I AM JOHN!
Banned
GAME INFO
- Publisher: Atlus (NA/JP), Ghostlight (Europe)
- Developer: Atlus
- System: PSP
- Rated: M for this game's got teen sex, murder, cursing, and kids shooting themselves in the head with fake guns." Unless you're in Europe. Then it's PGEI 12.
- Availability: UMD and downloadable via US/CA PlayStation Store.
- Release date: North America: 7/6/10 | Japan: 11/1/09 | Europe: 28/4/11
- Players: 1
- Price: $39.99
THE STORY SO FAR
What if I told you there was a 25th hour, a time in which monsters and men with special powers run rampant that the general population experiences as nothing more than a blink of an eye? It may seem hard to believe, but you are about to discover a firsthand account of the realityand the dangerof this mysterious hour.
Orphaned at a young age, you have spent your life gallivanting across Japan, bouncing between whatever city and school your relatives have decided to dump you for a time. On a dark evening in March, 2009, you find yourself in Tatsumi Port Island, a bustling coastal city where you will be attending the state-of-the-art boarding school Gekkokan High School. Aside from the odd boy who makes you sign a mysterious contract and the cute girl who pulls a gun on you during your first night in the dorms, it looks like you will be having an absolutely unspectacular junior year.
That is, until one night, when you find your dorm under siege by a hideous monsters. It storms the roof you and your classmate Yukari (the girl who pulled the gun on you before) have taken refuge on. Things look bleak, especially when Yukari is attacked when trying to stop this monster, knocking the gun from her hands.
You somehow know exactly what to do. You pick up the gun. You put it against your temple. You whisper the word Persona. You pull the trigger. Your life is changed forever.
After waking up in the hospital a week later, you discover what is really going on. This twenty-fifth hour is the Dark Hour, an extra hour that happens every midnight, unbeknownst to the general populous who becomes encased in coffins (dont ask) during the time. During this hour, creatures known as shadows roam the city and prey on unsuspecting victims; these victims are drained of all will and motivation and essentially turned into mindless zombies, a condition the media has come to refer to as Apathy Syndrome. But all isnt lost. A select few have the ability to perceive the Dark Hour, and are able to fight the shadows by using both conventional weaponry and Personas a mysterious other side of the wielder that grants them superhuman strength and magical skills and is coaxed out by the faux-gun Evoker that all Persona-users carry. There is a student-run group called SEES, led by class President Mitsuru Kirijo, comprised of your fellow Persona-possessing classmates whose mission has become to explore the Dark Hour and stop the shadows once and for all. However, theyve noticed something special about you: whereas most people only have one Persona, you, for some reason, are the Wild Card, able to hold up to twelve Personae within you. So not only do they want you to join SEES, they want you to lead them into battle.
Before you ask: yes, they do have a plan that involves more than roaming around aimlessly during the Dark Hour killing shadows. Every night, Gekkokan High transforms into Tartarus, a gigantic tower overflowing with shadows and answers to the mysteries of the Dark Hour, and every full moon, a major shadowlinked to one of the major arcana of the Tarot deckappears in Tatsumi Port Island for your killing pleasure. This might not be a surprise, but theres probably a correlation between Tartarus and these major shadows, one that can only be discovered by reaching the top of the ominous tower and destroying every major shadow that comes in your path.
The stage is set. Midnight has arrived, and Tartarus looms in the distance. How you tackle the task ahead of you is your choice alone, and the fate of Tatsumi Port Island, Japan, and maybe even the world rests in your hands. Just dont forget: saving the world doesnt get you off the hook for not doing your homework.
FEATURES
So whats the deal with P3P?
Persona 3 Portable is yet another version of Persona 3, originally released in 2006 (2007 in America) for the PS2 and re-released in the form of the enhanced Persona 3 FES in 2007 (2008 in America). In the wake of Persona 4 being the most successful game theyve ever made and the PSP becoming ridiculously popular again (in Japan, at least), Atlus decided to revisit the game that brought the franchise back into the limelight and update the admittedly kind of broken original game and its still kind of broken appended version with all new features. In the end, its (probably) still kind of broken, but you cant blame them for trying!
So what do I do?
Gameplay in Persona 3 Portable is split up into two distinct phases: day and night. During the day, you go to school and have to juggle all the responsibilities of being a high schooler. Do you stay awake during class or take a nap? Do you spend your afternoon at a club meeting, studying in the library, singing some karaoke, or catching a movie? Do you hang out with your friends and to raise your Social Link with them (more on that in a bit), and if so, which one? As the school year rages on, youll have to worry about midterms, sports meets, friends feeling spurned if you keep ignoring them, romantic relationships that can go horribly awry if the girl who likes you catches you with another girl, and so on, so planning how you tackle your responsibilities becomes important, especially since this ties into the nighttime part.
When the sun sets, you have the choice to spend the night at Tartarus. Here, you and three of your fellow SEES members explore the randomly generated floors of the tower, battling shadows in traditional turn-based JRPG style and looking for the answers that will explain why the Dark Hour exists and what these Persona are. Speaking of Persona, the Dark Hour is where they, and the Social Links, come into play. As you beat shadows in Tartarus, youll occasionally get the opportunity to win new Persona. You can keep these Personas and level then up by equipping them in battle, or you can bring them to the Velvet Room and fuse them into new Personae. Each Persona is aligned with an arcana, and each arcana (22 in all, though some are only accessible at certain points in the story) is linked to one of your Social Link friends. The more you hang out with them in the daytime portion, the higher your Social Link will be; higher Social Links give you experience bonuses, allow you to create more powerful Personas, and make special instances (such as fusing a Persona imbued with an item) more likely to occur, so it behooves you to explore the different relationships you can have in the game! The catch to spending time in Tartarus is that spending too much time will wear you and your party out, which can make you tired or sick, drastically harming your stats and limiting your ability to go to Tartarus or possibly study at night, so be careful.
How is this different from either Persona 3 or FES?
P3P has a number of changes and additions on top of all the stuff FES added (if you want to know more about what made FES so special, check out Errors thread on that game). These changes include:
- An all-new campaign. In addition to containing the almost completely unchanged original Persona 3 story (theres a new Persona 4 cameo during one scene, but thats about it), there is a new female protagonist with her own unique set of Social Links and special stuff. Its such a big difference that weve given the MShe her own section below!
- An all-new presentation better suited for a handheld game. While you wandered around a fully rendered Gekkokan High School and various districts in the original two releases, P3P is much more akin to an adventure game; you move a cursor around the environment and click on the person or thing you want to interact with. Theres some downsides to this: this means that theres no more anime cutscenes, and the fully-rendered cutscenes are now at a bare minimum, with most cutscenes comprised of character portraits on a static background. This only applies to the daytime part, though; Tartarus and battles are still fully 3D.
- Tweaks and additions to Tartarus exploration and the related gameplay systems. You can start from the last floor of Tartarus you reached as opposed to one of the hard stops on floors with two-way teleporters. Convenience has its cost, though, as not only does Tartarus feature new traps and hazards, but you no longer replenish your health and stamina points simply by returning to the lobby; you instead have to pay at the teleporter in the lobby to rejuvenate your party. The fatigue system has been overhauled as well. Instead of your party gradually tiring out as you fight your way through Tartarus, your party will only become exhausted after you leave Tartarus or if you return to the lobby without reviving a fallen comrade. Finally, missing citizens will occasionally find their way into Tartarusincluding your Social Link friendsand you must save them before the full moon or live with the consequences of their death on your hands.
- A battle system much more in line with Persona 4. You can now have direct control over your party members instead of relying on assigning tactics to the AI and hoping they listen (though like Persona 4, you can still do that if you so choose). Your teammates will also develop character-specific skills as your relationship with them grows, such as special follow-up attacks. The Wait command has also been replaced with a far more useful Guard command.
- And speaking of carry-overs from Persona 4, theres also fast-travel, the player character can now only wield Slash-type weapons in battle as opposed to any of the weapons (the three different physical attack types, however, are still intact), and part-time jobs that let you make money and raise one of your characteristics.
- The addition of Skill Cards. Obtained after a Persona hits a certain level, Skill Cards let you teach the skill on the card to any Persona, which should ideally give you more motivation to stick with a Persona and level them up instead of flipping them for something else the first chance you get.
- The Hall of Doors, a brand new optional dungeon outside of Tartarus for you to explore. Well, okay, its actually just the content from FES epilogue, The Answer, without the mediocre story to motivate you into playing it.. Still, its kind of cool, I guess!
- Two new difficulty modes a beginner mode for complete wusses, and Maniacs mode, a hyper-hard mode that disables New Game+ for extra playthroughs.
- Oh, and theres also Data Install option, so you can install the UMD info to your Memory Stick Duo and dramatically decrease load times if thats your thing! The install is approximately 260 MB.
PERSONA 3: GIRLS SIDE
As previously mentioned, Persona 3 Portables biggest addition is the ability to play the story as a girl instead of a guy, a first for the Social Link-era Persona games. This change is more than just cosmetic, though, as the female protagonists campaign has been completely rewritten. Certain more well-known recurring characters from the male protagonists campaign are relegated to rogues gallery status in the female protagonists campaign, and important major players in the story are Social Linkable for the first time ever! In fact, the girls Social Link map is a far more introverted affair than the males Social Links. Her Social Links take a page from Persona 4 and lets you develop individual relationships with all your fellow SEES members (yes, that includes the dog); the male campaign, in comparison, is far more focused on developing relationships with classmates and other peers and sordid characters, with only the female members of SEES possessing Social Links (so you can get in their panties). For a more comprehensive comparison of the two protagonists Social Links, check out this sweet chart I whipped together in ten minutes in Excel!
And if that wasnt enough, the female protagonist has her own silly Persona 4 cameo that's different from the male protagonist's cameo, a new Velvet Room assistant that can only be selected if you play her campaign (Theodore, the male version of Elizabeth), unique music tracks, and nifty pink menus. You know, cuz shes a chick!
MEDIA
Pictures:
Video:
Here's the badass opening cinema for the game.
And here's a trailer.
And here's a walkthrough done by Atlus in case you found this thread TL;DR.
And here's part two of that Atlus-produced walkthrough.
And here's Giant Bomb's 34-minute Quick Look.
REVIEWS
HEY, WHICH ONE SHOULD I PLAY?
Ive seen this question asked numerous times and on numerous forums since Giant Bombs Persona 4 Endurance Run and the announcement of Persona 3 Portable; people are looking for a good place to jump in on the series and dont know where to start. With that in mind, Ive decided to put all my biases on the table and answer the few variants of this question Ive seen despite no one asking. So on the off chance that one of these statements applies to you, may your question hopefully be answered!
Ive never played a Persona game in my life and I think its a good time to start. Is this the one for me?
Well, that depends. I definitely think that Persona 3 is a great place to start, but which version is a whole other question entirely. P3P has numerous refinements over FES that make it easier to play, but if you have no experience with the series, its not like those will actually matter so Im wouldnt necessarily say that these refinements should impact your decision; theyre incredibly useful additions, dont get me wrong, but the people these additions will matter to are those who have either played the game before or played Persona 4 and cant go back to the way things were (and really, its not like these tweaks are going to change the fact that Persona 3 is kind of a broken game in spots). Personally, Id grab a copy of FES for my first ever experience with this game, but thats because Im more of a console gamer and this is the kind of game I want to experience on my TV. In the end, I think it comes down to whether you prefer big or small-screen gaming. FES has a fully 3D presentation with cutscenes acted out by the character models and the rare super awesome anime cutscene; P3P instead takes a visual novel approach with those scripted cutscenes instead being replaced with static character portraits on a prerendered background and the rare anime cutscenes replaced with PSP-looking 3D models doing stuff and not lip-syncing. FES is more drawn out and cinematic, but it establishes an atmosphere; P3P just gets on with it so you can tackle the story and gameplay at a faster pace and keep things moving if thats how you want to be. Again: do you want to play a console game or a handheld game?
Persona 4 is the game that got me into the series and now I want to go back and check Persona 3 out. Which version would be more my speed?Persona 3 Portable, without a doubt. FES is a far more unrefined game than Persona 4, and based on my experience having been in this position, going to back to it will lead to hours of culture shock before you actually start to embrace the game for what it is. FES is certainly still a playable game
but when you can save yourself the headache by playing the game with all of Persona 4s refinements (fast travel, better equipment management, full control of party members in battle) and added cameos from some of your old friends from Inaba, why go back?
For some stupid, arbitrary reason, I have decided that I am only going to ever play one Persona game in my entire life (or at least in the foreseeable future). Which one should I play?Perhaps youve heard of this game called Persona 4? Some would argue that its one of the best games of all time. I might be one of those people...
The Persona series was so much better before Atlus wussified it. To hell with this Social Links crap I wanna negotiate with demons and fire real-ass guns and deal with all sorts of stats and look at some gothic-looking Kaneko art and stuff! Is there anything for me here?Go back to Strange Journey, you jerk.
HEY, DO YOU LIKE OWNING STUPID GAME-RELATED CRAP?
Then boy-howdy, dudebrother, you should go pre-order this game because you'll get Junpei's baseball cap. Atlus sure does know how to spoil us! So if you want this sucker, go put in a pre-order at: Amazon | Amazon.ca | Gamestop | Gamestop/EB Games Canada
HEY, LET'S TALK ABOUT THE SOUNDTRACK
This is the soundtrack for the game. It only contains the new songs composed for the game (i.e., the new theme song and all the stuff composed for Girl's Side). The track list is as follows:
Go check your favorite import site if you want it. Atlus and Sony did a drawing to win one of ten copies signed by Shoji Meguro shortly before the game's release, and our very own krae_man won one! Yay for him!
A WORD TO THE WISE: THERE'S A CHANCE THAT A BUNCH OF PEOPLE POSTING IN THIS THREAD ARE PLAYING THIS GAME FOR THE FIRST TIME, SO DON'T BE SAFE MOIST AS DUDES AND POST UNTAGGED SPOILERS PLZKTHNX.
Special thanks goes out to Error for the original two P3 threads that gave me a lot to live up to, and Yawee, Tamanon, Johnnyram, and the other heroes of the P3P import thread that I'm forgetting about for their news and impressions.
lol) I'll be sure to pick this up as I never got the chance to play either Persona 3 or 4 or the PS2.
