Developer: Atlus
Publisher: Atlus/Ghostlight
Genre: JRPG
Format: Playstation 1, Playstation Portable
Released: August 11th, 2010
Ok let’s get the annoyances out of the way. Persona suffers from a few similar issues with the SNES Shin Megami Tensei games. The movement controls feel very stiff especially when in 3rd person due to movement being grid based instead of being able to move in 8 directions. You do get used to these after a while but if you don’t play the game for a couple of days you have to learn them again.
The battle formation while I good idea in theory as it adds a little realism in regards to keep the squishy people at the back, it’s incredibly limiting when you are adding limits to your attacks. For example on being able to attack someone on the front row or in a straight line. In a real life scenario this would be solved by move an inch to the left or right then using the attack. The game kind of warns you early on to not go nuts with using your Persona but this is a lie really. Go crazy with your SP/Magic moves because when you level up it gets replenished and there are plenty of SP recovery items. The battle system has a load of variety in regards to elements and attack types which is great but I can see people being confused by it.
And say it with me, the encounter rates are needlessly high, especially on the world map. Enough of the negativity let’s get on to the good stuff. The story is pretty interesting, the world gets overcome by demons and your hometown is completely section off from everywhere else. Everywhere else except your hometown from and alternate dimension. It’s pretty cool piecing together information from the 2 dimensions and figuring out which it relates to.
The characters themselves are pretty likeable except maybe 1 or 2. The MC is silent as is the norm for Shin Megami Tensei games but you do get a bunch of choices to make for yourself so you aren’t a complete mute. There is loads of pointless dialogue and a bunch of different idle animations in this game when you are just roaming around but that’s a good thing. It adds more personality to all the characters without forcing it during events. The music is great, my 2 favourite songs being the Mikage Police Station and the Mall themes.
Once again you get to chat up demons to recruit them via spell cards which are fused to get unique demons. You can get them onside by flirting, dancing, whistling, singing, joking, hiding, crying, playing rock paper scissors, pretty much anything you can think of. It’s pretty overwhelming when there are loads of playable characters who each have 4 choices which each have a different effect on a demon. Finally I like the fact that characters have their own physical stats and so do the demons. I’ve always preferred this to having just the Persona having stats.
Enough of my chewing your earholes. I give Persona a solid 8/10, it does suffer from early days RPG issues but there is a lot going in the right direction for this game. I easily recommend it for you RPG fans.
Thou art I, I am thou. - Mamushi
Another fine review from my boy Mamushi! I look forward to reviews of the other SMT games. 10/10