FES

Posted by Jacob H. on 12th Jan 2011

Many games have come and gone in the past years, and JRPGs have weathered the storm from their inception, growing at a steady pace. For the past few years, some would say that the genre has fallen by the wayside. Persona 3 FES comes to assuage that fear. An director's cut of sorts for the smash hit Persona 3, Persona 3 FES includes new Personas, new scenes and assorted changes, and a brand new game titled “The Answer”, a sequel to the original story's “The Journey”. But does the game stack up to its peers? Let's see.

After a decade, you have returned home to attend the illustrious Gekkoukan High School. Quickly, you are informed that monsters known as shadows threaten the city, attacking at a secret time in between one day and the next. It is known as the Dark Hour, and if not stopped, your once-again home may very well fall in ruin. With this in mind, an organization of students recruits you to fight these shadows, known as the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad, or SEES. All of them gifted with the ability to summon Personas, otherworldly representations of a character's psyche that grant great power to their users, they stand ready to defend themselves.

The player soon learns of Tartarus, a massive spire that seems to be spawning these creatures. Thus you, with SEES in tow, journeys into the gigantic tower to find what secrets it holds and unravel the mystery that surrounds it. Moreover, because of your innate ability to control multiple Personas simultaneously, you soon find yourself becoming the leader of excursions into the dungeon-like building.

It's not genre-defining, and it doesn't go out of its way to try; nevertheless, it is well made, with appropriate amounts of twists and developments to keep the player interested. It is told through a silent-protagonist perspective, limiting the amount of characterization that can be achieved, but it certainly does succeed well with what it has. At the end of the day, it serves to be memorable, if not terrific; it is great, but not incredibly great.

The graphics meet and exceed most expectations of a Playstation 2 game. Player models move fluidly, structures look convincingly made, and on the whole its generally brighter palette serves to interest the player. Scenes are discussed through scenes involving portraits. They are all made well, with a fair range of different emotion. Altogether, the graphics are pleasing to the eye, and serve as a pleasurable representation of Gekkoukan and the flavor that surrounds it.

This is undoubtedly where the game will nab you, drag you into its embrace, and end your social life. It is this that makes the game one of the absolute best among this generation. Persona 3 FES is a dungeon-crawler of a great quality. It operates similar to what one would expect of a mash-up of classic JRPG gameplay and dungeon-crawling, with a few additions:

First, the game throws copious amounts of dating sim elements into the mix. What this amounts to is the player battling shadows in Tartarus at night and going to school and hanging out with friends and love interests in the daytime. This may sound like an odd mash-up; that's because it is. However, Persona 3 FES does what several other classic titles of its ilk do not; it injects large amounts of plot and character development into what could eventually become monotonous gameplay.

The title makes sure to stress a fair amount of concentration on developing Social Links with others by spending time with them after school. This is doubly effective as a means of introducing a wider amount of color into the game and, surprisingly, gameplay. This is because with each strengthened Social Link, the player's ability to summon stronger Personas increases. As a character gets to know key characters, they can gradually increase the power of summoned Personas, and after the Link is totally filled, the player forges an unbreakable bond that gives them the ability to form devastating Personas.

It's a very intriguing and enduring setup, and leaves the player without as much monotony as the dungeon crawling elements would inevitably form without them; it allows a fair amount of exploration through conversation and social interaction rather than geographic freedom to roam about the world. Essentially, it gives the player a feeling of freedom gameplay-wise without actually being as free as they would normally like.

Second, the gameplay proceeds in a structured but eternally customizable manner. The player levels and strengthens during combat, but more importantly, his Personas do. In addition to this, the player happens upon chance events after encounters that allow him to acquire new Personas. There are dozens and dozens grouped into different classes based on the name of tarot cards (e.g. The Fool, The Magician, The Hierophant). It leaves a very “Gotta catch 'em all” impact on the player in the beginning, opening up into a craze as the game goes on.

The feeling of collecting Personas strengthens when the player is introduced to a system known as fusion. It involves bringing first two or three, then later even more together to form special Personas. This brings a completely addictive means by which to find new and exciting abilities and attacks in the form of brand new Personas resultant of the fusion.

The title implements this in a classic dungeon crawler manner, with the player ascending the tower of Tartarus as the story continues. This is the primary goal for the player in the beginning, but as time goes on Tartarus serves more as a training area to strengthen your characters for monthly showdowns against the bigger baddies. This usually amounts to the player gaining a new Persona/s, and then using it/them to ascend even farther in the tower and level up to allow them to summon and find even stronger Personas and gear, until they hit a locked area which will not open until they proceed farther in the storyline.

The gameplay is undoubtedly one of the best implementations of dungeon-crawling and old-fashioned RPG-goodness ever seen on the Playstation 2, if not period. It's a real sight to behold, and it feels both reminiscent in its design for longtime RPG fans, and very new with its collectability and customization of Personas and their abilities. It's really quite something to behold.

The sound is a well-done aspect of the game. The battle tunes are well thought out, and the various jingles or songs heard around the city will get stuck in your head for days on end. However, they are often repetitious, and as such someone with tastes that depend on a much more varied sound constantly will probably find themselves annoyed.

Most scenes seen in the game are completely voiced. This is a hit and a miss. Most of the actors deliver their lines sufficiently, and a choice few do very well, but if one is searching for extremely convincing dialog or acting, they're perhaps going to end up disappointed. If you are planning on playing this game, make sure it is not for an example of video-gaming's best voice acting and you should probably be fine.

Persona 3 FES contains even more content than its predecessor. The time it will take to beat both “The Journey” and “The Answer” can very, very easily surpass one hundred hours. Moreover, after beating the game, the player is able to continue with such perks as a filled out compendium as what they had when they beat the game. This means that when they gain the compendium in the storyline, they can use all of their powerful end-game Persona from square one. This makes the game far more enjoyable and replayable to perfect the compendium, make better Personas, and explore the S.Links of characters not yet concentrated on.

Persona 3 FES is a terrific title that should not be overlooked by JRPG fans. It helps prove that the newer generation of games has not made a point on skimping on gameplay, and that RPGs of today yet thrive. And for its current price at thirty dollars brand new, it is an absolute steal. It is a must-have for any Playstation 2 library.