Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3

Persona 3 is one of my favorite games ever. Even the "tedious" parts of the game don't feel cheap, though that may vary from person to person. I love the way this game combines realism and mundanity with the fictional world and it's symbolism. It has a pretty good message about death which the later games get rid of (don't play them) and its story can honestly rival most smt games in their edginess and importance. Play this game if you can, it's on the cheap, it's on the darn PS2, and it's honestly one of the greatest JRPGs ever!

If you can get past the depressing atmosphere and funky AI, this is a game with a gripping story and complex characters that stand the test of time.

I wasn't particularly impressed, but it is pretty addicting. Normally anime high school based games aren't my cup of tea either, but something about this game's build up was much better than games I've played previously in this sort of gameplay style. At first I wasn't sure why this was M-rated, but then when I got to the part where you have to shoot yourself in the head in order to attack with your persona(s) it became pretty clear (it's not a message you want to send to kids). There's a lot of interesting things you have to take into consideration in this game that most other games don't consider - like resting and relationships with other people... (well I guess a lot of games consider this, but I don't play a whole lot of them) Anyway, that's pretty much why I find it decent. Not really the best reason I suppose, but hey, I enjoyed this game. (it's got creepy incoherent animated scenes)

Persona games are the best japanese student simulators, but everything else in it is really poor. Fights are boring and frustrating at the same time, and story in P3 is really bad written. Main hero has almost zero impact on the course of events. Except beating shadows, main hero do completely nothing during all story. It's a shame that Mitsuru must landed in such lame game.

I expected something better for all of the hype this really average franchise gets. All characters were boring anime archetypes with no flavor of their own. The story was an extremely generic premise that flows in the typical Japanese way of story telling like Light Novels. Tartarus, the main gameplay feature was fun at first but as you progress in the tower, it becomes more and more tedious by the second. In the end, I forced myself to complete the game. Bosses have a terrible gameplay design, for example the ones under the Millitary base, you have to kill the 2 bosses in the exact same turn or the one that wasn't killed will revive the other one ON FULL HP. No, they don't warn you about that, they never tell you about it until the first revive happens. One of the bosses even relies COMPLETELY ON LUCK. That's bad game design. He uses a move that spawns a roulette in front of you and you spin it and stop it. Whether you damage him for some small amount or he 2-3 shots you, that's up to luck. Whether you get debuffed or he gets debuffed, that's up to you.. Oh, did I say that there' s another boss fighting besides that guy? Yeah, 2 enemies at the same time. Not only you have to rely on luck but you also must simultaniously fend off that other guy who has an attack that can one shot you if you have an Ice based Persona. or leave you barely alive on about 30 hp if you don't. The whole game is riddled with badly designed bosses and the pacing of the story is bad. A story sequence happens and you're left with a whole month of free time before the next one. Either you grind which is boring, or do Social Links, which are just unfleshed dialogues that get the other characters attached to you. The characters seem to start loving you way too quickly. You go and say hi and you already got a girlfriend... (It's an over exaggerated example, chill.) I started with the P3P version of Persona 3 so I was happy that I get to walk around at first... but as soon as the novelty wears off you realize how **** tedious it is, constantly having to walk in a boring world just to advance the story a bit or do Social Links. You would wish for P3P's hub. Also, an additional -1 point for containing The Answer which is hands down the worst additional content I've ever played in any game. You play as the most boring character in the entire cast as the protagonist, Aigis and the whole thing contains **** enemy design and is extremely long for the little story it offers, you can just look it up on YouTube. Did I mention the whole thing is just grinding? Yes, THE WHOLE THING!