Introduction
With the advent of the release of Persona 3 Reloaded which is a reimagined version of The famous Persona 3 FES released on PlayStation 2, I thought it would be nice to drop my review of Persona 3 FES after having the pleasure of playing it 200:01:45 Hours back in 2020. So I feel a little entitled to share with you my take on the game, my experiences, and if I think you should play it, get it, or pass on it. All that on the following review!
It is important to mention The version I played was Persona 3 “FES” Stands for Festival, which has the base game plus an additional 30 Hours of DLC content called “The Answer”, where we learn about what happened at the very end of P3 FES Story.
Story
You’re a transfer student to Gekkoukan High. The dorm you are staying at is where you meet all of your friends.
Suddenly one night, strange things start to happen were monsters called Shadows appear and then you start running away from this shadow monster, event that triggers the Awakening of your Persona and are able to fend it off. The protagonist who the player controls, is the first character to receive and awaken his Persona. Subsequently, the rest of the gang awakens their Persona one at a time which is custom to Persona games. There is something called the Dark Hour, a time between the previous day and the next where the party has access to a Tower like building called Tartarus that has many floors full of Shadows to battle.
Makoto, Junpei & Yukari
You and your friends form the team known as SEES who take it upon themselves to investigate these strange occurrences happening at this particular hour. You go to school by day, you socialize, you go on field trips with your class, while the rest of the afternoon and night time you get to go to the city and of course go into the dark hour fighting demons and shadows only to uncover the mystery of this mysterious building.
The Answer is the continuation of the main story that ties all lose ends and that leaves the player satisfied. get ready to play another 20 to 30 hours more after beating the game and going through another sort of Tartarus, this time with doors.
That’s it in a nutshell. the summary of the story, I do invite you to try out the game because it’s mechanics workout perfectly and I love it.
Gameplay
World Map and Socializing
when I say world map I mean when you get the opportunity to run around and explore your surroundings talking with NPCs and interacting with stuff in the world .
You get to visit a Mall that has all sorts of useful stores for the party like equipment stores, accesories and even a “pharmacy” so you can pick up consumables. There’s a bar where you can interact with NPCs and socialize. The socialization in this game plays a key role in the strength of your personas. Personas are these entities that fight alongside you in battle, and the stronger the social link with a specific NPC is, the stronger that Persona for that Arcana will become.
Arcana, is the categorization of each Type of persona. Some belong to the fool Arcana, some others to the magician Arcana, and so on. The Arcanas are: Priestess, Empress, emperor, hierophant, lovers, chariot, Justice, hermit, Fortune, strength and hanged man Arcana.
Each of these 13 Arcana is bound to a specific NPCs and if you socialize enough with these characters, the stronger that persona for that Arcana will become. There are a total of 10 levels to have for each persona. So for instance, if your social link level goes up from one to two for the empress Arcana that means any Empress Persona you have in your roster will also level up from one to two Arcana level. This is so helpful because the more you socialize as I just said, the stronger you’ll be in battle.
Battle
Persona 3 FES is a turn-based role playing game you have a party of four members in battle. Each take their turn to attack in accordance to their speed of attacking. Enemies with higher speed or agility well of course ACT first, so watch out with those enemy shadows.
Here you get to call on your summons AKA personas. The party leader or the hero gets to shuffle among many personas in the game, while the rest of your party members are stuck with one Persona, their very own unique Persona. Each Persona has their own attack abilities, attributes and elemental affinity, use these wisely. Once the battle is over naturally you will get experience points, items, cards and money if I’m not mistaken. If you get enough experience points, then of course you will level up and become stronger. Your stats will increase. The turn based Glory System.
Persona Fusion
Okay so now that I talked about a little bit on Personas and what they do in the game, it’s important to let you know that you can manage and handle your personas in a way where you can fuse them together. Yes you read right, you are going to fuse your personas just like a Dragon Ball Z Fusion. What’s the purpose you ask? the resulting Persona out of the fusion will be a much stronger Persona than the base 2 you used in the fusion. Usually there are charts to foresee the outcome of the fusion, however there can be some exceptions and accidents as the game puts it in the results of fusing.
I’m going to let you have fun and try out different combinations of personas, unless you’re really in a hurry in that case you can look up any guide out there on the internet, there’s way too many, so there’s no point in me fixing one up for you! There is a sense of completion with the Persona Compendium, where you can collect every single Persona on every Arcana as the game has a list, and if you’re like me; that you like to see every slot filled with a name of a Persona, then you are going to have a blast Fusing and collecting each and every Persona out there.
The way to gain personas to increase your roster is by doing battle with monsters AKA personas in Tartarus. They sometimes drop cards as spoils that will contain a new persona for you to use or to fuse, so the more battles you do the better your odds of getting more personas is.
Needless to say the stronger most powerful personas will require strong base personas to be fused. The one thing I’ll say about Fusion is that you can’t simply just use two personas and hope for the best, you have to train every base Persona destined for that Fusion, observing their Arcana in order to increase your hopes or probabilities for the desired Results. The game tells you in a comprehensive in game chart what arcanas are compatible for Fusion.
So it’s a good idea to once you get a new persona, you equip it, you use it in battle, you level it up and then when it’s ready, you go ahead and perform a fusion. Another way around that is to Simply make a save state or save your game, go ahead and perform the fusion, if it didn’t work afterwards, Just reload and try again. If it keeps failing, you might need to level up your base personas a little bit more. Well that’s it for Fusion have fun!.
Graphics
The graphics in Persona 3 are anime-like Style. I know there is a fan base for anime like video games, so Persona 3 FES is totally up your alley when it comes to anime like role playing games. However the environments are semi-realistic renderizations so not everything is cartoony at 100%. This gives the game a sense of realism that doesn’t seem like a straight out game for kids. Matter of fact, Persona 3 is a game so serious with its plot with its characters, dialogues and its everything but funny.
Colorful graphics and exceptional effects Adorn the battles and your surroundings when you’re exploring the world hub. I can’t wait for the remake also known as Persona 3 reloaded where the renderization of its graphics for its environments is going to be second to none, while also maintaining its anime character like individuals. I also expect a 60 fps game, because some spell effects and abilities lag a bit specially when there is a group of enemies in battle.
The Game never crashed, so even though they are Playstation 2 graphics, They game is solid in its coding aspect. I appreciate that, you know, not a common thing you see nowadays, sadly, anyways moving on.
Cast of Characters
Makoto Yuki (The protagonist)
The silent protagonist. He just stares and is somehow the leader of SEES.
The silent protagonist is the Hero that we will be controlling throughout this adventure of approximately 100 to 150 hours. Our protagonist has blue hair. Long hair covers one eye and apparently he likes to hear music on his earphones/Headphones. He always wears his school suit which is a jacket type suit with bow tie, dress pants and boots.
He really has no personality because it is up to the player who makes the decisions when it comes to participating in the team, generally choosing between one or two options. When the opportunity arrives, he develops with the rest of his team to be able to fight together and triumph over evil. So In other words, he is You, the player.
Akihiko Sanada
He is an athlete who really likes boxing. We see this when we meet him in the first facets of the game, kinda like his presentation. He fights shadows with his hands and his fists. He uses 8-pound gloves, apparently the kind used for sparring.
Regarding his outfit, he is very well dressed, he has a long-sleeved white shirt with a buttoned collar, a red vest, tie, dress pants and dress shoes, he has short grayish hair that is quite elegant.
As for his personality, he is quite serious, he is always trying to give good ideas to boost the group and make everyone feel comfortable. He is a very good friend with Mitsuru since they both share a past, past that we see in the game in later episodes.
Mitsuru Kirijo
She is the beautiful and elegant girl of the team, she comes from a fairly wealthy family and she is extremely serious about her things, she is always taking care of what to say. She is very good friends with Akihiko, since they go to the same school level, all the characters are students of Gekkoukan High School.
Mitsuru has long red hair that is somewhat wavy towards the ends. She is very well dressed wearing an elegant long-sleeved white shirt with a good design with a red bow tie style. She also has a pleated or dark-colored skirt that reaches her knees and has tall black boots that reach her knees as well. She also fights with a fencing sword, a kind of fairly thin sword that looks like a pin.
Yukari Takeba
Yukari is the type of girl who could be anyone’s neighbor, average girl, calm, friendly, laughs with you, goes out with you to do any errand, she is the typical friend who lends herself to everything, she looks more Asian than the other participants in the cast, her eyes are slanted and Her hair is short, straight and brown, she wears a kind of pink sweater like the petals of Sakura trees and she has a red bow that adorns her chest. She has a short dark black skirt and she has brown dress shoes with High black stockings that reach her knees Yukari is very thin and very young.
She uses a bow and arrow to fight, Since she is a member of the archer club, it is natural that this is the weapon with which she fights the shadows.
Junpei Iori
Junpei is the most relaxed boy on the team, others could call him the team clown, and it is with good reason because he is always careless when speaking, he is quite immature to say things, he is always impulsive and Yukari is always bashing him for his recklessness and mistakes and how clumsy he is. for these reasons he is the relaxing element of the team, so to speak.
But despite everything, Junpei is a very good person deep down, we can see this when the team interacts with the enemy team, lowlifes that want to see the world burn. Within that team there is a very unusual girl, without ruining this part of the game which s very cool, She and Junpei get to know each other and they get very close in the romantic aspect of things. I won’t say more. Junpei is an excellent character even though in the beginning he is quite careless to speak, but eventually becomes an admirable person. you have to play the game to find out!.
Now he always wears his school suit with the shirt unbuttoned, there are seasons in the game when he just wears a white shirt, but that’s not important, he wears a baseball cap, he has a kind of small goatie. He is the tallest on the team. He uses a bat to fight, since he is part of the baseball club at school.
Fuuka Yamagishi
Fuuka is like the well behaved role-model girl of the class, she is extremely intelligent and super shy, she does not have much confidence in herself and she is very afraid when she joins SEES, the way she asserts herself is by helping you with her intelligence. Little by little she corrects her defects to become a true support for her team. I remember the one timee she wanted to learn to cook because it was one of the skills that she lacked, and in your adventures of trying to socialize she asks you to be present so that she has enough courage to be able to cook his first dish, the game is so great that you make the mundane everyday things entertaining because you never know how said character is going to react.
Now fuuka has cerulean hair, kind of a turkquoise color, short hair. She is white, short and has a calm and soft voice. Her outfit is like any other girl in high school, consists of her two piece school outfit: the top part which is a kind of jacket that has long sleeves up to the wrists in black, and has a turtleneck shirt underneath that is also particularly the cerulean color of her hair. She has a pleated skirt that is black that reaches a little above her knees. She wears brown dress moccasin shoes and she also has high white stockings that cover all of her legs.
Fuuka does not participate in combat as a Playable character on the front lines but rather, she acts as a strategist guiding the team through the Tartarus labyrinth. The labyrinth is impossible to navigate on your own. This means that She is always communicating with the team from the base that is the SEES HQ AKA the dormitory.
Ken Amada
He is a 10-year-old boy who tragically lost his mother in a car accident. After we advance in the story, we hear that Shinjiro had a hand in the tragedy, which is why Shinjiro has retired from chasing shadows and fighting with his friend Akihiko. Ken feels a great desire for revenge and hatred towards the person who caused his mother’s premature death. When you meet Ken, you see him full of hatred, resentment and sadness, even with his head down and without the desire to fight or do anything. Eventually when the story develops, Shinjiro was not the direct cause of the tragedy. However, Shinjiro does the unthinkable.
Ken’s Personality is that of a sweet child, he is very kind, he is calm and when he lets go of his resentment and what was tormenting his mind regarding the loss of his mother, he is very friendly and he becomes good friends with Koromaru, The team’s canine.
Ken has straight brown hair that is somewhat short, has his school outfit, however, instead of pants, he wears shorts, i believe this is custom for young boys in Japan, both pieces are black, he wears an orange hoodie underneath his uniform. For battle he uses a spear to fight against the Shadows. High tall white socks and sports tennis shoes.
Aigis
She is a creation of the Kirijo group, Mitsuru’s Family. She is a type of Android that was created with the ability to have feelings like humans, and to be able to interact and learn from them. When our Heroes take a school trip to a tropical resort, find her standing on a dock, as she’s looking towards the horizon and the waves, she wears a light blue robe so you don’t realize that she is actually a robot at first when you meet her. The team decides to take her home.
Aigis at first speaks in a very strange way, typical of how a robot would speak that is freshly unpacked so to speak, or that has not learned or has interacted much with the human world, however this changes quickly. There are very funny situations that occur due to her ignorance of human behavior, and it is up to her companions to correct her and tell her how she should behave in certain situations. she is without a doubt the most interesting character for me because she learns from human emotions and customs. and she becomes very attached to our leader makoto yuki.
This makes the human side reflect a lot in her, even participating and attending school as if she were just another human! everyone considers her a good friend and blends right in. This is where she learns many of her skills and interactions with the world. She even starts to smile and crack out a joke or two.
She uses her two arms to fight, with removable hands, instantly her arms become two cannons that she uses to shoot just like a Japanese animated science fiction film from the 80s. She was created as a blondie of medium height, blue eyes. The personality, that she adopted, is that of a very calm, kind, very affectionate and very cute individual. All of which seemingly she learned from her excellent friends from the SEES group.
The development of the story towards its ending has a lot to do with Aigis, since she is the last person seen with our Hero. At the time of concluding the story this of course links to the additional content of the game called the answer. You have to play the answer to find out what really happened in that ending.
Koromaru (Dog)
Koromaru has a moving story for those of us who know the story of Hachiko, a dog who waited for his owner at the train station for 9 years that kept coming back day after day, but his owner never returned because he passed away while still being away. It is a sample of the loyalty that animals can have towards their human owners.
Persona 3 FES reminded us of this story with Koromaru, since his story is similar. You find him in a temple that you visit in one of the many locations to which you have access after class as I mentioned above and as the story progresses you meet him eventually, you pet him, you feed him, he approaches, and you decide to take him with you into the Dorm.
There, Aigis can understand the canine language and translates. The group realizes that Koromaru’s owner had died for reasons I don’t remember, I think it was some illness or some accident, resulting in Koromaru becoming masterless, and now he found a new home with the SEES family.
Well, since he is a dog, I really can’t say much about his personality, but he is very friendly, he barks when it is his turn to give his opinion on something, and Aigis comes and serves as a translator so that he can participate in the group as far as it is concerned. In battle, Korumaru uses a knife or rather a dagger that he carries in his snout when doing battle and if I remember correctly, Korumaru’s persona is a Cerberus dog.
Finally, Koromaru is an Akita style breed of dog.
Shinjiro Aragaki
Shinjiro is the type of character that you would not want to meet in a dark alley at night simply because of his appearance, not to mention his temperament. His appearance is like that of a bum. He has a red closed suit that reaches down to his legs. He has gloves, he has a hat like a mountain passer o beanie, dress pants and brown pointy shoes. He has long ashen brown hair and has an angry aggressive expression on his face. His demeanor is cutting you off the moment you try to get close to him to talk about what happened with Ken’s mother, however he refuses to talk about it and leaves.
Eventually you manage to get through to him with your insistence and with the help of Akihiko. This part is when the true events that occurred with Ken’s mother are revealed. The team investigates this matter with the help from the police, it is unveiled that Shinjiro had no involvement in the matter, this causes Shinjiro to join the team to do battle. He uses an Axe, and is an all round good character, but unfortunately, I’m going to have to say that he doesn’t spend much time on the team, as he dies even after knowing that he is not the direct culprit of Ken’s mother’s death. What I can remember is that he died as a way to atone for his sins. Didn’t hate the guy, was always silent and mysterious. I was not expecting him sacrificing himself.
Ken, who manages to let go of the feelings of resentment and hatred that were ill-founded from the start, comes to terms with his aching heart. Shinjiro, who spent all this time grieving, feeling terribly bad because he also believed that he was the direct cause of the untimely and unexpected death of Ken’s mother, made the ultimate sacrifice. Rest in peace my dude.
Difficulty
It is quite a difficult game at first if you do not have much experience with role-playing games. you may find yourself with a brick wall, however even in my case; having a lot of experience under my belt with jrpg role-playing games, I found myself dying/ Getting Game over on a couple of occasions even knowing that I should not rush into battle with a lower level than the floor on which I am. The effects that some monsters launch in combination with some attacks that are quite strong end up destroying my team.
One thing that is extremely important that I must tell you: Any one of your companions can die in battle and you can resurrect him/her with one of the items you carry for resurrection, however if your leader, if Makoto Yuki reaches HP 0 or gets Ko’d, even if the rest of the team if full HP, your screen is going to greet you with an unpleasant Game Over. I learned this the hard way.
This challenge is at the beginning of the game, then you will get used to the mechanics, the weaknesses of monsters and which personas to take with you in dependance to the enemies that appear on certain Tartarus floors. I don’t remember very well but I think that you can lower the difficulty of the game, if it doesn’t let you in the options menu, you will have to start a new adventure and play it on easy.
There is nothing wrong or shame in playing a game on easy, I prefer, on a personal level, to play a game on easy and be able to enjoy a great story and not miss out rather than abandon it completely just because of my gamer pride. I encourage you that if you are having problems with Persona 3 FES, that you lower the difficulty and continue with your story enjoying every aspect of it .
Another thing I recommend you do, if you are persistent in continuing on normal difficulty, focus on fusing more powerful personas, so that Makoto can equip himself and take them with him into battle. If I remember correctly, he can carry up to ten personas in his pocket (It’s not pokemon okay?XD), which allows you to exchange personas in battle. In general persona 3 FES is not an extremely difficult game, it just requires a somewhat long learning curve, as long as you dedicate yourself to understanding the mechanics of the weaknesses of the monsters and the different personas you can get, you will be okay.
Replayability
New Game Plus
Allows you to enjoy the story of Persona 3 FES a second time, but this time with incorporated elements of being able to carry over to a new adventure your weapons, some items and if I remember correctly your levels, this is also typical of jrpgs that generally unlocks new dungeons only available in New Game Plus, which is an incentive for players who are encouraged to give the story a second playthrough.
In the case of Persona 3 FES, I didn’t take on the task of doing a second play-through since I dedicated 200 hours in my first run. I can say that there is a fairly substantial challenge in trying to beat Elizabeth, if you don’t know Elizabeth, Elizabeth is Igor’s; the big-nosed guy’s assistant who helps you fuse Personas in the velvet room. She is the honey-eyed one who looks like a stewardess dressed in blue with her little hat.
The stewardess has short white hair and she wants to learn about the human world. Okay, apparently she’s not human even though she one all through and through, don’t ask me how i know, Go ask Makoto, wink wink. In short, she is an extremely difficult boss to beat. She is only available if you start a second Adventure, I did not dare because of the time I dedicated to Persona 3 FES first playthrough and I simply decided to watch the confrontation on YouTube. I don’t know if I would have been able to defeat her but I decided to advance in another game.
The Answer
Only made available from P3 FES and its rereleases like the Persona 3 Portable where you get to play a female Protagonist. The answer is the DLC content contents and events that occur after the ending of the main game’s storyline. Get ready to dive into another 20 to 30 hours of gameplay. The revelation is quite shocking and you will love.
Music
The Music comes from Shoji Meguro, One of the Greatest of all time. His compositions are bulls eye accurate. They serve to increase the tone and feel to every situation. A game with bad soundtrack is a stale game. I always try to find innovating ways to make this point across, Music-is-fundamental-in-any-game. Period. If the music sucks, the game sucks, bold statement i know, but imagine playing a beat-em ups game while listening to prom music… not quite what you would expect right? Have a sample from Sensei Meguro.
Burn My Dread
Serves as the Game’s Intro track.
Master of Shadow
Mass Destruction
Memories of You
This track in particular Memories of you…Hits home with the feels and gets me thinking about Aigis.
Conclusions, Should you Bother with P3?
Persona 3 FES is without a doubt one of the jewels of the jrpg world that any Jrpg fan, even of video games in general, I dare say, must try at least once in their life. The characters are intuitive, each with their own personality, their own defects, strengths and their own dreams, each one contributing what they can to A common goal to defeat the shadows and uncover the mystery of what the dark hour is.
the story is Without a doubt unprecedented, it is not the typical save the world and defeat the bad guy scheme and in the end everyone is happy. In fact, I consider the ending of Persona 3 FES to be one of the darkest endings that I have been able to experience in a long time.
That is why I love Atlus’ jrpgs because their stories are unpredictable, their epilogues are Unexpected, always keeping the viewer wanting more and intrigued, as it was in my case. As for the music, I can say that Shoji Meguro is a complete genius and master without discrediting the other composers who probably participated in this work, but the music itself is great! if I could have the soundtrack album for this game I would buy it without hesitation!
Is the game worth it? Yes! for all the things mentioned above. if you like interesting and fun characters, if You like a good story, if you like a game that will keep you intrigued and playing for hours and hours on end, If you like a game that represents a challenge for you, it is difficult but not impossible, Persona 3 is the game for you.
I would recommend it completely, As we make our way into February 2024, we are about to receive the arrival of Persona 3 reloaded, which is a kind of remastering of Persona 3 original with improved graphics, I don’t know if the music is going to have a remasterization, I also don’t know if they are going to add additional content, What i DO KNOW is that they have already revealed the game will have different introductory music video than Burn my dread. check it out here actually!
So… I’m very much looking forward to this rerelease. I thought it would be very fun to share my review of persona 3 FES since I played it back in 2020. And that’s all i have folks! until next time.
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Thank You for Reading all the way to the End!
