Kombo’s Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don’t waste your time. This is why we’ve split our reviews into four sections: What the Game’s About, What’s Hot, What’s Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.
What the Game’s About
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona is the latest Persona RPG title for the PSP. A remake of the original Persona released on the PSOne some thirteen years ago, but this new remake features updated graphics, missions, and a new sense of playability. The game opens up with a group of high school students playing a game. Immediately after the game is over, each student has the same dream and they are now able to get in touch with their inner souls known as personae. The personae act has guardians and warriors throughout the game.
What’s Hot
What makes Persona stand out from traditional RPGs are the battle options. Featuring the standard, attacks, skills, etc., Persona takes it one step further. Allowing players to talk with the enemy before commencing in battle is unique and makes the game original to a certain degree. Talking to the enemy demons will allow you to sometimes not only avoid getting into battles, but also gain demon cards that will help you create new persona throughout the game. To successfully utilize the talking features, though, you’ll need to understand each personality of the enemy demon. To appeal to their needs, every member of your party will have four conversation options. These will range from persuading the demon, singing to it, or mocking it. Each option will cause the demon to react in some way, which may or may not benefit you in the long run.
The use of personae in battles is the real appeal of the game’s battle system. You’re allowed to equip several personae to each party member, which effectively gives you a rather large arsenal of skills that are available. The personae will act as your magic source and powerful attackers. With physical and magical based attacks, the personae will be the main weapon in your attacking repertoire. Aside from the personae, each character can have a melee weapon and firearm equipped. During the later sections of the game you’ll notice you can’t solely depend on the personae in battle and you’ll need to better plan your attacks when facing strong opponents.
The story found in Persona really has to be experienced to understand. With two stories told in this version – features the Snow Queen story which was excluded from the original – Persona can go one of two ways. You’ll either find yourself trying to stop an evil company from taking over the world, or you’ll find yourself journeying down the Snow Queen’s storyline. Each story varies in terms of content, so you may want to play the game twice to get the full experience.
What’s Not
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona is not a good looking game. With basic sprites, unsmooth animations, and overall lack of detail, the game isn’t a good looking title. Better resembling a PSOne title, Persona just lacks a lot of detail all around. As you explore various dungeons, you’ll find yourself looking at the same old design throughout the dungeon. This makes navigation a bit harder than it needs to be. Since the game is played in a third-person perspective, you’ll find yourself running through the same halls in the dungeons. It makes the journey feel dull and lackluster.
With the storyline all over the place at times you may find yourself losing interest in the game. The massive amounts of random battles do not help the situation, but the non-hardcore RPG crowd will likely find themselves growing bored with the storyline quickly. You really need to put in the time to appreciate everything the game has to offer.
Final Word
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona is a great PSP port of a cult classic PSOne RPG. With new missions and updated graphics, the Persona faithful will find this game to be everything they wanted and more. The game is very portable friendly with the new suspend game option, so you won’t always need to find a save point to quit from your play session. If you aren’t a big RPG fan, then this game will be too much for you to handle at this time.
