Game Cover

Thou art I... And I am thou...

Thou hast established a new bond...

Platform played on: PC

# Review

This is my first Shin Megami Tensei game and the story follows a student of Gekkoukan High School who joins the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad, a group of fellow students who investigate the mysterious Dark Hour, a phenomenon when select people can climb Tartarus, a tower filled with enemies known as Shadows.

Exploring Tartarus

The story is pretty awesome; there are two ongoing narratives. During the day, the player attends school, spends time with friends, and does other typical high school student stuff. At night, the player fights enemies within Tartarus and tries to unravel the mystery behind the weird events occurring around town. The gameplay during the day involves the student making different decisions and having conversations with various characters, much like a high school drama visual novel. The relationships built by the player gives bonuses for the combat, such as unlocking powerful Personas for battles.

Interacting with different characters

At night, the true gameplay of the game kicks in. The player explores different floors of Tartarus with a group of friends. They fight shadows with weapons known as Personas, physical manifestations of their psyche. The player uses the various abilities and powers of the Persona in turn-based combat with shadows. There is an element of RNG in both encountering the shadows and what the shadows do, but overall the game feels very balanced. As with all older JPRGs, grinding is necessary and get a bit boring after a while.

Turn-based combat

There are three versions of Persona 3: the base game, Persona 3 FES, and Persona 3 Portable. FES is the base game with some new content while Portable is a reimagining of the original game for the PSP. While FES has some content not available in Portable, such as being able to run around the world in 3D, animated 3D cutscenes, and an epilogue chapter called The Answer, I ended up picking Portable because it’s on modern platforms, has a new female main character, and has some quality of life improvements such as being able to control party members in combat. I played through the game with both the male and female main characters and found the female to be easier to maximize all Social Links with the side characters due to more social events taking place at night. The female character also doesn’t have to romance everyone.

Female protagonist

Overall the artstyle is amazing and the point-and-click nature of the gameplay during the day didn’t detract too much from the experience. The soundtrack by Shoji Meguro is also some of the best video game music ever; the music spans multiple genres such as jazz, J-pop, and symphonic and even my barber in his 50s who has never touched the game plays the music in his barbershop.

Clicking to navigate

# Conclusion

One of the best RPGs I've played.

# Overall rating: 8.6

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