Backlog Burnout Review of Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3 FES: Face Yourself

System(s): PS2, PSP
Release Year(s): 2007, 2008, 2010
Rating: Mature
Current Amazon Price: $98.70 (PS2 original), $15.16 (PS2 FES), $34.99 (PSP)

The Skinny:

A shining testament to the powerhouse that is the bizarre Shin Megami Tensei JRPG series from Atlus, Persona 3: FES is a lengthy, meaty, dark experience that is chock full of fun, personality, story, and enjoyment. This is a game with a unique idea pouring out of every orifice and its all wrapped up in a super stylized world that needs to be experienced.

The Meat:

Final Fantasy meets The Sims meets Silent Hill meets Pokemon. This is how I would describe Persona 3 to someone who is not familiar with it. If that sounds really bizarre to you that's because it is. It should also sound extremely fun and intriguing which would also be a correct assessment. Persona 3 is one of the most eclectic, strange, and stylish games ever made. Its mash up of genres and ideas should leave it a jumbled mess but instead it comes together to form an exquisite gaming experience that really needs to be played to be understood and appreciated.

Persona 3: FES is an updated version of the original Persona 3. There are several gameplay enhancements, as well as new story content. The entirety of the original Persona 3 is contained in a mode called The Journey, while the new 20ish hour mode called The Answer continues where The Journey left off. The basic story is that you take on the role of a new exchange student who has just arrived in the fictional Iwatodai/Port Island station of Japan to attend Gekkoukan High School. Everything seems normal when you get off the train and begin walking to your dorm, however soon everything takes on a green sheen, pools of blood appear on the ground, and all the people around you transform into coffins. Hurrying into your dorm you are met by a creepy little boy who asks you to sign a contract before disappearing into thin air. Then several other students come down the stairs with guns and begin questioning you. From this strange beginning your character embarks on an adventure that unlocks his ability to use personas, or physical manifestations of his personality. He uses these to battle monsters in the mysterious time known as The Dark Hour, an hour of lost time that exists between 12 and 12:01 AM that is only experienced by those who have unlocked their personas. i won't say any more, as the story of Persona 3: FES is excellent and one of the games many strong aspects.

From a gameplay perspective Persona 3:FES has two distinct styles that it switches between. The first of these is the exploration, persona collection, and combat that takes place around town and in the mysterious tower Tartarus that appears during the dark hour. You explore the tower floor by floor, constantly questing upwards. The tower is populated by Shadows, which are many armed black blobs wandering the floors. If they spot you they will aggressively and quickly charge at you. If you can manage to hit them with your weapon before they reach you then a turn based battle will begin on even footing. However, if they catch you by surprise or you miss then every enemy in the fight will get an extra turn to act before your party. This can be devastating and easily instantly wipe your team because the enemy AI is smart, brutal, and takes no prisoners. On the flip side if you can sneak up on a Shadow without being seen you get the same advantage. Once in battle your character can switch between the personas you have collected or created. Each different persona has different abilities, weaknesses, and stats, much like Pokemon. Magical abilities cost SP whereas powerful physical abilities cost your own HP to cast. This creates an interesting risk/reward system where to damage your opponent you must damage yourself. There are three different kinds of physical attacks (slash, pierce, and strike) as well as a full elemental system. Learning enemies weaknesses and keeping track of your own is key. If you hit an enemy's weakness it will be knocked to the ground and you will be granted another turn. Knocking down all enemies will give your party access to an all out attack where they jump on the downed party in a comic book style dust cloud of dirt and smacking sounds, dealing massive AOE damage. Care must be taken however because the enemy enjoys the same benefits as you. Get hit by an element you're weak to and you lose a turn and the enemy gains another. After battle you gain experience as well as occasionally gaining access to shuffle time. This mini game consists of cards ranging from experience boosts to additional personas. The cards rapidly switch around and it's up to you to track the one you want.

Speaking of acquiring personas through shuffle time, in classic Shin Megami Tensei fashion this game contains a robust fusing system. You can take two personas and fuse them together into a new, more powerful one, providing your character is equal or higher to the resulting persona's level. Mastery of this system is key to beating the game, as your power is directly related to your personas. There is an inheritance system in play for abilities known by the base personas as well, so careful fusing can result in powerful, custom made fighters. As the game progresses your fusion options open up to fusing 3,4,5, and even 6 personas into one powerful new force. Collecting all the available personas in the game is a similar feeling one gets from collecting Pokemon. It's fun, functional, and experimentation with different personas can reveal some fun new strategies.

One thing that may turn some players off is the lack of direct control of your teammates. They are controlled by the AI and you can give them general instructions like focus on healing or focus on knocking down the enemy. Overall the AI does a very good job and makes fairly good decisions. I actually like this system because to me it feels like you're really playing as this one character, and your party members are your friends, acting on their own to help you instead of just being mindless meat puppets tied to your whims.

Aside from the slick and smooth combat that can be found during the dark hour, there is another side of the game. This one involves time management and building of relationships in the normal world. This is an extremely strange and wonderful addition to the game. Aside from being this demon fighting bad-ass by night, your character, along with his friends, attends school and lives a fairly normal life by day. Aside from your combat stats you have social stats as well. These are charm, courage, and academics. These are raised by doing things like studying, standing up to bullies, or helping your friends with homework. These determine things like who you can ask out on dates or what activities you can take part in. The relationships you form with people, be it through dating, hanging out after school, or taking part in music club determine the strength of your social links. Each relationship you have has a specific tie to one of the arcana of the tarot cards (i.e. the magician, death, the hanged man, etc). These act as the class system for your personas. The stronger your social link is with that particular arcana, the more bonus experience it will get when you fuse it. For example, lets say you start dating a girl and your relationship with her is associated with the strength arcana. When you fuse a strength persona it will gain one bonus level. Now lets say you've been dating her for months of in game time and your relationship is pretty serious. Now when you fuse a new strength persona it will gain 6 bonus levels. This system is great because it requires decisions to be made. Do I go hang out with my girlfriend to raise the strength social link or do I go to practice with the swim team to raise the chariot link? And what about the exams coming up? I could either go to Tartarus tonight to fight some shadows and increase my combat stats, or I could spend the night studying to increase my academics stat to do well on the exams. This interaction between your social world and the combat world is the meat of the game and it meshes unbelievably well. It creates choice, tension, risk, and reward perfectly, all while giving the events of the game real meat and gravitas, all while telling a plethora of extremely interesting, interconnected sub stories.

A few final notes about the nature of the game in general and the differences between versions. One thing that must be mentioned is that this game is hard. Like really hard. The enemies are powerful, dangerous, and smart. Oftentimes elaborate strategies need to be planned out to deal with certain bosses. I personally enjoy this sort of challenge but it may turn some gamers off. This is only emphasized in The Answer mode which is significantly more difficult than the main part of the game. The game is incredibly long as well (hence the long delay since my last review). My final game clock, after completing both The Journey and The Answer was 110 hours. If that length of game is intimidating to you then I would recommend you steer clear because once you start playing you won't want to stop.

 Furthermore, there is a PSP port of this game. The graphics of the game were significantly downgraded for this version, however there were several gameplay changes. The option to play the entire game as a female was added which is a nice change of perspective. The story is the same but new character interactions and social links can take place. Also, in the PSP version it is possible to directly control your party members. So if letting the AI do its thing doesn't appeal to you then the PSP version is the way to go. However, this version does not contain The Answer, and neither does the original PS2 version.

The Bottom Line:

Perfectly fusing a multitude of disparate styles and designs, Persona 3: FES is a beautiful, bizarre, dark, wonderful game that I highly recommend. If you've got the time and the desire this game will provide you with an experience unlike any other and one I bet you will enjoy thoroughly from beginning to end. Also the soundtrack is one of the best in the business. All around an extremely solid game, and one I think any fan of JRPGs should play.

Grant Nielsen

Backlog Burnout Review of Dark Souls: If it was easy it wouldn't be worth doing.

System(s): Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC
Release Year: 2011
Rating: Mature
Current Amazon Price: $16.29 (PS3), $15.30 (Xbox 360), $19.99 (PC)

The Skinny:

While it may be more Stockholm Syndrome than actual fun, Dark Souls never the less has a strong appeal. If you're a fan of hack and slash and aren't afraid of a learning curve resembling the Great Wall then this game may just scratch your itch.

The Meat:

Dark Souls is like an abusive lover. It treats you like dirt, kicks you while you're down, makes you doubt yourself, and expects you to take it, say thank you, and come back for more. And the weird thing is you do. Dark Souls is notorious for its brutal, unrelenting difficulty and the horror stories you may have heard are not exaggeration. Anyone who says "it's not that hard" is full of crap. It is that hard, however it is the best kind of hard that a game can be. At no point in my frustrating, death filled playthrough did I ever feel like the game had cheated me or pulled a fast one. Every single one of the hundreds and hundreds of times I died was completely and totally my own fault. The game is harsh, but fair. Now the reason I'm hammering this difficulty home so hard is that it is an integral part of ever facet of the game's design. The gameplay, the environments, the bosses, the NPC behavior, it all is just HARD. And that's not necessarily a bad or a good thing. It will mean different things to different people. Let's break the game down a bit.

In the story department the game sticks with its theme of not holding your hand at all. You get an opening cutscene outlining the basic history and back story of the terrifying world you are about to be dropped in to, but no real details or explanation. If you want to find out explanations for the events around you then you'd best put on your detective goggles. Very few aspects of Dark Souls story are outright stated. They may be mentioned in passing by an NPC or implied by the design of a derelict castle. However, for all of its subtlety and secrecy I really really enjoyed the story of Dark Souls. It's dark, sad, haunting, and well worth exploring. Just be willing to put a little effort into it. In fact, that is a theme that runs through most of this game. If you don't want to put a large amount of effort into the experience, you should probably steer clear.

Gameplay wise Dark Souls is an immaculate beast of a game. Controls are extremely tight and responsive, regardless of if you're fighting with a sword, spear, bow, or magic staff. And its a good thing they are too because almost everything in this game is trying to kill you and kill you quickly. This is not a Legend of Zelda game where your hero can take more hits than an olympic boxer. If a basic enemy hits you two or three times with a sword like as not you'll find yourself respawning back at the last bonfire you visited. And death is only the beginning in Dark Souls. When you kill enemies you absorb their souls. These souls are used as currency for everything in the game. Buying things from merchants, bartering for favors, and leveling up your characters stats. When you die, you lose any souls you have collected that you haven't used. However, they are not gone forever. You will respawn at the last bonfire you rested at in an undead state and you will have one opportunity to fight your way back to the place of your death and retreive your lost souls. In this undead state you have less health and are vulnerable to invasions by other real life players in the game. If you can manage to stay alive long enough to reach the place of your earlier demise you can retrieve your lost souls. If not, they are gone forever.

The invasion aspect of Dark Souls is interesting. While in your undead, or Hollowed, state other players can invade your game and attempt to end you. Manage to fight them off and you may get a sweet payoff. You can even report their invasion of your world to an NPC who promises judgement and retribution. And there may even be a way to, if you play your cards right, become an agent of that retribution. This multiplayer aspect of Dark Souls is pretty darn cool and adds a unique element. While you may be on edge that someone will invade your world, you can also call upon the help of other players to assist you with a difficult boss. My first playthrough of Dark Souls was done as a solo run, and then I replayed it with multiplayer functionality. Both methods of play have their own strengths and weaknesses. Besting the game without another player's assistance gives a great feeling of accomplishment, however few things feel as good as smiting down an upstart player with the nerve to attack you in your own world.

Combat involves careful reactionary dodges to enemy attacks and near perfect execution. While difficult, the combat is extremely deep and rewarding, involving crits for back stabs and split second evasions. Learning a towering boss's movements and finally besting a titan much greater than yourself is an extremely gratifying experience. No matter your play style there is something for everyone here. If you want to be a massive, armor covered beefcake that is a viable option. Mage and rogue paths are available as well. No one method is more effective than another in my opinion, and they all play in radically different ways. While the combat takes time to master, it is fun and extremely fluid. Just don't expect the game to hold your hand or help you very much.

One last thing I want to mention is the atmosphere of the game. It is absolutely amazing. No matter where you are, from the giant halls of Anor Lando to the scum covered, rotting boardwalks of Blight Town the world feels real. I almost wanted to use the term alive and breathing, but that would be completely wrong. This is a dead world. Every inch of it reeks of decay, degradation, despair, and doom. And for all of that it is beautiful. In its own weird way, Dark Souls is, in my opinion, one of the best looking games ever made just because of how absolutely effective its visuals are. It really must be played to be experienced.

The Bottom Line:

If you are looking for a fun, low effort romp through a fantasy game you really need to look elsewhere. This game is brutally difficult, almost to a fault. I use the word almost because it never enters the realm of unfair or broken. The difficulty will turn many people off and rightly so. If you are a gamer who gets easily frustrated or isn't super persistent this is not the game for you. The tutorial boss killed me 5 times the first time I played. However, if you are willing to put in a little work to learn the game and can manage to beat it even within its own hellish rule set the feeling of accomplishment you will get is unmatched. I would highly recommend trying to beat the game without a walkthrough as well because like any game there are exploits that reduce the difficulty. However, this is really missing the point. Once you see past the gruff, murderous, spiky exterior and get to the burning, molten hot, pain filled interior you may just find that you are enjoying yourself. If you're like me you'll notice you're having a better time than you've had with a game in a long while. Is it "fun" in the really traditional sense of the word? Maybe not. But is it a hell of a good time? Absolutely. You're a dead man walking through a dead world, and it's absolutely breathtaking.

Grant Nielsen