Make Some Friends, Save The World

Every role-playing video game I've owned had some unique aspect to it. Skies of Arcadia Legends had the battles between ships, rather than simply between characters. The Baten Kaitos games had the card battle aspects. Wild Arms 3 has its Western setting. Dragon Quest 8 had Akria Toriyama character designs. What? That was a good enough reason for me (combined with excellent reviews). Sudeki, well, Sudeki was the first RPG I owned, so it had the advantage of there being nothing to compare it to.

With Persona 3 it's the Social Links. Normally, dating sim games hold zero interest for me. The key here is that making friends and spending time with them (strengthening the Social Links) improves the main character's chances of saving the world. Each S. Link corresponds to an Arcana. Each persona (which is an aspect of your soul that can take on a form and help you fight monsters) belongs to an Arcana. The stronger the S. Link, the stronger Personas of that Arcana are when you create them. Building connections with others makes you stronger as a person.

The story is fairly standard. Your character returns to a town he grew up in, but there are strange happenings. Fortunately, you are an exceptionally gifted youngster, so you join Professor Xavier's X- I mean, you join S.E.E.S., the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad, and set to protecting the city from monsters, while scaling Tartarus, an immense tower that appears during a hidden hour each night. I wish we had a club like that at my high school. That's not the whole team over there, either, since it's missing the dog, the robot, and the elementary school kid. Truths are learned, personal difficulties are faced and overcome by each team member, etc., etc.

The dungeon crawling/leveling up aspects are the least interesting part for me, which is a little frustrating because they're also the most time consuming. The fun part was deciding how to spend the day. Would I hang out with a friend, or go buy some better equipment for my teammates? You can increase your Academics, Charm, and Courage over the course of the game with different decisions. Sometimes it's as simple as staying awake in class (Academic boost), other times it requires going somewhere and spending money, but you can find cash in Tartarus, so it pays (literally) to go there. Increasing those areas will open up certain S.Links to you. The wealth of choices you usually have makes the limited periods where the story is on rails really annoying, though.

That's one thing I really like about the Social Link part. Most of the Links are in turn, connected to others. Join an Athletic team and make a friend, but given enough time, you can also befriend the team manager, Yuko. Progress that friendship far enough, and she tells you a rumor she heard about a monk that hangs out in a nightclub. Who you can also befriend. The more people you hang out with, the wider your connections spread. None of it is essential to win the game, but in my mind during the game, the S. Links emphasize who the character is fighting to protect. Since it isn't essential, you can focus on whichever ones you find most interesting. I've completed all the S. Links at least once (the completist in me), but there are certain ones I have no interest in dealing with again. It's become almost like a puzzle game for me. Trying to figure out the best way to spend time with everyone I want to, so that nobody winds up feeling neglected.

The combat is fairly straightforward, though it benefits from a really excellent soundtrack. I don't mind some of the repetitive battling against cannon fodder because I enjoy the music. The combat system is a little different from other RPGs I've played because I don't have absolute control over all the characters in my party. I can issue basic commands, like telling them to attempt to knock enemies down, or focus on healing, but I can't tell them to use a specific spell or attack. It added a certain level of unpredictability to the battles, and I found myself spending more time healing teammates.

In most RPGs, I tell the other characters to do the healing, and my character spends most of his time attacking, and it works because I can be sure that a character I tell cast healing will do it, and on the character I specified. With Persona 3, even if I set someone to "Heal/Support", there's no guarantee they'll cast a healing spell, and they may not cast it on the character I'd prefer. So it was best to be sure the job was done right. Besides, I like the other members of SEES, I didn't want them getting knocked unconscious.

If you were going to ask me if I'd recommend it, I'd say yes. I don't know if the hypothetical you likes RPGs, but I can tell you I really love the game. Enough to play it through 6 times. I already mentioned I like the music, I also love the voice work, especially for Junpei, though he benefits from being a class clown type, so he uses many exaggerated voices throughout the game. The controls are pretty easy, and when roaming Tartarus, the game enables you to see potential enemies, so you can avoid or attack them as you see fit, which is always a plus. One of the persistent annoyances for me with Skies of Arcadia and Dragon Quest 8 was that you couldn't avoid those sorts of random battles. You run for three seconds, boom!, you're attacked by randomly spawning enemies you can't see. Not a problem with Persona 3.