Persona 2: Eternal Punishment being ported to PSP

[Wolf Kanno]

Not a big surprise (http://www.siliconera.com/2012/02/28/persona-2-eternal-punishment-coming-to-psp-with-new-scenario/) but I'm happy that they decided to finish the collection of the series for the PSP. It helps this is probably my second favorite entry in the franchise behind Persona 3:FES. The best thing will be, if it gets a release outside of Japan, non-Japanese players will finally be able to utilize the transfer data feature in the game.

[Del Murder]

Never played the Persona series. What's it like?

[Mirage]

Brutal, but kinda fun. Don't expect the game to give you a break. Make one mistake at the wrong time and it'll curb-stomp you back to your previous save point, which is likely to be at least an hour or two hours ago.

[Wolf Kanno]

Never played the Persona series. What's it like?

Kind of a loaded question and it really varies from game to game... The overall common theme is that the stories are basically about High School students fighting demons and Lovecraftian Horrors that wish to annihilate existence. The characters usually fight with what is conventional for them such as guns and katanas, but their real power comes from the power of Persona. Persona are the "other side" of the human soul/psyche and they contain great power and resemble the mythological gods and demons of human history. The main characters are always granted the ability to summon their persona and this acts as your magic and special attacks in the gameplay. The games themselves, are usually dungeon crawlers and I'm afraid if you don't like long palette swap walls that comprise a dungeon, you're not really going to get anything else. The games usually shine with the battle systems that offer a ton of customization and really play with a Pokemon style rock/paper/scissor/ mechanic. Still, even the battle system change from title to title, though this main idea of elemental weakness exploitation is a core mechanic throughout. Here's a rundown of the titles in the series.

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Revelations: Persona ~ Be Your True Mind (a.k.a. Shin Megami Tensei Persona 1) - The first entry in the series. I would actually recommend skipping this entry until you know you like the series, but then again, there is a bit of continuity between the first game and the second games. The story is a bit of pulp science fiction with light horror but the game is just ridiculously cheesy to the point it's like watching a Bruce Campbell horror flick. You basically play as a bunch of high school students who are visiting a sickly classmate in the hospital, she's been getting special experimental treatment from the SEBEC corporation but when you visit her, the whole world goes crazy and demons are unleashed on the planet. Trns out those experiments on her was actually meant to use her as a medium to open up gateways into alternate realities and lo and behold, there are demons on the othr side. It just gets weirder from there.

Combat is typical turn base but the battle screen is a grid system. Abilities have specific AoE so party placement is incredibly important to optimize your team. Characters have three methods of attacking an enemy, either using their Persona powers, using guns, or using a melee weapon. The other options is the ability to communicate with the demons themselves. If the conversation goes well, the demon may give the character an item, XP, or Money. What you really want is the enemy to give you their card, which can then be fused with other monster cards in the Velvet Room t make new Personas. Persona's themselves act as a secondary set of armor and weapons as their personal stats are added to your characters stats. Persona's have specific strengths and weaknesses and thus when they are equipped, the player character has them too so it's wise to keep that in mind when building a party. There are multiple characters to get in your party but only five avilable slots, there are also multiple endings and even an alternate second story in the game with its own ending and characters to recruit. So it has lots of replay value. The combat is just... not up to standard. The game can get really slow and tedious. The plot is also ridiculous and even the cast is easily one of the least likable in the series. It's why I say you should skip it for now cause trying to start from the beginning may convince you not to bother playing the rest and rest of the series is pretty awesome.

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Shin Megami Tensei Persona 2: Innocent Sin - The significantly better sequel. While the plot is still equally cheesy and bizarre, it does have strong character moments and eventually unfolds into something much grander and darker. This is the entry where the series decides to take the "Horror" aspect a little more seriously. The game deals with Tatsyua Suou, a delinquent student who just wants to ride his motor bike and not think about his future. Unfortunately he gets caught up with some fellow students on a quest involving the Joker Rumor that's been going around school. Basically, if you call your own cell phone, a harlequin will appear and make your dream come true. It gets a bit messy when the students learn the rumor is true, and Joker asks for a high price in return. Not only that, rumors themselves are all starting to come true and this eventually snowballs into a clusterfuck involving cults, the Mayan apocalypse and the return of Adolf Hitler. The real clicker is the dark secret that Tatsuya and his friends carry that may actually be the real beginning of this whole fiasco.

Combat is much cleaner, removes the whole grid system, and adds the ability to actually set your party's turn order, though this can force faster characters to wait until a slower character takes their turn. This is important because of the new fusion spell system. Its' basically built on Chrono Trigger's Dual/Triple techs but works more like Breath of Fire IV's fusion ability system. Basically character's can combine spells to create more powerful abilites but it requires the spells to be used in a certain order to activate, hence the importance of the ability to control your parties turn order. You also have to put in account the enemies turns as well so sometimes it's best to start a battle with a slow character who will let the enemy go first, cause normally the enemies turn would appear sometime in the middle of the three spells needed to activate a fusion spell, and thus negate it from happening. It's a very clever and strategic system. Conversation system has also been overhauled and made far more entertaining, with characters now able to combine their different conversation strengths to create new unique conversation options to woo the demons on your side. Your target is to get them to give you tarot cards so you can trade them in for new personas These are usually hilarious and add a more levels of charm and endearment to the cast. You also have the ability to spread rumors through detective agencies to unlock new enemies, shops, and dungeons.

Shin Megami Tensei Persona 2: Eternal Punishment - The other half of Persona 2, this game works as a psuedo-sequel that completes the whole story. It was rumored that the development team didn't have enough time to complete the full Persona 2, and instead broke it up into two games. I can't say too much about the plot of this game without revealing spoilers for P2:IS but hear goes. The game let's you play as Maya, the female heroine from the previous P2. As a reporter she's investigating the Joker Rumors going around the local high schools, where calling your own cell phone summons Joker, who will kill anyone you ask him to. The rumor turns out to be true, but weird things are going on his time. Maya's investigation leads to a psychiatric ward, an organized crime organization, a cult, Guido's mysterious return (main villain of P1) and a government conspiracy within Japan to use ancient astrological powers to start a new age in man, and a mysterious boy that Maya feels she knows, and simply calls her Deja Vu Boy, Tatsuya Suou.

Gameplay is exactly the same, though cleaned up. The game reuses a lot of stuff from the first P2 game, though it brings back the EX Dungeon and the game actually had a data transfer system with it's first half that netted you better levels and equipment for one character, as well as more of the demon compendium filled out.

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Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3 - Considered (both positively and negatively) as the "FFVII of the Persona franchise" mostly for breaking the series into the mainstream. It is also the most radical departure from the previous entries. You play a nameless high school student who learns that there is a missing hour in the day, called the Dark Hour. During this hour, the world transforms into hellish parody of itself but most people don't realize what's going on because they are transformed into coffins and "sleep" through this hour. Only a special select few can actually experience this hour without being put to sleep. During the Dark Hour, monstrous creatures known as Shadows (think the Heartless except less cute) stalk the world and feed on random human victims they can stir from their "sleep". These victims during the regular hours of the day suffer from what the normal population call "Apathy Syndrome" which makes them like zombies that just lie around waiting to die. Your hero signs a contract with a mysterious boy, who tells him that there is only one year left "...until the End", afterwards, he joins a secret school club of other students who are aware of the Dark Hour and they go out each night to fight the shadows with the aid of Personas, a side effect of the Dark Hour.

The gameplay is where everything gets interesting. Basically, Persona 3 merges dungeon crawling JRPG gameplay with a high school "dating sim" style game. You have one year to solve the mystery of the Shadows and watch the story unfold. Each day is played out separately and during the day, you go to classes, make friends, take tests, go on dates, goof around, but once a day has passed, it's gone. Your character has social aspects separated into charm, academics, and toughness. These aspects allow you to talk to new people, get better scores on exams, and can net you some items in some places. It's the friend making aspect that is most important. People you befriend become Social Links which are assigned to one of the 21 Major Arcana of the Tarot cards. The closer you get to these people as their personal stories unfold, the higher your social link gets. Where this is important is with Persona fusion which I'll get to later. The social links tell really amusing stories that fall more into the weird goofiness of previous entries, stories range from a student trying to date one of his teachers, to talking with a drunk and surly Buddhist Monk in a night club, to hanging out with a friend on a dying MMO, and even a creepy little boy who likes to visit you in the Dark Hour while you try to sleep...The stories have fun and bizarre twists, with the Sun Arcana and Devil Arcana being my personal favorites...

P3 drops the previous game systems and adopts a simplified version of Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne/Lucifer's Call/Maniax, so Personas are now assigned to one of the 21 Tarot classes, and these personas are now fused together to make new personas with shared skills from its two parent personas. Where Social Links get involve is that if you have a SL with a the arcana of a fused persona, the fused persona will now receive a huge XP boost that will level it up and unlock new skills. This is good cause naturally leveling the personas is time consuming because they require 10x more xp than your character on average. With higher levels and more skills, you can then turn around a dominate in battle or even fuse them again into new more powerful personas.

Combat is taken directly from SMTIII, introducing the Press Turn system. Basically you get one turn per character on your team, same with the enemy. If you strike and enemy or get striked yourself by an elemental your weak to or a critical hit, you get an extra turn and the enemy is knocked down, meaning that if they survive until their turn, they lose it because they will spend it getting up, but the same goes for you. If you dodge an attack or get hit with an element your character nulls/absorbs/counters then the enemy/player will lose not only their turn but the rest of their party's turns as well, so it is very important to build for defense and watch what enemies weaknesses are. If you knock all the enemies down, your party can initaite a group attack that does huge damage on the enemies, usually killing all non-boss type monsters. Your party is all A.I. controlled and they only have one persona that can eventually get an upgrade in the story. So each character is unique, from Junpei who specializes in slash/pierce damage with a little fire magic on the side; to Yukari, who is mainly a healing character and uses Wind magic. So who is in your party is important before going into dungeons. You also have a navigator who can take a turn to scan the enemies and reveal their weaknesses, this is very important because the A.I. will make mistakes until they know the enemies strengths/weaknesses from scanning (think Libra from XIII) but luckily you only have to scan the enemy once, afterwards, further encounters will have the party doing their best. While your control of your party is limited, you can still give out important commands mid-battle like conserve SP, or go for attacks that will knock the enemy down, or even tell them to prioritize a specific target. The A.I. is actually really good once you get the hang of the scanning mechanic. The game also makes good use of a New Game + feature where social stats, items and your Demonic Compendium are transferred over.

There is a lot more to it than all this, but this section is getting a little too long and this gives you the gist. There is a director's cut version called Persona 3:FES which gives you a ton of new features like weapon making and new story events, as well as a playable prologue called The Answer that is a giant dungeon crawler that details the events of what your party does after the game ends. There is also Persona 3 Portable for the PSP which dumbs down the game a bit due to hardware limitations but it allows you to pick the sex of your character which leads to a very different take of the games main story and she gets her own unique social links separate from the normal male protagonist. She even gets the option to change a certain major story event...

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Shin Megami Tensei Persona 4 - Its P3 with a much bigger and better social system, though I feel several of the changes to the dungeon crawling side of the game were for the worst. Still, it's an exceptional game that really tugs at the heartstrings. You play a Japanese high school student sent to live in the boonies with your Uncle Dojima who is a detective in the district for a whole year. You make friends with the other local kid from the city, whose family moved there cause his father is the manager of the towns new Junes Shopping Center (think Wal-Mart except with an annoyingly catchy theme song...). You hear a rumor about a "ghost channel that comes on at midnight after a rainstorm. What you see is weird caricatures of people you meet in the town, and then a few weeks later, the person on the show is found dead, brutally murdered in grotesque ways. The party investigates and learns they can go into the TV and visit this TV world where the Shadows live, and discover that there is a serial killer in town whose using the Midnight Channel as a way to murder their victims. Being granted the power of Persona after overcoming each character's personal dark side. You basically play Scooby-Doo in this small town, trying to discover the identity of the killer while jumping into the TV world to rescue his victims.

The social aspect has been greatly expanded with your character now able to do some new activities like make models of Gundams, pick up a part time job, fishing, and even cooking mini-games. Your Social stats have been expanded to five new categories and they not only unlock new social links but also new dialogue choices in the story itself. Some Social Link Arcana now have two different choices as to whom you can spend time with which creates more replay value in subsequent playthroughs of New Game +. Several social links can't even be completed until your social stats are up to par. You also get more group events with multiple social links that will raise all of them at once. One social link even follows you into dungeons and will restore your SP at a price... The story itself is superb and the whole set-up of Nanako (your cousin and Dojima's young daughter) as well as Dojima himself is some of the best and most heartwarming writing I've seen in a game.

Gameplay is mostly the same as P3 except now you can control your whole party old school style and the Navigator character's role has been kind of lobotomized. Which is a shame cause Rise is a hell of a lot less annoying to listen to than Fuuka from P3 was... There are several other major difference like themed dungeons, more special bosses and semi-major retooling of the Press Turn battle system but that would involve going into more detail than is necessary.

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It's a pretty awesome series and I highly recommend it. Persona 3: FES is easily my favorite JRPG on the PS2 and one of my top five favorite games of all time. You may want to start with P3 or P4 but both of the P2 games are also really good, if a bit old school by today's standards, and the first game is amusing as well if a bit antiquated and overly clunky.

[Jessweeee♪]

Yeah, I recommend P3 when someone asks me if they should try the series and I don't know their taste very well. Like Wolf said, it is kind of the FFVII of the series. If you do pick it up I recommend the FES or PSP version. FES has a little bonus kind of sequel thing, and the PSP version doesn't have that but it does have some other tweaks, like the option to control your party members rather than just letting the AI handle it (the AI is actually pretty good as long as you don't have Break abilities). Persona 4 is my personal favorite! By the way, the Persona 4 anime goes pretty great with the game. Dunno how it fares for someone who has never played it though.

I'm really excited to hear about this game getting a PSP port!

EDIT:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v726/jesse053/slinks.png

[Mirage]

I wonder how many keyboards WK burns through per week.

[Wolf Kanno]

To be honest, I still could have gone into greater detail on just the social aspect of P3, or even some of the amazing customization you can do in the P2 titles when you start to involve the special food shops. ;)

I would also recommend P3:FES when it comes to which version of P3 to play, though P3P is not a bad choice either. FES really did add a crap ton of new things to do, and really rebalanced the game (the mechanics with the Shrine got fixed so you can't raise your academics so easily) new events like being able to take Koro-chan out for walks and talk with party members, the new movie marathon segment, the security videos, weapon making, tons of new quests that Elizabeth asks you to do, and new Personas. The Answer itself is not too bad either, while it's a straight up dungeon crawler with no social links or demonic compendium to help with gameplay, the story is very good and had several unexpected twists and turns that really helped humanize the cast.

[Del Murder]

Thanks for the info! I don't like dusting off the PS2 that much but I may try P3 for PSP at some point.

[Wolf Kanno]

I'd still recommend playing the PS2 version if you can. P3P is not a bad but I really feel you lose a bit of the characterization without the amusing 3D character models and anime /manga symbols which the PSP port can't do. Not to mention you lose out on seeing the awesome anime cutscenes. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghLKgI5-3nM&feature=related) Though I do feel the game took the few good changes from P4 (like the ability to decide what skills your characters keep) and the addition of the rescue missions are a nice touch. Makes me curious what little changes to the battle system they'll do for the P4Vita port.

[Jiro]

Can we promote that essay to the front page? It's fucking amazing. Anyway I'll be looking into picking up all of the persona games for PSP as my copies of 3:FES and 4 have been nicked.