Excellent ST
@Irene !
I refuse to believe it's been nearly 17 years since this first released in the US. (With the help of popping the OST on over the weekend for a short drive) I still remember that summer (August 2007) sitting in my first post-college apartment by myself and playing the original release on my PS2 as I was done with Twilight Princess and was waiting for Mario Galaxy to come out (and Final Fantasy XIII was still a long way off). I remember getting solely hyped for this purely based on a series of blog posts that Leigh Alexander had written about the state of JRPGs over on Destructoid and how Persona 3 was going to revitalize the genre.
As someone who's only exposure to the JRPG genre up to this point had been through Squaresoft and Nintendo let me tell you that Persona 3 was one hell of an event. I'd been somewhat aware of things like Nocturne through sites like RPGamer or references in TVTropes but this was my first foray into SMT. From the opening beats of the soundtrack to the first cutscene to seeing how narrative and mechanics intertwine with the social link system, to the first time the game ASKS YOU TO MAKE A DECISION THAT MATTERS, to combat requiring not just strategy to ensure you don't game over because you left the MC vulnerable to attack but also tactical decisions that need to be fed to your AI controlled teammates like the team leader / quarterback you're playing as, the whole experience was just a fundamental shock and rewrote my understanding of what was possible not just within the genre but games in general.
Yea, I hadn't really dabbled with Visual Novels at this point and I admittedly still really haven't but I understand you can easily see where nu-Persona takes a lot of inspiration from
I admittedly never finished the vanilla version, having burned out on it about maybe 40 hours in. By that point I had joined RPGamer's forum and I remember the minor "will they? won't they?" localization drama over the FES release which had been announced a months earlier. This was also my first experience with Atlus games and it was super cool that all the first run orders had a small artbook and soundtrack sampler included (at no extra cost!) which was such a huge difference from other releases at the time and made you just feel like Atlus really wanted to give something extra for the tens of thousands of customers they had at the time. It's certainly a far cry from modern Persona where the average CE is this overstuffed box you get for like $200 and then have to find shelf space to put it on.
When the FES release finally arrived, I booted it up immediately, imported my save file and started over in a weird sorta NG+ sorta not playthrough since you start over with your social stats from vanilla but all the rest of your progress was reset to a fresh game. I don't know how much that helped specifically, but a combination of that with the QoL changes from FES ensured that I saw the game all the way to the end this time. I don't remember a lot of the beats aside from knowing in advance to book a day on the weekend for the final boss, and then the rite of passage that comes with that encounter IYKYK.
Also, I still think this game is the sole reason why I think all the RPGs in my backlog are these 100+ hour epics I'm afraid to start. But that's me.
The game is problematic in plenty of ways and I think at this point it's a hard recommendation. I think it's great that the current staff at P-Studio are returning to it and attempting to put their own spin on it. Probably because P6 is a long ways off and a remake (and let's be honest here, a P4 Remake probably won't be too far behind) is a safer and cheaper way to experiment with new mechanics for a franchise where I really can't imagine how much further they can push the design after Persona 5 really took the interlocking mechanics of P3/P4 to the next level. I'm also glad they're at least trying to sand down some of the rougher edges, both mechanically and narratively, but it certainly sounds like from some of the reactions here that this is still a ways off from being a title (or even series) which could be universally recommended to people without needing to add a host of disclaimers. Which is sad because the series really has some good heart even if it does exhibit some flashes of ugliness that can drag the whole experience down.
Anyways, I'm waiting to see what happens with 2024/2025 and if this game makes it to Nintendo hardware before I check it out (I have a PC but I'd rather play my JRPGs on a console).
For everyone playing this for the first time, you're still probably in for a good ride even if this game isn't going to feel nearly as fresh as it did back in 2006/2007. There truly wasn't anything else on the market like this at the time.
EDIT: Also having to wait until April for the general availability of the OST is going to be brutal
. Which is kind of harsh, and not that the game hasn't been good and enjoyable so far! But the early game is slow and kind of empty. There's still the great Persona everyday-life vibe and game feel of trying to maximize your time and actions, but without almost any plot or much otherwise going on it doesn't hit as hard as even early P4, but especially early P5. I also find that the balance is way more skewed towards the social elements so far since the actual dungeon crawling and combat is pretty few and far between.
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