Persona 1 is ambitious. It is a game that had a lot of good ideas for a JRPG, that are still in games to this day and particularly in its own series. Though, the execution of those ideas leaves a lot to be desired.
There are two routes of the game, the original SEBEC in the original PS1 release, as well as Snow Queen Quest which is available in the PSP version. The former presents a decent story with some fun ideas and a fun cast depending on who you had in your party. It presents a typical JRPG adventure as one would expect with twists and turns and eventually fighting godlike beings. Snow Queen Quest by comparison feels like a romhack that while somehow made by the same team, feels a lot more meanspirited, and is a bit of an experimental mess that didn't result in much good.
Characterwise, Persona 1's cast is fine enough, albeit they are a rather typical cast of japanese high schoolers who have a few quirks. The most memorable probably being Mark as he strays the furthest from the anime archetype that many of the other characters end up being based off of. Most of these characters do have moments that are interesting and stray from typical writing, but most of the time they act like their generic counterparts in other media in the game itself. In many cases this is understandable, as most party members end up being optional in each route with the player being capable of having different teams depending on their choices. This does often effect group conversations, as often times the most optional of these characters such as Reiji has little to add in group conversations and otherwise feels standalone as opposed to being part of the party. However, characters specific to each route like Maki, Mark and Nanjo in SEBEC have a lot of interesting dialogue together and fun dynamics as a group which is what I often crave from in a party.
Story-wise, more than anything the ideas the game presents are interesting, but their execution can be quite lacking. I found the major villain of SEBEC to be rather bland and unappealing, with Maki more than taking the show. The storyline and themes it presents are quite interesting and can be seen to continue forward in future Persona games. Snow Queen Quest I do not think was handled well by any means, and often feels mean-spirited toward the antagonists either in their depiction, or criticisms of their lifestyles which can oftentimes feel sexist considering who wrote them in the first place.
Before moving on from story, I do want to note the absolute disgusting and uncomfortable topic of Tamaki who Tadashi based off of a crush and forced to reciprocate his love in game. This sort of thing has happened to me outside of this review, and I want to note how disgusting and unflattering it is to have a creator put a version of you into a game purely to romance with their self-insert when you had no interest in them irl. It is very uncomfortable and while a minor part of the story, is significant enough in SQQ to bring up as a large negative.
Now to the gameplay, Persona 1 uses a grid style for its gameplay, and despite what others say, I had enjoyed it quite a bit. Changing formation to give certain party members more reach and allow for their different persona skills could be enjoyable for experimentation and the actual statistics for combat worked excellently. Different weapon variety and different preferences for personas also helped distinguish each party member beyond merely their statistics, making each feel wholly unique. With all that being said, there are far too many elemental types. All physical weapons count as different categories, and there are all the various elements from every single SMT game prior, as well as tech, rush, and other elements that were baffling. Too many elements in fact that bogged down the experimentation aspect of SMT games. Why bother doing a hundred experiments to determine which of the 30 different element types the enemy is weak to, when you can just physically attack them where that works 90% of the time where then you'll have their log put in and always know their weaknesses and resistances from that point onward? It is redundant and boring and also trains players to be really bad with using skills. On top of this, is the fact that balancing toward enemies is really bad, especially toward late game enemies. In an attempt to justify the ridiculous number of elements, the game decides to also give enemies a ridiculous number of repels, absorbs, and more. This makes battling extremely tedious and needlessly unforgiving as it is very common to get wiped from enemies who repel all elements that you are not aware of until you have already selected all your party's attacks. Especially when meeting mixed groups of enemies. Since all your party members need to have their action prepared prior to getting to see them all play out, you can't adjust after seeing a repel or absorb until AFTER every party member has already attacked and at that point it is typically too late and you will be left on death's door for the enemy to wipe you out.
This now will get us into the overall difficulty of the game. Overall, both SEBEC and SQQ are not very long. However, the game artificially expands them both by making experience gain low in comparison to the enemies you are fighting, has far too many enemies that can instant kill your party at numerous points to reload saves, as well as by adding in far too many convoluted systems to leveling up. There is your character's character level, their persona level, as well as the Persona they currently have equipped with a rank. To level up your character, you must participate in combat, otherwise your experience will be lower. If one party member is overperforming since you are in a zone where their persona performs very well, they can easily become an EXP sponge and drain all resources from the rest of your party for the forseeable future. Then, there is persona levels, which determines the level of personas your characters can equip, which is SUPPOSED to go up faster and take up more experience away from your character level when you use your personas skills... But often times, this is not the case, and even using your persona's skills to wipe out all enemies will STILL result in your persona level experience being lower than your character level experience for that encounter. The actual numbers on this are strange and rarely make sense making grinding even more tedious. Speaking of tedious, lets talk about persona ranks. Every Persona in the game has a rank from 1-8, with 8 being their max. To level up your persona's rank, you must have them equipped, and you must be using their skills in combat. However, this experience is a single point, for EACH USE OF SKILL. Meaning, to max a Persona out to rank 8, where they have their full stats unlocked as well as actually having all their spells, you have to use that singular Persona upwards to 226 times if your character is not 10 LEVELS HIGHER THAN THE PERSONA. This adds another level of tedium as some personas don't even get good skills until they reach rank 5, which will be painful to grind out until then. All of these come together to make a tedious grinding fest that while it can feel rewarding due to the results you get from it, rarely does due to the game's balancing and usually only for a few rare personas. Combat encounters lose their charm after so many of them, and they are so poorly balanced. Boss fights either are a test of how much you have grinded up, especially with the final bosses, or absolute push-overs that require no strategy.
This takes us to the next level of tedium, the maps. I do not understand how these maps came into existence. I do not know who made these maps. I wouldn't be surprised if they were made by a 60s AI running on a IBM computer with 1KB processor that skips every 2 seconds, or a blind monkey with carpal tunnel scribbling on a piece of paper. These maps make no sense. For one, there are so many dead ends that it is non-sensical. Dungeon exploration is done in first person, and unlike later games that also do first person dungeon exploration (INCLUDING OTHER SMT GAMES), there are no chests or items on the dungeon maps. Meaning any dead end you go down, is utterly and pathetically useless. In fact, its worse than useless as the high encounter rate means that every dead end you go down will waste time with another random encounter. If you see a dead end, don't 100% complete the map, ignore it since they are actually wasting your time. There are so many of these, and the maps have no rhyme or reason in how they are designed that I am in awe of their terribleness. In a sense, perhaps being charitable we could say the developers wanted to make the dungeons feel unrealistic, strange and Euclidean to reflect the game's dream and otherworldly aspects like Alice in Wonderland. I refuse this as they are not even designed well in that sense since they are still absolutely incomprehensible. The better assumption is to assume they are this bad solely to sell game guides and to also pad out the game longer than its short runtime in order to get players playing longer and make the game sound longer.
My final note on gameplay is that the isometric view in rooms that is iconic to this game to give the sprites for the characters more expression also had really bad controls due to the fact that it was mapped funny to the directional buttons. Pressing down moved you left, pressing up moved you right and it took a lot of time to get used to this. You will eventually get used to it, but it certainly wasn't the best design decision.
All of this is to say, that this game had good ideas, but their execution was terrible in most senses. You can see these ideas further evolved, refined, and made much better in future Persona games.
I do not have much to say about the music, as I am a bit tone deaf, but the music was often good from the original PS1 soundtrack that I was listening to while playing the PSP version. Albeit, some tracks feel very out of place in certain scenes, particularly with the SEBEC ending sequence bafflingly choosing the goofy soundtrack during a very emotional sequence. The art was good, and conveyed the characters well especially in promotional material which has had its style used for every subsequent Persona game through future artists new interpretations. The pixel art wasn't outstanding compared to other games that came out at the same time, but it was serviceable and gave an idea of what each thing you were looking at was supposed to be.
Looking at all of this together, and coming back to my experience with the game... I respect Persona 1 for what it was able to accomplish and what it was on the Playstation 1. It was a truly unique game and it kickstarted one of my favorite franchises while having some excellent ideas that have been brought forward to many modern games. That being said, I do not think anyone should go back to play this game. For all of the numerous issues I mentioned above, I do not think it is worth coming back to this game compared to other JRPGs on the PS1 and if you are really curious you should watch a playthrough on Youtube instead. It has aged poorly, what it offers in story has been done better in other games since, and while being enjoyable at the start of the game especially if you have the means of speeding up the gameplay by fastforwarding combat, does overstay its welcome even in just the SEBEC route, let alone playing the clunky Snow Queen Quest route that I feel bogs down the game even further. Despite its numerous flaws and how I do not think anyone should play this game in the modern day, for its legacy, Persona 1 for the time it was released gets a 3/5 for the contributions it made to the medium.
There are two routes of the game, the original SEBEC in the original PS1 release, as well as Snow Queen Quest which is available in the PSP version. The former presents a decent story with some fun ideas and a fun cast depending on who you had in your party. It presents a typical JRPG adventure as one would expect with twists and turns and eventually fighting godlike beings. Snow Queen Quest by comparison feels like a romhack that while somehow made by the same team, feels a lot more meanspirited, and is a bit of an experimental mess that didn't result in much good.
Characterwise, Persona 1's cast is fine enough, albeit they are a rather typical cast of japanese high schoolers who have a few quirks. The most memorable probably being Mark as he strays the furthest from the anime archetype that many of the other characters end up being based off of. Most of these characters do have moments that are interesting and stray from typical writing, but most of the time they act like their generic counterparts in other media in the game itself. In many cases this is understandable, as most party members end up being optional in each route with the player being capable of having different teams depending on their choices. This does often effect group conversations, as often times the most optional of these characters such as Reiji has little to add in group conversations and otherwise feels standalone as opposed to being part of the party. However, characters specific to each route like Maki, Mark and Nanjo in SEBEC have a lot of interesting dialogue together and fun dynamics as a group which is what I often crave from in a party.
Story-wise, more than anything the ideas the game presents are interesting, but their execution can be quite lacking. I found the major villain of SEBEC to be rather bland and unappealing, with Maki more than taking the show. The storyline and themes it presents are quite interesting and can be seen to continue forward in future Persona games. Snow Queen Quest I do not think was handled well by any means, and often feels mean-spirited toward the antagonists either in their depiction, or criticisms of their lifestyles which can oftentimes feel sexist considering who wrote them in the first place.
Before moving on from story, I do want to note the absolute disgusting and uncomfortable topic of Tamaki who Tadashi based off of a crush and forced to reciprocate his love in game. This sort of thing has happened to me outside of this review, and I want to note how disgusting and unflattering it is to have a creator put a version of you into a game purely to romance with their self-insert when you had no interest in them irl. It is very uncomfortable and while a minor part of the story, is significant enough in SQQ to bring up as a large negative.
Now to the gameplay, Persona 1 uses a grid style for its gameplay, and despite what others say, I had enjoyed it quite a bit. Changing formation to give certain party members more reach and allow for their different persona skills could be enjoyable for experimentation and the actual statistics for combat worked excellently. Different weapon variety and different preferences for personas also helped distinguish each party member beyond merely their statistics, making each feel wholly unique. With all that being said, there are far too many elemental types. All physical weapons count as different categories, and there are all the various elements from every single SMT game prior, as well as tech, rush, and other elements that were baffling. Too many elements in fact that bogged down the experimentation aspect of SMT games. Why bother doing a hundred experiments to determine which of the 30 different element types the enemy is weak to, when you can just physically attack them where that works 90% of the time where then you'll have their log put in and always know their weaknesses and resistances from that point onward? It is redundant and boring and also trains players to be really bad with using skills. On top of this, is the fact that balancing toward enemies is really bad, especially toward late game enemies. In an attempt to justify the ridiculous number of elements, the game decides to also give enemies a ridiculous number of repels, absorbs, and more. This makes battling extremely tedious and needlessly unforgiving as it is very common to get wiped from enemies who repel all elements that you are not aware of until you have already selected all your party's attacks. Especially when meeting mixed groups of enemies. Since all your party members need to have their action prepared prior to getting to see them all play out, you can't adjust after seeing a repel or absorb until AFTER every party member has already attacked and at that point it is typically too late and you will be left on death's door for the enemy to wipe you out.
This now will get us into the overall difficulty of the game. Overall, both SEBEC and SQQ are not very long. However, the game artificially expands them both by making experience gain low in comparison to the enemies you are fighting, has far too many enemies that can instant kill your party at numerous points to reload saves, as well as by adding in far too many convoluted systems to leveling up. There is your character's character level, their persona level, as well as the Persona they currently have equipped with a rank. To level up your character, you must participate in combat, otherwise your experience will be lower. If one party member is overperforming since you are in a zone where their persona performs very well, they can easily become an EXP sponge and drain all resources from the rest of your party for the forseeable future. Then, there is persona levels, which determines the level of personas your characters can equip, which is SUPPOSED to go up faster and take up more experience away from your character level when you use your personas skills... But often times, this is not the case, and even using your persona's skills to wipe out all enemies will STILL result in your persona level experience being lower than your character level experience for that encounter. The actual numbers on this are strange and rarely make sense making grinding even more tedious. Speaking of tedious, lets talk about persona ranks. Every Persona in the game has a rank from 1-8, with 8 being their max. To level up your persona's rank, you must have them equipped, and you must be using their skills in combat. However, this experience is a single point, for EACH USE OF SKILL. Meaning, to max a Persona out to rank 8, where they have their full stats unlocked as well as actually having all their spells, you have to use that singular Persona upwards to 226 times if your character is not 10 LEVELS HIGHER THAN THE PERSONA. This adds another level of tedium as some personas don't even get good skills until they reach rank 5, which will be painful to grind out until then. All of these come together to make a tedious grinding fest that while it can feel rewarding due to the results you get from it, rarely does due to the game's balancing and usually only for a few rare personas. Combat encounters lose their charm after so many of them, and they are so poorly balanced. Boss fights either are a test of how much you have grinded up, especially with the final bosses, or absolute push-overs that require no strategy.
This takes us to the next level of tedium, the maps. I do not understand how these maps came into existence. I do not know who made these maps. I wouldn't be surprised if they were made by a 60s AI running on a IBM computer with 1KB processor that skips every 2 seconds, or a blind monkey with carpal tunnel scribbling on a piece of paper. These maps make no sense. For one, there are so many dead ends that it is non-sensical. Dungeon exploration is done in first person, and unlike later games that also do first person dungeon exploration (INCLUDING OTHER SMT GAMES), there are no chests or items on the dungeon maps. Meaning any dead end you go down, is utterly and pathetically useless. In fact, its worse than useless as the high encounter rate means that every dead end you go down will waste time with another random encounter. If you see a dead end, don't 100% complete the map, ignore it since they are actually wasting your time. There are so many of these, and the maps have no rhyme or reason in how they are designed that I am in awe of their terribleness. In a sense, perhaps being charitable we could say the developers wanted to make the dungeons feel unrealistic, strange and Euclidean to reflect the game's dream and otherworldly aspects like Alice in Wonderland. I refuse this as they are not even designed well in that sense since they are still absolutely incomprehensible. The better assumption is to assume they are this bad solely to sell game guides and to also pad out the game longer than its short runtime in order to get players playing longer and make the game sound longer.
My final note on gameplay is that the isometric view in rooms that is iconic to this game to give the sprites for the characters more expression also had really bad controls due to the fact that it was mapped funny to the directional buttons. Pressing down moved you left, pressing up moved you right and it took a lot of time to get used to this. You will eventually get used to it, but it certainly wasn't the best design decision.
All of this is to say, that this game had good ideas, but their execution was terrible in most senses. You can see these ideas further evolved, refined, and made much better in future Persona games.
I do not have much to say about the music, as I am a bit tone deaf, but the music was often good from the original PS1 soundtrack that I was listening to while playing the PSP version. Albeit, some tracks feel very out of place in certain scenes, particularly with the SEBEC ending sequence bafflingly choosing the goofy soundtrack during a very emotional sequence. The art was good, and conveyed the characters well especially in promotional material which has had its style used for every subsequent Persona game through future artists new interpretations. The pixel art wasn't outstanding compared to other games that came out at the same time, but it was serviceable and gave an idea of what each thing you were looking at was supposed to be.
Looking at all of this together, and coming back to my experience with the game... I respect Persona 1 for what it was able to accomplish and what it was on the Playstation 1. It was a truly unique game and it kickstarted one of my favorite franchises while having some excellent ideas that have been brought forward to many modern games. That being said, I do not think anyone should go back to play this game. For all of the numerous issues I mentioned above, I do not think it is worth coming back to this game compared to other JRPGs on the PS1 and if you are really curious you should watch a playthrough on Youtube instead. It has aged poorly, what it offers in story has been done better in other games since, and while being enjoyable at the start of the game especially if you have the means of speeding up the gameplay by fastforwarding combat, does overstay its welcome even in just the SEBEC route, let alone playing the clunky Snow Queen Quest route that I feel bogs down the game even further. Despite its numerous flaws and how I do not think anyone should play this game in the modern day, for its legacy, Persona 1 for the time it was released gets a 3/5 for the contributions it made to the medium.