I'll start with the part that requires the littlest explanation. The act of dungeon crawling in this game is completely straight-forward. Short of the fact you're climbing a tower instead of crawling a dungeon, there's very little new here. Every few levels you'll fight a mini-boss and a few levels later you'll fight a guardian (...boss). The tower is broken up into sections, and as the story progresses, more areas open up allowing you to proceed further into the tower. As you climb, you'll get lots of loot, acquire a lot of demons, and become super-wealthy. During battles you can cast spells, attack regularly, and scan the enemy for weaknesses (which you only have to do once per enemy, subsequent times fighting them, you can just look up their weakness). While there's more strategy in these fights than say, your average non-Atlus RPG, it's pretty much on par with their previous outings: Digital Devil Saga and Nocturne. That's pretty much it. I'd like to say it's deeper, but it's not. It's more fun than that description gives it, but I'm trying to be vague as spoilers in a game like this would outright ruin the fun.Now, as you're climbing the tower, you'll be amassing a collection of Personas. While there's another way to acquire Personas (who, in short, supply you with all of your spells and abilities in the game), the easiest way is to just get them from picking their card after battles. Persona are a chicken and egg thing though, you can't just make a Persona from nothing. You make them from melding other Persona. Now, the Personas you get after battle are weak and crappy. But you'll fuse those Personas after leveling up your social links to make strong and awesome Personas. What? Sorry, I'll explain social links in the next section, where it belongs. But, in short, if you haven't played Nocturne or Devil Summoner, a Persona is essentially a demon that you craft from collecting other demons during your journey. Unlike Espers in Final Fantasy though, each battle-ready NPC in Persona 3 has one Persona while you have many. And during every turn within a round of battle, you can switch your Personas so you can adapt to any particular battle situation. And in doing so, your spells and abilities change since they're all tied to a Persona. I suppose it still doesn't make much sense, but let's say that it's much more entertaining than having some dude gaining levels and magically learning abilities at arbitrary levels. Rather, while fighting your Persona gain levels on their own outside of your characters. These Persona then pass down traits and abilities to the resulting fused Persona.
Ok, the above paragraph is crap. It's not a complicated system in action, but it's terribly complicated to explain. It's fun and deep but not frustrating and/or annoying. It's the kind of hook you need to add to make a JRPG more palatable than normal, which is something the people at Atlus have been doing for years and it's only recently (with Digital Devil Saga and Devil Summoner to a degree) that we've had the pleasure to see what life is like outside of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. Well, it's better and it doesn't treat you like a child. Your average eight year old wouldn't be able to comprehend what's going on, and apparently, given the content of the previous paragraph, neither can I. But I promise, it does all make sense within the first two hours of the game.
Now, in short, the relationship and school-life simulator parts are two heads of the same beast and they tie directly into your performance in fusing your Persona and making your way through Tartarus (the aforementioned tower). You go to school to raise your skills which help you make new friends. You do things with those friends (and the clubs you join at school) to raise your social-link levels. As you raise your social-link levels, you gain bonus experience when you fuse Personas. Immediately after fusing, your Persona can gain levels and learn new skills. Obviously, these are very good reasons to go to school and make friends. At least, I think they are. Without ruining too much, yes, there are many girls you can make girlfriends out of and many people whose dramatic lives you can invade, but really... you do it to kick ass. Also, I suppose, one could argue that it's an innovative and unique way to progress the story and break up the long trips into Tartarus... and I suppose it is.
Now, this isn't the whole game. Like past Atlus titles, the moon cycle plays an important role and is the main determiner of how the story unfolds. It's a very cyclical game where everything in between a full moon is you getting ready for the next full moon. As such, it's well paced and easily digested for those who don't like to plow through an RPG. Now, while you can plow through Persona 3 like I have, it becomes pretty evident that this game is just barely shorter than Dragon Quest VIII. But where Dragon Quest VIII failed, Persona 3 shines. Everything is on this set time line and your actions won't deviate it from such. This game will progress whether you're ready or not. Thankfully, I found myself enjoying things enough that I was always more than ready for the next Thing during each full moon. It would take some pretty poor gaming to not be ready. And I think that's the greatest compliment I can pay the title. That in everything it does, it keeps me at a level where I can remain competitive in a game where things don't seem to scale based on what You've Done Previously.
While the vast majority of this review has been glowing, I feel the need to point out the following. I did not in any way like Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. I thought it was difficult, convoluted trash once I really delved into it. I recommended it to some people when I probably shouldn't have. While it does a lot of neat shit and is a nice thing to have in my PS2 collection, it is at it's core a badly paced title that happened to do some interesting stuff. As for Digital Devil Saga, well, my love for it is pretty obvious given recently decided to permanently scar my skin with one of the characters tattoos from the second game. And the other game we got during the PS2 era Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzu-something and the Mediocre Story with Kingdom Hearts Gameplay. Persona 3 hits the sweet spot between these three titles and blazes a new trail. This is a game that makes Rated M: For Mature a valid ESRB rating. Sure, you're a high-schooler who points a gun at his head and pulls the trigger to summon a Persona and a few of the characters say shit a few times, but that's not why in my opinion it should be Rated M. Persona 3 should have gotten tagged with an M because its smart. Too smart... for children. This is a game that isn't afraid to surprise you and sometimes shock you. it's a game that isn't scared to tackle religion and the concept of right and wrong. And I can confidently say that if I were a child, it is very likely that I wouldn't understand this title and would probably get bored due to it's complexity. It's deep, smart, involved, sometimes brilliantly funny and sometimes outrageously sinister. It's the kind of game that, ironically I suppose, makes the adult RPG-Gamer wish they too, had a summer break.
Also, I'd just like to add that there's an expansion, called 'Fes,' out in Japan. It apparently ties things up in a nice, neat bow. Atlus, as of yet, has not decided whether to bring this title to America. There's no doubt that this decision will be made once a certain sales number is hit. I can confidently say, that if you have any interest whatsoever in the above-described game, that it's worth the full cost of admission and then some. Don't wait for it to hit the budget bin because it won't. That's just not how Atlus works, and you should be so lucky as to even get to play this game.[discuss]
