It's not that Persona 3 is a particularly poor game, that it offends the senses in the same ways that any number of games do, but rather that it offends you because it at first comes across as so damn likable. This is a game that, from the get go, feels absolutely stuffed with promise. The art style, while not of Kazuma Kaneko's caliber, is snappy and stylish, bordering just a little too close to the very typical anime style that's so prevalent in the JRPG realm, but still never quite falling into that camp. The story starts off strong enough, the characters all seem fairly interesting and the music is unique if nothing else at first, making the four-hour introduction fairly painless. Then you leave the introduction and find yourself firmly in control of your avatar, able now to explore the labyrinthine tower Tartarus, the games sole, 264 floor dungeon, and engage in the much discussed 'S-Link' portion, a school/dating sim light that directly affects your performance in the tower. And these are fine enough in their way. Fine enough, that is, until some six hours pass and you realize, quite shockingly, that you're going to be doing all of this for the next 70 hours, over and over and over again. And that soundtrack, once a tad cute if not at times enjoyable which has revealed itself to be particularly banal, is going to haunt your every moment in this fantasy world.
But then, isn't that the premise of most games, the repetition of one task until such time as you achieve whatever it is the game wishes for you to achieve? Certainly so, but other games add a little something to their make-up known as 'variety'. Take Persona 3's cousin game, SMT: Nocturne as a prime example. While essentially similar to Persona 3 in a number of ways, being from related series and development teams, Nocturne isn't so dull or stupid as to try and sell itself on being 'unique' or possessing a 'challenging design'; it's too busy being excellent to bother with selling itself through novelty. It's friendly enough to want its gamers to like it based on its every facet; as such, new music crops up constantly, one spends their time wandering a world filled to the brim with exciting dungeons, demon's to recruit and story tidbits to uncover. The trick, Nocturne's development team must have realized, lies in amusing the audience economically. It's really like any good movie in that sense; it moves along with one plot thread as the focus for some time, one particular dungeon and the demons that go with it, waiting until the precise moment the player would be coming to boredom to reveal it's next big turn, it's next astoundingly designed dungeon, it's next set of beautifully realized monsters.
Persona 3 doesn't do this, and it doesn't care if you don't like it. What you see is what you get. That tower? That's your only true outlet for battling this entire game, and by god, does it get boring fast. It's even worse when you realize that you're never going to control any character beyond your own, making battles at time unimaginably frustrating. There are a number of times where should you be in control of the party you would win and effortlessly so, but with the AI being what it is, you WILL die a number of completely unnecessary, avoidable deaths through no fault of your own. What this means, in the end, is that the battle system becomes not only a good deal arbitrary, but also stupendously dull. Strategy is rarely required from your part in battle; simply keep a variety of persona capable of covering one another's weaknesses and you should be all set; it is such that in the later stages of the game your allies become entirely superfluous. In short, they're almost entirely unnecessary. It's really a shame, too, considering how fantastic the SMT battle systems have been this generation. Even Devil Summoner, something of the blacksheep this generation managed to be relatively difficult at the same time as it was fun. No such luck in this installment; be content grinding through 260 some-odd floors of drab backgrounds, uninspired enemy designs and boss battles devoid of entertainment.
The games other half, the sim aspects, are in a word trite. Really. There is absolutely no reason for their inclusion in this game, other than an attempt to establish it as 'unique'. So, yes, it's off the beaten path, mixing in this sim aspect, but it is by no means compelling. There's a bit of storyline precedent to this socialization, a tossed in number concerning the strength of your personality as reflected through others, but nothing is done with it; the excuse is superficial and by no means ties into the game thematically. Consider it nothing more than a way to level up your persona much faster and unlock some hidden ones and you'll be all set. Some will try to argue that the individual social link stories build the games themes, microcosms of the bigger picture as it were, but don't be fooled. These social chains are overly bland, prone to the sort of rushed characterization that finds its way into JRPGs so often. Every side character has one aspect of their personality directly tied to some tragic event in their history that becomes not just an aspect of them but the character themselves; the melodrama in these side-stories is stifling and overly wrought, nothing more.
Ah, and then the middle, the fusion of the two, our story. What the hell, Atlus? What in the hell? DDS1 and Nocturne had brilliant stories, truly, DDS2 had a decent one and Devil Summoner's was at least light-hearted and ironic enough to be fun. Persona 3, though, is a step backwards, regressing to the same nonsensical third-grade philosophy present in so many of its ilk. No, fans, it's not deep. Don't feed me your lies and stop treating the developers' bullshit as though it were a gourmet meal. Bullshit with seasoning and all the trappings is still bullshit, is still inedible and wholly unappealing. The characters shooting themselves in the head to summon their persona is no deep commentary on identity suicide or impending death, it's a shallow gimmick made specifically to improve the aesthetics of the battle. 'Memento mori' doesn't mean anything in the context of the game outside of a few side characters dying banal deaths, giving their connected party member two minutes of character development then disappearing from all mention outside of a few battle quotes. Yes, I understand that when the hero dies in the end that's supposed to be us, the player dying, being closed 0ff from the game world; too bad FES came along and allowed us right back into the world we'd been kicked out of, stomping all over the importance of that detail. Look, it's a nice enough theme, really it is, but they did nothing with it besides throw in the aforementioned character deaths, the aforementioned gun gimmick and your avatars final demise. It's a hodgepodge of cliches, the story, as our the characters, villains, heroes and supporting alike. In short, it's bloated nonsense that was out of style when the original Shin Megami Tensei showed up and at the very least tried to do something more than say what poorly written Japanese animation had been saying for decades. What a wonderful step back from a videogame genre I'd though had finally matured.
There's no real way to rap this up; I've said all I really had to say. The game is hollow, plain and simple, without much of a soul, point or even any real motivation for its players. Do yourself a favor and buy the infinitely superior SMT: Nocturne.
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