An unique experience. Persona 3's presentation and new approaches to roleplaying take you to some place totally new.
STORYLINE:
When first turning on the game you'll notice two things. One, this game doesn't really seem to link with the exact same mood and apperance as the pervious games. Two, it has a very different take when it comes to RPG storytelling. If this may sound flakey to old school Shin Megami Tensei fans, believe me theres nothing to be worried about. In fact, what makes Persona 3 so freaking addictive are these changes. The new style, deep story, setting and surprisingly deep interactive characters would take most RPG gamers in complete surprize...and that's half the fun.
You start off as a transfer student that goes by the name you give him after a creepy dream/nightmare like intro where he calmly makes his way into a student dormitory and signs his name one a contract bay a creepy boy sitting behind the front desk. After signing, the dream seems to distort, making it's way back to a more normal reality where you bump into two very surprised girls. One who goes by the name Yukari Takeba, seems twitchy and scared at first, worse is the fact that she is holding what looks to be a gun. Before things get out of hand, however, a soothing voice of a second student, Mitsuru Kirijo, stops Yukari's actions before they get out of hand. As confusing and freaky as this events are however, the two students try to convince you to stay quite about the incident, and proceed to give you a tour of the dorm without much explaination. It turns out that the dorm is actually pretty empty, and even though it's technically a girl's dorm you are told will be staying there temperarily due to some school management issues (ka-ching!). So you are assigned the room. What the heck is going on here?! What are with these strange people?!...Who cares, you got your first day of school tomarrow. The entire plot and setting occur in Tatsmui Port Island, mostly in or based around Gekkoukan High School. The events and story continue in a new "day-to-day" system, in which your character will move along a calender, each day going to school and spending the afternoon socializing or doing whatever else he wishes. Although the main story reloves around the strange hidden "Dark Hour" and the mysteries that connect the students in the dorm and Gekkoukan High School to the bizarrenes that occur during that hour, most of the side plots and events occur in your character's every day life. In fact, you later fighting powers are determined by this "life in the shoes of a typical japanese student" system. You socialize and interact with the unsuspecting citizens as you see fit, spending your days to way you want to. Depending on who you choose to grow close to or hang out with with determine what kind of Persona (summons) you can find and create to fight with later on in the game. Choosing how and what to spend your time on is just as or sometimes even more critical that the actual combat.
GAMEPLAY:
Actual combat in Persona 3 is actually pretty basic on the surface. During the "Dark Hour" is the time where you'll do all of you fighting in a place called Tartarus. It's all most like a dungeon crawl where you go into a huge ever shifting building and try to make your way to the top floor. Each floor is randomly generated, but the enemies get harder the further up you go. Nearly all the materials you need in the game, including weapons, armor, healing items, and, most important of all, Persona are collected in Tartarus. So heading in there almost every night night to gain experience and so one is critical as the main story develops. It might sound a bit dull, but thank to the intense combat system, it's not as bad as it would seem. Dispite the fact that you can summon Persona to aid you and weild powerful weapons for personal protection, your tactics and ability to plan ahead is key between deciding life or death. If you keep going at a steady pace, more often then not the enemies well seem just as cunning and/or powerfull as you are, keeping you on your toes. When your characters finally become exhausted or if you just get tired level grinding, you can stop whenever you want an switch back to the other main aspect of the game, socail development to inrease the power of your Persona, or simply to proceed with the story.
SOUND:
Usually, I mention sound last, because frankly, I tend not to care so much about it, but these time I have to say that the sound was critical in this game as well. The music and voice acting where both unbelievably fitting and unbelievable good in this game. Part of what made the story so intense and the characters so believable where not the graphics but the actors who where there voices. The cast was drop dead PERFECT in bringing these conflicted high school kids to life. I wouldn't have had Yukari, Junpei, Mitsuru, Akihiko sound any other way. Even the villians where believable and sounded great.
GRAPHICS: The art involved is smooth and beautiful. Mixing mundane with the fantasic, but they where nothing really new. Past RPGs have had similar style and quality. But that's not nessecarily a bad thing, the graphics seemed to suit the game well enough. Although why they didn't just develope it for the PS3 now that it has been out all this time, I'm not sure I understand.