Customer Reviews

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 [Original 2007 Limited Edition With Artbook and Soundtrack CD]

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I've always heard great things about the Persona series, and decided to start with Persona 3, both because it's one of the most recommended and because it's one of the most accessible.

One of the first things I noticed about the game were the social links and personal life of your character as a whole. Unless you choose to skip over this whole part of the game, which would exclude you from bonus exp and a lot of plot, you'll be spending about half the game in a life sim. The other half is dungeon crawling and grinding in Tartarus, climbing up a tower floor after floor to achieve various main and optional goals. Both of these two game elements are great in their own way, although personally, I started to get more and more annoyed at Tartarus and more and more excited for the social aspects of the game as I played. It got pretty boring to grind mostly unchanging floors of monsters, and needing to find certain monsters for side quests was usually more annoying than fun. Some variety could have really kept this part of the game alive for me and kept it from becoming a chore, but despite this, it never got to the point where it completely hindered the game. It just slows it down. The social aspects never experience this since there are so many people to meet and so many stories to hear. Every one of them is different, and all the characters have different personalities, so choosing what to say is rarely generic or simple.

The only real flaws this game has is a slowly dulling Tartarus and lack of choices in the social aspects. After viewing some guides, I realized quite a few choices of what to say didn't matter at all, which ruined the illusion that you have control over how the relationships turn out. But despite these minor flaws, Persona 3 definitely deserves a spot in my favorite RPG's list, as well as for video games as a whole. I'd recommend this to anyone who's interested in a somewhat different and constantly good game.

The limited edition might also interest collectors or people who really think they'll like, or already like, the game. It comes with a soundtrack that has most, if not all, of the songs from the game, and an art book that has some really awesome sketches and art of main characters and locations in the game.