Friday, June 13, 2008

Persona 3: FES

Developer: Atlus
Publisher: Atlus
Release Date: April 22, 2008
System: PS2
ESRB Rating: M
Official Web site

In a nutshell: The best game I've ever watched, or the best anime I've ever "played."

0:00 All I really know about this game is that the guys from Penny Arcade liked it and that Atlus gave me a free copy of the recent "FES" update, whatever that means.

0:01 Japanese singing over a confusing, jump cut-strewn anime. Then an equally confusing English rap over more jump cuts -- there's one every second or so! Flashes of people walking around school, RPG-style battles, a girl in a French maid's outfit, a white tiger, a gun to the face, a shop, and much more that I don't have time to write down.

0:03 In contrast to the frenetic intro, the title screen is dressed in mild greens with a gentle piano soundtrack and a full moon outside a window.

0:04 My menu choices are "The Journey" and "The Answer." Um, I was actually looking for "New Game"" or something. I guess that's kind of like a journey.

0:05 There's "New Game," along with my old friends "Load Game," "Config" and "Return to Title." Whew!

Read the full review at Crispy Gamer

4 comments:

Kikimaru said...

I hope you didn't arbitrarily turn off your PS2 at the 1hr mark, since the anime-cutscene you "weren't allowed to describe" is quite freaky!

Oh, but such a shame. Persona 3 is a real slow-burner; not much happens for the first... 2-4hrs...

Kyle said...

I actually did turn it of soon after that... because of bad planning I had somewhere I needed to be as soon as I hit the hour mark. I'll work my way up to it again from the last save point eventually...

Unknown said...

It works out, actually. My own bias towards jRPGs aside.

After a while I got the impression that this is one of the baby steps the Japanese take when trying into adding the more choice-heavy gameplay style of wRPGs into their own efforts, while still remaining VERY Japanese.

Also, I've begun to hear the J-Pop soundtrack in my sleep.

Rodneylives said...

Dear god, I hate to say it, but reading this one was torturous. It sounds like just about the most pretentious thing ever. Everything that sucks about Japanese game storytelling in one game: stilted obtuse descriptions of unexplained things spoken by obnoxious, condescending privileged people (who, of course, the player turns out to be one of) amist a sea of overplayed metaphor....

There, you see? Games like this make me write huge sentences.