Nintendo Okie

I’ve spent a lot of time playing my PS2; so much so that I wore it out and had to buy another.  The majority of my time was spent playing Gundam games but ever since I discovered the Persona series, Amuro Ray has been fighting the One Year War without me.  I am slowly working my way backwards through the Persona series and this time I am talking about Persona 3 FES.

What You Need To Know
P3F is about a group of Japanese, high school students that have the uncanny ability to experience a 25th hour of the day; they call it the Dark Hour.  During this hour, normal people transmogrify into coffins and a huge tower called Tartarus erupts from the ground of Gekkoukan High School.  In order to discover the origins of the Dark Hour these high school students, with you as their leader, fight shadow creatures as they climb to the top of Tartarus.  The complete story of P3F is divided into two parts; The Journey (70+ hours) and The Answer (30+ hours).  The Journey is the story of the original Persona 3 and The Answer is a new story arc currently only available in this version.  The combat is standard, turn based JRPG fighting where your use your persona (think of them as a Final Fantasy summons) to cast spells and attack the enemy.  The added touch of the Persona 3 lies in the social interactions you can have with your schoolmates.  As you spend more time with your friends, you will be able to summon more powerful personas linked to each social interaction character.  Not only do you have to unravel the mystery behind Tartarus and spend time socializing with those around you, you also have to lead the life of a normal high school student; part time jobs, homework, school clubs, etc.  It can all seem very overwhelming at first but since P3F requires a significant amount of time to complete, you will have your daily routine down to a science by the time you reach the credits.  And don’t think you can just ignore your friend because they will get angry with you plus you will be denying yourself of one of the games strongest suits.

Fantastic Story
Without a story a JRPG would be nothing more than a repetitive, monster fighting game.  An interesting story is the best reason to play a single game for over 70 hours.   P3F has well written characters with real life problems.  As you spend hour after hour with your teammates, it’s hard not to care about their lives and you want to help them where you can.  Not only are the small story arcs great but the overall story of trying to rid the world of the Dark Hour is very anime like; it resonates well with me and probably anyone that wants to play a JRPG.

Crippling AI Teammates
You do not have direct control over your party members and that is a problem.  Generally, it is only a minor nuisance as the AI follows its own battle strategy rather than your own.  However, when you are in a clutch situation (a boss battle, near death, etc.) it can be infuriating.  Best I can tell, the AI is programmed to heal the party member with the lowest health.  Unfortunately, they are not smart enough to realize that if I die the game is over.  Often times they end up healing some other member and things just get worse from there.  It’s like playing baseball with someone that has the rule book memorized but has never held a bat.  You can issue commands to your teammates to act out certain tactics but you slowly unlock them as you play the game and they are never fully explained.  After 100 hours of play, I was still discovering the advantages of some commands.

Party Members Leave
As the game progresses, you will gain more members for your team.  You can only go into battle with four members, one of them being yourself.  You are forced to choose which characters to fight with given each member’s strengths and weaknesses.  Only the characters you lead into battle will gain exp and grow stronger.  The problem arises when team members are absent from your selection.  There is no warning when characters will be absent as it is all driven by the story.  In several instances, a player could easily be stranded without one of their main party members and hit a wall in battle.  While the story can be applauded for taking risks with the characters, the player will potentially have to grind out levels for another character.

End Game Is All Fight, No Talk
Fighting is a huge part of P3F but the social aspects are just as important.  Late in the game I had maxed out the social links that were important to me and had boosted my characters stats as high as possible.  I started to find game time with nothing of benefit for my character to do.  Towards the end of The Journey, I started unlocking new social links to build.  I’m not sure if these are linked to the status of your character or if you have to hit certain parts of the story; it’s never really explained.  There were some characters in my party I never discovered how to social link with.  The Answer has no social linking or side quests at all; it is all combat driven by the story.  What I’m trying to get at is towards the end of the game, a lot of what makes P3F unique takes a back seat to the combat.

Fun Battle System
That’s not to say the battle system isn’t good because it is actually a lot of fun.  I like to describe the battle system of P3F as paper, rock, scissors with a lot of hands.  Each character and enemy has their strengths and weaknesses that you need to consider.  There are three different types of physical attacks, six different magic attacks and an almighty attack type.  A shadow that casts fire will usually be weak to ice and a shadow that casts light will usually be weak to dark.  When you hit an enemy’s weakness they will be knocked down, and if you knock down all enemies you can command your teammates into an all-out, almighty attack that deals high levels of damage; typically lethal.  Most attacks deal damage based upon the stats of the attacker and attackee but light and dark magic are different.  Since they are one-hit kills, their hit percentage is quite low.  That is further worsened by their relatively high magic cost to the point where I found light and dark useless to my strategy.

Good Sound
From original music to great sound design, just about everything you hear in P3F is top notch.  Each spell you can cast has an appropriate sound to accompany it; reflection spells give off a metallic, echoing ting of a shield, wind spells carry a rumbling bass, electricity hits with the crack of thunder, healing spells give off a soothing ripple, etc.  Even the menu sounds replicate whooshes and clicks as if you were realistically moving things around.  The voice acting is to be applauded as well; and there is a lot of it.  The stand out performance goes to Karen Strassman with her role as the android Aigis.  Upon first meeting Aigis, she seems devoid of emotion and has a hard time interacting with humans.  As the story progresses, she slowly awakens to her emotions and begins to act less like a machine.  This is reflected in her voice as she goes from speaking in a very technical, serious manner to crying out for help and even crying at points.  The low points of the voice acting are the words of encouragement you receive during battle from the support character Fuuka.  These are only a handful of lines which are minimal compared to the hours of voice acting elsewhere in the game but they only stand out since you hear them so much during battle.

Conclusion
Persona 3 FES is a great game well worth the time it takes to complete.  The story’s commentary on the human psyche is complimented by all the character specific side stories that surround it.  The combat meets a good balance of simple/deep to keep one entertained for 100+ hours.  Lacking direct control of your party member is the biggest weakness of P3F.  In the smaller fights the AI intelligence level doesn’t really matter but when the chips are down, their lack of reasoning can be detrimental.  The team commands may be used to makeup where the AI is lacking but, as I tend to do, I decided brute force was better than strategy.

Final score –
Total play time – 130 hours
Completed both The Journey and The Answer story arcs
Game purchased new at retail