Bygone art really is Contemporary

I love 2000s, the 50% aluminium (or silver painted plastic), and the other translucent colourful plastic of all the technology, a whole lot of Frutiger Aero slaped left and right (I had a mouse with a bubble of undefined liquid in which a plastic tropical fish was swimming), my favorite bands released their best works (or at least my favorite). All that to say, I really know time, and yet as much as Persona 3 contains so much of the Y2K, it doesn’t limit itself to that period.

So, not leaving you all hanging anymore, let me share some thoughts.

But before note, IF YOU DON’T WANT TO HAVE GAME SPOILED AND/OR ARE INTERESTED IN THIS GAME, please play it first, because this will be very much a spoiler-filled article.

C) Money

B) Fes is the definitive version of the original game, and Reload is a remake made with fans of Persona 5 and/or folks who played Fes and Portable too many times in mind first

A) Before you even ask, Persona 3 Portable is a straight-up visual novel that takes 50% of the original game goodness and, in exchange, introduces the ability to play as a girl (Aka it’s a great way to replay P3, not start)

(For all people wondering about the order, here is an explanation.)

Well, it’s a very well-written game that got very well-translated, that does all the pretentious art cliches (main theme being overpresent, having very philosophical question be the main point of one of the character and usage of forbidden art [read tarot] as main connection of one with mystical side of reality that’s acually very present) so well that it actually is good.

Each character, whenever it’s one of the Social-Links or a participant in the main plot, isn’t just their stereotype. A perfect example of that is Junpei, first shown as comedic relief, who everyone makes fun of, stereotyped “Gamer” who hates studying and doesn’t have any hobbies outside of playing games, reading manga, and eating ramen (the mid-late 2000s show up), who also is sad that, in the end, the goal of saving the world will require sacrifice of the power that allowed him to be “more” than most people. All that leaves you through most of the game with the thought that this person isn’t that deep, and yet the last few months prove quite the opposite. First, he develops a great bond with Chidori, a persona user who is hurt by her own power (both physically and mentally), making this person fear death for the first time (because of the possibility of not being able to see Junpei again), and then the tragic death of her (technically her sacrifice to save our “comedic relief” from death) that causes him to in following time be in great apathy from which only portraits of him drawn by her bring him relief. On top of all that, he later in the story reveals that his father is an alcoholic, and so his class clown personality has been a mask to hide his pain.

To say those characters are well written is not a diligent summary of the writer’s work, nor the translation team that poured more work than they actually were required to do.

But also, I do need to do some clarification, as this isn’t a master piece without any flaws, translation definitely has issues (which I will touch on in a second), not all interactions and dialogue are actually full-on deep and meaningful, but when it matters, it not only delivers but elevates the expectation.

So, the biggest gripe everyone could ever have with this game’s translation is some parts of the dubbing, most precisely anything involving Fuuka, which, on the surface, is correct. Her lines, in fact, are written very stiffly, as well as dubbed, but the problem is how to put it… Engraved into this character’s whole concept is that she’s a high school student with an inferiority complex who gets bullied by her classmates. This is already a hard character to write. In all honesty, with that context, Fuuka is way more understandable as a character, yet most people don’t even know anyone with an inferiority complex, so they assume incompetence instead of nuance.

But enough with that, the stories of both the main game and “The Answer“ are extremely good. If I were to describe this game’s story in a sentence, I would say: The worst translation of Memento Mori, Memento Lori (which isn’t that bad).

What I love most about Persona 3 Fes’s systems is how most of them are tied together with the cycle of days; it makes daytime feel fundamental to the whole game, both contributing to mechanical growth as well as bringing balance into the game between combat, exploration of Tartarus, and the life of a high schooler.

The one that makes Neo-Persona (all Persona games after the 3rd(Inclusive)) be what it is called: the Social Links.

Social links are fundamental in this game’s progression; without them, you are going to have a hell of a time. In them, you just talk with many different people: from classmate who wants to become the best sportsmen to the president of a huge corporation, each representing a different major arcana from the tarot deck, first in flawed form, progressing and growing to gain more “positive” traits of the card. Each social link has 10 ranks, and what makes it interesting is that each rank grants additional exp when fusing a persona aligned with the same arcana, tying both “Normal” and “Hero” lifes together. Also, on rank 10, you get the ability to fuse the “strongest” persona of said arcana, which brings us to another part of the systems: persona fusion.

Persona Fusion is simply your main way of getting new personas. Maybe after some fights, as a reward, you can get a persona, but from the rewards, only you get a very small portion of them, not even talking about the fact that most of them are “current level fusion fodder”. What is even more interesting is the fact that thanks to social links, you can easily get much higher-level personas than you are, which:

C) encourages players to often fuse and replace personas

B) allows players to grasp slightly higher power if they put enough effort

A) creates a somewhat interesting active level dynamic that is easily trackable by just checking at what level you can fuse a new persona

And so now we can go into combat without leaving people unaware of the systems behind.

Combat in this game is pretty interesting because it’s a mix of the classic “Press-Turn” system of SMT1 with the simultaneous turn system of Pokémon. As much as your agility stat defines the order each character can act again if they hit a critical hit or an enemy weakness (note that attacks that hit multiple enemies will not score, so-called “one more”), which, with a possibility of 4V4, creates quite a dynamic turn-based system, and I really like it a lot, gives all the fun features of press turn system without the snowballing unfairness of missing attacks in the SMT3 nocturne (PAIN).

(Honestly, I believe people overlook a lot of brilliance in the turn system of Pokémon.)

What is more interesting about those systems is the fact that how strong the boosts really are; Hellbiker can easily outclass Helel if you give Hellbiker good skills. But to note, in this game, it’s extremely hard to create strong personas because of “Peak Atlus Game Design”, aka random skill inheritance. Most personas have a very short move pool because the whole idea is to in fusion pass on skills from previous personas. The problem is that what skills are passed on is 100% random, with a caveat that each persona can inherit different skills at different rates; the only way you can affect that is through resetting fusion by quitting fusion selection and entering it again, and know: meta play of this game is required for beating the super boss of this game.

So, that is for systems; now let’s get over some of my favorite takeaways from this game.

This was a very unique experience that I believe deserves more attention, but what is saddening me greatly is the fact that how much this game is how inaccessible. This is a PS2 game that has only been released on PS3 in a select few regions, and with the PlayStation Store on PS3 already being halfway closed, the ability to play this game in the most accurate and expressive form is getting questioned. On one side, we need to preserve media because sooner or later, we will not be able to experience it again, not even speaking about younger generations, but at the same time, this game’s second story makes me question if we should always be just making everything accessible.

I know this will be a controversial take and that many will disagree, but what if true preservation isn’t milking the same game over and over, re-releasing the same unchanged version of it? What if we could make a new, better version of it that will not change the fundamental values, will not change anything to go against the original version’s values? Could we let the original version give the rest in its time? Let the art stay in its contemporary space? This is a question that doesn’t have a true answer (I swear this isn’t a dad joke), and in many ways, both sides have their own rightful argument of which we all should not ignore.

That said, neither P3P nor P3R delivers it; they scrap a lot of the original game in the name of making their own unique experience.

And so with this idea will end the valuable part of the article and start some of its goofier side.

One of my favorite bits in this game is the fact that the protagonist uses some cool personas; those personas are the representation of one’s psyche, and so my question stands:

HOW THE F@(&ING HELL DOES ONE’S PSYCHE BE SO F@(&ED UP TO THE POINT WHERE THE BEST REPRESENTATION OF THEM ARE: METATRON, BEELZEBUB, AND MESSIAH!!!!111!!11!11!!1

It’s a really funny bit; the same implications go for Succubus, Incubus, Satan, and Thanatos, to name a few.

And the final joke from me is a video I made that is a representation of what happened once in my original playthrough:

With some funny bits after a slightly philosophical take on game preservation, I will leave you all

Cheers from your Edgiest Man Alive™ -Karlox Dark