One of the most aggravating things to talk about is Persona 1 for one reason or another. Part of me was really hoping to find it in myself to give this specific version of the game another chance. After physically owning it by way of the Playstation Mini thing they did around the time Covid was starting, I came back to it after years and realized the localization just absolutely did not sit right with me. I knew I was playing an inferior product because of all the content that was cut, all of the racially insensitive westernization of the characters, it was quite a lot to stomach knowing what the release could've been.

It came with an entire half of its story missing, the fabled Snow Queen path which people who only played the PS1 version would have no clue about. But apparently the people who owned the PSP remake got their chance to play this one. To which, I find the cost of the PSP version far too great as well. While it may have more story, it completely throws out the UI/UX, feel, tone, all of the worn PSX-isms that make it such a wonderful and compelling game to me. Worst of all, it removes all of the bangin acid and techno on the soundtrack in favor of a bunch of Jamiroquai ripoff bullshit and anime openings. PSP players can patch it to put the old music back, but even then, much of the feel is still so distant, so lost, missing much of what I fell in love with.

I've been crossing my fingers and hoping for a fan translation project to finally get around to being done. It was hanging by a thread somewhere in the summer of 2025, and the translator had lost access to the files on their computer. Right around my birthday they apparently were able to reclaim some of it, but it's not certain if they're going to be continuing the project or if anyone would be able to pick up with where they left off. I have heard no such news of an adoption happening, nor any of an update on the Revelations Persona project specifically. Some part of me thinks it will be done by the end of this year, people keep telling me to hold on, but I'm not that faithful and I'm going to have to eventually just let go and wait until it drops on my lap one night browsing CDRomance.

So, what's the big deal, some Persona 3+ fans might be asking. The big deal is these bad boys just hit so different. It's not quite exactly like the classic Shin Megami Tensei experience, but it's a lot closer to it than the more recent Persona games, while still having its own opportunity to explore the unique aesthetics and narrative ideas of Jungian Psychology applied to the broad plot stylings that started with Digital Devil Story, were adapted further in SMT If..., and later perfected in Persona 2: Innocent Sin. Persona 3 onward might as well be a different franchise to me, because the gameplay, tone, character sensibilities and plot beats make it feel like a direct sequel to If... than they do with those later games.

The first huge thing about it is the combat works in a column and tile based party arrangement / positional system which can be games and optimized depending on what kind of enemies you're fighting and what kind of moves you prefer. Melee and ranged weapons, all of the same kinds of spells you get from the demon cards you can collect to mix and match and fuse and do all of the typical Persona things you would expect in any other Persona game. You're running through dense Wizardry style mazes like most Megami Tensei games of the time, giving it more of a dungeon crawler feel than the later titles too. There's also a really unforgettable and quirky map system which completely just does not exist in the PSP version of the game, lots of other weird little quirks and beautiful mashes of crunchy low poly art, pixel portraits, and isometric sprites. It is like a beautiful clusterfuck of chaos in pretty much every regard and demands you to pay attention to how it works.

If there's one thing I could say about it that's maybe not very good not counting things caused by the incomplete and bad localization, it would be that the theme is somewhat underdeveloped. It was their first time working with all of the Jungian concepts and you could tell they had no higher aims with what they wanted to say, making Persona 2's duology the better game in contrast for having a fully fledged story. But Persona is not without its meaningful character driven moments, and some of them I really hold close to my heart even still. Regardless of the fact it's on this clown shoes version of the game.

The character I ended up connecting the most to was Maki, or Mary. You could say she's sort of the main character of the story path you end up being forced down, if you don't count "kid with earring" to be the main character. In line with the heavily psychological themes, the big twist of everything is that unlike Shin Megami Tensei, there isn't necessarily a demon invasion or apocalypse happening. Through technological psycho-babble, it all is more or less the manifestation of the deep grief-stricken fears and desires of a girl cursed to live a life of pain, isolation, unending medical complications, seeing all of her friends move on without her, for her to rot in the uncaring arms of a medical system that can't help her. I think that makes for a very deep and personal story and happened to resonate with it really hard when I first saw it.

There is still a likelihood I may have read too deeply into it when I first played the game, granted. But the emotional impact all of these ideas had on me was quite profound, and I think that speaks to what actually works about Revelations: Persona as a game, and the broader Persona games as a franchise. These are games about psychological struggles, hence why they use so much of the aesthetics and ideas concocted by Carl Jung. A man who was low key schizophrenic and built a vast tapestry of archetypes and modes of being and perception. He has left an immense legacy for poets and writers, and whatever the opposite of a legacy is for the world of psychology. A curse? A burden. It is what people call "pop psychology" and shouldn't be taken too seriously.

For Carl Jung, the Persona is this image, this icon we take on the mantle of. It is an ideal that we more or less present and project to people in the world around us. Necessarily, to project such an ego, we hide or obscure or have parts of ourselves that we don't want, and we call this presence the Shadow. There is a deep struggle between a persons various personae and shadow. We all have an unobserved and unwanted self that we have to reckon with. People who always hide it away and never try to address or incorporate it back into their life in a healthy way, to reconcile it in some form, will inevitably have some kind of horrible breaks and lapses in who they are, and that unwanted presence leaks out as a sort of destructive force. In this game, the Persona is obviously more like a Stand in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, but in reality, it's sort of more like a facade which can constrict and complicate how we see ourselves. Many of these sorts of psychological conundrums are explored in the game, in a very sloppy and sort of endearing way I really like.

I feel I could try to make more sense of the Jungian Psychology and the way the game uses it, but really it is quite messy and also fairly hard to take seriously after learning all of the things I know about Carl Jung. But there is more it draws from than just him. One of my favorite poems by Li Po, Chuang Tzu and the Butterfly, a huge influence on the game, as well as the character Philemon. This is one of those Jungian archetypes made manifest as a person, a sort of representation of all of the goodness, dreams, and potential of Persona and of humanity itself, which becomes far more relevant in the sequel too. He's like a guardian of dreams and consciousness, and the Butterfly poem is spread all across the game, in text, in the motif of many butterflies.

Chuang Tzu in dream became a butterfly, And the butterfly became Chuang Tzu at waking. Which was the real—the butterfly or the man ? Who can tell the end of the endless changes of things? The water that flows into the depth of the distant sea Returns anon to the shallows of a transparent stream. The man, raising melons outside the green gate of the city, Was once the Prince of the East Hill. So must rank and riches vanish. You know it, still you toil and toil,—what for?

On top of this, there is just something about the low fantasy modern city setting that I love. Walking around the mall and knowing at any moment you could be attacked by a demon. All of the familiar places you may have grown up around suddenly deeply unsafe and unfamiliar. The way it has this otherworldly tone where you can't quite tell if it's some sort of living nightmare, in a game that's all about transience, dreams, personal fears and change. The way you cross into the mall, stumble into a room suspiciously like the White Lodge from Twin Peaks. Opera singers wailing as you fuse occult cards together to bind the likeness of devils and angels to your very personality. It has such a curious and weirdly dark and whimsical tone that was never recaptured as the series would move on and smooth out its edges. Even compared to 2, it has some stylistic flair I prefer at times.

The music is also just so wonderful. I know I complained about the loungey and anime oriented style of modern games at the beginning of the review, but it's all because of how much I adored the music of the first three persona games. Exactly what I want out of sequencer/midi ambient and acid techno. Just firing on all cylinders, nearly every song on its gigantic OST so memorable and special. It would be a disservice not to ever hear the OST, which is one reason I can't discard this localization entirely. This is such an iconic boss battle theme to me and these dungeon themes are even better

So I find it really hard to talk about Revelations: Persona localized for the US. On one hand, it is an absolute butchering of a game, but it's also the best you got to actually experience the vision of the game without actually just learning Japanese. The localization choices they made for it are flat out insulting and asinine. The PSP remake completely takes the soul out of the game. Persona 1 is everyone's punching bag. Atlus, Persona fans, Persona haters, even the people who love Persona 1, all kicking and stomping on this mistake. For one reason or another we're all just mercilessly wailing on this stupid fucking game that was destined for better things but just couldn't quite cut it. GOD I hate it. But I love it. But I don't love it. I just wish the fan translation would get finished, but I don't think it's happening at this point.