Persona 3: FES Edition (PS2)
2007/2008 Atlus

The Short Version- Instead of a mind numbingly slow paced JRPG that makes you wanna blow your brains out, it’s a decent JRPG where the characters blow their own brains out and splatter the walls with ectoplasmic AWESOME

The Long Version- Persona 3 is one of those games that’s obscure enough that I have to explain what the hell it is to people repeatedly, but popular enough that I don’t have to elaborate much on the Internet. Which is good, as typing out a summary of the game over and over would put a strain on the other things I need my wrist for.

Like opening jars.

You begin with a ‘stylish’ anime cut scene, and by stylish I mean holy crap high contrast. This is the adventure of Donkurai Emokido, the withdrawn-looking but inexplicably studly hero of P3, who takes the ‘silent hero’ stereotype to a new level by not bothering to name him. After transferring back to the city after ten years, our blue haired, be-bolo-tied introvert experiences, and completely shrugs off a bizarre vision of dead machines and people transmogrified into bloody coffins dotting the street. Arriving at his dorm, Emokido fits right in with his new roommates, and with little better to do, joins their ‘club,’ SEES, the Specialed Extracurricular Extermination Squad.

You see, it turns out there’s a secret twenty-fifth hour of the day, that only certain people can experience, like ‘Chosen’ Japanese teenagers, Stonemasons, people waiting on government papers. This ‘Dark Hour’ is also when a ‘holy crap how’d that get there’ huge tower called Tartarus appears smack dab in the middle of town over where the school was. Also, blob monsters with masks are eating people’s brains. The only way to stop this mayhem? Shoot yourself in the head.

Not since the invincible pit trick in Mega Man 3 have I seen such a ringing endorsement of suicide in a video game, and I say it’s about time. Kids! Feel special? Misunderstood? Grab your Evoker and free your inner spirit all over the place. Personas are summoned and equipped in a way similar to the Guardian Forces from Final Fantasy VIII, except greatly simplified and without the handicap of having to play Final Fantasy VIII. Each has elemental strengths and weaknesses, and learns new skills as you gain experience, though it can only hold 8 skills at a time leading to a Pokemon-style choice of what special move you will have them magically forget they had to make room. You can also combine Personas with the help of a hook-nosed midget thing and his assistant to make newer, more powerful ones, or more often than not the same damned type of creature you’ve had for weeks with a slightly different set of skills. There’s a whole pantheon of creatures and mythic beings you can create for yourself, which is pretty sweet when you can claim to have likenesses of Thor, Dionysis, and Satan just hanging around waiting for you to free them from their pokeball- and the pokeball is your head! BLAMMO.

Basically, this game is what you’d get if you mashed a dungeon crawler up with a Japanese dating sim. In a way, it’s almost like doubling the grinding you need to do to advance, since your days will be taken up by studying/singing karaoke/picking dialogue selections, and your nights monster killing in Tartarus. P3 isn’t as level-dependent as a lot of games though, you can get pretty far just making sure you remember and exploit the weaknesses of the enemies along the way. The fighting system’s gimmick is based around hitting an enemy with their weak element or whatever doesn’t just deal more damage, you knock them flat on their ass- and get a free extra turn to do it again. So it’s really easy, if you get the drop on the enemy, to kill em all with one character on your first turn. Really, that’s the best way to go about it. Your team mates are controlled by the computer, and while they sometimes blunder onto something useful, they really seem to enjoy casting useless spells like attack up and charm turn after turn.

You’re given a lot of freedom to customize Emokido- he can wield any weapon, and your choice of Personas will flesh out his resistances and strengths. It’s not quite Fallout 3 robust or anything close, really, but as Japanese games go, it’s pretty cool. And in spite of looking like a frail hipster kid or generic ‘mystery’ kid from a school based anime, he’s a freaking player. See, you build up “Social Links” as you pretend to care about people in your day to day life, much like in real life when you hold a door for someone and the next thing you know they’re taking pictures through your windows and going through your garbage. By the same merit, it’s possible- and encouraged- to get the little guy offscreen-laid with about every female character other than the Online Game chick, though obviously she’s moist for the little Jack Skellington too. (also she’s your homeroom teacher.  SPOILER) The FES edition even lets you make it with a robot!

So, basically, P3 gives you two games in one, and they really could be integrated a little better, but it’s probably as close as they’ll ever get to making a ‘visual novel’ with actual gameplay involved. You play through a year of school with your main character guy, and the story pretty much all unfolds on its own. If it weren’t for the need to build yourself up enough to survive the ‘ordeals’ of each full moon and delve further into the tower, you might as well be popping in a dvd. But I have to admit, the story that’s there is actually pretty good. You’re kept in the dark while creepy shit goes on and little by little they show how involved the little group you’ve worked yourself into is with the origins of Tartarus/The Dark Hour/Shadows. The ending is good too, if a bit of a downer. Basically, it’s in there from the intro though, as they fuzzily display “Remember, you are mortal” repeatedly.

Seppekumon.

The FES edition of the game makes the regular edition more or less totally obsolete. It includes an enhanced version of the entire original game, along with an expansion called “The Answer,” which is a fanfiction.net caliber appendix to the game’s story wherein Aigis takes over the main character slot and the gang has to fight their way out of a weird time abyss that’s got them stuck in their dorm. It, like the title says, Answers questions left unresolved at the end of the last game, the chief one being “What the hell happened? Did he die? How did he come back? Did he really come back? What the hell, man.” Apparently enough people asked, because normally Japanese media is okay with endings that don’t make sense or leave you with an uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach. Or both, if it’s a really good one.