Sea Slugs! Anime Blog

With the new Persona anime looking up this season, I thought it would be a good time to give props to Persona 3, the game that loosely provides the setting for the show. I’m actually glad that the anime has very little relevance to the game, since VG adaptations tend to chafe at the constraints of the source material. Then again, FF Unlimited took this same approach, and faceplanted on its ugly mug.

Persona 3 is a mashup of SLG and dungeon crawler, though more Tokimeki Memorial than Diablo. If you’re ok knowing you’ll be spending more time hitting the books, eating fast food, and chatting up classmates than slaying ungodly foes, you might want to check it out. In other words, don’t expect to be gallivanting around a world teeming with magnificent vistas, because the most exotic this game ever gets is during its love hotel dungeon.

The clever design emphasizes the importance of socializing with your friends and neighbors as the foundation of your dungeon crawling abilities, rather than the traditional method of using plot advancement as the proverbial carrot-on-the-stick. And that’s just fine with me, because I’d rather explore character backstories all day long than grind low level mobs for chump change.

Persona 3 definitely hit the sweet spot for me, though its game design is rather polarizing. It’s definitely one-of-a-kind though, and if you’re an RPG/anime fan, you owe it to yourself to at least give it a rental whirl. If I recall, Jeff was considering getting the game; I wonder if he ever did? Read on for some thoughts I had after finishing the (freaking long) game.

• I think the key design feature that makes the game shine is the active calendar. By essentially making time your most precious resource and enforcing set deadlines, a sense of urgency is created that relentlessly propels the game forward, whether you like it or not. In a way, this reminds me of the brilliantly crafted Star Control 2, where you only had a limited time before one of the two warring juggernaut races dominated the other, and then started taking over the rest of the galaxy. This ensures that Persona 3 never leaves you dawdling about, wondering where to go next, as your hands are always full juggling your Miley Stewart/Hannah Montana double life.

• In retrospect, I should have played the game on Easy difficulty, as that would have saved myself a lot of frustration. The nature of the ‘Press Turn’ battles makes every fight a ’sudden-death’ match; couple this with the punishing rule that it’s Game Over if your main character dies (even if the rest of your party is alive), and you have an mercurial combat system where you can be dumped back to the title screen before you even have a chance to react. Easy difficulty gives you a limited stock of 10 continues to last you the entire game, which can help relieve some of those frustrating moments.

• Where else can you find a chariot-riding penis monster? (NSFW!).
• Ken Amada looks like a younger version of Spero from Stella Deus, which Soejima also did the designs for. His voice is probably the worst of the English dub - he reminds me of Ash Ketchum from the American Pokemon dub.
• The lyric-laden BGMs set the soundtrack apart from other JRPGs, though the words were often difficult to comprehend due to the accented Engrish. Gotta love the incongruous battle music: “Oooh yeah, Da Da da da, da da da Da, Bay-beh baybeh, Da Da da da, da da da DA!” Come on, you know you like it.

• Of course, I couldn’t leave out the most important question of all: Fav character? Probably Mitsuru. She had the best character art, and I liked her commu story, which was reminiscent of Maria-sama’s Sachiko. She throws around a lot of French expressions, but unfortunately the English VA mails in an American accent for everything. I wonder why Atlus didn’t release a JP-language option, like their other releases?
• The biggest downside is that the constant dungeon crawling and social stat grinding (charm, academics, courage) can be pretty tedious over the course of the school year. The plethora of story events help break up the monotony though, and you’re always looking forward to furthering the backstories of your social links.

• The Tartarus Theater 4-koma series is a must-see if you’ve played the game, though the humor is a bit hit-or-miss.
• The limited environments lent a slightly claustrophobic feel to the game; you pretty much spend all your time visiting the same 5 or 6 places over and over, just like in real life. After finishing this game, I developed a sudden urge to gallop freely through unrestricted fields and woodlands, sans the creepy man-faces.
• I really dig the iconic “Velvet Room” theme that plays soothingly in the background as you mull over your Persona fusions, so I was pleasantly surprised by its subtle appearance in the first episode of Trinity Soul. Too bad the dream was aborted before the aria portion kicked in.

Final Slug Rating: 9.0/10.0 Slugs.