One of the best anime RPGs you'll ever play
This is a rather long review, so please bare with it.
A few seconds after you introduce the game, you are greeted with a high quality anime movie with a rocking song and superb animation that shows you what style the game has: obscure, dark, mysterious, with a very unique and personal sense of style. After that, you begin the game with yet another sweet movie. You should take this into account: movies in Persona 3 are a bit more frequent than in other games that design an intro movie, an ending movie and that's it. I'm not finished with the game yet, but even at half, I still get to see some of them.
STORY (no spoilers, just the beginning)
So, what's the game about? You take control of a high school student which name you're allowed to choose, and are introduced to a bizarre change of the world that happens every night after midnight. So, in fact, all days consist of 25 hours, one which very few people are aware of. During that 25th hour, called the Dark Hour, all normal people are "transmogrified"... meaning, you pretty much get stuck in a black coffin without your knowledge until the Dark Hour ends.
That is, of course, unless you're rather special and are able to remain concious during that hour (which is certainly not pleasant, as you may imagine). Our Hero is such a person, who begins the game by visiting a college dorm inhabited by some other people that introduce themselves as SEES (Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad): normal students that, during the Dark Hour, devote themselves to defeating the enemy that appears during the 25th hour. These enemies, called Shadows, feed themselves of human souls, and appear mostly on a immensely huge tower called Tartarus. Your job as the newest member of SEES is to explore Tartarus, try to find where it ends and defeat all Shadows you may encounter.
Shadows are stronger than any normal being, and so, to aid you in your quest, you'll get your very own angel guardians (of sorts...): the Personas. Personas are Familiars that some people possess, and are summoned by... um... shooting yourself in the head with a gun. Yes, that's right. It's not really a gun, but you WILL be shooting yourself quite a lot. There's a movie in the game that tells this much better than anything I could possibly tell you, trust me. These special guns are called Evokers, and as a member of SEES, you get one. Each person has its own unique Persona, except for you: you can have many Personas and change them as you please. More on this later.
So why defeat Shadows? Well, apart from feeding from souls, Shadows seem to be the cause of a disease called Apathy Syndrome, an illness that affects normal people and turn them into people that don't speak, don't do anything... they just stand there and moan.
Why does Tartarus Exist? Why does the Dark Hour exist? What are these Shadows and why do they appear? What's this Apathy Syndrome and how does it relate to Shadows? Many, many questions arise, and as the game moves on, more questions come forward, making the game incredibly cool in a way that you'll never loose interest and keep you stuck to it.
MUSIC AND SOUND
It's simply great. You have many genres in the game, but you should have noticed by the intro that music is important in the game, as is in every RPG game. As repeating as it may seem at times, you'll find yourself humming the music rather than hating it. An unwritten RPG rule is to never compose songs that have lyrics, because people get tired faster. I've reached 40 hours of playing game and I'm actually searching for the original soundtrack. It's just that good.
But that's not the only good part. Music fits perfectly in every situation of the game, and you'll surely feel submerged in the feeling that you're there with the characters. It's like a novel, but a hell of a good one.
Another different thing are character voices. You see, I HATE dubbed games. As long as possible, I try to get original voices, be them english, japanese, french, whatever. Original Persona 3 language is the japanese (that's the one I have), whose voices simply rock. I swear, I love each and every one of them, every dialogue, every single line of every character is superb. Voices match perfectly with each person, and dialoges have all the correct tone, expression, etc. English dubbed version... um... sucks. Ok, so maybe I'm not the right person to say this since I hate dubbing, but take this into account: it sucks so hard that somebody took his time and effort to take the japanese game and replace the scripts with the one from the english version, so as to have an english-written, japanese-spoken game. I mean, voices don't match, expressions are as overacted as they come, and so on. But that's actually true for ALL dubbed games. I mean, I'd kill for the original japanese Final Fantasy X version so that I don't have to stand that annoying hero's voice (let alone Rikku's).
Just don't let this brain-shrinking voice dubbing stop you, the game has plenty to make up for it.
BATTLE MECHANICS
I have to go through this first because battle strategy doesn't just limit to beating Shadows; you need to meet people, get them to like you, meet more people, boost your status, level your Personas, fuse them... and all of this has influence in battling. Trust me, it's a good system. You can have a party of up to four people including yourself.
So, you battle with Shadows inside Tartarus like this: Tartarus is a tower consisting of more than 200 floors (don't know hoy many, though). You go from floor to floor via stairs you have to find, and every few floors you find a Boss and a Warp Point to take you to the first floor, allowing you to go back to the Boss floor and continue upwards. The catch is: no floor is equal than the other. Not only that, but also every single floor changes its appearance every time you visit it. That's right, you visit 5th floor one time, then come back some other time and it's nothing like the first time. So it's not really that Tartarus has more than 200 floors: it actually has thousands.
You'll get a mini map with a sort of fog of war that you have to unveil every time you visit a floor. As you run through Tartarus, you'll encounter enemies that you'll have to fight in order to move on, because if you try to pass through them, they'll chase you.
"So let it chase me, I don't care". That's not it. As you go through floors and encounter Shadows, you must strike them first with your weapon while they're not looking, thus gaining an advantage of a whole turn when you enter the fight. If the Shadow hits you first, then it'll get the advantage, and if you hit it first but the Shadow spotted you, there's no advantage.
Once in battle, you get a series of commands: physical attacks, summon Persona, wait, give orders, escape, change Persona, item, and a command called Rush. Most of these are easy to understand by their names, except Rush: this command forces everyone (including you) to go with phisical attacks rather than using magic or items.
Which brings me to the following interesting fact: you cannot control your teammates. They will fight on their own, making their own decisions. You can only give an order to them, like supporting, full attack, etc., but how they do it is totally up to them. As you advance, more commands are available for you to use.
Ok, Shadows. Most Shadows are vulnerable to some element (that doesn't limit to Ice, Fire, Thunder, Wind, but adds Light, Dark, Pierce, Strike, Slash, and others). Striking them with an element they are weak of causes a Critical hit, which makes them fall to the ground. The next turn this Shadow attacks, it will be only to get up, it won't be able to attack you. During the time it's down, the enemy will be more vulnerable to attacks. If you score a critical attack, you are allowed to attack once more. If that second strike is another critical, you can strike once more, and so on. Unfortunately, the same goes for you and your partners. You can be knocked down and be hit multiple times, so be careful. If you manage to knock down all enemies on the battle, you'll have the chance to go All Out: a powerful attack that all your teammates do, beating the hell out of the enemy. That's always fun to watch.
There are different kinds of Shadows, but when you travel Tartarus they'll all look the same. You'll know what enemies they are once you enter battle mode. You can tell how many Shadows you'll face in that battle by the size of the Shadow you see roaming around: the bigger it is, the more shadows you'll face.
This is important: YOU CANNOT SAVE INSIDE TARTARUS!! The only save point it has is on the 1st floor. Some floors have Warp Points that take you to the 1st floor, but you won't be able to go back to that floor. There are others, usually on Boss floors, that do save that floor you are on and thus lets you go back there instead of starting from the bottom. But unless you go back to floor 1, you cannot save.
PERSONAS AND THE VELVET ROOM
As I said, Personas are your companions which you can use in battle. You are the only one that can use more than one, but you have a limited amount of Personas you can hold at the same time.
You can get Personas by winning them in a micro-shuffle game you usually get at the end of battles, or Fusing them. You can Fuse Personas on the Velvet Room, which is a strange room you can access through Tartarus or the Shopping Mall. Other uses for the Velvet Room are accepting requests from the beautiful lady there, who will make you do things and reward you for them. You can also save your Persona before you fuse it, and later buy it back.
Personas have different attributes, powers and weaknesses, so you can only use a power when you call the Persona that has it. They will learn new ones on time, or you can study how to fuse Personas in order to merge the two powers they have on the resulting one. Personas do level up, so take that into account.
Personas belong to types that the game calls Arcana. Fusing two or more Personas can result on another Persona which can receive Bonus EXP to level up faster. But in order to get these extra points, you must have established the Social Link that belongs to the Arcana the Persona has. Social Links will be explained later.
Your weaknesses and strengths are defined by the Persona you have equipped at the moment of battle. You are free to switch Personas during battle as many times as you want, as long as it's once per turn. This way you can analyse enemies, see their weaknesses and choose the best Persona for the fight. Unfortunately, since you're the only one with the ability to switch Personas, all other members will have a fixed weakness/strength, but don't worry, you'll have plenty of partners to choose from.
Oh, another thing. Personas don't die. You do. And if you die, the game's over. All the other party members can be alive, but if you die then that's it.
And last: you can only fuse Personas if the resulting Persona's level is below yours; otherwise it won't allow you to. If that Persona is the same level as you, but with the extra EXP it levels up higher than you, then that's ok.
SOCIAL LINKS,ARCANA AND STATS
This is one of the many things that make this game great. In order to get extra EXP for Personas, you must create the Social Link of the Arcana that Persona belongs to. In order to do so, you simply must become friends with the person that holds that Arcana's Social Link. If you consider that there are around 22 Arcanas, you've got a lot of smiles to give. You become friends by attending school, talking to people on various places and joining clubs. Some people won't talk to you unless your stats are high enough. You have three stats: Academics, Charm and Courage. You level them up by studying, watching horror or romantic movies, going to cafes, karaoke, placing offerings on shrines, giving the correct answers in class, etc. It's not that easy and it will consume much of your time, and that time must also be used to upgrade Social Links, since if you don't talk to someone for a long time, that person will be mad at you and your Persona will be weaker.
Having 22 Arcana means you'll have 22 people to talk to. Also, each Social Link you obtain can be leveled up, thus giving a Persona of that Arcana much more EXP when obtained via Fusion. It also means that the story of that character develops more and more. Some of those people are girls from your school and such, so that pretty much means that as long as you play your cards right, they will want to be more than just friends. Talking to people consumes time, which we'll be covering right next.
TIME (oh, surprise)
Persona 3 is a time-based game. Not real time, but the game consists of days that you go through with different moments such as Early Morning, Morning, Lunchtime, After School, Evening, Late Night, etc. You won't be able to make use of all those times, though. At most, you'll have three "moments of day" to do what you have to do; mostly they will be After School, Evening and Dark Hour. As you may have guessed, you can only go to Tartarus at night, since the Dark Hour begins after midnight. During those limited times you have to either raise a Social Link or raise your stats, which will make time advance to the other "moment of day". You may also visit the Mall to buy weapons, armors, items, etc., which doesn't consume time. Some days are special (holidays, sundays) and some other days will be the only ones you'll have to raise some Social Links (mostly people that don't go to your school).
GRAPHICS
Graphics are not something to write home about, although with an RGB cable it would improve greatly. Even so, the game is loyal to its anime theme, with beautiful and realistic scenery (except Tartarus, of course), great colours and brilliant control over where you can or cannot go. There's not much to say, other than after some time, Tartarus might seem a little too repetitive, but that's not such a big deal, since you'll be more concentrated on finding Shadows rather than admiring the bizarre setup. In-fight graphics are also good, with plenty camera movement and effects to keep it entertaining and dynamic. Summoning Personas doesn't involve a long and cool animation, sice you'll be summoning almost every time and so it would make the game slow and annoying, so don't expect a Final Fantasy VIII here. Not much else to say, really. Just see it for yourself.
REPLAY VALUE
Wouldn't know... I haven't finished it yet. But you can restart the game with the stats you finished with, and that's good, since it's possible you won't be able to max out all Social Links and stats. Other than that, I'd play it again just because it's so damn good...
OVERALL
I'm an anime fan. Huge. I own more than 100 series, just so you get the idea. I'm also a huge fan of RPG. Played around 30 RPG games. I'm telling you this so that you know that if I score a perfect 10 on Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3, it's because it deserves to have a perfect 10. I truly enjoy playing that game, every second of it. Even the first time I lost I was pissed, but when the game began again, it greeted me with a different opening video, so all of a sudden I wasn't so angry. And every time you feel that the game is becoming slightly repetitive, something happens that makes you forget that idea and makes you move on.
I'll tell you this: my PS2 is brand new, and I've already got 40+ games, including all 4 Final Fantasies, 2 Resident Evil, 2 Silent Hill, all Metal Gear Solids, and I still play this game the most. Maybe it's because I'm such a sucker for anime RPGs, but still, give this one a chance, I promise you won't regret it.