I love video games but they don’t always love me back. For instance, I know for a fact EA games don’t love me. But I suppose that’s reasonable considering some of the mean things I’ve said about them. Sadly, Persona 3 doesn’t love me either. I’m able to tell because it keeps killing me repeatedly. You see, generally things that kill you, don’t love you unless we are talking about a crazy person like the guy who killed John Lennon. But we are talking about Persona 3, which I love dearly despite the fact that it continually abuses me. Don’t get me wrong, if you let one game abuse you to the point of tears, please, let it be Persona 3. The number of things this game does right is so numerous I don’t know where to start. Unsurpassed style pours out of this game starting with the opening movie and never relinquishing until the very end of this 50+ hour game.

Step into the role of Mr. Generic RPG Protagonist Guy. You and a few other select kids have the ability to stay conscious during the 25th hour of each day. That’s when the demons come out. All others, completely oblivious to this hour, are put in a sort of stasis. The demons, which are multiplying, then come out and feed on the poor souls. So it’s your job to destroy the demons. You can each command a “Persona”. Using a seemingly magic gun called an “Evoker” you can shoot yourself in the head to draw out your persona’s powers. I know, it’s odd. So anyway, grab your persona (figuratively) and head into Tartaros, the game’s main dungeon. Sporting over a hundred floors you will make many trips back here as you strive for that next checkpoint which will let you instantly warp to that floor on a future visit. The main incentive to fight in Tartaros is to level up. Every full moon is when the demons attack, and frequent visits to Tartaros will be necessary if you want a fighting chance the next time a full moon rolls around. What do you do when you’re not furiously battling evil demon hordes to decide the fate of the world you ask? Why, you’re going to High School of course. You see, unlike child actors, you want to have skills to fall back on (in case the demon vanquishing market ever falls through). Smart, huh? In fact most of your time won’t be spent fighting or exploring at all. Each day you will go to school where one or two small cut scenes may or may not transpire. After school you may do as you please until the evening.

By far the best way to spend this time is to improve your relationships with people. Over the course of the game you make several friends and choosing to spend time with any given friend after school will result in (probably) a cut scene and (hopefully) leveling up your friend rank with them thus giving you more power. More on that later. Most of your friends fit into two categories. There’s the comedic obsessive type, such as the student council member who’s obsessed with finding out who’s been smoking in the restroom to the point of harassing absolutely everyone, or the slimy businessman who takes you on as an apprentice and teaches you in the ways of underhanded business tactics. To raise your friendship with with these loons you must agree with them despite how insane they act. Then there’s the sad type, like the alcoholic monk whose family left him or the man dying of a terminal disease. If that sounds depressing, it is. However these characters are far more fleshed out than the comedic ones, having layers of depth rarely seen in RPGs. Leveling up my relationship and seeing where all the different character’s stories go is my favorite part of Persona 3. It doesn’t hurt that in doing so my Personas get stronger.

About that. The main character can use multiple Personas. One can be equipped at a time and they may be switched as a free action once per turn in battle. Apart from HP and SP, your equipped Persona decides all of your character’s stats. His Strength, Magic, Endurance, etc., as well as all of his skills and elemental resistances. Multiple Personas can be fused together to create new ones with some of the old skills the old ones had. The higher your friendship rank, the more leveled up your new persona will be. It is far faster to fuse Personas than to level them up in battle, so making lots of friends pays off. Plus, picking and mixing your new Persona is endlessly amusing. Having several Personas to chose from with a wide array of skills is essential.

The battles are standard Japanese RPG fare with a couple exceptions. For starters, this game is actually balanced, meaning that no spell is useless. Even status ailments and stat enhancers are worth using in situations. This means that you will be making many tough decisions as you struggle, yes I said struggle, to stay alive. I’ve played more than a hundred RPGs in my life (I counted) and this is probably in the top ten most difficult if you don’t count SRPGs. Please bear in mind I’m saying this as a compliment. Let’s face it, most Japanese RPGs are mind-numbingly easy. Don’t let the difficulty dissuade you; if you ever find yourself at a part that’s too tough you can always level up. Also, there’s an easy mode available at the beginning of the game which I would recommend to non-RPG veterans.

Another big deviation from the norm would be that you only control your character. Over the course of the game you gain several party members, up to three of which can join you in battle at any given time. However these guys have the audacity to do whatever they please! Imagine if you needed Barret to attack that soldier but he was like “No way! I think I’ll use a potion on myself instead”. To be fair, the AI is reasonably smart and you can issue tactical commands like “use support” or “go all out”, etc. Actually, if given the choice, I’d definitely keep it the way it is. Having my companions automatically attack makes battles a lot faster. Also, having my teammates independent instills a feeling of comradery and teamwork that you don’t find when you control everyone. Even equipping a companion requires that I talk to them and give them the new equipment. It may seem like a needless extra step, but after I’ve been in battle for a while with these nearly autonomous people, having saved their skins and them saving mine countless times, I feel a connection that wouldn’t be there if I were simply controlling everyone.

Another reason I feel connected to the game’s characters is the excellent writing. Apart from your optional trips to Tartaros and and on full moon nights, you won’t be fighting or exploring. That only leaves reading. With the exception of Suikoden 5 and the Elder Scroll series this has got to be the most text heavy RPG I’ve ever played. Like in many RPGs, your main character is silent in an effort to make yourself feel more connected to him. Fortunately you are given countless dialog options allowing you to say what you want. I desperately wish more games were like this as it makes watching the story much more fun when you are actually participating in the conversation. For a while I was being mean to my teammate, Junpei. Junpei isn’t that bright so he’s always arguing with the more serious Yukari. They kept trying to drag me into their bickering and I usually ended up making fun of Junpei because it amused me. After a while Junpei started acting like a total jerk towards me and I began to fear for our friendship. “Junpei’s a good guy” I thought to myself. “He’s always such a team player and now I’ve gone and ruined our relationship by insulting him one too many times”. Saddened that I had neglected Junpei’s feelings I had no choice but to take his crap. Then, finals (remember, we’re in high school) week was finished and Junpei approached me apologized for acting like a jerk. He said it was because he was stressed out with finals. I was immensely relieved to find out that we were still friends and that Junpei was just mad because he’s stupid (I checked his score. It was very low). To be fair, nothing I said actually brought this about, but my point is that most other Japanese RPGs don’t have the level of depth or the quality of writing to make one care about the characters on any real level.

The music, unlike anything ever heard in an RPG, is a mix of Japanese Hiphop and Techno with ambient vocals. Slightly odd at first, the soundtrack will likely grow on you quickly. Simply put, it’s some incredible sounding music that complements the fresh feeling that’s so predominate in Persona 3. Be glad Atlus is including the soundtrack with every initial release copy of the game. Visually, the game impresses. The high def art for the characters is refreshingly different and simply gorgeous, and each character has several pictures to represent them. Animated cut scenes are abundant throughout the beginning of the game (and far less frequent afterwards). The animation is fluid and easily on par with many anime. Actually, the whole game feels like an anime. The voice acting is only available in English, presumably because there was no more room on the disk. This doesn’t surprise me considering that all plot-related cut scenes and dialog are voiced. Atlus USA went all out with this one, hiring some of the biggest names in anime voice acting and the result is something that even die-hard Japanophiles like myself can appreciate. Despite no Japanese voice acting, I give Persona 3 huge props for its localization. Since the game takes place in a Japanese city, Japanese culture is far too incorporated to change. Atlus realized this and hasn’t “Americanized” the game at all. Characters even use some Japanese words and honorifics, but nothing someone who watches fan subbed anime wouldn’t know. Persona 3 represents what English localizations should be: masterfully rewritten dialog without ever changing the meaning or tone of any given sentence.

So why, if this game is so brilliant, does it hate me (and you, did I mention it hates you too)? Cheap deaths. Elements are a large part of the battle system. Fortunately, unlike in Final Fantasy this actually adds an iota of strategy to the game. Each character and enemy has elemental weaknesses and strengths. Playing your elemental “cards” right has never been so important, as hitting someone with an elemental attack they are weak against not only does more damage but provides you with a free turn AND makes them stunned, missing their next turn. This is a triple whammy, more potent than in any game ever. Using it on enemies is great, don’t get me wrong. In fact, if you manage to stun all the enemies this way you are given the option to have all your characters charge the enemy, doing a large amount of damage to all of them. The problem is when the enemy plays your weakness. You see, some genius at Atlus decided it would be a good idea to include both lethal elemental weaknesses and the much despised rule that if your main character dies in battle, the game is over. Now combine that with 10+ floors you have to traverse before getting to a check point and you may find yourself losing the game after hours of unsaved progress, with no other option than to reload (assuming you haven’t smashed in your Playstation). Since your character has the ability to change Persona and you can see what attacks your enemy has, a careful person can make absolute certain that he is never weak against his enemy’s attack. However this would make the battles take far longer than anyone I know has patience for. Heck, if you level up a bit, most battles aren’t too dangerous (though still far more than in other RPGs). It’s those attacks that catch you off guard. With thousands of battles played by the end of the game, you can’t be expected to be paying perfect attention in every single one. I mean, there’s a death spell. A DEATH SPELL! If the enemy casts it on your main guy and it hits, that’s it. Game over man, game over! Heck, there’s even a death spell that targets all your characters. You damn well better have a Persona with strength against darkness equipped for that one. I’m sure there’s some Shin Megami fans that will eat me alive for saying this, but I think there’s no excuse for such blatantly cheap deaths in RPGs today. And I haven’t even gotten started ranting about the charm spell.

If there’s something good to come out of the harsh beating Persona 3 bestows on you, it’s a reason to keep playing. Post-Final Fantasy games and their kin give countless things to collect and do that make you stronger, but there’s no point. Unless you want to fight the secret super boss at the end, you don’t need squat to beat them. I find myself wondering why I even bother when I could simply skip everything possible and run to the end. But when I get something in Persona it matters to me! It makes me happy. It makes me think “Yes, now I might be able to beat the next boss in Tartaros”! Leveling up my friendship, getting new weapons, forging new Personas, it all matters. There’s a fun bonus card game you sometimes get to play after defeating an enemy. The cards spin around and do other tricks to throw you off as you watch, trying to pick the card with the bonus you want (Some cards even give new Personas). Later on, some of the cards have skulls on them. I was pretty good at the game, but eventually I accidentally picked a skull card. It was an exp card so I expected it to dock me some exp or something but instead I still got the exp bonus. Then something happened that sent chills down my spine. It was the text: “Death Approaches”. By this time the game had killed me several times. I knew how merciless it could be. I knew I had to get the hell out of there. I sprinted for the stairs. As I ran, a blip appeared on my radar. It was heading towards me! I could hear the *kachink* *kachink* of chains as it pursued me. It cut off my path to the stairs. At that point I didn’t have a dungeon escape item so I had no choice but to search for a warp point. As I hastily turned I saw it behind me. It was death. He was floating towards me. At that moment I knew I would die if he reached me. I didn’t know death, but I knew the game well enough to know I would die if I couldn’t escape. I’ve never had a near death experience in real life but I will say to you that this is the next best thing. Letting out a yelp, hands sweating, I ran. I blindly ran like never before, all the while watching the radar blip behind me as it drew ever near. Somehow, I found a warp point and hit it right as Death’s sickle was in the foreground of my screen. My hour of game time was saved. I exhaled. It was great.

So yeah, the game hates me, but I can’t stop playing. I’ve never played the first two Personas or even a Shin Megami game, but you can be sure I’m going back and playing any and all I can get my hands on. Even if you are the sort who has become jaded by Japanese RPGs over the years I urge you to give this one a try. It’s truly refreshing and if I might go out on a limb, in a league of its own. Strongly recommended for anyone who has played Japanese RPGs, plays Japanese RPGs, or wants to play a Japanese RPG.