This article is a repost from my old blog. Since it was one of the most active posts from the old website I decided to repost here. This is also a good lead-in for an entry I am posting soon.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 showed me that the RPG world can still be rocked by the smaller companies and original franchises to compete with larger franchises such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. While I consider the Final Fantasy games to be very solid in story, gameplay, and interest, they don’t give me the impression of style. I am a big Final Fantasy fan, but with the mainstream games, Square Enix sticks with their system of doing things and that both works well for them and is familiar to the Final Fantasy veteran. In steps Persona 3. From the second you load the DVD into your Playstation 2 until the second you decide to quit playing for the night, Persona 3 bleeds its originality and style. Even the first menu screen you see as well as all of those within the game are carefully crafted to reflect the feel of the game.

So I am ranting on about the style of the game, and if you haven’t payed Persona 3 you probably won’t understand it until you actually witness or play the game in person. The art team spent a lot of time on developing the world and characters in Persona 3 and one of the lead artists actually commented on how they first created the main character of the game and built the entire rest of the game’s art and characters in order to compliment the main character. You play yourself (well the main character has no default name, so you’re expected to use your name), a high school student who just transferred to a new school at the beginning of your Junior year. I don’t want to spoil too much of the plot, but one thing leads to another within the first few days of your arrival and you end up on the roof watching one of your dorm mates attempt to shoot herself in the head while a giant shadow monster is approaching you. She is reluctant to pull the trigger and the shadow monster knocks the gun out of her hands, so what do you do? You pick up the gun and shoot yourself in the head of course!

That’s right! Did I fail to mention that the characters strengths rely on inner dwelling powers known as “Persona”, which can only be released when the user shoots them self in the head with a special pistol called an Evoker. Well thats just fantastic. Shadow monsters roaming around during some time called the “Dark Hour”, mysterious things happening within the community and your school, and to top it off high school kids shooting themselves in the head in order to defeat the monsters.

All of this is tied together into a game with original art, story, and gameplay. The gameplay works in a similar fashion to Harvest Moon. If you are familiar with the Harvest Moon franchise then you know that your goal is to bring a farm back to life, usually within one year, but you can also venture into town to pick up goods, learn about the residents, create social ties, and develop relationships. In Persona 3 the main character attends school on a daily basis, except for Sundays, and while in school is able to make friends, increase his knowledge, raise his social status, join one of several clubs, hit on girls, or make after school plans with classmates. These bonds you create with other students help strengthen your own inner power and persona abilities. You are given one year (April 2009 – April 2010) to play the game. You get to go through every day, spending as you so choose, making all of the decisions on your own and not stuck to a static line of events. Taking a couple days off from fighting is encouraged when your friends become sick or tired from battle and need time to recuperate. When you’re done with the daily school and club activities and any other errands or things your have planned then you can get down to the fighting RPG side of things and explore the strange tower which only appears during the “Dark Hour” every night. This fighting portion of the game is in essence the game’s main purpose and objective, but with all of the other game elements mixed in you have a constant variety in what you can do.

If you’re interested in an RPG / life sim hybrid that allows you to control what, when, and how you act throughout the game then give Persona 3 a try. As an added bonus, every copy comes with an art book and a copy of the soundtrack. Remember all of the style I was talking about earlier? The soundtrack is amazing in itself, really sealing the deal on the entire game with fresh music that is rarely seen in RPGs, let alone any games.