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Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 is a bit of a new experience for me as it marks the first time I have ever played a school-based role-playing game. Sure it's not the first time the main character was a student. I mean, we're talking about Japanese RPGs here. If the main character isn't royalty, then he's almost always a student or apprentice of some kind. But in most games, if you have to attend classes, it's usually just some sort of gimmick that exhausts itself in the first hour. To be fair, there are, of course, the Harry Potter games, which often take place almost entirely at Hogwarts. But Persona 3 is the first RPG I've ever played that was based around a high school, with the standard run-of-the-mill classes.
In Persona 3, the fourth in a series of games you've probably never heard of, (and if you're wondering about the numbering scheme, apparently there were two Persona 2s) you play a student who just transferred to Gekkoukan High School where an epidemic is plaguing the student body. Called Apathy Syndrome, the vast number of teens who suffer from it are simply too lazy to continue their studies and just sit around their rooms and do nothing. Surely, kids not being excited about going to school is far from suspect in North America. And if they are too lazy to leave their room may be just symptomatic of them not getting enough exercise or smoking too much pot. But in Japan, apparently, the causes need to be far more nefarious. Shortly, after moving into your almost empty dorm, you discover that these Apathy Syndrome sufferers are connected to evil Shadows that take over the school at night. During the Dark Hour, a magical time that exists between midnight and the following day, the high school transforms into Tartarus, a spiralling tower filled with monsters and treasures.
It is not clear whether the Dark Hour is, in fact, 60 minutes or it's more a theoretical length, such as rush hour traffic. But it's a time of which most people are completely unaware. Those who are asleep “will transmogrify into coffins” (for no apparent reason) and will wake up the next morning not realizing any extra time has passed. And those who were awake during have no memory of what happened during it. That is, except for a few special people, such as yourself and your dorm mates.
You quickly discover that you're living among people who have sworn to fight the evil Shadows and save the city from its onslaught which the citizens are completely oblivious to. Masquerading as an after-school social club, Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad, they fight using special monsters of their own, called Persona, which they evoke, in true Anime fashion, by shooting themselves in the head with a special gun. You, of course, awaken to your own power to do this and join their team.
Based on twelve of the 22 Major Arcana of the Tarot cards, a Persona is used in much the same way as the cards in Yugi-Oh or monsters in Pokemon. They each have various magic attacks which either utilizes the character's skill or hit points and they give the Persona User strengths against certain types of attacks and weaknesses against others. So for example, one character might be strong against wind attacks but weak against fire. The same goes for Shadows and you can order one of your teammates to analyze the weaknesses of a given enemy.
While the rest of the characters can only use one Persona, you have the ability to switch between them, even during a fight. You collect more by defeating enemies. And in a sort of otherwordly magic shop, fuse them together into more powerful ones.
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The source of power for these Personae are social links you create with people you meet. In other words, the stronger a friendship you have with someone, the more powerful Persona you can create when you fuse them together because that social link will level up the newly made monster. So you go to school six days a week, attend student council meetings, join social and athletic clubs and eat meat dishes with a fat kid to strengthen your various relationships. And it's usually pretty boring because you don't really get to do much. For example, if you join the Kendo club, you don't get to play in a Kendo match, you just watch a simplistic little Machinima scene of Kendo practice and then maybe become better friends with one of your teammates if you choose the right response to a question he asks you. And when you're not making friends, you'll often have to do things to increase your courage, charm and academics so you can make more friends in the future. It's quite monotonous at times.
As for the battle side, your party consists of up to four people and the fighting is of the standard turn-based variety, with one major difference: You can't choose precisely how the other party members attack. Instead you choose tactics for them such as, conserve skill points, heal/support and full assault. You can assign a target, but even then that's all your doing, you can't tell someone to use an ice attack or try to charm the enemy or what have you. But what's often easiest is to tell them to act freely and for the most part you won't have to worry about them as they’re usually pretty good at taking care of themselves.
If you die, the game's over but if your teammates do, they just fall unconscious and you can bring them back to life with a revival bead you can purchase at the local mall's pharmacy. (You can also buy weapons and armour at the police station. Think of it as a mystical weapons for tots program.)
Generally, your character will attack first, unless you are surprised by the enemy. What's nice, though is when you're moving through Tartarus, or the Tower of Demise, as it's also called, you can see the enemies moving around, so you can try to avoid them if your health is low or you can even sneak attack them, which means your entire team will attack before the regular attack pattern starts.
When you knock down an enemy, either through a critical hit or exploiting the Shadow's weakness, you get an additional turn. If you knock them all down and you're not fighting by yourself, your battle party can all attack at once. This often brings a quick end to the fight.
Most of the battles occur in Tartarus as you work your way up through the tower. Some floors are guarded by bosses and eventually you'll reach a barricade you can't get past. These barricades are removed when you defeat boss Shadows on a full moon which are wreaking havoc throughout the city.
The overriding story told through a mixture of Machinima and Anime cut scenes is somewhat interesting as you hear the background for how the Shadows came to be. And there is a short shower sequence! But the game is rather long, and by long, I mean drawn out.
The main problem is that the story only moves forward at each full moon, but you play every day in between. The battles in Tartarus are really just filler. Sure it's kind of fun to explore the new blocks of the tower at first. But once you've defeated the bosses and reached the barricade, something I could often do in a single night's outing, there's not much else to do. They are side quests you can partake in but they don't usually take that much time anyway. So you spend a lot of time just trying to level up for the next full moon boss. Often, they seem to be easier to defeat than the Tartarus bosses but you often can't easily save before the full moon outing and it's a real nuisance to have repeat the night.
In the end, Persona 3 is a tedious excursion that made me waste hours of my life that I will never get back and left with my right eye bloodshot for staring at the TV screen as my contact lens ran out of moisture and it solidified to my cornea. But you do get to fight alongside a magic-wielding dog with a knife in its mouth. That's different.
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