Great Games: Persona 3
SPOILER ALERT: Plot details follow for Persona 3
Persona 3 is a game drenched in death. It has to be. The problem at its center is this: how does one face the fact that they will one day die? How do you live knowing all you experience will vanish? This is an uncomfortable question, and some avoid it by never thinking of it, but this story will allow you no such convenience, as awakening your “Persona” requires a repeated shooting of the head.
For many gamers, Persona 3 was an introduction into this spin-off of the Shin Megami Tensei series. Persona itself found it roots in the game Shin Megami Tensei If… which brought the RPG into a Japanese high school setting. Persona was the continuation of this concept, and while Persona 2: Eternal Punishment did establish a following for these games in the West, it was Persona 3 that really helped to bring this series to a wider audience. As much was said by then Atlus CEO Naoto Hiraoka,
“Persona 3 represented something different for us; it was the first time where we decided to look at things overall, and think more about the consumers and what the consumer might be looking for in a game. That’s how that game was developed and then released. Seeing the fan reaction that, it was extremely positive, and things took off from there. So we decided that, going forward, we would focus on these things and think about these things while creating our games.”
Persona 3, if anything else, introduced an element which has gone on to be a staple, the Social Link, in which you build relationships with various students and others. The Social Links, as well as the adoption of character designer, Shigenori Soejima, helped Persona 3 bring in more of a “slice of life” manga aesthetic. This was both a notable tonal shift from the previous games, and a unique edge over other traditional RPGs. Style is everything in Persona, and this entry has plenty of it, with the music adopting equal parts rock and hip hop, a gothic cathedral clocktower, and a protagonist that’s the spitting image of Gerard Way.
You begin as a transfer student to Gekkoukan High School on the coast. You live in a dorm with a organization known as SEES, whose duty it is to defeat “Shadows” who only appear during the “Dark Hour.” This strange period of time occurs every midnight, in which everyone turns into a coffin, and those attacked by the Shadows fall into a near-comatose state or Apathy Syndrome. Only the people in SEES can fight against the Shadows as they carry the “Personas” within them. The Shadows come from a mysterious tower known as Tartarus, and on every full moon they send forth the strongest among them into the world. The only way, it seems, to put an end to this madness is by defeating all twelve Shadows and reaching the top of Tartarus.
On this journey you are joined a number of colorful characters. There’s the leader, Mitsuru, of the Kirijo Group that funded SEES to begin with. Mitsuru is studious, strict, and sexy. Her upbringing as an elite can make her appear distant, but isn’t depicted as cold, always sure to show concern, even if she doesn’t always know how. Yukari is another cute classmate who is headstrong and upbeat, but privately feels lonely without her father and is disgusted by her mother’s philandering. Her cheer belies a more troubled psyche, someone who struggles with the initial self-shooting. Junpei is the comic relief who’s always hitting on chicks and never succeeding; an unabashed pervert you grow to like. Akihiko is a boxer who obsesses over training due to his inability to save Miki from an orphanage fire. One of the cooler characters. Shinji, a tough guy who keeps mostly to himself, avoids SEES altogether due to his guilt for having accidentally killed a fellow Persona user. This fallen user was the mother of Ken, a child who joins SEES for the purpose of getting vengeance for her. Despite his age, Ken has all the maturity of an adult, sometimes appearing more thoughtful than Junpei. Fuuka is a quiet girl who starts with little confidence, but grows assertive in her relationships, even befriending a former bully. She’s also a terrible cook. There’s the dog, Koromaru, the animal mascot of the game, but unlike Teddie or Morgana, he doesn’t speak. This makes him no less a personality, though. Lastly, is Aigis, an anti-Shadow android developed by SEES who knows nothing of human emotions, yet grows to learn them.
The gameplay should be right at home for RPG fans, turn-based combat which requires an understanding of elemental strengths and weaknesses. Akihiko can use lightning, but is weak to wind and Mitsuru can use ice but is weak to fire. Other times, physicals are better than elementals, so you might prefer Aigis’s Orgia Mode or Yukari’s piercing arrows. Only the main character can use multiple Personas, and success in the game weighs heavily in favor of using fusing the right Personas together who can perform greater abilities. Instead of a variety of dungeons, the game has you journey through all 260 or so floors of Tartarus, with the occasional boss blocking the way. You are given until the next full moon before a major boss to complete a block of Tartarus. It’s given that once you clear a block of Tartarus, you’ll be ready for the level-ending boss, give or take a few levels. Without a doubt, you’ll spend a great deal of the game grinding, which can get tiring, literally. Fighting too long in a dungeon will make your characters “tired” and as such, they’ll be more vulnerable to weaker attacks. It’ll take at least a day of rest for you or one of your characters to improve their condition, and that’s assuming they don’t get sick. Since the major boss doesn’t appear until the full moon, you may find yourself wondering whether or not you’re high enough to successfully face it. It isn’t wise to spend every night leveling, as that quickly gets boring, and slows things down to a screeching halt. As a rule of thumb, I always tried to get five or six levels higher than I was after clearing a block, and only reserving time to do so once every two or three nights. “Mass Destruction” is certainly an energizing battle theme, but it gets old.
Social Links are one of P3’s highlights, as well as their debut appearance. Much like a visual novel or a sim game, Social Links involve forging friendships with a variety of people in the city. There are so many, in fact, that it’ll be difficult (though not impossible) to complete them all in one playthrough. This includes, of course, dating, in which you don’t have much of a choice. Get far enough in a Social Link with a girl and you’ll automatically start dating her. The problem here is that if you see other girls while already intimate with one, she’ll get jealous and your Social Link will go into reverse. There are complex ways of getting around this, but my method was to pick a favorite girl and max out with her, only departing when a better one appeared. I should add that Yukari, Mitsuru, and Fuuka’s Social Links will only be available after maxing out a particular skill, be it Courage, Academics, or Charm. So you’ll spend a lot of nights studying, drinking pheromone coffee, or singing karaoke. One girl you can date who has no effects on your Social Links is Elizabeth, Igor’s assistant in the Velvet Room. Being isolated from the world, she makes humorous observations about the foibles of everyday life, from pouring all her coins into the fountain to trying to give a school lecture about diet soda. Taking her to your room isn’t too bad, either.
I’m not too familiar with the “best girl” arguments surrounding P3, but I’ll tell you straight that I was stuck between Mitsuru and Yukari. Yukari had the “girl next door” appeal, but also a feisty assertiveness. Mitsuru was very cool and mature, but her overthinking in fast food restaurants was equally entertaining. Of course, their Social Links are also well spun, with Yukari possibly reconciling with her mother, and Mitsuru learning to follow her heart as passionately as her mind. Maxed out Social Links are a necessity if you want to fuse strong Personas like Cybele or Siegfried, but this doesn’t mean their stories are no less interesting. From Kenji, the senior trying to romance a teacher, to Kazushi, the track star dealing with a bad knee, to Bebe, the French Japanophile who doesn’t want to leave, to Yuko, a cute coach who finds a love for helping kids, and to my favorite, Mutatsu, a Buddhist monk who drinks in the dance club, but offers solid advice.
The plot is engaging, but takes quite a bit of time to unfold. The game can move at a snail’s pace, with little happening at a time, and initially, you feel more connected to other students at school than those who live in your dorm, yet once things get going, your ears perk up, your back straightens, and your eyes sharpen. As stated before, P3 revolves around memento mori: “remember that you will die.” When they fight in Tartarus, they put their lives on the line and are forced to seriously confront their own mortality. This is often communicated visually with the Evokers, which never lose their ability to unsettle. Much of the characterization revolves around how the characters confront death, be it their own or that of one they care about. Yukari suffers internally from her father’s death, but the more she learns about the sacrifices he made, the more she seeks to honor them. She even comes to understand that her mother’s philandering was a way for her to cope as well. Mitsuru also loses her father over the course of the game, and is completely devastated, as her whole reason for fighting was to protect him. Yukari helps her find a resolution similar to her own and find a deeper friendship that wasn’t there before. Ken tries to deal with his mother’s death by attempting to take Shinji’s life, but when Shinji is killed by Takaya, it leaves him feeling no better. One death doesn’t replace another. Akihiko deals with Miki’s death through over-compensation, deluding himself into thinking he can protect everyone, but Shinji’s death shatters this belief. Shinji himself dealt with his murder by running away from life, but when faced with his own death, accepts it as atonement. Even the dog, Koromaru, routinely visits and protects the shrine where his dead master once lived. The antagonists, Strega, aren’t shy about death, they embrace it wholly, but think nothing of life, and as far as they’re concerned, neither does anyone else. Most people live without reason or thrill, and that it’s better to embrace the quiet of death than to live in suffering. Indeed, their “cult” of sorts gains many followers, because life is difficult and death is easy.
A similar question faces SEES when they confront Nyx, the Death Arcana, who will bring eternal rest onto all humanity. They are given the choice to either live in bliss, forgetting their memories of the Dark Hour, and be taken away by surprise, or attempt to fight Nyx, knowing full well that they’ll probably die. SEES decide to fight, preferring to live with significance than to die in peace. This ties into how the protagonist eventually defeats Nyx, unlocking a great sealing power with the friendships he built over the game’s course. It sounds cliche, of course, but it answers the question of how to face death successfully: by living a life of meaning. That way, you can pass without regret. Aigis, though she is an android who cannot die, similarly finds her humanity in the feelings she shares with her friends, resolving to protect the protagonist as he rests in her lap.
While I always saw the ending as ambiguous and up for interpretation, the protagonist dying fits well within the themes established in the story. The game is all about reminding you about the fact of death, and the myriad of ways in which this affects our approach to life. The protagonist dies happy, having made the friends of a lifetime and immeasurably changed the lives of many. A shortened life, perhaps, but one better spent than too many others.
Originally published at http://sansuthecat.blogspot.com on August 2, 2017.
