Persona(!!!) 3 Portable.

I am going to to be honest with you, I have not played Persona since the original Playstation version. So when I had the chance to get my hands on the PSP version I jumped at it. The Shin Megami Tensei (真・女神転生 lit. True Goddess Reincarnation) series is a group of games that focuses around summoning demons. Persona 3 Portable is a remake of the PS2 version with some changes. Some of the story aspects are different. The first Persona that you receive, Orpheus, will have a different look; Igor’s assistant in the Velvet Room, Elizabeth, can be replaced with a male equivalent named Theodore (who is hella creepy and awkward, then again I chose to play as a girl so maybe there’s something there I’m missing). The choice of gender for you character affects some of the social links that you can make and also the story is altered regardless of which sex you choose. If you haven’t played Persona 3 (I’m guilty of this too) you may want to pick up the original so you can appreciate the changes to the portable version. My major beef is that Atlus sent me a picture of some dude wearing the hat that you get for pre-ordering the game. Way to be mean. This guy really looks like he’s enjoying his Junpei hat.This game came out on July 6th I also received this game on July 6th for review (I guess that’s what we get for being an New York-based site). So the element of surprise is gone.  Atlas, you can make this up to me by giving me 10 colorless demon souls (Glory_of_phire,meet me in World 3-1 ).

This is the look of a man who denied phire a hat.

In order to get this review out in a fair amount of time I did NOT complete the entire game. I did clear about 20 or so floors in Tartarus, really tried to max out the social links and live the good Japanese school girl life.


With that said, let’s get to the review.

For those who have played Persona 3, please skip this section. For those who haven’t, read on. The story of Persona 3 puts you in control of the main character (I named mine Pro Tagonist) who is a transfer student at a new high school. The story of Persona 3 takes place in a modern Japanese city, built and funded by the Kirijo Corporation. Experiments carried out ten years ago created the Dark Hour, a period of time that exists between one day and the next. During this time, most people are transmogrified into coffins and are not aware of the Dark Hour; however, there is a select group of people who are. The Dark Hour bends reality; Gekkoukan High School(Go Gekko!!), where most of the characters attend school during the day, becomes a huge labyrinthine tower called Tartarus, and beasts known as Shadows roam the area, preying on the minds of those still conscious.  The Shadows leave their victims in near-catatonic states outside of the Dark Hour which is called Apathy Syndrome. To investigate and learn about the Dark Hour, Shadows, and Tartarus, the “Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad”, or SEES (not to be confuse with C’s or the C’s), was created. SEES is a group of high-schoolers capable of summoning Personas to combat Shadows. Great way to spend your time after school, no?

The controls of this game are very simple and I feel are the standard to all games in the genre. One of the things I do enjoy is that when you’re not in battle and you’re living your high school life, the navigation allows you to fast jump to places and navigate the world.Talking to and buying from the NPCs (non playable characters, think that guy on the subway that you see on the way to work or the hot dog stand guy) is handled the same way. When there’s something wrong or the character has something to say there’s a little “!” over their head (I totally wish some of my exes had that feature). In dungeons you control your actual character as they navigate. You can choose to initiate battle by hitting or getting hit by monsters, each with their own set of conditions. Inside of fights the battle system is menu and turn based. The game allows you to choose if you want to micromanage every little detail of the battle by controlling every single one of your character’s actions or you can set their AI and focus controlling the main character. If you’re feeling extremely lazy you can speed up the battles by hitting triangle and entering rush mode. In the dungeon you can use the shoulder buttons to control the camera. It helps but it doesn’t always catch that monster that’s hiding in the shadows. 9/10

The games music is done by Shoji Meguro. If that name sounds vaguely familiar (and I mean vaguely) it’s because he’s also done work on the Bleach anime and a few other titles. The music is catchy at some points and down right strange at the others. The rap music that plays reminds me of the stages that you played as Knuckles in Sonic Adventure 2. There is voice acting in the game. All the dialogue isn’t acted out but a good portion of it is. The voice acting for the most part is decent. I am still trying to figure out where I have heard some of the actors before. The sound effects aren’t going to win any awards because they are generic sound effects but that’s ok. 8/10

The graphics of this game look great for the PSP. The artwork is well done , the only thing the bothers me is that when you pick the female main character she looks as if she has a weird lazy eye thing going on. The animations in battle are very fluid with an almost cartoon feel to them, the Personas summoned are very detailed (since they are pretty much the stars of the game). The only downside of this game graphically is exploring Taturus. For the most part it’s the same repeating textures for a couple of floors and then you get another group of same repeating textures till you get up to the floor with new stuff on it. It’s repetitive but you tend to zone out while you run around the dungeons looking for monsters anyway. 8/10

As with most RPGs there is a good deal of play replay value. So far I can already see a few things that I would like to do differently and different relationships that I should have worked on and I could have done things a lot differently (studied more, fell asleep during class). The game follows the store of Persona 3 with some story changes, so playing as the female changes things. If you’ve never played Persona 3 then play as the guy and see the story from his perspective. You have a few options that for later play throughs. 8/10

This game overall is pretty fun. Not too many games on the market where you have to struggle to keep up your study habits, manage your social life, work part time, and train to stop the apocalypse. It’s overwhelming at times but that’s half the fun. Also I may just be getting old and forgetting facts but I never had to Google so many questions before in a video game. Some of the stuff I knew off the top of my head but some questions jeez. The game sometimes looks bland in dungeons and the music is very Japanese so there are some ‘more rhymes than Micheal Jordan-beast powered rap‘ type moments but it grows on you. I would recommend this for people who play Jrpgs or people who want to be a Japanese school girl that saves the world from monsters. 8/10

Hi I'm the Persona hat! What do I and Megan Fox have in common? We'll never be on phire!