Finishing Persona 3 feels like the closing of a long book in my life. I finished it over the span of three years, and what I’ve been through in that span has decisively built a collection of chapters. Chapters each with their own meanings and lessons that lead into the next, as with the months in Persona 3. Although not a technically clever narrative, Persona’s ability to walk the line between innocence and maturity in a high school simulator/dungeon crawler themed around death is impressive. There were many special moments for me during this game while completing the social links, seeing the cast grow and evolve in their own ways, accepting and appreciating their fate, respective to their backgrounds. The game itself is nowhere near to perfection, with sluggish and inconsistent pacing issues, poor gameplay variety, and weak role-playing elements. For an experience well worth over 100 hours, it would be quixotic to expect consistency in quality, and the story peaks were vindicating of those errs. The fusion system, and vast amount of content went a long way to redeem some of the issues and make for an addicting gameplay loop. Ultimately, it was worth sifting through a bin of mud to find a pot of gold. This game has some of the great emotional peaks you’ll find in a JRPG. The sheer amount of time spent with characters gives weight and uncertainty to their fates, and most storylines have banging payoffs. The unfortunate reality is the slog it becomes to remain invested in so many storylines for this long of a game without taking a significant break, and as a result having to catch yourself back up with the plot and characters each time it phases out of your life.
The highest merit of Persona 3 is the well-written variety of believable high school students with fascinating stories. Junpei and Yukari, Akihiko, Mitsuru, Fuuka, Aigis, the list goes on. The way characters are developed in this game are with one-on-one interactions between the protagonist and their acquaintances, resulting in a lack of illustrated affinities between character arcs besides the ones directly tied to the main plot. For an RPG, self-contained relationships make for a less rewarding narrative, as player agency is severely diminished. This just goes to show how Persona is such a well-crafted narrative experience that despite those issues, it remains such an influential game on so many for the execution of its themes of death and acceptance.
The visual novel presentation wasn’t great and hurt the experience of important story beats. The first ten or so hours of the game has enough cutscenes and presentation variety for it not to be an issue, but the weaknesses of the style does start to reveal itself towards the end of the game. I enjoyed it and felt it was fine regarding the social links, and everyday school life, but it suffered otherwise.
At the end of the day, the game itself is old enough to be in high school, and plenty of case analyses have been conducted on the game’s strengths and weaknesses. If there’s one thing to take away from my experience with the game, it’s to always have a tribe. People you can trust and surround yourself with to support each other both through times of suffering and of bliss. If you don’t have a tribe to live for, you’ll become apathetic, and death will take control over you. Though you’ll still be living, with nobody to live for, our existence becomes merely an inhabitation. Our family protects our peace of mind. Love and peace, Alhamdulillah.
The highest merit of Persona 3 is the well-written variety of believable high school students with fascinating stories. Junpei and Yukari, Akihiko, Mitsuru, Fuuka, Aigis, the list goes on. The way characters are developed in this game are with one-on-one interactions between the protagonist and their acquaintances, resulting in a lack of illustrated affinities between character arcs besides the ones directly tied to the main plot. For an RPG, self-contained relationships make for a less rewarding narrative, as player agency is severely diminished. This just goes to show how Persona is such a well-crafted narrative experience that despite those issues, it remains such an influential game on so many for the execution of its themes of death and acceptance.
The visual novel presentation wasn’t great and hurt the experience of important story beats. The first ten or so hours of the game has enough cutscenes and presentation variety for it not to be an issue, but the weaknesses of the style does start to reveal itself towards the end of the game. I enjoyed it and felt it was fine regarding the social links, and everyday school life, but it suffered otherwise.
At the end of the day, the game itself is old enough to be in high school, and plenty of case analyses have been conducted on the game’s strengths and weaknesses. If there’s one thing to take away from my experience with the game, it’s to always have a tribe. People you can trust and surround yourself with to support each other both through times of suffering and of bliss. If you don’t have a tribe to live for, you’ll become apathetic, and death will take control over you. Though you’ll still be living, with nobody to live for, our existence becomes merely an inhabitation. Our family protects our peace of mind. Love and peace, Alhamdulillah.