Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES
by Atlus
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Product Summary
Brand: AtlusAudio: English (Unknown)
Release Date: 2008-04-22
Platform: PlayStation2
Number of pages: 370
Model: 53026
Publisher: Atlus
Product features:
- Includes an enhanced version of the original game plus the new FES
- 30 additional hours of gameplay with 17 new music tracks
- 120 hours of gameplay
- Includes a weapon synthesis system and hard play mode
- Includes the ability to change your characters clothes
Video Game Reviews of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES
Customer Review: Good fun
Summary: 4 Stars
Well here's a new one on me...RPG meets The Sims.
Well not quite but it does mix RPG mechanics with a very heavy element of keeping up your social networking. The story of Persona 3 sees you as a young male student, new in town and joining a new school. You find out early on that something very odd happens to this school every night at midnight: a tower called Tartarus which is filled with monsters appears, and you (along with a few school chums) have been assigned to explore it and climb to the very top. As you go higher and higher in the tower, the monsters get tougher and there's a boss fight every few floors. You find items along the way and gain experience.
Now this is all pretty standard RPG stuff. Fighting is turn based, and you have a arsenal of spells and physical attacks at your disposal. As in other Shin Megami Tensei games, all the enemies have certain weaknesses that you can exploit to get extra attack turns (and in the same way, so can they). Spells all have similar names as in the other games of the series (Agi, Mamudo, Rakunda, etc), and the usual status ailments still apply. This is all good fun and makes for battles that you usually have to think about rather then run in blindly every time. Monsters are visible in the tower so you can choose whether to attack or run past - whack them from behind to ensure your turn comes first! And if they catch you first they get the first turn in battle which can sometimes be lethal. In fact towards the end of the game, any time the enemy goes first can spell Game Over. Another thing to understand is that you can have a team of up to four people but apart from your own character, everyone else acts on AI. So you have to issue "general" orders to your team mates (ie Heal Only, Full on Attack, Save Magic points, etc) and let them decide how to interpret these. The good news is that the computer AI for the team mates is fantastic. Even when I left everyone on "Act freely", they always did really sensible things. And if you use the "analyse enemy" support function, they remember the enemy weaknesses in all future encounters and only use effective attacks. Very clever. I found this one of the best computer controlled team-mate games I have ever played.
Apart from this, it's pretty similar to other Shin Megami games, especially in the annoying habit of enemies using far too many instant death spells which is cheap and REALLY annoying!
The series also retains the process of monster fusing. As in previous games you keep a team of monsters (called Personas in this game), and as your collection grows you can fuse them together to make better ones. The slight difference is that they are not captured in battle any more (all the monsters you fight are different to the Personas), but have to be "won" as random rewards at the end of battles. These will be familiar to fans of the series, as Pixie, Ganesha, Sati, Angel and all the rest are back to entertain you again, plus a few more. You can keep a stable of monsters with you at any time and try them all out! In contrast your team mates only have one permanent Persona each, but they all have interesting abilities and weaknesses, so you'll be choosing carefully who you take with you into boss fights.
So now, here are the differences. And they are mainly in what happens when you are not fighting your way through the tower. Well, when you are not fighting monsters, you spend game time leading a pretty normal life as a teenager in modern day Japan (game-world Japan, of course!). The game has a very big emphasis on time and dates. Unlike most RPGs where time is just kind of generally moving forwards, here it is divided into days on a calendar, and each day has it's own morning, daytime, evening and night-time sections. You'll soon find out that the times of the day dictate what is available for you to do, for example, every week daytime you are at school (boo!), and in the evening the shops are closed. On Sundays and school holidays you are free to do whatever you like, but during exam weeks, you can't do anything. And in the evenings you can go out, chat to people, or explore Tartarus. What will take up most of your attention during the days, though, is trying to establish lots of social links. This means making friends with lots of people, and making clever choices in conversations so that they start liking you more. It sounds a bit lame but this is actually a requirement of the game, as the monster fusing is more effective depending on how strong your personal relations are. So get on with everybody and you'll find you get stronger monsters! In a rather mean twist, the hero can have unlimited male friends, but be careful with the girls because as relationships grow, you'll find that they get jealous of each other so you can only ever have ONE strong female relationship at a time. Kind of limiting as there are about 6 girls in the game you can potentially create social links with. I guess there's no such thing as "just friends" with girls in the Persona universe.
The game is fun and very addictive, but to my disappointment, it did verge on being repetitive at times. Each day that rolls past is pretty similar to the one before it. And climbing the Tartarus tower can start to lose it's novelty too, because the floors all follow a single standard design (it changes every 20 floors or so but still!), and some of the bosses can be tough, so you really do have to explore the same floors multiple times just to level up (the characters even call it call it "training"), which can really get tiresome. However the growth of personas is always a great lure to keep edging those levels up (what will be the next skill they learn??), and the battles are generally good fun, so I didn't mind too much. The story is also pretty good. Even the after-battle item rewards are fun: you get shown a choice of tarot-style cards with rewards on them , which are then shuffled before your eyes face down, and you have to watch carefully and then try and pick the one with the best reward on it! As basic as that sounds I found this NEVER got old! Oh yes, and one very odd part of the game overall is that in battle, the way to summon a persona is to shoot yourself in the head with a special gun! Let's hope no impressionable kids try to copy that one eh?
Description of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES
A brand new chapter of Persona 3 featuring 30 plus hours of gameplay and an enhanced version of the original game loaded with new content and features, Persona 3 FES is the comprehensive version of one of the most acclaimed RPG's of 2007. Over 120 plus hours of total combined gameplay, numerous additions and enhancements, and critically-acclaimed game and art design.All Games
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