Persona 3 is a very good game that I'll never be able to forget for years. I'm a huge fan of Shoji Meguro and Soejima Shigenori myself, and to know that those two great people were involved in this game is enough for me to try it out. Then what? I'll never regret it. Even though the graphic's not as good as FF series or those RPGs by Square Enix, the character art makes the player able to know their emotion and feelings. The music is good, too, so funky as well as sad at the same time. Especially "Kimi no Kioku", which has bittersweet lyrics but cheerful tune, makes me cry at the end. This game is love, it deserves two thumbs up for everything. However, the ending is somehow... disappointing. The bittersweet ending is nice, and to tell you the truth, is one of the best endings that ever touched my heart. However, it needs more touch. I mean, more choices for multiple endings... Or at leastone lovey dovery happy ending.… Expand

After finally finishing Persona 3 (including all the side quests, 100 hours later), this simply put is the best RPG of the year. Characters I truly cared about, a plot that has good resonance in today's society, and a game system that's been refined and polished over the years, all came together in a perfect package. It's a rare game that can keep me entertained for so long.

The mix of dungeon battles and dating sim like gameplay makes it a very strategic and great game to play.

Below are my thoughts on Persona 3 after completing about 45 hours of the game. While not a review per se, most of what I would cover within one is handled here. I'm not going to bother getting into things such as how the battles work or that the game uses randomized dungeon layouts. What I do want to get into is what makes Persona 3 a good game and trying to give some concept of what makes it fun and what about it seems to work so well. You play as a student in a Japanese high school with the ability to summon Personae. Becoming a member of an elite group of Persona users known as SEES, you fight against the “Shadows” who have essentially taken over the city in ways others cannot comprehend. Each night, after midnight, a period known as the Dark Hour begins. The Shadows are concentrated within Tartarus, a massive tower that grows out of your school. The entire game, essentially, revolves around school and dorm life, whether in battle or out. Knowing this is important as Persona 3 is unique in the series in terms of how it deals with these components. School is not ignored or brushed aside. You don’t go on a journey to far off places or leave your life behind. In many ways, your success there (and in turn, with your peers) is tantamount to your success throughout the game. It is not simply a device to tell the story and further character plotlines; it is intrinsic to the life of the character. To me, a lot of the game's success comes down to two things: balance and choice. They go hand in hand to such a degree that I don't really think one can be discussed without the other. After the opening scenes, the game thrusts the player into a role that is surprisingly non-linear. The game does not force you to level up any more than it forces you to study or make friends, although ignoring either is probably going to screw you over. As in real life, doing well in Persona 3 is all about making the choices that are right for you and balancing things out to the best of your ability. This is applicable in three main ways: * A player who does nothing other than level up may be powerful in terms of hit points, but his Personae and social skills will be extremely underdeveloped. * A player that does nothing but improve his charm, courage and academics might find some new avenues open to him (certain characters won’t even deal with you in any real capacity until your courage is high enough, for example), but will soon find that he might be unprepared for pending fights against the Shadow. * A player who does nothing but hang out with friends will have a high Social Rank with his friends, but find that he is unable to interact with certain other characters, access certain places and that his own personal ability will likely be a lot less than desired. Raising these abilities is not handled in the typical fight lots of monsters manner. Rather, they are done during the daylight when the Shadows are not even a factor. Your day is divided up into sections, some of which is taken up by school (which may include some lessons or questions, although most are quickly skipped through) and some of during which you are free to make your own decisions. Most anything you do that will affect these stats will take up a portion of that day, whether it’s seeing a scary movie to raise your courage or spending time with your friend Kenji to help raise your Social Link to help out your Magician Arcana Persona fusions. Social Links can be raised to a maximum level of 10, but are not as simple as hanging out with a character ten times. You will have to improve your relationship with these characters in order to do so. The benefit of Social Links, as mentioned before, is their relationship to the Arcana of your Personae. The higher your Social Link is, the more bonus experience you will be given when you fuse a Persona within that Arcana. At its highest levels, we are talking about raising your Persona’s level several times over and likely learning all of its move sets the second it comes into existence. screen Obviously the significance of this cannot be understated as it is the easiest and most efficient way to improve the abilities of your Personae. In addition, it is the only method in which you may control Personae beyond your level as well. Essentially, it’s not in your best interest to simply fight and level up your Personae, which flies in the face of almost every Japanese RPG convention, including the previous games in this series. As you can imagine, with such a heavy focus on character interaction, Persona 3 would need an interesting cast. Luckily, ATLUS managed to pull through here. While you’re not going to like everyone, you’re simply not supposed to like everyone. Some characters are slightly seedy, others just plain obnoxious and others are completely likable in their own ways. This extends to people you’ll meet in town and school as well as those in SEES alongside you. While not all of them have their own Social Links, several will be developed over the course of the story. While you will meet many characters with all sorts of situations (related and not), the key points of the story are obviously based upon those within SEES. Through the course of the game thus far, I’ve found each member to be interesting in his or her own way. At times, there is a surprising amount of realism and, I suppose, normalcy to these characters. Their interactions are understandable, whether negative or positive. They tease each other, they look out for each other and they get angry with each other. While these are simple, prime emotions, clearly, I feel that they (among others) are so well realized in this game that it is worth pointing out. It’s very likely that each person is going to walk away from this game with a different character they enjoyed the company of the most. The flipside to this is, of course, that your character is completely silent. Silent protagonists have become something of a no-no the past several years, with talkative main characters in the forefront. In Persona 3, this angle allows you to more directly believe the character is you and considering all of your direct interactions with those around you, this is a pretty important thing. While most of your responses will be relatively simple (and some may not even have clear intentions), what you say will affect your standing with others and how quickly your relationships with them progress. Of course, being an RPG and not a social interaction sim, you’re going to have to fight. Tartarus is where 99% of your battles will take place and a lot of your time will, likely, involve trying to scale it and complete various related quests for items and money. Battles are fast paced and grow rather challenging as time goes on (particularly 30+ hours in), utilizing a system that’s based on giving advantages to those that take advantage of weaknesses (which might sound familiar to you). Even within the battles, the characters converse with one another and give you useful information. They act of their own accord, although as leader you can give instructions. This extends even within the mazelike dungeons, where you can have your friends run around solo and find items or defeat enemies. I feel these aspects further push the idea that you are the protagonist, but it also helps balance out something that could have been fairly tedious. Afterall, you’re probably going to be revisting floors many times (although they will be different every time) in your attempts to finish quests and be strong enough to beat guardians that reside on certain floors. It’s worth pointing out that not all of your battles will take place in Tartarus. The remaining 1% that was mentioned before will take place elsewhere in the city with completely unique Shadows. These story segments are not optional, although it will become clear very early on when they will take place. This again returns us to the whole concept of balancing your choices. You're going to have to be prepared to finish these battles. The game's basic construction is going to lead to you likely wanting to be a well rounded person in the game and in some ways it requires it for any real progress. The difference between requirements here and in most other games is that it never really feels overbearing or constraining. Topping all of this off is Persona 3’s excellent presentation. Its art style, even in things as basic as menus, is unique, colorful and interesting. Persona 3 continues the tradition of interesting designs, whether it’s a character, Shadow or Persona. Character art is all high resolution, the animation is largely strong, the graphics are clean, voice acting is largely very well done and the translation (whether the Japanese suffixes bother you or not) is extremely well handled. What probably sets this one apart the most, however, is the music. Previous Persona games did have more of a Japanese pop flavor to them, but the updates and differences to this title’s composition are pretty significant. There are some obvious electronic and hip-hop influences here. While you’ll get to experience this more for yourself, I do think it may become a love it or hate it affair… Personally, I fall in the former group. So who would I recommend this to? In some ways it’s hard to say. Some Persona fans will likely be bothered by the changes since the last title (arguably most by the continued ignoring of demon conversations within Megaten overall), but I’d honestly say they are missing out. Persona 3 does things differently, but I would never say any of these differences are bad. They’re just, well, differences. I feel like this game might appeal to those who generally would be turned off by random dungeons or even Japanese RPGs in general. What it attempts to do (and although most of its basic ideas have been done in some fashion before elsewhere in parts, I'm not aware of any game that has really brought this all together at once) it generally does so well and balances and paces so strongly that it’s really hard to find many faults with it. What’s there is addictive in a way that I’ve personally not found a RPG to be in years. Personally, despite being just a little more than halfway through with it (which is why I’m not really calling this a “review”, although it more or less is), it’s already surpassed my expectations and become one of my favorite games on the system. If nothing else, it should be appreciated for trying some risky things and doing them so well. It’s really worth a shot and I hope everyone gives it a chance.… Expand

Few times in my gaming career have I been so drawn into the world of a game. Persona 3 engaged me on so many levels: challenge, story, depth of character, consequence of choice. All those things merge into an experience that surpasses its individual parts. Looking at each piece individually, everything seems fairly tame. A random, turn based dungeon crawl? A text-choice slice of life game? Anime cut scenes? Nothing by itself would amount to anything special, but together its really something every RPG fan should experience (moreso if you are an anime & RPG fan...this IS an interactive anime movie). The dialogue is clever, the voice acting is brilliant, easily on par with the current, excellent dubbings going on in the world of anime, and the characters are very intriguing. The pace is brilliant as well. Just when you start to wonder if there is anything more than random dungeons in the game, you are rewarded with extremely clever missions outside Tartarus (which hold up or surpass many of the setpiece dungeons in non-random dungeon crawlers). Not to say that the random dungeons themselves aren't fun. If you have a hankering for old school, seat of your pants, 'I wonder if I have enough heal potions to reach the next save point' gaming, this is it! But when you realize that you get that, and all these other things going on at the same time that you realize this game is special. On top of the great mechanics (which will be instantly familiar to Shin Megami Tensei veterans), you have this synergy of story, character, and atmosphere. They manage to spin even the ludicrous into the story in a way that doesn't make you cringe (like why does a 255 story tower appear in place of your school every night?) The protaganists approach it in the same manner you probably would, a definite WTF? approach. Even design choices such as having all AI party members works so well that I'd be hard pressed to play the game without it. It may be annoying at times when Junpei buffs you instead of smacking the bad guys, but those times when you are desperate, and one of your teammates saves you (I live to hear Yukari shout 'hang in there!' when she heals me :) ), it just adds to the bond you feel with your virtual buddies. At its core this game is a finely balanced game of resource management and dungeon crawling. But the atmosphere and story do such a good job of covering that up that you never notice. You reap the excitement from the challenging dungeons, and you are emotionally invested in the story and characters all at the same time. I'm sure I'm already approaching (or over...) the limit of how long these reviews can be, and I haven't even touched on how clever the scheme of working in schoolwork and dating into this game is. I will just say that those things too add to the sense of emotional investment in the game as a whole. After a single play through, this game has become arguably my favorite RPG of all time (a lofty post previously held by Suikoden 2). And the best thing is, the game feels infinitely re-playable! There are so many paths you can't follow due to limited time (its a long game, over 50 hours, but it goes very fast) that you could play it a second time and see tons of new content. And I must admit that I want to see what happens when I give into tempation in that one mission where .... oops ....sorry can't go on, that would be a spoiler :)… Expand

I've been a huge fan of the Shin Megami Tensei series until now, but Persona 3 has changed that. While absolutely brilliant at times, the game is far longer than it should be and completely flounders near the end. There is simply not enough content to fill 300 calendar days; before the game is even half over, all of the non-combat stats will be maxed out, leaving you with nothing to do during the Evening and Late Phases during the days you choose not to go to Tartarus. Since the entire month's worth of quests, bosses, and exploration can be completed in two days (and frequently just one), too many phases have to be skipped to no benefit. This wouldn't be that big of a problem if the load times were not so bad, but they are. Furthermore, by the end of the game, even the daytime phases will be wasted. There are too many restrictions as to what S-Link threads you can do on what days, so once you complete a few, you may be left with nothing to do on certain days of the week. Lastly, the last few hours of the game are drawn-out, cliched, ridiculously easy, and offers none of the vital explanations necessary to truly understand the game. The FES expansion released in Japan explains a lot, fills in some of the gaps, and gives the game another difficulty, but, as the game currently stands, the moments of brilliance are too spread out to justify the 70+ hour investment. It isn't ALL bad though; six or seven bosses can be a bit a difficult, some of the music is outstanding, and the S-Link stories are awesome. However, they are not enough to compensate for the terrible endgame.… Expand

Modernized hardcore oldschool town+dungeon(tower) gameplay tickles my rpg-bone but in the end the game may be a tad bit too hardcore for it's own sake. That is why they HAD to add the easy mode that helps but a hardcore rpg gamer like me refuse to use. So the result is a game with fatal random factors that can cost you to lose hours of work. Very similar Experience to atlus' other hardcore rpg Etrian Odyssey to which this game is remarkably similar to. Only real differences are the presentation, themes and the extra activities outside of the dungeon. A must for rpg fans, even the newbies. This game will break you in or just break you.… Expand

This game is a refreshing breath of air to the series as it incorporates a rather fun aspect called social links that both power up your personas as well as help to create an interesting storyline. This game is a pleasure to play, the characters are endearing and rather different from your norm. All in all this Persona is a great game that many people should give a chance.

One of the most unique games on the market, Persona 3 puts the player in the driver's seat of living a dual-life so popular in today's anime. Where balancing one's social life, studies, and nightlife with grinding and monster-mashing become the true challenge, and one can feel the difficulty of maintaining it all. All in all, a tried and true gem, and definately a game for the record books.… Expand

I'm a huge fan of the Shin Megami Tensei series, so this game appeals to me as it is. But out of all the RPG's I have played this has got to be one of my all time favorites.

The compelling story and interesting character interactions make this game worthwhile. Unlike other RPGs which go for breadth, this one goes for depth. You don't have a big world setting to explore, but you get to know a small setting intimately well. The biggest problem is gameplay. The vast majority of the gameplay takes place in a single, repetitive, and increasingly irritating dungeon - brief stints into other "dungeons" are brief and lack depth. The combat system is an uninspired rehash of RPG cliches. The lack of direct control over your party members is maddening and adds nothing to the game. Even with the command system, they inevitably make poor strategic decisions that prolong, or worse, lose battles. The single most frustrating aspect is the fact that no one can revive the main character. When another character is knocked out in battle, you can revive them. If an enemy knocks out the main character, it's game over. This means that one lucky critical hit from a relatively minor enemy can undo hours of progress. Even with the best of planning and preparation, this will happen to you numerous times. That said, the pluses are strong enough to more than make up for the minuses. The game uses suspense masterfully and I keep playing just to see what will happen next.… Expand

I've ALWAYS hated japanime games but this one did something different. It had a great story, excellent characters and the balance act between school and Tartarus was fun. Downsides are that it's repeptitive and has bad music. So what? This game is the first JRPG to ever interest me and I like it. You will too.

anime in general needs to pick up this game as well as Persona 4. The Social Link system is an amazing way to mix up the action, and the end result is a perfect blend of dungeon crawling, monster collecting, and visual novel. The grind might be repetitive, but the boss battles are great and the story/characters are amazing. Definitely not an RPG to be missed!