Review #500: Shin Megami Tensei - Persona 3 FES

 And to celebrate review #500 I torture myself with Persona 3.

Not a good cover...

 Persona 4 is one of my favorite games of all time and my favorite PS2 and PSVita game. And I also happen to adore Shin Megami Tensei, particularly the games that came after Nocturne. And I had gone all this time without playing Persona 3, a game some people claim is better than 4. They are wrong. But more importantly, I thought that it was a game befitting my review #500 and... it was a poor choice.

 The game pits you as the new transfer student to Gekkoukan Highschool, and everything is fine and dandy until the Dark Hour happens, a 25th hour that most people don't know exist since they get transmogrified into coffins. But a select few can remain conscious during the Dark Hour, and an even fewer can master the powers of Persona, avatars that do the fighting for them. As it so happens, you can use a Persona and you're soon recruited into the SEES, a band of highschoolers that make it their job to defeat Shadows, enemies that appear during the Dark Hour, and climb the Tartarus, a tower that appears at this hour. The entire game takes place throughout an entire year, during which you'll have to juggle your studies, your social life and your Tartarus escapades.

The new costumes become useless almost as soon as you get them.

 I liked the plot, I found the idea of a 25th hour pretty original, and I liked the characters. While none of them felt as fleshed out or deep as the Persona 4 cast, they are a likable bunch. The entire ambiance of the game is darker and more moody than in Persona 4, tragedy and loss hit closer to home here, and the overall aesthetics make it a moodier game, which is alright in my book.

 Alright, so the game is divided in days, and Monday-through-Saturday you'll be attending school, except while on holidays, while Sundays are your days off. Every day is divided into Morning and Evening, during the Morning you can visit different places around town, buy weapons and items, engage in activities to boost your social skills(Academics, Charm and Courage) or engage in activities with other characters and advance their personal plots and substories, creating 'Social Links'. And it's in your best interest to level up as many Social Links as you can, since this will give you bonus experience points on fused Personas. Plus, these social links tend to be very engaging, although I didn't feel they were as emotional as the ones in 4. It kinda sucks that you can't establish Social Links with your male team members, and maxing the female Social Links means making them your girlfriends, which if you want your character to be a player is alright, but it kinda sucks if you only want one waifu for laifu. And then you've got the Evening, during which you're much more limited: You can visit the mall to buy provisions, visit the Velvet Room(To fuse Personas or undertake quests), boost your social skills or engage in one of the only two Evening Social Links.... or you could visit the Tartarus.

Attacking shadows before they hit you is vital to surviving your trip throughout Tartarus.

 The Tartarus is when the game becomes a proper RPG, you go from dull hallway to dull hallway, climbing upwards and defeating enemies in turn based combat. No random encounters here, you can see enemy encounters as black blobs, land a hit without them noticing and you get a free turn, get attacked first and they get the free turn. But first, let me talk about the Tartarus, the most boring dungeon you'll ever face. Most of the RPGing in the game is spent here, and you must climb about 260 randomly generated floors that change every time you visit them. There're no puzzles, there's no fancy design: It's nothing but hallways and square rooms. You can only save your game at the bottom floor, and you'll find two-way teleporters every 10 floors or so, which also marks a boss room.

 To add insult to injury, not only is the Tartarus monotonous to look at and explore in, the game also makes use of a fantastic fatigue system. Basically, characters get tired and their performance decreases. And if they get tired they'll be unavailable for exploring for a few days. And even better, the fatigue gauge is hidden, so you don't know when your characters will get tired. It's completely idiotic because Persona 3 requires grinding, it doesn't matter how good your strategies are if you and your party can't tank the hits, or if you don't have access to good Personas because your level is too low. So, you have to grind and you also have to be wary of the hidden fatigue system. But what's even better, throughout most of the game you'll be facing monthly bosses that happen every full moon. Whenever the day comes there's no going back, and you can't go back to grind, so it's entirely possible to get stuck in an unwinnable situation, either because you don't have a proper Persona or your level is too low because the fatigue system was so annoying. It didn't happen to me, but it could've, and that's horrible game design.

You have to shoot yourself in the head to unleash your Persona. Because Japan. 

 And as you climb the Tartarus, trying to get to the two-way teleporter you'll be running out of Mana, so... you'll soon learn that it's best to climb to the top, ignoring enemies unless they're in your way, get to the checkpoint teleporter and then climb again, this time around grinding for experience points, items and Personas. It's bad. Luckily the combat system and the day-to-day activities and social links are fun, because the Tartarus is horrible, and the Fatigue system is one of the most stupid ideas I've ever seen in an RPG. Ever. On the flipside, as you level up the fatigue gauge increases, so you can go on longer without getting tired. It still sucks, but it gets more lenient and thus slightly more fun. Slightly.

 But whatever, you attacked a blob and you started a fight, what happens next? You use your turn to attack, cast a spell, switch your persona, use an item or attempt to run, and then it's your teammate's turn and... it turns out you can't issue commands to your allies. Yes, throughout the entire game you'll be at the mercy of your three computer allies. And they are idiots. People claim that you can issue 'tactics' and thus it's a non-issue, but they are lying. The AI will never, EVER cease to amaze you in their stupidity. I may issue everyone to 'Knock down' the enemy, but they will ignore it. I will set my healer to 'Heal/support' and she'll use a full-healing spell on a character that didn't need it or won't realize when it's better to use a single-team mate healing spell or a party based one. This one time Yukari, my designated healer, was set on Heal/support, but instead of healing me, and keep in mind that if your character dies you lose, thought she could take on the boss and.... missed. And had the boss used another spell, instead of a low-accuracy Light spell, it could've costed me the entire boss fight. Because she decided that it was a better idea to attempt to attack the enemy rather than heal me. Trust me, the AI is stupid, the AI will cost you a few fights(which could mean losing up to half an hour worth of progress if you're grinding) and you'll hate them every step of the way.

Hopefully you enjoy the battle system, because you'll have to grind quite a lot.

  Once you get over how dumb the AI is, you'll discover that the combat system is actually quite brilliant, which is a no brainer considering it takes after Nocturne. Basically, hitting an enemy with their weakness knocks them down and gives you an extra turn. If you manage to knock down every enemy you can use a full-party attack that deals massive damage. The same holds true for the enemy, while they don't have the 'All-out attack' they can knock you down and get extra turns. It's a fun system that would've been even better if you could control your allies. Landing the final hit on an enemy, finishing a battle with an all-out attack or sometimes just because, after a battle you'll be given the opportunity to earn a new Persona.

 Personas are kinda like Pokemon that only the main character can equip. You can carry about 10 of them, and each Persona has their own skills, resistances and weaknesses. Sadly, Personas can only learn so many attacks and they need a lot of experience points to level up, so you'll be fusing them in the Velvet Room over and over again to get better Personas. Sadly, this is an older Shin Megami Tensei game, so you can to keep selecting the two Personas you want to fuse until the resulting Persona shows that it will inherit the skills you want it to inherit, no pick-and-choosing here.

If the reaper comes for you.... RUN!

 This being a SMT game also means that it's actually quite challenging. Many times the answer to a difficult boss is having the right Persona. Sadly, and particularly on the first few Tartarus boss battles, you'll be forced to babysit the AIs and act as the healer, since your CPU allies simply won't be able to perform the job of healers and it'll be up to you. Which kinda sounds like a nitpick, but it sucks having to maintain the health of these useless AIs. If only I could've issued orders this wouldn't have been so annoying. But nope, gotta sit there, spam healing spells and hope that these AIs dish damage. Luckily, later in the game you can relegate another AI as the healer and you can do the fun stuff.

 Lastly, this is the FES rerelease of Persona 3, which means that it has new Persona, new weapon-Persona fusion things, a few new events, new costumes and a few other niceties, as well as a pretty lengthy, and very hard, second story: The Answer. It's pretty lengthy and it goes a bit more in-depth with the cast, but it's not very interesting. Also, there're no social links and no Persona compendium(Basically, you can't summon Personas that you used to own).

You can doze off during class to attempt to mend your tired status.

 Persona 3 is.... very dated. Having played Persona 4, it was almost impossible for me to tolerate this one. Not being able to directly control your AIs is idiotic since the AI sucks. The Tarturs is very boring, and while Persona 4's dungeons were also made up of hallways and square rooms, at least they had different themes which made them feel more unique. The Social Links, while interesting, didn't really do it for me as much as the ones in Persona 4 did. That said, I can appreciate all it did for the franchise, the Social Links were a brilliant idea, having to juggle your academics and your social life with battling was very original and basically set the blueprint for future Persona games.

 What I can say in the game's favor is that it really gets better as you go along. The more you play the more you get invested in all the different subplots, the more you level up the longer you can go ignoring the horrible fatigue system and the more you level up the less a mistake from your AI allies will cost you. If you really want to play Persona 3 do it before playing 4, lest you realize just how much better this game could've been.
 7.0 out of 10