Where do I even start with a game that took me 95 hours to complete? I suppose I had better start at the beginning. I am a HUGE fan of the JRPG genre of games so when it comes down to something like Persona 3, its obviously going to affect my opinion of the game. Well, regardless of that here we go.
I found the start of the game to be quite slow, picking up the pace very gradually, so I starting to get a little bored of it and start to think that the hype surrounding this game was undeserved. Then it happened, the dorm I was living in was attacked by a monster known as a “shadow” so my character took a gun to his head and you hear the words “persona” as he shoots, releasing his own persona in order to fight the monster. The story of this game is intense and extremely interesting, that is when the story is happening.
It seemed as though the game would go on for (in game) weeks, dragging along, before I got to the next story section, but when they did happen they were incredible. Following a group of teenagers around as they fought a battle against shadows to save the world, seems like every JRPG story you’ve played through before, but it’s the twists and turns this game takes you through that makes it so interesting.
The battle mechanics of the game could of used some improvement as having to rely on the AI to control the other 3 characters in the party, grew tedious very quickly and made the latter half of the game that bit more difficult, more so than it needed to be. Collecting and fusing up Personas to create new and more powerful ones took hours upon hours of my time as I tried to make the most powerful team possible. I spent a good long time in this game and on paper. The school mechanics may seem boring but I spent a lot of time trying to max all the games ‘social links’ which would gave me access to more powerful Personas, which I could also then, in turn, fuse into weapons or keep them. I found the game to be fantastic and couldn’t put it down.
SET IN STONE GAMING 