Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Worth playing"

SPOILER FREE

It's like this. Take everything you've ever known about RPG's, flip it over leftward and up, and build down. That is the kind of thinking that was needed to make this game. It combines elements from several different game flawlessly while adding 1 or 2 flaws of it's own. Games like Final Fantasy, Pokemon Red Rescue Team, The Sims, The Brain Game, and even mystery games are all thrown into the mix without making it seem like it was rehashed at all. That said, this game is totally original, but has a wide range of concepts.

Here's the gyst of the game. You are _ _ _ _ _. Whatever your name is that you name the main character. This guy is a kid from the city that comes to live in the small town of Inaba for a year while his parents are away. While he stays in Inaba, he lives with his uncle Dojima, the cop and his daughter, Nanako. You will quickly meet some people that will help you discover something incredible after murder has occured in Inaba. This incredible thing is the ability to enter through a TV to walk into another world. This world is filled with creatures called Shadows, the other selves of humans that are reborn there. These serve as enemies. One other creature is in this realm called Teddie. He's a sort of irritating bear thing that happens to be the only sentient resident of this other realm. He also serves as the only way to leave the realm with his ability to summon TV's on will while he's in this realm. Evidently, the murder that was made is connected to this world. In fact, someone was thrown in there and left to die. While in the TV realm, you unlock your other self, a powerful entity called a Persona. Since the murder involves this other realm, there is no way the cops can solve the case on their own. So, that job falls to you.

As far as variety goes, this game has it in abundance. Other than battle shadows in the TV realm to get stronger, you also have business to attend to in the real world. You have a different set of stats for each world. In the TV world, your Persona's stats are your fighting stats. Things like Strength, Magic, etc. In real life, your stats have to do with the personality characteristics of real life, like Courage, Knowledge, Understanding, etc. Depending on how high these stats are, you will be able to partake in more things. For example, if you didn't have enough Courgae, you wouldn't be able to skip school with a friend of yours. If you don't have enough Expression, you won't be able to explain to a child why people die. This system works well as a whole. Things in that you can do are aplenty enough to keep the fun coming. You can go to a ramen store, talk with a myriad of friends, tutor someone, go to one of your clubs, study, read, etc. Make no mistake, this is NOT in any way like playing the Sims. The things that you do are actually are relevant to your existence. Reading a certain book or pretending you didn't hear a creepy sound at the end of a hallway will increase your Courage, while keeping at something like doing your envelope making job will make your Diligence go up and give you money. Talking to a friend will make it so you can create Personas of that personality type more powerful ( this has to do with the fusion system of mixing persona's to form stronger ones. explained in greater detail later). All the actions you can do will contribute in someway to your character overall. Interesting thing is, you can only do 1 action per day, and another smaller set of actions at night. That complicates your tactic as to what you will do each day. Will you converse with a friend to make an arcana of Personas more powerful or go have a try at the Rainy Day Meat Bowl Challenge to increase your stats? Maybe do some fishing to trade fish for items with the old man? Will you go inside the TV to train your characters and get money and items? It's all up to you.

As I stated before, you will end up doing a variety of things. You can accept sidequests from people to get items, do a fishing minigame to get even more items, participate in several story driven events, answer questions and do exams in school, and fuse personas. The main character is the only character that can hold and use more than one persona at a time. Everybody else had 1 persona they're stuck with. So, which characters you pick to talk to in your party and use in combat will be important as each character has their own unique persona with strengths and weaknesses. Battle isn't quiet as easy as in most RPGs. Tactics and strategy are required to win effectively. That makes picking characters even more of a tactical problem that some players will spend several minutes thinking about before they commit. Unfortunately, because of the way characters are acquired, you seem to get them rather slow. Some players might feel irritated at the wasted effort they put on one character when they have found a different character they would rather use. Of course you can simply relate with everyone, but that won't bring out the party's maximum power. One character you get nearly at the end of the game and if you don't have a high enough stat, you won't even be able to initiate a relationship. That said, the character set up isn't overly great. Yes each character has their own realistic personality that makes you think "... and that's how it is in real life too..."" which add to the game, but if you pick the wrong characters, it will be very unforgiving as the game only lasts for a certain number of in-game days.

Fusing Personas is a part of the game that cannot be missed. Since the main character's card is the Wild Card instead of one specific arcana, he can use any Persona he chooses. You acquire personas every now and then from defeated shadows and you can bring them to the Velvet Room to have them fused. This system can be rather complicated. Almost any 2 personas can be fused, and later up to 6 can be fused. Each persona is categorized into an Arcana, which is attached to a certain characters relationship. The stronger that relationship is, the more bonus XP can be added to that category of Persona. When that relationship has maxed out, you have the ability to make the max level persona of that Arcana. Fusing different arcana's will result in several other different arcana categories, but a useful chart found in the gamebook will help in that area. As a Persona levels up, it will learn new attacks. There are many kinds of moves including elemental, which drain SP, while melee moves drain HP. There's also buffing/heal moves that take SP. There are many different moves, and strategy is around when you decide what moves a Persona will get for this reason. A persona can only remember 8 moves, so some will need to be forgotten. Others that the persona will never learn can still be taught to a persona through fusion. Some of both personas' that are fused moves will be attached to the new persona. This way, you can make persona fit to your strategy, but making these personas with specific moves can be far more difficult than it seems.

The game's combat is a little different. Yes each character and enemy has weaknesses, strengths, and stats. But, when an super effective element attack hits an enemy, they will fall over. This allows for that character to attack again. If all enemies are knocked over, the whole party can do a rush attack the obliterates the enemy almost indefinitely. However, enemies can knock over your characters too, so caution is needed. Depending on whether or not you have relationships with your teammates and how high those relationships are, your friends will be able to use special techniques under certain circumstances. Things like knocking over an enemy or about to take a mortal blow will trigger these things. This increases the complication of choosing who to relate with even further.

The other game aspects like graphics and sound are great. The graphics are pretty good. Beautiful, colorful, well done and not lazy in the slightest. The sound is a kind of pop style music. It's pretty original and catchy stuff. That said, it sticks in your head enough for you to know that it's good. The voice actors are as believable as it can come ( save for the girls. Some anime style girls have overly exaggerrated voices). The overall concept of the game is different and flows smoothly. In other words, the gaps between days, fighting, and conversing are seemless and natural feeling. It isn't " I ran out of items, health and magic. Time to go an inn.". It's more of " I've been fighting for a while. I can't go further without dying. Time to go to sleep." . Your character returns to the real realm, goes home, does a night action and goes to sleep. The next day it happens all over again with you in the captain seat. The amount of choice within the game is simply incredible, giving it immense replay value. If you don't play through the game right, you won't solve the mystery and the game will end with your character simply returning home, leaving parts of the game unexplained. If that happened, go ahead and start an New Game Plus ( that's basically the idea) and do it again. It will be easier the second time through and some parts of the game can only be done the second time around anyway, boosting the replay value even further.In the end, this game is pretty good. Among the best. 9 out of 10.