Flak Beard wrote:
I'm really tempted to pick up Persona 3 just by all the good things I've heard from other gamers. I love RPGs, but I'm not the buff I once was.
Would you say it is as niche as something like Disgaea or Odin Sphere? Both those games only held my interested for a small number of hours.
So Persona 3 has two fairly distinct components.
The first is the day-time dating sim sections. Your character has three attributes that he uses in these interactions. You go to class, then afterwards you can spend time with the people around you. These are classmates, members of your sports team, or potential girlfriends (of which you can date all of them, because you're just that awesome). This is also the time you can go shopping for equipment that you'll need at night. Doing these events builds up your social links with everyone. Each person corresponds with one of the major arcana of tarot.
The second is the night-time dungeon crawling. The main dungeon is 250+ floors of randomly generated floors, with two way teleports right before bosses, as well as one way teleports on most floors. You battle with a team of up to four members, though you can only determine general tactics for the other three.
The main battle mechanics are the one more system and the Personas themselves. One more is fairly simple to grasp. You hit an enemy's weakness (fire attack on a fire weak) and they get knocked down, and you get one more turn. You can do this multiple times. You only get the extra turn if you knock the enemy down. If you attack an enemy that is already down, they'll stand back up, no matter what. Also, if you've knocked down all enemies you can do a group attack. If an enemy who is knocked down has his turn come up, it wastes the turn standing up. The enemy can do all the same things to you (aside from the group attack).
The other portion of the battle system is the Personas. These represent various mythological creatures, and they define all your battle attributes. They determine your standard stats (Str, Mag, Luc, etc), your weaknesses/resistances, and your spell selection. Your party members are limited to a single Persona each, while the main character can have a group of them. During battle, you can change Personas, once per turn. Proper management of spells and your weaknesses/resistances is key.
Personas grow in one of two ways. The first is through experience. Both you and your Persona gain experience and level up. When you level up your HP and SP increase, and every set number of levels you can carry additional Personas. When your Persona levels up it gains three points distributed among the basic stats and may learn a spell. Additionally, upon leveling up a Persona may change a spell into a higher level one. You can decide whether you want it to occur or not, but you don't know what it will turn into (first rank fire doesn't necessarily become second rank fire).
The other way Personas grow is through the demonic fusion system. This is the only way to get some Personas. What happens is you take two or more of your Personas and fuse them into a new one. The new one's level and spells are based upon the level and spells of the ingredients. This is also where you have the overlap with the dating sim portion of the game. Each Persona is aligned with one of the major arcana, and when you fuse a Persona it gains bonus experience based on the level of the social link, which can be a really nice boost. You cannot fuse a Persona that is a higher level than your main character, but the bonus experience can level it beyond your level.
The story is pretty interesting, with some really nice twists throughout. The characters were also portrayed well, and you won't like all of them, but for the correct reasons. The voice acting is also pretty good, though I personally feel that voice acting in games should stay in the native language.
Aside from the dating sim stuff, it is pretty standard RPG fare. And all of the dating sim stuff is completely optional; it just makes the game harder, but still beatable, if you don't participate.
