Chickaroo Reviews - Persona 3 FES (PS2)

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Chickaroo Reviews - Persona 3 FES (PS2)

Post by chickaroo1 »

What if I told you that there are more than 24 hours in a day? And that during the Dark Hour, there are strange coffins and shadows all around...come join me in the Velvet Room for this fantastic JRPG. Game: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES
Systems: PlayStation 2, PSP, PlayStation Network
Release Dates: P3 on PS2: 7/13/06 (JP), 8/14/07 (NA), 2/29/08 (EU), 3/6/08 (AUS)
P3 FES on PS2: 4/19/07 (JP), 4/22/08 (NA), 10/17/08 (EU), 11/18/08 (AUS)
P3 FES on PSN: 4/10/12 (NA), 2/12/14 (EU)
P3P: 11/1/09 (JP), 7/6/10 (NA), 4/29/11 (EU), 4/28/11 (UK)
Developers: Atlus
The Shadows Are Out to Play...
Story: The story begins in the year 2009 with a nameless boy riding a train on his way to Iwatodai to stay in the Gekkoukan High School dorm rooms. He then learns about this club at the school called the SEES. The SEES group is known to help defeat shadows to protect people during what is known as the “Dark Hour.” The Dark Hour is an hour taking place between one day and the next. During this hour, people who are still out and about turn into coffins and these creatures called Shadows come out and attack. It’s up to the SEES group to get rid of them and protect the people at all costs. And now, it’s up to your character to join with the SEES and save the night and day!
Juggling High School Life and Fighting Shadows
Gameplay: The game at the core, is an RPG but also for the first time in the Persona series, mixes in some social simulations. At the beginning, you get to name the protagonist whatever you want. After all, he is you. Since your character is in school, they get to be able to run around the school and talk to others. The game is also set up in different times of the day too. There’s the “Early Morning” segment, where you character walks to school and may overhear a conversation between the other kids at school. During the “School” segment, you may hear a speech from one of your teachers and may be quizzed. You can answer them and may be right or wrong.
During the “After School” segment is the most common, this is where you get to roam around the school or around town and do various things. You can talk to people, hang out with people, study, enter a sport, go shopping around the mall, and so much more. Doing some of these stuff will affect the protagonist in a certain way, depending on your actions. If he studies, his knowledge will increase. And so on and so forth.
And now for the big part of the game, the “Evening” section. Once the evening has begun, you will be sent back to the dorm rooms to possibly study, sleep or go to this place call the Tartarus during the dark hour. The Tartarus is the school turned into a big tower full of shadows and monsters. This is where the battling comes in to play. At the beginning of the game, your party consists of the protagonist, Yukari Takeba, a cheerful popular girl at school, and Junpei Iori, the class clown. Running around the Tartarus consists of many shadows to defeat and many floors to explore. While running around, the protagonist can shoot at a shadow with their bow and arrow weapon. Or you can get hit by a shadow if it runs after you.
Here comes the battling part! The battles are turn based. You only get to control your character and not the team mates. However, you can set up their actions via a tactics option during your turn, an example being to tell one of your teammates to heal someone if they’re hurt or attack a certain enemy. You can use your weapon to attack or use your newfound persona to do element based attacks. How you summon your persona is by...having the character shoot their heads with a gun...okay to clear things up, the characters are not suicidal nor does the gun kill them. But it is pretty confusing first time around and may upset a few people. Battles can be short or very long, depending on how powerful the enemy is. If you feel as though the battle is taking forever, you can tap the triangle button to speed things up a bit.
What’s new this time around is the social links. Social links are rankings between relationships you have with the people around you. The more you hang out with them and do stuff with them, the more your bond will grow.
A Nice Mix Between 2D and 3D
Graphics: The graphics here are pretty dang good. This game looks absolutely beautiful for 2006. The 2D models that appear during texts look nice and clear. Battles look nice and the opening cutscene whenever you start up the game is magnificent too. This is one game that pulls off the anime look well.
Who Doesn’t Love Engrish Music?
Music: The music is very good too. Probably one of my favorite soundtracks as well. From the catchy “Want to Be Close” that plays at school or the powerful “Burn My Dread” as the theme song, you’ll find a favorite song. Keep in mind that they repeat like crazy too.
Music is composed by Shoji Meguro.
Are You Going to Burn Your Dread?
Overall: Persona 3 FES is a great JRPG. From the story to the characters to just about everything in this game. It’s fun and great and offers a nice challenge that’ll make you keep going until you hit the end.
4 / 5
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Gonic
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Post by Gonic »

Being a huge Persona fan myself, I decided to give this review a look and see what you have to say -- after all, it's always nice to read other people's opinions about stuff you like as it can create interesting discussion. I'm going to be pretty blunt here and say your review needs more work. But instead of just saying that and abandoning the thread, I'll give you some pointers on where to improve on your review. Hopefully you'll incorporate them into your future reviews so more interesting discussions can be had as a result.

First off, I like the whole list which tell us the game name, systems, and dates the game was released on. As Persona 3 FES is quite an old game, some people might not know where to find the game. Listing the consoles will greatly help assist readers find what console the game just got released on (PS3 being the most recent console for Persona 3). I also appreciate the quick blurb of the story; it says a lot without giving too much away!
From here I'm gonna list what you can improve.

Story: As mentioned before, the quick blurb of the story is nice, so keep doing that. Just remember: try not to spoil anything in a review. However, after you have given a blurb, that's it. Nothing. Reviewing the story of the game is just as important as reviewing the mechanics and gameplay. What did you think of the story? Does it hold up? Is it a bad or good story? Any stand out moments to you? What could they improve? Was character development good? (This part would be important as Persona is a very character-driven game) Which characters did you like etc? These points will help your reader out as everyone's tastes differ. Some people may not want to play an RPG with a pants story, and so on and so forth.

Gameplay: You went into a bit of detail here, which is good! However, all you did was explain the gameplay rather than review it. Persona -- being an RPG -- has a lot you can go into, so maybe list a bunch of features you liked and why you enjoyed them, and then maybe some you didn't like and why. Was this game too easy, too hard, or just enough of a challenge? What could Atlus improve on for future sequels? But as this is more of a 'retro' review, you could also go into if the game holds up by today's standards -- has the gameplay aged well?
You also need to go into a bit more detail for certain parts. For example, you mention Social Links but don't mention how increasing Social Links with other characters will change the way they behave in battle, such as taking a fatal hit for the main character you play as (which would have otherwise killed them). You also forgot to mention the Fusing of personas and the 'capturing' of personas which plays a massive part in the game (in my own personal opinion, anyway).

Graphics: Here you did actually review the graphics of the game, mentioning how for 2006 the game still holds up. Reviewing graphics should never be too long. Pinpoint specific locations in the game that really stood out to you. Does the graphical style suit the tone of the game? How do character models look? Are there any questionable designs, e.g. stuff that shouldn't belong there, or is it all good? Try to go into more detail about these things. Some of your readers will care about a game's graphics.

Music: Personally, I always find music difficult to write about. It's a very subjective topic because everyone has their own individual taste in music. In the review, you named two songs that you liked, which is good! Maybe add a bit more information explaining why you liked them if you can! This will hopefully urge the reader to visit Youtube and give it a listen. Personally, I would add if the soundtrack suits the tone of the game. Also try and sum up the style of the game's music. In Persona 3's case, I would call it funky jazz with other styles of music thrown in occasionally. Listing the composer was a great idea too by the way!

Overall: This should be quite short, sharing your final thoughts and a quick summary for people who are too lazy to read entire reviews. Briefly sum up how you felt about the game and what specific audience would enjoy this type of game, e.g. fans of the Final Fantasy series, perhaps.
You could look up some game reviews on Metacritic for numerous examples of good summaries; they use the summary for their quotes all the time.
Hopefully you will take this criticism on board when writing future reviews. If you ignore any and all criticism that comes your way, you can't evolve as a writer. It's part of the of the industry unfortunately and I know it sucks to receive it, but it's what the reader feels is best for you as a writer. You can get better at something you clearly enjoy doing and succeed in your hobby/career.

Consider everything I have written here when writing your next review.

Good Luck - Gonic
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