Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The PS2's best RPG?, 8 Nov 2008
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
.....It could very well be- if you're into JRPG's and anime in general, then it's likely this will be the big shiny jewel atop the PS2's crown for you.
For those who don't know- this version is essentially a 'director's cut' of the original Persona 3- which became my favourite RPG ever (until this version came out, of course.) It has everything he original had, plus more- more characterisation, more Personas to find/create.... but that's not the main thing. This version contains the extra chapter- "The Answer," that take place after the main story (called "The Journey") Yeah- that's up to about another 30 hours play time crammed in with all the other extras!
The story focuses around a young hero (you) moving to a new city and transferring to a new school where he soon discovers he has a power called "Persona"... a power that allows him to enter the "dark hour" and fight enemies that only people with the power can see- the Shadows. He find he's not the only one with such a power and joins a school group that fights the shadows for the sake of..... well, you'll find out. ^_^ Unlike his fellow Persona-users though, the hero has the ability to command up to 170 different Personas! But the game's not all about fighting- half of the game is about going through a year in the hero's life in school- making friends, girlfriend(s) :), and various activities- it all adds so much to the game's overall experience and creates an incredibly deep world full of characters you will feel a real attachment to. And that's what an RPG should do, right? ^_^
To sum up: it's an incredible game and well worth getting even this late in the PS2's lifespan- it blows many 'next-gen' RPG's clean out of the water. The modern japanese, unique, and often morbid style of the game (did I mention that the character's summon their Persona's by shooting themselves in the head?) will easily appeal to anime fans, and even if you aren't a said fan, you're still getting a near-flawless RPG.
|
|
|
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The greatest JRPG of the last decade, 10 Jan 2009
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
A tall claim perhaps, but no less a true one, as Persona 3 has what very few JRPGs since the PS1 glory days have displayed: Heart. Real, genuine, emotional heart to it.
Playing as a silent protagonist who you name yourself at the start, you transfer to a new city and new school in Japan where you quickly find that your dorm mates are all members of a mysterious organistion called SEES that is dedicated to the eradication of 'shadows', demonic creatures borne of 'The Dark Hour', a 'missing' hour of the day that occurs after midnight that only a few select people are aware of the existence of. All you know about the Dark Hour at the start is that when it occurs, your new high school temporarily transforms into a huge, menacing structure known as 'Tartarus', a tower that you will have to gradually explore as time goes on to find clues about what's going on, while simultaneously dealing with the increasingly powerful shadows as they attack the city every month during the full moon. All this, and you must also juggle your private life with your 'night life', as you control the relationships you form with others and the direction those relation ships can take.
It might all sound a bit heavy, but Persona 3 is an absolute joy to play from beginning to end as you control your character over the course of most of a year, deciding on your own what to do with your time each day as a huge amount of choice is thrust upon you. Do you join an after school club? Work on your studies or your charm? Try to make friends with any one of a huge cast of characters? Or live the dream and try to get off with any of a number of pretty girls who you'll have to win the trust of and romance as best you can? It's an RPG like no other as the gameplay is very heavily driven toward making you form relationships with others(It does serve a purpose to the main story, as well as offering bonuses to the 'combat' centric parts of the game.) and nurturing these relationships as best you can. The number of characters with their own unique personal stories for you to invlove yourself in is astounding, as each one plays out like it's own mini-soap opera where you control how conversations go through things like how you talk to your friend/girlfriend, what gifts you give them, whether you spend time with them on holiday days, etc. It's an immensely deep experience and does a wonderful job of making each character someone you can actually care about, with impressively written dialogue and some really good voice acting(Though the voice acting is mostly reserved for the main story parts). The heavy focus on character development as opposed to OTT world ending plots and convoluted plot twists and mincing villains(Though it has elelments of these things in more minor forms it must be said, even if they never dominate the game in any way) is a stroke of genius, as is giving you the freedom to determine how you spend each day.
The dungeon crawling Tartarus sequences are where the game's 'other half' comes into play. Taking the form of a traditional JRPG, you explore randomly generated floors of Tartarus, fighting shadows as you find them(No random battles either, you decide how you initiate battles as shadows walk around in the dungeons like you do) and collecting items, fighting bosses... it follows a fairly repetitive pattern to be honest, but that's sort of the point of it in a way.
The battles themselves are normal turn based affairs where you control only the main character as the other members of SEES are AI controlled(Though their AI is very impressive, and you can set how they approach each battle, whether that be cautiously conserving HP and SP or hitting the enemy with all they have.), where you use magic offered by 'Personas'(Creatures you can collect through battle as the game goes on, Pokemon style) to use various abilities to defeat shadows. The combat is easy to manage, but can get quite difficult quite quickly if you aren't careful and don't take the time to level up as much as possible(In fact, I'd recommend playing the game on 'beginner' setting firast thing, as it is quite unforgiving in places even on normal).
Graphically the game is somewhat less than spectacular. The visuals are nice, with a good sense of style about them, but they simply aren't in the same league as the likes of FFXII or Knigdom Hearts 2 or the like.
The soundtrack though... THAT is awesome, with fantastic tunes throughout(Often fully vocal songs are used for background music too, which creates a really nice atmosphere) that fit the game perfectly.
I can't see the game appealing to everyone of course. It does have a very 'anime'-esque style to it, with many classic anime cliches, character types and storylines aped in some fashion or other throughout the game(And yes, it isn't shy with the fan service either fellow otakus :)) and it requires an enormous time investment(I finished it in 80 or so hours, and that's not taking the time to do everything OR playing the 30-40 hour bonus 'Epilogue' game 'The Answer' offered on this FES edition of the game), but in all honesty, this is simply the best JRPG I have played since the likes of Xenogears and Final Fantasy IX were eating up my time into the early morning hours. It is a genuinely gripping emotional rollercoaster that consistently finds ways to surprise and engage on a number of levels. It is a true JRPG classic.
You NEED to buy this game, especially at a price under 20 quid new. Your only regret will be the amount of sleep you will lose playing it. It's THAT good.
|
|
|
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
pretty good, 29 April 2009
Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars
Well here's a new one on me...RPG meets The Sims.
Well not quite but it does mix RPG mechanics with a very heavy element of keeping up your social networking. The story of Persona 3 sees you as a young male student, new in town and joining a new school. You find out early on that something very odd happens to this school every night at midnight: a tower called Tartarus which is filled with monsters appears, and you (along with a few school chums) have been assigned to explore it and climb to the very top. As you go higher and higher in the tower, the monsters get tougher and there's a boss fight every few floors. You find items along the way and gain experience.
Now this is all pretty standard RPG stuff. Fighting is turn based, and you have a arsenal of spells and physical attacks at your disposal. As in other Shin Megami Tensei games, all the enemies have certain weaknesses that you can exploit to get extra attack turns (and in the same way, so can they). Spells all have similar names as in the other games of the series (Agi, Mamudo, Rakunda, etc), and the usual status ailments still apply. This is all good fun and makes for battles that you usually have to think about rather then run in blindly every time. Monsters are visible in the tower so you can choose whether to attack or run past - whack them from behind to ensure your turn comes first! And if they catch you first they get the first turn in battle which can sometimes be lethal. In fact towards the end of the game, any time the enemy goes first can spell Game Over. Another thing to understand is that you can have a team of up to four people but apart from your own character, everyone else acts on AI. So you have to issue "general" orders to your team mates (ie Heal Only, Full on Attack, Save Magic points, etc) and let them decide how to interpret these. The good news is that the computer AI for the team mates is fantastic. Even when I left everyone on "Act freely", they always did really sensible things. And if you use the "analyse enemy" support function, they remember the enemy weaknesses in all future encounters and only use effective attacks. Very clever. I found this one of the best computer controlled team-mate games I have ever played.
Apart from this, it's pretty similar to other Shin Megami games, especially in the annoying habit of enemies using far too many instant death spells which is cheap and REALLY annoying!
The series also retains the process of monster fusing. As in previous games you keep a team of monsters (called Personas in this game), and as your collection grows you can fuse them together to make better ones. The slight difference is that they are not captured in battle any more (all the monsters you fight are different to the Personas), but have to be "won" as random rewards at the end of battles. These will be familiar to fans of the series, as Pixie, Ganesha, Sati, Angel and all the rest are back to entertain you again, plus a few more. You can keep a stable of monsters with you at any time and try them all out! In contrast your team mates only have one permanent Persona each, but they all have interesting abilities and weaknesses, so you'll be choosing carefully who you take with you into boss fights.
So now, here are the differences. And they are mainly in what happens when you are not fighting your way through the tower. Well, when you are not fighting monsters, you spend game time leading a pretty normal life as a teenager in modern day Japan (game-world Japan, of course!). The game has a very big emphasis on time and dates. Unlike most RPGs where time is just kind of generally moving forwards, here it is divided into days on a calendar, and each day has it's own morning, daytime, evening and night-time sections. You'll soon find out that the times of the day dictate what is available for you to do, for example, every week daytime you are at school (boo!), and in the evening the shops are closed. On Sundays and school holidays you are free to do whatever you like, but during exam weeks, you can't do anything. And in the evenings you can go out, chat to people, or explore Tartarus. What will take up most of your attention during the days, though, is trying to establish lots of social links. This means making friends with lots of people, and making clever choices in conversations so that they start liking you more. It sounds a bit lame but this is actually a requirement of the game, as the monster fusing is more effective depending on how strong your personal relations are. So get on with everybody and you'll find you get stronger monsters! In a rather mean twist, the hero can have unlimited male friends, but be careful with the girls because as relationships grow, you'll find that they get jealous of each other so you can only ever have ONE strong female relationship at a time. Kind of limiting as there are about 6 girls in the game you can potentially create social links with. I guess there's no such thing as "just friends" with girls in the Persona universe.
The game is fun and very addictive, but to my disappointment, it did verge on being repetitive at times. Each day that rolls past is pretty similar to the one before it. And climbing the Tartarus tower can start to lose it's novelty too, because the floors all follow a single standard design (it changes every 20 floors or so but still!), and some of the bosses can be tough, so you really do have to explore the same floors multiple times just to level up (the characters even call it call it "training"), which can really get tiresome. However the growth of personas is always a great lure to keep edging those levels up (what will be the next skill they learn??), and the battles are generally good fun, so I didn't mind too much. The story is also pretty good. Even the after-battle item rewards are fun: you get shown a choice of tarot-style cards with rewards on them , which are then shuffled before your eyes face down, and you have to watch carefully and then try and pick the one with the best reward on it! As basic as that sounds I found this NEVER got old! Oh yes, and one very odd part of the game overall is that in battle, the way to summon a persona is to shoot yourself in the head with a special gun! Let's hope no impressionable kids try to copy that one eh?
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). 
Amazon Home