Reviews: Thanks You, Makers of Most Addictive Video Game Ever

Wow, this'll be a late one! But it was a weird day. Moving on.

Today's review is for the recently released and very recently completed game, Persona 3. Now, I would like to start by saying that normally, I'm not the type of person who gets addicted to one activity above all else. I multi-task, schedule, and plan my free time way, divvying it up into tinier portions until I generally have 20 things to do every day anyway. As a result, barring some weekends, I have almost exactly an hour to an hour and a half every day to play video games. The rest of the time is for work, sleep, meals, transit times, television, reading, daily internet website checks, and this blog, among other things. My self-control remains good, and most games that are notorious for their game sink natures either fail to attract my interest in the first place, like World of Warcraft, or don't last in the long term, like City of Heroes/Villains.

Persona 3, however, is an exception.

Oh, I never had the five hour marathon sessions the cliché demands. But if I had free time, or even time that wasn't remotely free but where nothing essential had to be done, this game would be what I would do. I got the game for Christmas. On February 29th, I finished it. It took me about 102 hours. You can do the math; in the meantime, I'll think about it, realize I played and defeated other whole games in this period as well, and quietly weep.

The game itself is a strange one. It's a role-playing game from Japan for the Playstation 2, as many games are. But. like its predecessors and most of the other games from the series Persona spun off from, it abandons the usual fantasy setting for a more modern one, albeit a twisted version of modern life. The game takes place on a small island in Japan in the years 2009-10, making it more or less modern. The players are high school students who discovered an invasion of sorts from another plane of reality. Every night at midnight, the world mostly shuts down, and most people enter a sort of suspended animation in coffin-shaped crystals. Meanwhile, the world shifts into a sort of alternate reality.

This period, called the Dark Hour, is a dangerous one for those not safely suspended, as it is filled with evil monsters called Shadows. the players are awake during the Dark Hour, but they're better protected than most, as they can create protectors out of their own minds called Personas. These Personas give them extra strength, protection, and a source of the usual RPG magical powers, letting them take the fight to the Shadows. This usually comes from attacking a mysterious tower they call Tartarus, which in actuality is their high school after transforming every Dark Hour.

The first really strange thing about this game is how they access their Personas. The user must undergo severe mental trauma, which can be done using fairly morbid methods. In this case, they use devices called Evokers, which resemble guns, and point them at their own heads, simulating suicide. This game has a "Mature" rating for a reason. I mean, they're not really shooting themselves in the heads every time they use their powers, it just looks like it. That still doesn't help.

The second strange thing is the game's time limit. In addition to Tartarus, the Dark Hour also releases a major Shadow boss every month or so in game time, giving the party limited time to explore Tartarus and gain experience and treasures. This is made more difficult by the third strange thing. The main character, which is nameless until you the player give him one, doesn't have one Persona like the other main characters. He can instead create new ones and alternate between them, giving him much greater versatility. But to get the best ones, and give them often useful bonus levels, he must make connections with living people in and around his school that correspond to types of Persona. So when not exploring the monster-filled tower of the damned, he has to spend time attending classes, taking tests, making friends, dealing with girlfriends, and other real-life stuff.

In short, the game's addiction comes from combining two very addictive game genres into one. Tartarus is a randomly-generated dungeon, so it's new every time you explore it, making the grinding experience comparatively fresh and Diablo-esque. Thank Lonny the weapons aren't as random or varied, or you'd never want to leave. Meanwhile, the social half of the game resembles a normal dating sim, which I never really explored before but now can definitely see the appeal of. Often, I was annoyed at having to explore Tartarus and do normal RPG stuff out of a desire to focus on the relationship with the latest girlfriend!

The appeal of the game is threefold. There's the usual enjoyment of tactical combat, gaining levels, working to optimize power, and the other benefits of a good RPG. There's the surreal setting, combining semi-normal childhood experiences, the often alien Japanese culture when compared my own childhood, and the whole alternate reality full of evil beings. The last source deserves more exploration, though. Just what about the dating/social elements appealed so much to me?

I think the real answer, at least in my case, is a little depressing. Video games are a lot about fantasy fulfillment. And while my high school experience was not that bad, it certainly wasn't much fun, either. A game like this offers a chance to re-explore high school, often in a way I didn't or couldn't in real life. And it's not just the experience, it's the illusion of control. The Sims was another game that affected me the same way. Everything was quantifiable, understandable, and had a clear path of correction. Not socially confident enough? Just perform a courage-building activity like karaoke enough times, and your courage boosts automatically! See a girl you like? Talk to her x times, convince her to go out, say the answers that don't make you look like a total jackass, and love was guaranteed! Being socially awkward at best, concepts like the elusive "chemistry" drive me crazy. If two reasonably attractive people had similar interests and philosophies, then it would only make sense for attraction and love to develop given time, at least as my thought processes think. Frankly, the idea that real life was so simple and love so successful is as much a hoped fantasy as that of the world-saving hero to me.

Not that the game doesn't have downsides, even if most were intentional from the concept. For all the control issues I just commended, the game is often eager to show how little choice you really have. Events in game come regularly and without warning, ruining any plans you made on how to advance your character. One day, you have an entire week planned, and the next, you learn that you're being forced into summer school for days on end. Or a typhoon hits. Or you get sick. Or Dark-Hour themed plans intrude. Similarly, the relationships you have are often without any long-term realism or death. For example, your friends would often call to try and make plans with you on Sundays. This is fine, except you have no way to call them. If you don't see them at school, you can't even talk to them in most cases. And the game rewards you for how many maximized relationships you achieved. So when a relationship reaches this maximum, there's nowhere else to go. Your friends will rarely even want to hang out again, and the girlfriend you just formed an everlasting bond of love with will not only never date you again, she won't care in the slightest that you're dating other women in an attempt to maximize THEIR bonds.

The only other complaint is that the randomized Tartarus dungeon and some of the daily aspects of high school life both get tedious midway through the game. Nonetheless, this game would earn a solid A just for innovation and appeal. In fact, this was the game that motivated me to try to make another game of the Genre section. The trick is both coming up with something new and up to my modern standards while also original enough to not be Persona 3.5, but I'm confident I have something. If a game manages to compare to Final Fantasy Tactics and Symphony of the Night, there's little other praise I need to give it.