Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 is a strange and wonderful trip into an anime adventure. You're an orphaned high school student, transferred to Gekkoukan High School on Port Island. After arriving, he's attacked by creatures known as Shadows. The assault awakens his Persona, Orpheus, from the depths of his subconscious, enabling him to defeat the terrifying foes. He soon discovers that he shares this special ability with other students at his new school. From them, he learns of the Dark Hour, a hidden time that exists between one day and the next, swarming with Shadows. Under the supervision of school chairman Shuji Ikutsuki, he joins his new companions in confronting this threat to humanity. With your school as the primary battlefield, you'll be forced to juggle two lives: Student by day, defender by night. And your greatest challenges await you on the eve of each full moon.
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Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Reviews
It's a true dungeon crawl though, so be wary of this fact before you push the buy button. It mixes in highschool antics and teenager romance to boot.
After school lets out you can go one place and do one thing, then you go back to the dorm and have a choice of going to one more location, studying or going to bed early. Even the in-class lectures and questions are fun (probably because I knew all the answers, they aren't that hard). How Smart or Confident. I don't understand, however, why they chose firing a special gun in the characters' head the summoning ability. The after-school clubs you join will determine your strength and skills in using certain personas (monsters you summon for battle).
While not graphic or bloody, it may be a bit disturbing to younger players simply due to the visual act. Except for the mandatory bosses that show up on the Full Moon of each month. You get to basically customize your character by who he interacts with and how, what he does in his spare time. How Smooth do you want him. The characters aren't that original in my opinion, but have enough depth to make them interesting and create a desire to form better bonds with them. One complaint - there isn't enough time given in your day to do several activities. You can also combine your collection of personas to create different ones. Depending on your level in these areas will depict how much interaction you can have with certain NPCs.
This game is an excellent blend of role-playing, strategy, puzzels, simulation, and classic turn-base fighting. The enemies aren't easy either, providing an increasing challenge throughout gameplay that requires both strength and strategy. No biggie though, it only contributes to the difficulty of raising your skills. If you find that the latter sounds boring, don't worry, as they are few and far-between; maybe one or two a game-month, save for Final exams. It is definately unique and different, rather than a simple conjuring sequence of pretty colors like other games.
Depending on who you choose to be friends with, and what skills you increase with your activities, will unlock different 'species' of persona, ranging from classes of angel (Principalities and Judges to name a few) to nasty-looking monsters, so there are plenty of choices to please anyone and their choice battle strategy. Overall, its one of the best RPGs I've played to date and I highly recommend it to any RPG fan and gamer. One thing I really enjoy is that you get to choose when and how ofter you want to venture to Tartarus (enemy's 'castle') to fight and increase your level. Anyone who knows me knows my video game library consists of mostly RPG, strategy, life-simulation and any game that allows you to 'play god'. The voice acting is quite good, and there is a great deal of it which always makes me happy.
Some can only be done on particular days t particular times, and unless you know what to watch for, they're very easy to miss. The characters personalities are definitely in line with main Japanese culture, and the school system is Japanese to a T, though that should come as a big surprise. Sidequests abound in Persona 3, and the benefits of pursuing them give the player access to more powerful personas and nice storylines with various NPC's. Certain side quests require specific items that are infuriatingly annoying to find, such as a particular brand of soda.
Probably the only thing that makes me a bit ill is the magic system. The character, after being exposed to this, embarks on a quest to determine where the Dark Hour orignated, and how to save the Lost Ones who die within it. Certain elements are overdone and others underused, especially the timing system. Get the FES version now though, as its been updated and upgraded. Many of these feel like storylnies from various mangas and animes, but are charming and a nice distraction from the slogging fight scenes that make of the rest of the game.
You do actually ahve to pay attention in school, as there WILL be tests. These forms only appear during the Dark Hour, a period of time occuring at midnight. Periodically people fall into the Dark Hour. The entire main storylnie is entirely voice acted, which is long and well thought out, though certain points of deus ex machina plague it from the beginning. Overall, this game is incredible, and will require at least two run throughs to play completely and get all of the potential side-quests, which are worth it just to hear the stories. Once you head for the bedroom, the days over, no repeats allowed with reloading. Those who do usually die, and in the real world, their bodies are reduced to a catatonic wreck.
The only real detracting factor is also in the sidequests.
The voices of the characters are actually capable of voice acting unlike even some PS3/360 games (Dynasty Warriors/Samurai Warriors anyone).
Bad form.
Persona 3 follows the same formula as the previous persona titles, with significant shifts to the setup and story.
Also, being a Shin Megami Tensei game, its also a worthwhile investment, as there won't be enough, and eventually it'll be above 100 bucks on Ebay.
The main character arrives at a school where an ominous tower, named Tartarus by those investigasting it, appears during the Dark Hour, and is found to be able to manifest multiple Personas after calmly walking through the Dark Hour time frame.
The Dark Hour is alos host to hordes of monsters that roam the empty countryside killing anything they find.
The main character and his allies can manifest Personas, which are essentially the core of their characters given phsyical form.
While the system is very well done, with great graphics and an intuitive style, the games designers should've rethought a setup where the characters appear to be blowing their brains out every 30 seconds in a country with a disproportionatly high suicide rate.
It has plenty of mini-quest,if you don't finish them all you can play the game again and try to do them all. This game is great.
Once you have the cards for the personas you are allowed to combine them to create personas of equal level with different arcanas. If you're looking for something fun to play either pick up Persona 3 or Persona 3 FES (it comes with the original but also has new missions) Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES. The interactions are interesting but a lot of them seem tediously boring so you kind of click through the text, you're only there for the fusion skill boosts anyhow. The game also plays like a dating sim at times which may or may not be interesting to you depending upon if you like that sort of thing. The music is fantastic, the storyline is engaging, and generally the character interactions make it a fun addition to any RPG collection. During this time you use personas to cast spells and use skills while you rely also on your characters weaponry to fight. You also have to keep your skills up, charm, braveness, and knowledge if you want to begin interacting with all the characters. If you built up your relationships this allows them to level up without you even using them which gives them new skills.
Be careful, however, because if they start to like you and see you talking to other girls they get really upset with you and it's hard to get them on good terms again. Action RPG fans stay clear of this but people who like the romantic aspect of playing as a school kid and going through a subtle progression of steps to become the popular kid you may enjoy this. One thing to note, it can, at times, feel tedious going to school every single day. but I guess the dating sim aspect of this requires it.
I'd say the most interesting thing about this game is the fact that, from the get-go, you feel like you're playing an anime.
The personas are given through a end-of-battle card selection process that sometimes appears; you see a bunch of cards, they are flipped, switched around, and you pick one.
It doesn't feel like a normal RPG in that sense but still is fun and has an interesting story.
It doesn't make sense they force you to date the girls just by talking to them (can't everyone just be friends).
Once you get through the day you can choose to go into this giant dungeon tower that appears during an hour that exists only for persona users when time freezes for normal people at 12:00 AM.
There are plenty of girls who you can talk to at school and the more you talk to them the more of a relationship develops.
During the day you build relationships and progress through character interactions to unlock higher levels of card fusion (I'll speak more of this later on) for a particular arcana of cards.
You'll have to answer questions in class (sporadically not every day and the questions are often about Japanese culture so you'll often get them wrong) and you interact with the other students on particular days.
Generally, it's a fun game but the school scenes get repetitive and I often found myself doing the day work for 95% of the time between story missions and then just grinding right before the story mission.
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