included, get a nice anime cutout that appears when you talk to them. These all look fantastic and help you get a better feel for the character and their changing emotions. As for the personas... wow! There are nearly two hundred personas you can get in this game that come from things like the Bible, Greek and Norse mythology, folklore and much more. You can have a team of Satan, Michael the Archangel, a Succubus and Loki all of which have a description of their origins as well as a truly detailed makeup. Nothing like having a God of an orgiastic cult leading your team into battle.

Rating: 7

Sound

Music in the game varies greatly. On the surface the music not only proves to be enjoyable but outright original. This is not your typical RPG soundtrack for sure. Nearly every song will have some kind of vocals to it. Battle music, lounging around your dorm or searching for the boss on the full moon, you'll find yourself listening to a catchy beat accompanied by hip hop lyrics. But due to the limited places you can visit, the selection of music is miniscule. You'll have the same music playing at night and the same music playing every afternoon and in every shop. They will change as the season changes or as the mood in the game changes, but even then you are still hearing the same song every afternoon for months at a time. Again Tartarus is the main offender. Throughout the 250+ plus floors, you will hear the exact same background music with only minor changes between sections. You are later given the option to change to 4 other backgrounds but that only helps a little.

voice acting... oh voice acting. Atlus is a company I can usually depend on for selectable languages, but not this time. You get English and you'd better like it. That being said, there are some real stars in the vocal department and some real duds in there too. Your stars are Vic Mignogna as Junpei and Tara Platt as Mitsuru Kirijo. One is a rough around the edges and playful teenager, the other is a protected rich girl with a chip on her shoulder. Both well acted. On the downside you have Mona Marshall as Ken Amada and Mela Lee as Fuuko Yamagishi. One is a child with a nasally voice, the other a shy school girl who sounds robotic. The other complaint I have is that they retained honorifics in this dub. Honorifics are fine from the people who actually use them, but it's out of place when an American voice actor attempts to use -senpai, -san etc. At the same time, you might disagree with me since English voice overs aren't my specialty. So feel free to make this section higher.

Rating: 7

Fun

Reviewer's Note: I put in over 150 hours to get the full experience of this game so I could provide the most accurate review. The least you could do is give me 3 minutes to detail all the gameplay aspects. There will be cookies and milk at the end.

Battle: All battle will take place in Tartarus or during full moon events. There are no random battles. When going through Tartarus you will see black blobs with 4 arms aimlessly wandering around. If they see you, they'll come after you and try to get the opening attack, but if you sneak up on them you do. Once that happens you will go into the battle screen. As with previous persona games, you control your main character and can only issue general commands to your teammates. They will act the way they see fit based on your commands. What's good is that they do adapt to their mistakes. If they use ice and it gets absorbed, they'll say "ice doesn't work" and they won't use it again on that type of enemy. In essence battle is you making the first move and attempting to exploit weaknesses. If you exploit an enemy's weakness, you get another turn and that enemy is knocked down. If all enemies are knocked down, you can initiate an All-Out Attack, which deals massive damage to everything. Most battles can be handled without ever letting your teammates act, but when bosses later in the game come about, you may find yourself the healer while everybody else does the damage. Oh yea and I guess I should mention, you summon your persona by shooting yourself in the head. Self-inflicted violence, yummy.

Persona fusion: After some fights you will be presented with cards. They will each have either a persona, money, experience or a weapon on them. They will shuffle and you get to pick one. Pick the persona and it's yours. But the best personas come from taking those earned in battle and fusing them into bigger and better ones. You can create personas equal to your own level. Your teammates all have one persona, but you can eventually carry up to 12. Fusion is simply taking those you've earned and putting them together either by 2 or 3 and all the way up to 6 personas at one time. Level ups only earn you HP and SP, so you need to fuse personas as often as possible to get the best spells and the highest stats.

Social links and day to day life: In your day to day life you can fall in love, take part in club activities and hang out with friends. This not only is fun but is also essential to the game. As you get closer to people, you will level up what are called social links. These social links will allow your created personas to get experience boosts. Social links are fun but also extremely nerve racking. Every time you make a decision to hang out with someone, you'll be questioning whether you should have been with someone else. Neglect someone for too long and they'll act coldly towards you. If you are dating one girl, don't let her catch you with another or she'll get angry. Which person will you spend your Sunday with... 7 people asked to hang out with you then? But you can't just focus on friends, you need to study for school and work on your personality for the pickier friends. Do you study tonight or take a shot at that boss in Tartarus? Every day is important in this game and has to be treated as such. Played right, you can make it so you go to Tartarus once or twice a month. Then you can focus on studying for your semester exams and putting down the mack on Mitsuru the other 28. And just for Jak since I know he want's to see it again... there's implied sex! Max out your dates and they'll ask you to their room and then fade to black.

Conclusion: P3 FES has been called by many reviewers as one of the best RPG's for the PS2. While it does have it's pitfalls, that is for the most part true. You have a simple yet engaging story that is made to feel so much more epic by the fact there is much more to do than further the plot. You have truly enjoyable characters that you get close to and really get an attachment to. There's so much to do that everybody will be deceived by at the beginning of the game. It truly is a gem of a game... AT ONLY 30 BUCKS! That being said, I ONLY recommend this to hardcore RPG players. If you are a casual gamer or a casual RPG player do not play this game... you will never finish it. This game requires time and dedication and a real investment of yourself. To get everything this game has to offer, you are going to have to give it over a hundred hours, which is a lot to say the least. But if you are on a limited budget and want something that can eat away the hours then P3 FES is exactly what you need.

Just go get it now if you're thinking about it. In 3 months this game, like nearly all Atlus games, will be next to impossible to find without taking out a second mortgage and buying it on Ebay. Also, if you like this game please find yourself a copy of Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne. It is controller smashingly difficult, but I still think it's the best in the MegaTen series.

Rating: 8

Final Verdict

8.00 (good)

Reviewed by shoujoboy, May 25, 2008

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