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Persona 3 (PS2) | 
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| From: Koei
Category: Video Games
List Price: £29.99
Buy New: £17.95
You Save: £12.04 (40%)
New (11) Used (6) from £17.49
Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 1725
Platform: Playstation2
Genre: role-playing-games
Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
Media: Video Game
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.5
EAN: 5060073303915
ASIN: B000SZ9RNI
Release Date: February 29, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 Entertaining..... October 10, 2008
Jj Dante (UK)
Who would have thought playing a game where you go to school each day, and take exams would be so much fun? It's a deep rpg, which is entertaining and quite adult at times. The graphics are manga-style, and look great, and the gameplay implements a battle system similar to Final Fantasy. You get to create 'Personas', and I'll replay this just to try to create different ones!
A good purchase for all fans of rpgs like Final Fantasy.
 RPG Addiction + anime FTW September 17, 2008
R. Beaconsfield (UK)
I was looking for a new RPG to keep my PS2 alive. I hear whispers that the FES version will be released in the UK, but rather than buy the FES and miss this version, I bought this one for the first play-through. I plan to exchange it for the FES version for the replay to really get the most out of Persona 3. The two versions are different enough to each deserve a full play through!
Persona 3 is just packed with over 100 hours of gameplay, and though I filled each day with activity, I still never completed every task. Which is what gives this game such huge replay potential. The settings are beautifully rendered, and the characters have a very appealing anime style.
I haven't played something as addictive in ages. This game is definitely for those that enjoy character building, character-driven plot, but also those with a compulsion to build the biggest, most skilled monsters. The game runs from day to day as you progress through a school year, which is a very unique feature - At first I found it confusing, but the reality is you still have control over your progress and the in-game calendar. You can enjoy 22 subplots, exploring social links which ultimately pump your stats and allow you to instantaneously level-up familiars. No level grinding if you don't want to! But lots of advantages if you do want to level grind.
You will have control over the main character in battle, and will give commands to your team based on techniques you learn throughout the game. But you don't directly give commends to each individual in battle beyond a simple instruction like "set taget/knock down/full assault." This might put some off, but it works very well, keeps things very exciting (with some fun unpredictability), and forces you to think hard about your enemy, your team's skills and how to manipulate weaknesses to your advantage.
Your arsenal of familiars (personas) is huge, and you can have infinite fun creating them - and different every time depending on the skills you combine.
After 103 hours I still have dozens of things I want to do and so much left undiscovered. There are also 2 seperate endings to this game.
Cure your case of Apathy Syndrome today! July 13, 2008
Mr. Od Smith (Coulsdon, Surrey)
If there's one thing that can be said about the previous MegaTen games, it's that some of them can be inaccessible to most gamers, with their plots that seem to be overly complex, with an overly high occurrence of random battles and a lot of back-tracking.
So Persona 3 came as a surprise to me on several levels, as the game is highly accessible, with an involving plot and some great characters, and - best of all - no random battle sat all!
It seems that having Koei polished the game up to its standard, and the game does remind me of Disgaea to some degree, especially in the way the plot is moved forward having the same look and feel of the dialogue sequences of both games, as well as a sense of fun that is laid over the seriousness of the events, as the two cross over.
Long story short (and to avoid as many spoilers as possible), your character is transferred to a school and is soon in the midst of a nightly battle between good and evil (or to be accurate, members of SEES against Shadows), and has to balance his school and social life with them. In order to find out more - as well as being the part of the game where your characters level up - they have to venture to Tartarus every night, the demonic tower that appears on the site of the school. This is also where you earn and level up your Personas, which is where you learn the various abilities to use throughout the game.
Meanwhile, in the daytime, you improve on your social links in order to make your Personas more effective for when you create them, as well as opening different sub plots in the process. That and attending school.
It may sound like a lot of work, but it isn't - it's sort of like Bully/Canis Canem Edit by day, and a more traditional Megaten by night. And it works.
Going back to the lack of random battles, a welcome addition after the infuriating frequency of them in Lucifer's Call, the only places you can encounter enemies on a regular basis is Tartarus, and you can elect to fight them, or just run/sneak past them (like in Okami), although as you level up enemies on the lower floors will run away from you rather than fight. And, as with previous games, if you find an enemy's weakness, you get a second turn - so you can literally decimate a group of enemies in short order (or even one turn), although his also applies in reverse so you have to play smart rather than hope to bully your way through these sections. You could skip these sections entirely, other than the plot-required visits, although this makes it more likely you'll get owned in the boss battles that fall on every full moon.
True, some parts of the game can still frustrate - team members ignoring orders and aiding the bosses grates, and some of the questions asked in class require you to have an intricate knowledge of Japanese culture, customs and history (one even asks about sign language!), but these are far more minor than not being able to walk three steps without being involved in your umpteenth battle. On the other hand, as the game automatically skips chunks of each day, you feel you aren't getting a fuller experience (compared to CCE, where you do).
The Tartarus sequences are more realised, as you have a set amount of time to complete each level of the structure, dictated by the tasks you're given that range from defeating a certain number of enemies, to defeating rare ones, to finding a specific object - as well as creating a Persona that fulfils a criteria - and Tartarus itself is never the same twice, as some times a floor might be overrun with enemies, others it'll be empty, or even home to rare enemies. This shakes up the game playing experience, as sometimes you can try and level grind an area you strolled through before, and find yourself getting hammered.
The plot is a work of genius, however, as little by little it unravels to reveal more dark secrets of the region and its recent past, and the characters also develop with these as we continue to the inevitable final showdown.
However, there's aspects of the game that might not be so appealing - the dialogue can occasionally turn 15-rated, some of the darker elements of the plot might put gamers off, and the Daily Mail probably won't like the manner in which Persona's are summoned - let's just say the teenaged characters pull out their Evoker (which looks like a gun) and point it at their head...
So, although some elements may put off gamers (or pull in the wrong kind, who'll hate the game), the fact is this game is a gem that should be sought out and played, as it's got a lot of RPG elements and seems to improve upon them all, yet it seems completely fresh all the same.
A Fine Fusion JRPG April 13, 2008
Jon Rosenberg
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
Despite the advent of the next gen consoles over the last couple of years there's none the less been spate of quality games brought out for the king of the older generation of games stations the PS2. While the likes of God of War II have been highly lauded others, such as Rogue Galaxy have failed to garner recognition which they deserve. Of the later maybe both the oddest in inception and the most enjoyable to play has been Persona 3. It is one of a series of strange demonic CRPGs created by Japanese developer Koei.
Now anyone who's had anything to do with the genre will tell you that demons in a JRPG are common as a cold in spring time. What makes Persona 3 peculiar is that it isn't a pure RPG, nor yet an action RPG (such as Kingdom Hearts) or a tactical RPG (such as Disgea, one of Koei's earlier and highly amusing games) rather it fuses a classic turn based JRPG, with elements of tactical team building, and a school life simulation game.
An odd mixture? Without a doubt
Does it work? Definitely.
It's not a perfect game, there are minor flaws which I will discuss below, but it a very fine one.
The strengths of the game are beautiful cell shaded graphics, an interesting plot, combat mechanics which are (for the majority of the game ) nicely challenging and well thought out, interesting and diverse characters and the freshness of the continual changing of pace between demonic combat and school life. It is the way that the last of these is integrated into the mechanics of the rest which is the most interesting thing about Persona 3. The more you develop your contacts through you daily life the more options open up to you with in the combat scenarios.
I've not included the soundtrack amongst the strengths of the game, not because i think it bad, so much as because i'm left uncertain how to think of it at all. It comprises of a selection of specially written Jpop numbers which are mostly either upbeat, or manic depending on what's happening, for much of the time they seem pretty much in keeping with the overall feel of the game, but, I'm just not sure i liked them. Call me curmudgeonly but there were times i felt like simply turning the sound to mute so as not to have them chasing through my head for the next few hours or days.
Games flaws are few, but sufficient for me to dock it a star in rating it, despite how much pleasure i derived over all from playing Persona 3. The first is that towards the end, the combat can become seriously unbalanced in favour of the player by the use of one of the special options open to you. The trouble is it's difficult not to use it once you've found it, because it's quite likely by this point you want to get to the end and see how it all comes out. Which brings me to the more serious problem. This is a long game, a very long game, you can easily spend more than 100 hours on a single play through it. For most of the time this is by no means a problem, but there is a period between the final revelation in the plot and the actual finale of the game which seriously drags. If you've been at all conscientious about fulfilling the quests with which the game presents you, you'll find there maybe as much of 10 hours of play where there's really very little of substance for you to do. These two things along with a couple of minor issue about certain plot elements not being fleshed out to their fullest potential are enough for me to knock off that last star.
So a four star rather than a five star game? Well yes, very reluctantly yes, as I know a great time playing it for the most part. It is fun, it is pretty, it is fresh and different, even to a fairly jaded old games player, yes i got a bit irritated with the music, but at the end of the day i still played it for over 100 hours and now several weeks afterwards am thinking about going back and playing through again from the start.
Something different April 8, 2008
Elonen Jakke (Finland)
Thematically the game is nothing that special in the field of anime, but as a game it's something really offstream, the combination of school-life simulation with the dungeon exploration reminds me of some really old games and is a really different experience from the traditional concept of RPGs. This is my first game in the Shin Megami Tensei series and it well exceeded my expectations. The 'real time' world that follows the calendar around the year always keeps you hooked for just 1 more day with more objectives and more people to meet than you can possibly fit into your schedule. You get to experience the highlights and the mundane of the Japanese school life in a very unique manner, while fighting to find the time to explore Tartarus and level up.
Battle difficulty is really quite high (at least on normal mode, easy is recommended for first time players but it didn't appeal to me) - even normal 'trash' that is several levels below you can wipe you out if you let down your guard - but not impossible if you put your mind into it; the fights are really much more about strategy and right setup than high stats. Fusing new Personas for ever better abilities is also very addicting and although it's really easy to make money there's literally no limit to how much of it you can spend in the development of new Personas. As concequence it feels very rewarding to have created just the perfect Persona that makes a really difficult boss fight manageable.
Should also note that especially character art is very nice, and the unusual musics (or rather, songs) also work quite well. The dialogue is pretty realistic and sometimes very funny. I would've very much liked to have the original Japanese voice actors, but most of the English actors do a fair enough job.
I'd say the game gives good value for at least 100h to play it through once properly, and after that you just may feel inclined to replay it again using the skills and information you accumulated to do even better (since developing your social links is a very demanding task that requires much planning ahead).
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