I just watched my sister finish Persona 3, and it reminded me of a bunch of stuff about the game...namely some stupid crap that really annoys me about it. My sister was quite annoyed as well.

You see...Persona, and I guess all the Shin Megami Tensei games are very...Japanese...and very NERDY. So like...it's a game made specifically to appeal to Japanese nerds and Japanophiles (weeaboos, if you like using that term). Now, don't get me wrong, I like some Japanese stuff, and I'm totally a nerd, but damn it, ROBOT GIRLS DO NOT INTEREST ME.

Persona 3 especially seems to cater to the nerdy, socially-awkward type. Obviously, there are the social links, which try to "simulate" socializing with people as you would in real life. But, of course, all the girls you socialize with fall in love with you, which doesn't happen in real life (unless you're totally awesome...like me >_>). And of course, all these girls fall into some weird category of some nerdy "fantasy." There's the awkwardly shy girl with glasses. There's the popular hot girl. There's the popular, hot, and smart girl. There's the hot teacher (yes, your teacher in the game falls in love with you). There's the athletic girl. There's the little girl whose parents are getting a divorce (I guess some people are into that). And then there's a stupid ROBOT GIRL. All these people fall in love with you for some reason...obviously to cater to the target audience's interest, or whatever. It's kinda creepy, and a little unsettling, y'know?

But mainly, I'm pissed about the robot girl: Aigis. She's a stupid robot. And I love robots, so you know it's bad when I think a robot is stupid. Robots don't have emotions! Why does she fall in love with you? Why did the writers feel they needed to make her such an important character? She's freaking annoying as hell.

One big thing that bothers me about her is her design. She's a robot...who is modeled as a female...and wears some big stupid bow. What kind of design for a robot is that? That's dumb, just like the stupid Terminatrix from the third Terminator movie. Robots should be cool-looking. They attempted to make Aigis "cute", but they failed to do that in my eyes. Okay, she looks alright in her school uniform, but still, she's a dumb robot. With a boring personality. Maybe if she were like a jerk, like Bender of Futurama, she'd be more interesting. Instead it's, "I want to protect you. <3 <3 <3 <3." It's like if the Terminator fell in love with John Connor. Ew.

The writers give her the spotlight all the freaking time, as if I'm supposed to fall in love with her as well. No chance in hell. It infuriates me even more in The Answer, the expansion to Persona 3. You actually have to PLAY as Aigis! And what's worse, they create a NEW robot girl character, her sister Metis, who is probably even more annoying. Metis doesn't even talk like a robot (which is explained by the plot, but it's still annoying). Again, the designers felt the need to try and make Metis "attractive", making it look like she's wearing some weird leotard, giving prominence to her boobs (why do robots need boobs?), and some dumb-looking face mask. I guess they tried to make the robot girls look "cool" as they added some stupid armor to Aigis in The Answer as well. BAH. You wanna a cool robot girl, look no further than Samus Aran...okay, she's not really a robot, but whatever.

I used Aigis once in Persona 3, then quickly disposed of her when I heard her dumb battle quotes. SHE DOESN'T EVEN SHOOT HERSELF IN THE HEAD EVOKE HER PERSONA. That's SUPER lame.

It's just dumb that they felt the need to create this stupid "female" character, when there are much better girl characters in Mitsuru and Yukari. Fuuka can go to hell, though.

Despite all I say, Aigis is a very popular character among Persona fans. BOO. I find her very uninteresting and dumb.

Now Junpei and Akihiko...those characters are GREAT, and it's a shame you cannot create social links with them. I surely have more love for these male characters over dumb robot girls.

If you like robot girls, I'm sorry if I offended you. I'm even more sorry if you're actually a robot girl. But if you are a robot girl, and you're hot, look me up. :)

Well, at around 6 AM or whatever on July 9th, I finished the Japanese role-playing game Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES. I'm not really sure when I started playing it, but I'm sure I twittered about it when I did, so you can look that up. I actually put a little more than 82 hours into the game, not including the times that I spent restarting from Game Overs.

So anyway, I'm gonna present you with some slightly ordered thoughts on the game.

"First Impression"

I first learned about Persona 3 back when it first came out in 2007 in the U.S. I think I was watching an episode of X-Play on G4 where I saw a review for it. I'm going to be honest, the game looked kinda lame at first, but then I learned one thing about it that quickly created interest: YOU SHOOT YOURSELF IN THE HEAD TO CAST MAGIC. This is all I needed to hear. I fell in love with this concept instantly. Seriously, doesn't that sound awesome? Harry Potter would be WAY better if instead of using some lame wands, they SHOT THEMSELVES IN THE HEAD.


However, after hearing about this, I was also informed that the game is a "grindfest", involving lots of leveling (this means fighting a bunch of monsters over and over to become more powerful for you "non-gamers") in order proceed through the game. Apparently all the Shin Megami Tensei games are like this. This was kind of a turn-off to me. I think at this point, I was pretty much "over" Japanese RPGs. So even after I went to GameXchange, inquiring about the game in which you "shoot yourself in the head to cast magic", I ended up not getting it, and then forgetting about it...

That is until a while after the launch of the site Giant Bomb. You see, on February 9th of this year, Vinny Caravella and Jeff Gerstmann of Giant Bomb began the "Persona 4 Endurance Run", a series of videos showing their play through of the game Persona 4. The videos proved to be VERY entertaining, and eventually I thought, "Hey, if I have this much fun watching people play the game, maybe I'd have even MORE fun playing it myself!" Of course, Persona 4 is still a pretty new game, so I didn't really have the funds to purchase it. Then I remembered, "Hey, there's a game before this, right?"

I did some research, and the popular opinion was "You should play Persona 3 before playing Persona 4" due to how much more improved the gameplay of Persona 4 is. It would be very difficult to go back to playing P3 after P4. So I figured, I might as well experience that amazing "Shoot yourself in the head" game. Luckily, I did not have to buy a copy, as my friend Daniel let me borrow his copy of Persona 3 FES (which is a version of the game that includes and extra expansion to the original game/story).

So I suppose I better start talking about my ACTUAL impressions from actually PLAYING the game, rather than hearing about it. Let's get the gameplay out of the way first.

Gameplay

Persona 3 is a Japanese role-playing game, and I've played many of those before... but most of those games were Square games, like the Final Fantasy series. I had never really delved into other types of role playing games, especially not the Shin Megami Tensei series. Boy, was I surprised to find out how different the Persona series is compared to the likes of Final Fantasy.

Persona 3 is basically a combination of a JRPG and a dating sim. Yes, a dating sim. Basically, the game has its own calendar, and gives you a year to play it. Each day, you go to school, hang out with friends, then at night, you go fight monsters in a dungeon. The "hang out with friends" part is actually very crucial to the gameplay, because as you become closer to your friends, the more powerful your "Personas" become.

These "Personas" are pretty much demons that reside in your soul, your "other self." They are what is summoned whenever you shoot yourself in the head. You don't actually cast any magic yourself, that's all your Persona's doing. You can carry multiple Personas, and you can create more through Persona Fusion, which is where the Social Links (your relationship with you friends) come in. Each Social Link you gain is assigned to a specific Arcana (like that Tarot card stuff). Your Personas also come in a variety of Arcana, and the stronger your Social Link in that Arcana is, the stronger your Persona are of that Arcana as well.

The Social Links represent the "dating sim" part of the game. It's a pretty neat idea, but it's executed kind of weirdly. The Social Links are pretty much gameplay-only, and have little relevance to the story. Sure, you'll get some cool scenes while you build these social links, but they are rarely SPECIFICALLY referenced in the story, other than, "Oh hey, you made friends! YAY!" Like, you're able to make certain people your girlfriend(s), but the story doesn't really involve any of your relationships with these girls. It's not like Final Fantasy where the main character's relationship with their love interest is a big part of the game. I guess that's for the better, though, as you can pretty much make all the girls on your team into your girlfriends, which would likely result in awkwardness during team operations.

Another weird/stupid thing about the Social Links is that if you create a link with a character, and you stop hanging out with them, they will eventually "reverse" their link with you. If you do not mend this link, it will eventually become broken, making it so that any Persona of that link's Arcana is NEVER ABLE TO BE USED AGAIN. While I never actually had a Social Link break on me, I had quite a few reverses, and I was all like, "It's not my fault I can't hang out with you! I'm only, TRYING TO SAVE THE WORLD." Luckily, this "reverse" stuff was taken out of Persona 4.

The Social Links only comprise some of the game. MOST of the game involves dungeon crawling: which involves going into a dungeon and fighting a bunch of monsters. So this means combat.

The combat in the game is full of things I love, and also THINGS I TOTALLY HATE. I already explained how awesome it is to shoot yourself in your head to summon your Personas. So let's talk about the stupid crap that I hate about the combat system.

Why I hate combat in Persona 3

• You're Not Able to Control Your Entire Party
  
  This is a stupid thing that was fixed in Persona 4, but I unfortunately was playing Persona 3. You are only allowed to control your character in battle. Your team mates are controlled by the computer, and man, is the computer STUPID. They will constantly be doing stupid crap that you don't want them to do.
  
  "Hey, that enemy is strong against Ice, don't use Ice on it!" *Mitsuru casts Ice on the enemy, healing it* "WTF ARE YOU DOING!"
  
  "Hey, I'm hurting pretty bad. Can you heal me, Misturu?" *Mitsuru casts Marin Karin on an enemy, and it fails* "MITSURU, I'M DYING."
  
  ^ That right there is a HUGE problem for one very big reason...


• If Your Character Dies, It's GAME OVER
  
  So yeah, if your teammates die, that's fine. You can always bring them back to life with a spell or an item. However, if you die, that's it. Game over. And, my GOD, THERE ARE SO MANY WAYS TO DIE IN THIS GAME. A lot of enemies have instant-kill attacks that they will NOT hesitate to use on you! Losing an hour of progress because an enemy got a lucky hit on your is a COMMON OCCURRENCE in this game! So frustrating, which brings me to my next point...


• Luck is More Important Than Strategy
  
  I'm not kidding. Luck plays a HUGE part in this game. You might have a really awesome strategy to beat a hard boss, but it can all go downhill real fast if one attack of yours misses. Or maybe you'll win in the end because the enemy decides to waste a turn doing something dumb, like trying to poison a character who is already poisoned. Or maybe you'll lose because your teammates decide to do something dumb, like heal themselves over you, or attack an enemy that will repel their attacks and damage themselves, or use a 50 HP healing item over a 300 HP healing spell, or decide "There's nothing I can do!" when they have plenty of debuff spells that they could use on the enemy, or BLAH BLAH BLAH.

Why I like the combat in Persona 3

• You shoot yourself in the head to cast magic


• The Elemental Weakness System
  
  Now, this thing is kinda awesome, but also kinda terrible. The way it works is that if an enemy is weak to a certain type of attack, like say an Ice attack, you will get another chance to perform an attack. If you attack another enemy with another weakness, you get ANOTHER turn, and so on and so on. It's possible to finish battles in just one turn! (Which is pretty much a necessity, 'cause you can't rely too much on your teammates acting intelligently on their own.)
  
  However, this system also applies to actions the enemy takes. This means that an enemy can kill you in one turn as well...which sucks after you spent an hour looking for a really rare item, only to find it, then get ambushed as you rush to find a save point.


• Persona Fusion Can Create Some Really Badass Personas
  
  Using the correct methods, you can pretty much create super powerful, nearly invincible Personas for yourself. I always love getting to a point in a game where I can absolutely crush every enemy with little effort...still, doing this kinda stuff requires some (a lot of) grinding.

Story

I was gonna talk about my thoughts on the story, but then come on, those are spoilers. Actually, the real reason why I'm not gonna talk about it right now is 'cause I've already spent like an hour typing all this stuff up, and going into the story would just take even longer. I'll just say, that I liked the story, and the endings (both the good and bad) are pretty cool...but there is no way in hell that I'm going to play "The Answer", the expansion to the story, because I hear that's an even bigger grindfest than the actual game.

My favorite thing about stories are the characters within them, and I think the game does a good job of creating some really likable characters. The game is all about "friendship" and stuff, after all.

Miscellaneous Thoughts on Persona 3

• The Main Character looks dumb. He's your typical "pretty" anime character, with dumb blue hair that covers one of his eyes. He's always wearing expensive headphones, and likes to walk with his hands in his pockets all the time. Also, every girl ever swoons for him for some reason.


• The voice acting is really good (Junpei's is great), aside from a few voices, like Fuuka's, who looks like a little kid, but sounds like a much older lady.


• Ken Amada is dumb. He's a little kid that joins your team, and I NEVER EVER USED HIM, even if he might have made a few boss battles easier. I don't want no dumb little kids on my team. Honestly, he wouldn't be so annoying if he didn't try to act "mature." If he was a normal little kid, I'd be fine.


• The music during the last actual boss fight is awesome, and it should be, considering you gotta spend almost an hour fighting him...and you'll probably fail multiple times. >=[


• A lot of people say they like the story of Persona 3's better than Persona 4's. I haven't played Persona 4, but from what I've seen of it from Giant Bomb, I like Persona 4's better. Persona 3's story is dark (obviously, since you shoot yourself in the head), but it seems TOO dark at times. I like that Persona 4 has a lot of humorous, light-hearted moments. There's only a handful of them in Persona 3 from what I remember.


• Why the hell can't you create Social Links with the male characters on your team? I wanna hang out with Akihiko and Junpei! Sure, Mitsuru and Yukari are hot, but c'mon! Again, Persona 4 fixed this when they create Social Links for all your teammates. It just sometimes seems like the Persona 3 characters aren't really friends since some of them never hang out outside of fighting monsters and crap.


• The "sad music" would've been more effective if it didn't play every freaking time I talked to the "Dying Young Man" social link guy. Actually, a lot of the music gets really repetitive... Some of the more emotional scenes are ruined by the music that's playing in the background...


• The anime cutscenes in this game are TERRIBLE. Most of the time, it's just shots of the characters just standing in one spot, staring at something, maybe with their clothing moving due to wind or something. The intro cutscene to The Answer actually has movement, but I do not want to play through that.


• I never got a chance to make the "Penis riding a chariot" Persona. :(