Persona 3 FES: Limited Edition
released on Nov 28, 2008
Each copy comes with 52-page Color Art Book, Soundtrack CD featuring 18 songs and outer Collector's Box. Engaging Social Link system - build intimate relationships with friends and love interests alike Never the same game twice, with over 20 Social Links and a complex storyline encompassing a full school year. Intense, strategic battle system - Find and exploit enemy weaknesses with the help of your allies Highly stylized designs with beautiful 2D character portraits, detailed 3D animations, and heart-pounding cut scenes.
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Depression
(i MUST preface this by saying that this is purely a review of The Answer. backloggd has no separate pages for it and it would feel incorrect to slap a wholly negative review for only one part of one of my favorite games of all time on the most popular page for it on this site. so, i guess i'll stick it here.)
the answer is. . . extremely frustrating. frustrating in the sense that the gameplay pares down all the breaks and conveniences you get in the journey and just forces you to do hard mode without a compendium, a HP/SP checkpoint before some of the most infuriating bosses in the series, and i swear to god they somehow mangled the AI to the point of being legitimately dysfunctional at times.
but it's also uniquely frustrating in that, at the core of this expansion, there is a story worth telling here that is just not being done the justice it deserves. one of the things about persona 3 that has always been sort of a "sad trumpet bwaaaaa" for me every time i do a playthrough of the journey is knowing that your very last moment in that game is your friends all finding you dead on a rooftop. so, giving these characters room to grieve and mourn and lash out and cope in an expansion feels like a completely natural way to expand P3's story, especially with how vague some of the details of the ending were on launch. and, at scant few parts, that's what we get. i think my favorite cutscene in the entire expansion is the one that plays right as everyone starts learning about the keys and what they do and start vocalizing their own opinion on things + conflicting with each other in ways that not only feel in-character but also completely organic. but it takes us SOOOOOOOOOO long to get there.
so yes, the answer is almost majority just dungeon-crawling. listen to me here: i enjoyed exploring tartarus in the journey because you could do it at your own pace and nobody was breathing down your neck to have x done by y time (unless you count the elizabeth requests, which were so generous with time limits that they more felt like gentle suggestions than anything else). when you strip the persona formula of everything BUT tartarus, though, you lose out on the genius balancing act that the journey had. now all i'm doing is exploring a dungeon with seemingly no end and fighting boss after boss after boss. you get occasional breakups to that formula with doors to time that show lore cutscenes for each character, and while some of those are genuinely interesting and appreciated, they don't outweigh the fucking tedium of it all.
i really can't overstate how mangled this gameplay formula feels. AI just doesn't listen to you when you tell them to heal/support, they will often use multihit attacks if you assign them one specific target, and a whole shitload of other AI issues that i've literally never once encountered in the journey. i am an ardent defender of P3's usage of AI over direct control and think it adds depth to the game. i don't know what the answer does to mess it all up, but it's diabolically sabotaged here. part of it must be that bosses are a lot more needlessly complex and use more annoying strategies. no matter what the cause, it's astonishing to me that this was shipped as is.
ultimately i do think the answer conceptually has merit and is a story worth telling. but the story aspects are either undercooked (read: virtually everything regarding metis) or just not worth the cost of admission (several hours of grinding and tedium). the absolute best thing i can say about this expansion is that it gives us some great songs in "heartful cry", "darkness", and "brand new days". beyond that, i have to echo what most people told me when i first played P3: if you're interested in the answer, you are far better off just watching a cutscene compilation on youtube. actually playing this feels like pulling teeth.
as a final note: despite all the condemnation i've cast towards the answer, i still find it incredibly disappointing that atlus is likely going to never make it accessible anymore, what with portable not having it + the upcoming remaster almost certainly just going to be a graphical upscale of the PSP version. i would love to be wrong here, but atlus is the devil, so probably not.
the answer is. . . extremely frustrating. frustrating in the sense that the gameplay pares down all the breaks and conveniences you get in the journey and just forces you to do hard mode without a compendium, a HP/SP checkpoint before some of the most infuriating bosses in the series, and i swear to god they somehow mangled the AI to the point of being legitimately dysfunctional at times.
but it's also uniquely frustrating in that, at the core of this expansion, there is a story worth telling here that is just not being done the justice it deserves. one of the things about persona 3 that has always been sort of a "sad trumpet bwaaaaa" for me every time i do a playthrough of the journey is knowing that your very last moment in that game is your friends all finding you dead on a rooftop. so, giving these characters room to grieve and mourn and lash out and cope in an expansion feels like a completely natural way to expand P3's story, especially with how vague some of the details of the ending were on launch. and, at scant few parts, that's what we get. i think my favorite cutscene in the entire expansion is the one that plays right as everyone starts learning about the keys and what they do and start vocalizing their own opinion on things + conflicting with each other in ways that not only feel in-character but also completely organic. but it takes us SOOOOOOOOOO long to get there.
so yes, the answer is almost majority just dungeon-crawling. listen to me here: i enjoyed exploring tartarus in the journey because you could do it at your own pace and nobody was breathing down your neck to have x done by y time (unless you count the elizabeth requests, which were so generous with time limits that they more felt like gentle suggestions than anything else). when you strip the persona formula of everything BUT tartarus, though, you lose out on the genius balancing act that the journey had. now all i'm doing is exploring a dungeon with seemingly no end and fighting boss after boss after boss. you get occasional breakups to that formula with doors to time that show lore cutscenes for each character, and while some of those are genuinely interesting and appreciated, they don't outweigh the fucking tedium of it all.
i really can't overstate how mangled this gameplay formula feels. AI just doesn't listen to you when you tell them to heal/support, they will often use multihit attacks if you assign them one specific target, and a whole shitload of other AI issues that i've literally never once encountered in the journey. i am an ardent defender of P3's usage of AI over direct control and think it adds depth to the game. i don't know what the answer does to mess it all up, but it's diabolically sabotaged here. part of it must be that bosses are a lot more needlessly complex and use more annoying strategies. no matter what the cause, it's astonishing to me that this was shipped as is.
ultimately i do think the answer conceptually has merit and is a story worth telling. but the story aspects are either undercooked (read: virtually everything regarding metis) or just not worth the cost of admission (several hours of grinding and tedium). the absolute best thing i can say about this expansion is that it gives us some great songs in "heartful cry", "darkness", and "brand new days". beyond that, i have to echo what most people told me when i first played P3: if you're interested in the answer, you are far better off just watching a cutscene compilation on youtube. actually playing this feels like pulling teeth.
as a final note: despite all the condemnation i've cast towards the answer, i still find it incredibly disappointing that atlus is likely going to never make it accessible anymore, what with portable not having it + the upcoming remaster almost certainly just going to be a graphical upscale of the PSP version. i would love to be wrong here, but atlus is the devil, so probably not.
the far superior box art