Review for SEBEC Route only, I just restarted to play Snow Queen.

I absolutely loved this game. I got through the main story in about 30 hours, but I chose to spend 20 hours grinding just for fun (which ended up being the deciding factor for me playing Snow Queen). The grinding in this game is almost an idle game to me, only occassionally needing to change things up and after a while I had the enemies well memorised.

I missed the fusion spells Persona 2 has to offer, and I'll admit that the area limitations (in terms of what a character can hit based on where they are) were something that initially scared me when I tried to play this years ago. However, I actually adapted really quickly and only needed to change up my team layout a couple of times. I loved the first person perspective combined with how fast you move - bouncing off the walls brought me such great joy throughout.

The game is super clear in what you need to do and when unless it's something secret/unlockable (such as the Snow Queen Route - which I almost stumbled into doing the first time by pure chance - or having Reiji as a playable character). I was never struggling for where to go and there was only one occassion where I grabbed a guide and it was because I failed to notice a staircase on the map and a minor glitch later showed on the map that I'd already been down it when I hadn't.

I really appreciated the story for how the idea of Personas was handled. The game puts emphasis on the lack of a true self (in contrast to what later installments would insist upon) and confronts the fact that there are many aspects to what makes a person and those change depending on the situation and your existence in other people's eyes. It addressed the conflict of feeling like you're not being true to yourself because of how you act in different situations, the concept of someone being "fake", and recognised that that can be something difficult to navigate. In the end, it did give the simple answer of "it doesn't matter. Stop getting lost in the details. It's all you. You're you and you're real no matter what." and I think that is beautiful. I think it's something that is worth addressing regardless of age because anyone can get caught up in the concept of being "genuine". This game really reminded me why I loved Persona 2 so much and Persona 1 is now my second favourite in the series because of how frank and real it feels.

One thing is I really wasn't sold on Maki having feelings for the protagonist. I appreciate their relationship doesn't seem to come to anything, because it just didn't feel like it really made sense. Honestly, was cheering for Mark and Maki quite a bit - their relationship was pretty cute!

Controls wise, I found the d-pad difficult to work with compared to the joystick. I'd definitely recommend joystick for playability.

Songs are absolute bangers, I never got sick of the battle music and Battle Tesso is iconic. I'm desperate to use that track in any situation.

I wasn't completely enamoured with the 3D in the cutscenes - I'd have preferred 2D for them - but they don't look bad. They're clearly higher quality than the Playstation 2 models Atlus were using at the time.