Persona 3 is stylish and rich and ultimately is about loving people and wanting to be alive, which is a relevant and necessary antidote to current death-focused trends that are lazily propagated. The game's dynamic between relationship building (and that is relationships of all kinds: Platonic, mentor, surrogate parent, surrogate son, romantic) and dungeon crawling is enriched by both sides influencing the creation and advancing of social links and personas. It is something that once you get into the rhythm of, it becomes addictive to continue pursuing. The richness of the side-stories makes up for the uneven pacing of the main plot. AND THE MUSIC! How did I get this far in the review and not mention it? It is simply the best. So groovy, so much variety, it oozes cool. I love the balance between hip hop battle scenes switching to J-Pop highschool hallway running switching to gothic choral arrangements in the velvet room. It is one of my all-time favorite soundtracks.
FES is less good overall. 8 (or 4 stars out of the five) is the rating I give to the main Persona 3 campaign, whereas I give a 6 to FES. It takes away the entirety of the relationship building, and also robs you of other tools in the persona fusing process, making for a much simpler and repetitive experience. The story also feels a bit too padded out, although it hits some juicy bits in the back half. Some good new music is introduced. I think I would give it a full point increase if it had been 15 hours long instead of 35. I am very excited to tackle Persona 4.