I got sick and missed five days of Persona 3. I was hoping to finish this game sooner than this, but a foreign invader to my system had other plans. Fortunately, my heroic defensive army of white blood cells was able to stay off, and I am back to 100 percent! I managed to finish Persona 3: Portable last night, so now I need to figure out how to write about it. I'm a lot over it, and that memoir idea seems like too much work. Instead, I'll write a boring review. But, like, an actual professional one. Can I write eight hundred words without coequals or slang while also telling all about the game? Probably not, but I'm "gonna" try!
Persona 3 Portable is a PSP remake of the PlayStation console version. As far as I can tell, it's mostly the same game with bug fixes and some additional content. There's a list of changes online, and there's even another version called "FES." The P3 series is a strange beast.
The biggest difference is probably in the graphics. Most of the game is displayed in the same style as visual novel games. On the console, though, many key scenes have anime cutscenes. On the PSP, though, it's all in the graphic novel style. The character portraits and voice acting are high quality, but I think I'm missing something with what I got. I like emotes, I guess.
You play as a silent high schooler who has transferred to a new school. [Insert name here] has a dark and mysterious past, which is touched upon at first. It then goes away until the great reveal towards the end of the game. We get vague ideas of changing the future, but it's a mess that doesn't make any sense at the time. Even after, I don't think it makes sense.
The gameplay of P3 falls into two categories. The main character, named Makoto, is a high school junior. This means he needs to navigate the perils of high school! It's simplified, so you don't have to sit through eight hours of education, but you'll still need to think about midterms and finals. To get the most out of the game, he'll also need to create and strengthen relationships with classmates and others around the town. You can only spend time with one or two people a day, so you'll need to manage how you spend those hours. Every character has an interesting backstory and personality, and I loved experiencing them. There are twenty two people Mikoto can befriend during the game, and I'm disappointed I couldn't meet them all. Some of my personal favorites are the girl at the shrine, the dying man at the same place, and the girl whose heart I broke. Sorry, Yoko, but Yukari is a main character.
But that's the day! Night is when plot advances and when your team will climb the tower of Tartarus. Tartarus has us walking through a random assortment of hallways, fighting a less-than-varied amount of monsters, and collecting treasures. Occasionally something will break up both of these situations. Midterms/finals and summer vacation, for example. On nights will a full moon, we get to explore a unique dungeon to save the city from the attacking shadows, the early game antagonists.
The setting is a mid-level Japanese city with a dark history. Every night, between 12 AM and 1 AM, something called the Dark Hour happens. Dark Hour is when the average human being transmogrifies into a coffin and when Shadows attack the city. They look for Persona users, which Mikoto and friends are, and attack them. While we battle the monsters, we learn where they came from, how they tie into our characters' past, and how to save the future! As well as finding new, more dangerous threats to humanity.
Battles take place in a turn based fashion where agility matters. But there's a lot more to it than that! Most enemies have strengths and weaknesses, which you need to exploit to get through them in a timely manner. Whenever you find an elemental weakness, you get a free attack. If you use that extra on every enemy in the battle, knocking them down, you get a massive, teamwide attack, which does more damage than all four characters attacking separately. It's a lot of fun and rewarding and something I'd like to see in more RPGs.
The most glaring downside about P3 is how repetitive and monotonous it is. High school is the same, regardless of country, so there's not much they could have done to change that up, but Tartarous is awful. It's the same hallways for 250 floors. Most of the mobs are palette swaps of each other, so don't expect much variation there. Half of the game takes place here, but there's nothing to set it apart. Sometimes the floors will change, but that's it. It's the opposite of fun. The music also gets pretty aggravating after a while. It's fun at thirst, but you can only hear the same opening notes of the same few songs before you go mad. If I have to hear "put you in a trance" one more time, I'll bash my head into the wall. And it's even worse in Tartarous! There are 250 floors and one music track that restarts after every fight and stairwell. You can ask Fuuka to play one of four other songs, but they're not much better.
Persona 3 ate my soul for fifty hours, but the last twenty started to drag out too long. If you can get past the repetition, there are a lot of fun and heartfelt moments of character growth to experience. The main and secondary characters all shine, and even the droning music is fantastic in small doses. P3 was my first Persona game, but call me a fan. 7/10
Hey, I did it. Also, the ending sucks, but you only find it out if you look for some of the other sequel stuff. Knowing that twist takes away another point, so I give Persona 3: Portable a 6 out of 10. It's a lot of fun, but it can really overstay its welcome.
But P3 really hit on something that made me feel things I'm uncertain of. Having Makoto live through high school made me reflect on my school experience. Many people consider/ed that time to be the best four years of their life. I, though, hated it. Maybe it's because I tried to spend as little time in school as possible, showing up five minutes late and being one of the first out the door, but this game made me want to give those four years another shot. I can't, obviously, and I promise I'm not gonna make national headlines when I get caught trying. I can't go back, and I can't make new experiences during an important time in human development. I don't know what was better, college or high school, but wouldn't it be nice to look back on your last years of freedom fondly?
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