(Hey Icy. I'm a long time lurker and admirer of the site, and I've finally decided to throw myself into the brutally honest community that is the forum. Below is my first real stab at a game review--I'm currently a high school student, and have, as of late, found my growth as a writer to be something nearing nonexistent. I hope to improve to the level of being able to actually, you know, write a competent review, and am looking forward to criticisms and suggestions from both you and the community. Also: The intro. paragraph was initially an overly-general and pointless attempt at depth, or something. I spared us both the trouble).
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona
Rating: **
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona is a localization redux of the 1996 Japanese Playstation game Megami Ibunroku: Persona. Owing to both the recent success of Playstation 2 releases Persona 3 and Persona 4, and the snafu ridden original localization (in which, among a litany of unfortunate decisions, a character was blackfaced and given a fittingly stereotypical vocabulary in an effort to make the game more appealing to an American audience), the newly staffed Atlus USA gave the game a proper, and—for what it’s worth-- culturally sensitive, treatment.
The events of Persona are both hectic and bizarre. Within minutes of the opening, demons overrun the city of Tokyo, a friend mysteriously recovers from a life threatening illness, side characters die in awkward bouts of melodrama, and the playable group awakens to the power of “persona”—borrowing a bit superficially from the writings of Carl Jung, personae are explained as the mask needed to face the troubles of the world made manifest (though, for as much as this matters in the context of the story, they could be called anything). *
Battles initially occur in urban locales-turned-dungeons--multi-floor mazes seen through a first person perspective. The unfortunate aging of the graphics are especially jarring here, as nearly unchanging, poorly detailed patterned floors and walls become the scenery anywhere from several minutes to several hours.
Battles occur at random. The spacing between these encounters, keeping with RPG tradition, is anything but generous, which, oddly enough, often allows for the clearing of a dungeon with minimal additional grinding--though the player is often met with a stark increase in enemy level when starting the next dungeon--a false, and disappointing, sense of having escaped the grind.
As with most RPGs, fights are fairly straightforward and mindless at introduction, but soon become convoluted battles of attrition. Boasting a total of 14 negative status ailments, (a great deal of which cause characters to lose multiple turns, chunks of health, or both), it is not that uncommon a scenario to find the whole of the party unable to act, leaving the player to view either a certain, and lengthy, death, or, if sufficiently overleveled, a scenario concluding with a member or two barely holding on.
Such situations are, understandably, frustrating. Particularly telling of any game is whether a death feels deserved or contrived, and, conversely, whether winning brings about a sense of satisfaction in the player. It is a failing of the game, in both loss and victory, that play feels mechanical—that little strategy, little thought, needs to be implemented by the player.
This contrivance is most evident in an oft-touted feature of the game—the Contact system. Rather than battle enemies, players are given the choice of ‘contacting’ them—communicating with a limited set of commands (including ‘Dance’ and ‘Insult’--this is a perfectly classy affair). Demons are given a handful of vague traits (ex. Haughty, joyful, snappish), and players are left to decipher which set of commands will pique the demon’s Interest level for a substantive reward(as opposed to making the enemy Happy, Angry, or Sad).
Perhaps, if there were some level of sense or consistency in this system, it would work. As is, nearly all commands will make Demons either Angry or Happy, and what seemingly at-random combination of commands eventually raises Interest levels is in no way guaranteed to raise the Interest level when used later (it may, in fact, make them angry!), rendering the Contact system a guessing game—more annoyance than interesting, or necessary, addition.
Worse still is that the purpose of this system--the gaining of Spell Cards used to create additional personas--hardly needs to be used for an unsettlingly large portion of the game. In the first 12 hours of play, I made a total of one Persona. One. In all situations preceding, victory was won with the default set of personas, using largely the same sets of commands. It is no surprise, then, that the game comes with an 'auto' (repeat) function--it needs it. It is a mockery, really--evidence that play requires leveling more than thought, mindless repetition more than involvement.
Persona is a perfectly competent game—but so utterly devoid of charm, consistency, characterization, or strategical depth, (all things needed to sufficiently justify the playing of a dozens-hour JRPG) though, that the game fails to set itself apart from other RPGs in any positive way. If anything, this remake serves as a reminder of the merit of later games in the series—games that manage to be unique, challenging, and enjoyable, a combination that this game just doesn’t get right.
*-eh. Is this paragraph too summary/list driven? =/