LONG BLOG
Persona Review Full Complete
Game: Shin Megami Tensei Persona
AKA: Persona, Persona 1, SMT Persona
Platform: Play Station Portable
platform used: PSP 2000
Mission: unlock all movies, obtain secret Persona Vishnu
Requirements: play through multiple branching routes, collect all cards from all demons
Persona for PSP is a remake of the game Persona for Play Station. I've never played the original game as I only came into the fandom with Persona 4. Roughly half way through, I stopped and played through 3 then finished 4. At that point I had the bug and subsequently played through every English release persona game except the Play Station release of this game. The original release of this game, from 1996, was very different; being one of the worst examples of localization in video game history. Characters were massively altered and half the game known as the Snow Queen Quest was cut out entirely.
In canon, this game takes places after Shin Megami Tensei if... (female route) and before Shin Megami Tensei Persona 2 Innocent Sin. The story opens with your friends at school; you meet nine of them who are destined to be you party. Lets meet them. First is you, the protagonist, the quiet kid with an ear ring. Maki the bed ridden sick girl, she's a friend of yours. Nanjo, the scion of a multinational conglomerate. Mark, a street artist who is also an heir, though, to a dry cleaning business. Brown, the class clown. Elly, a popular student with an interest in the occult. Yuka, a vain fashion victim. Reiji, a delinquent who often cuts class and apparently is adverse to shirts. And finally Yukino, who was a delinquent but turned her life around with the aid of a teacher. Most of these characters are general archetypes and are not very well expanded upon. After a brief introduction you leave the school to visit Maki in the hospital. Then demons appear. Once you get through the introductory portion you and your five party members will retreat to the school.
There are two routes through the game. First is the previously mentioned “Snow Queen Quest”. In this route you try to lift a decades old curse on the school. This route is actually somewhat hidden, you have to follow a specific set of steps not to be ushered onto the main route, the “SEBEC” route. In this route, you try to stop a deranged CEO from using the town as a test bed for reality warping device. I actually have a major problem with how this game is laid out narratively. The two routes don't have to be exclusive. At the beginning of the game you become trapped in the school. When this happens you go around talking to people and getting equipment before leaving through a hole in the school wall. You activate the Snow Queen Quest during this portion of the game by gaining access to a store room where a cursed mask is sealed, and unsealing the mask. But at the end of the Snow Queen Quest you leave the school, not having resolved any of the already introduced SEBEC plot elements. The town was already warping before you got trapped in the school. Persona 2 references events that happen in both routes implying that, canonically, both happen. Worse yet, game play wise, there is no real new game plus; the only thing that carries over is the ability to go to last floor of one of two hidden dungeons and any unlocked movies. So we can't use new game plus to account for it. This is a glaring flaw in storytelling and design. Let's get back to the story.
The Snow Queen is a play that is preformed yearly at the school. A side note: the movie Frozen was originally going to be an adaptation of this old tale. Every year, a female student was chosen to be the titular snow queen. A mask is worn by the actor chosen to be the snow queen. Of course, the mask is evil. The Quest has you traverse through three towers to save the school. Each tower is controlled by a former snow queen. While one of the queens is interesting, the other two fall somewhat flat. This particular arc focuses on Yukino. She is exclusive to this quest, opting to stay back and defend the school in the SEBEC route. This brings us to another, albeit minor, issue. There are nine playable characters but some only appear in one route and one of them is hidden. This quest has good character development for Yukino and the Snow Queens during each of their towers. Ultimately it falls sort of flat, lacking the major psychological themes of the main quest. In the end I would recommend playing this route first as it happens first. Its ending is somewhat unsatisfying.
The SEBEC route is the more interesting of the two routes. The local CEO of the multinational company SeBeC has created a machine named Deva in order to become a god. Stop him. You get to pick from a wider array of characters; for both routes, some characters are set and you have to take them with you. Maki takes the center stage in this route. You delve into her psychological state and help her through her issues as well as some other characters' issues. The end of this route is satisfying, unlike that of the Snow Queen.
One of the other pitfalls of this game is early endings. Choosing the wrong conversation option can and will end the game early. Indeed, that is what happened in my first play through; I recommend using a guide if you want to avoid this fate. It is worth noting that if you wish to collect all of the movies, as I did, you must get the early ending on the Snow Queen Quest.
That about covers the narrative, let's talk about the other section of this game, Game play. Simply put, this is an outdated game. Not enough thought was put into long term play-ability and even the advances added to the PSP version don't help much. Let's talk about the verious systems that are present in the game.
No self respecting adventurer leaves the house without being properly prepared. Each character can equip armor to the head, body, legs, and arms. Armor is divided into male, female and unisex. Weapon wise, everybody gets a personal primary weapon, such as a sword or bow and a gun; guns can be equipped with bullets that change the property of the shot such as inflicting a status ailment. There is some overlap, too; for instance, the protagonist and Elly both equip one handed swords. I quite liked the variety of weapons and armor to equip at my disposal. Remember how there are nine playable characters? The game doesn't keep track of who can use what items. That means you might get a really cool drop that nobody can equip. It always feels bad when that happens. Unfortunately changing armor and weapons doesn't trigger any visual effect on battle field.
There is something else you can equip as well. Persona. Persona are the Gods, Angels and Demons summoned from the Sea of Souls, the Collective Unconscious. Equipping these gives a stat boost and bestows whatever strengths or weaknesses the persona may have to the character. Each of the nine characters have preferences when it comes to the persona they can use; this ranges from BEST to WORST. At best the persona may do things like revive the user when K.O.ed, nuke the opponent, or heal the whole party. At worst you are unable to equip the persona at all. Each persona has a set level that doesn't change, but can go up in rank; up to eight as it is used, learning new spells along the way. Each persona costs a certain amount of SP to cast. Effectively, this means that any spells cost the same amount. This means that it is often not beneficial to upgrade, as a low level persona my have a high level spell that cost a pittance to cast.
When you are done with a persona, or want new ones, you can bring it to the trans-dimensional Velvet Room. The Velvet Room is presided over by the always creepy Igor. Igor will help manage your persona, fuse cards you get from demon negotiations and will take back any persona you are done with. When you fuse a persona, you take two spell cards received from demons, and an item, if you are inclined, and Igor will produce a persona for you. If you trade in a maxed out rank 8 persona, the persona leaves something behind that Igor will give to you. This leads us to another of the game's flaws. Some persona can only be obtained by fusing two cards and an item. Some of these items are only obtainable once. Even worse, some of the best armor and weapons in the game are only available when you trade in a rank 8 persona that you can only get once a game. This could have been easily fixed by having a new game plus mode. Now that we have our gear and persona, what are we fighting?
In the game you fight a variety of demons. The variety of enemies is very good; every enemy looks distinctive, and the final boss is downright unnerving, drenched in a fantastic level of symbolism. My biggest gripe is about the game's battle system. Like most Shin Megami Tensei games, all of the demons have weaknesses and resistances; think Pokemon but each individual demon has its own set strengths and weaknesses. To find out what these strengths and weaknesses are, you can press R and highlight them to get info on the demon's level, HP, SP, moves and the afore mentioned weaknesses and resistances. The problem is this chart is basicly inaccurate! There are around 10 element types and 4 "Super types" You have to memorize what types fit under what supertypes because the game doesn't tell you. The attack types are massively and confusingly varied. Types are one handed sword, two handed sword, spear, ax, whip, thrown, arrow, fist, handgun, machine gun, shotgun, rifle, tech, rush, fire, ice, wind, earth, gravity, blast, nuclear, expel, death, miracle, curse, and force. For instance, some enemies are listed as weak to “gun”, but if you shoot them with the wrong character, they resist it because of some super type. This makes combat infuriating.
Is this game good? No, it's mediocre. You will spend a long time grinding for very little gain. The story, while interesting, is only complete if you play both halves. The combat system is confusing and frustrating and the lack of new game plus heavily hampers the enjoyment of the game. The music is good, but that's about the only stand out to the game. Play it if you really want to experience the beginning of persona. But if you want to get into the series, stay away from this game.
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