Shin Megami Tensei: Persona (2009)

It works like the old Shin Megami Tensei games, there isn't much development on the characters, with little dialogue between them and a poor development relationship. But the gameplay is fun enough to keep you going until the end of the game, just like the PSP soundtrack.

He has a weird idea of grid in battles, honestly, Persona just started to get solid gameplay from Persona 3: Portable and going.

The word I kept coming back to while playing Persona was "tedious." There is so much required grinding, so much backtracking, and way too many encounters that will end in instant death unless you pull up a wiki to see what the monster's weaknesses are. These are the kinds of things that always kept me from JRPGs, but the Persona series' reputation convinced me to give them chance and start playing through all the SMT games I could get my hands on. Those hang-ups I had about the genre were definitely still hurdles for me here, cursing every time I had to spend hours in some boring dungeon grinding away. The game's battle system, however, kept me going; its many features forcing me to strategize in every single encounter and providing a real sense of accomplishment with each victory.

What you get out of the battle system is crucial because the story really doesn't do much to keep you engaged. The main SEBEC quest quickly becomes overcomplicated and bogged down in trying to tie standard plot beats to Jungian psychology. The Snow Queen plot is more straightforward and enjoyable as a result, although the game structure of this alternative quest kills much of the narrative momentum with mandatory grinding. As a gamer who really values stories and knows the Persona games are prized for them, this entry was a bit of a letdown.

I came very close to giving this game 2*, but everything in it is just good enough to keep you coming back for more without blowing you away. I do not regret the hours I spent in Mikage-cho, but am also certain I will never return to Persona 1. If you're a series completist like me, you don't need to fear having a bad time with this game, but be sure to go with the "Beginner" difficulty so you can get all its good parts without having to spend too much time bogged down in its more frustrating and tedious elements.

Oh boy, this review is hard for me to do. Not because it's difficult to rate the game, but because it is Persona. One of my favorite franchises ever. And the game actually sucks.

I mean, it is obviously not completely fair to look at such an old game with todays standards. Obviously, the graphics and mechanics are out of date and stuff, I get it. But still, a few Design choices in this game simply leave me baffled, to the point where I wonder how anyone can even like the game.

Where should I begin? The dungeon design. Oh yes, the dungeons. I've rarely seen a game where 90% of the dungeons just completely suck. Mostly you end up running the same floors up and down over and over again, while having the exact same random encounter every two steps. And once you finally reach the boss room of this stupid dungeon that haunted your dreams (because all you can see in front of your inner eye are these stupid, repeating corridors), the game literally warps you right to the beginning of the bloody dungeon so you can walk all the way to the boss again (storytelling anyone?). This situation was literally the point where my poor soul thought it couldn't take all this torment any longer, but nonetheless, I pressed on. After all, it was Persona. I had to see it through, and I wasted too much precious time already anyway (sunk cost fallacy ftw.)

Besides from the crappy dungeon Design, the story and the characters were completely lackluster. If the characters dropped dead in any point of the game, I wouldn't even bother. None of them were really interesting and even though the story improved towards the end of the game with a few plot twists here and there,it is simply not enough to keep me engaged with the world. Especially when the game world is made 90% out of repeating corridors and a (japanese) main character called "Mark" who doesn't even look really human. I mean look at him. What even is this?

There are several other things that infuriated me, such as the developers dragging the ending out to eternity (the horse is dead, just leave it be FFS!), the demon contact system being completely random, the fact that you can only recruit one out of four characters which the game doesn't tell you (and your choice is permament, so if you took the annoying "Brown" dude because you're like "hey, an additional party member would help", well I've got bad news for you in case you wanted another party member later on). Talking about things the game doesn't tell you: you can mess up during the game and unlock the bad ending,which isn't even a real ending, but it prevents you from going any further and seeing the real endgame. And if you messed up, you messed up. If you want to beat the game, well have fun starting the game over again.

So overall, I'm not sure if I am just being unfair being so harsh to this game. After all, it's really old. Maybe I'm also just really disappointed, because it's Persona and I really wanted to like it (and yes, I know it's different than part 3-5). But still, I feel like the game is really bad, and it just shows me that no matter how much I SHOULD like a game, the moment I hate every minute of myself playing it and I can't wait for the Suffering to end, I just need to drop the game, even if it's called Persona. Let's just hope Persona 2 does things a bit better, because I definitely can't handle a game like that which is even longer.

Most people prefer to skip over this game when they first encounter the SMT Persona series, because let's face it: it is pretty bland looking and considerably dated. Which is totally understandable, when you have the option to put in 90+ hours into a much better looking, character-rich, story-rich games like P4 and P5.

However, I adored this game. As a note, I have only played the PSP remake (although I played about 10 minutes of Revelations: Persona to see how bad it is) and I did not play the Snow Queen route (yet).

In brief, the story involves a group of friends playing a game in an empty classroom based on a rumor (think of the Bloody Mary chant, but without mirrors) and suddenly get knocked out. After coming to, they go to the hospital to get checked out, visit their sickly friend Maki, and then all hell breaks loose: they end up in an alternate world. And suddenly, Maki reappears, perfectly healthy and ready to fight demons with them! How is that possible? What is the story behind the SEBEC corporation? Why is the president Kandori so evil (or is he)? What's the deal with Maki?

What I loved

• The characters! Really, they do grow on you some after putting in 40+ hours and the bit of conversation that you (the MC) have with them in the various rooms gives you some insight about their lives. This is the friendship game before P4 became the ultimate friendship game.
• The story! It is a unique take on interacting with and fighting demons, as well as how this world became the way it is. There are a couple layers to what the true story is, so it was pretty exciting to get all the details revealed.
• Cut scenes! The animation is a little stiff, but really does look great! I'm a sucker for cut scenes, so I was a little disappointed that the majority of them are pretty short.
• Personas! You have a choice of forming personas manually or by guided fusion, which also involves putting them in the right order, throwing in additional fusion items, and matching them by affinity to the characters.
• Demons! You can contact demons through any characters, who each have four options. This is where you try to get their cards, and yes, noticing the moon phase is definitely important. You have three attack options: melee, gun, and persona skills.

What I hated

• Grinding. Now, normally I don't mind grinding, but I didn't realize how much I needed to do once I got towards the end of the game. I wanted to get the ultimate personas for each characters and I was at least 10 levels too low, so I spent many hours grinding, grinding, grinding...
• It's ugly. No, really, it's pretty ugly. Even the characters are, with their gray uniform and boring style. The dungeons are bland-looking; I spent more time looking at the small guide map than the actual dungeon.
• It's dated. The ps1 version was released in 1996 and the PSP remake was released in 2009. While the PSP version is eons-better than the ps1 version, Atlus would essentially have to remake the entire game from scratch to make it look better looking rather than refreshing it.

Anybody actually enjoy this game as well? Talk to me!