Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES

Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3 is actually the third part of the Persona sub series of Shin Megami Tensei games, but since no one gives a fuck about the first two lets just call it Persona for our review.

To get this off the bat, this series is as far away from final fantasy as you can get, SMT games have always had very dark story lines and characters which revolve around devils, demons apocalypses etc (for those who dont know DMC’s Dante made a guest appearance in the last good Shin Megami game, which was titled Nocturne.

So basically, here’s my run down of the game’s various aspects.
 
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Concept:

As different as the Shin Megami games are from the rest of the RPG genre, Persona is actually more in line with the usual Japanese RPG’s, you play as an un-named silent hero that has a mysterious past that's slowly unraveled throughout the game and has a big part in the final outcome, your supported by a band of anime-happy looking people all of who have their own well fleshed out back stories. The real kicker of the game however is its fixed time limit game approach, you can’t keep on grinding forever, the game gives you a fixed time to get your shit together. But don’t worry, the game follows a real life calender system, and your story progresses through 10 months of a calender year, so you’ll have a lot of time to do everything you want to.

Oh, did i mention how the game during day times can easily dub for a high school simulator ? regular tests, dating, movie theaters and all.

Story:

The story involves a special period of the day called "The dark hour" that's only accessible by a special few people with gifted powers, and guess what, all of your party falls in that group, basically you have to unlock the mystery of why there even is a dark hour and what is causing it, and your ultimate goal is to stop it from existing altogether. Because as time passes the demons from the dark hour are slowly making their way into the real world and attacking and killing innocent people. You use a special gun like device to commit fake suicide (shoot yourself in the head) to bring out your special powers that can help you kill the enemies. Along the way you build friendships, make romantic connections, fight with school people and all that.

During the day you play a high school life simulator, but during the night its all down to serious RPG fighting business.

 
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Graphics:

This is probably the most underwhelming part of the game, the developers ditched effects heavy 3d graphics in favor of more vibrant, colorful pseudo 2d-3d graphics, it looks like a cross between cell shading and anime style of graphics and for the most part it does its job well, the art design of the game is the only saving grace here. That and there are no graphical glitches in the game whatsoever, the frame rate is consistent with no slowdowns either. During conversations well drawn portraits of the person talking in different emotions are shown ala classic Japanese games which are a very nice touch.

In place of lavish square enix style CGI the game uses anime rendered cut scenes, which are well enough to please most anime fans in my opinion. They’re a little too Japanese sometimes though which tons of extreme closeups of people’s eyes.

Sound:
Easily the best thing about the game is its aural representation, this is the first shin Megami Tensei game ever to use a proper voice track and for the most part it works, though there are a few dry characters here and there but thankfully those are the one’s with very little screen time, your party all sounds top notch, one really good thing about the game is that it borrows a lot of voice actors from Valkyrie Profile : Silmeria, which is in my opinion one of the best versed games ever.

As for the music, its top notch, mixing orchestral, techno, guitar beats and even rap here and there to give off a very fresh sounding experience. Personally, I'm a real softy for games or movies that have solid orchestral tracks in them, this game has a few of those too, but mostly its a mixture of all that i mentioned above.

 
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Gameplay:

The game play uses very tried and tested mechanics, and doesn't really try to reinvent the genre, which isn't anything bad, if your a fan of classic dragon quest style RPG’s you’ll feel right at home, but for the more faster paced RPG player, don't worry, the game has very active AI options in there as well so you can separately send out all of them into battle where they’ll fight and earn experience for themselves. Keep an eye out for their health though.

The high school part of the game is not there just for fun, its an integral part of the game, as your social links with people get stronger your persona’s (think of them as the FF equivalent of guardian forces, or aeons) get stronger as well, so you NEED to do all that right. Not to mention, taking classes and answering your teacher’s questions right will increase stats like charisma and knowledge, which help you impress and pick up chicks.

Closing Comments :

I have to say, this was one of my most anticipated RPG’s coming into 2007 (originally it was supposed to be released WAAY back in march), and even after a half a year delay i still loved it. Here’s hoping that Atlus will bring out the so far japanese exclusive expansion to Persona 3 which is titled "Persona 3 : FES" to the US as well, there have been rumors of that for some past weeks, one can only hope.
 
Note : This review was originally written in 2007, hence the seemingly odd final statement.