I couldn't get into Persona games on PS2, I thought they're just too slow, but the Portable edition better fits my style of playing the game. Of course, the game is repetitive by design - you're a school kid working your way across the school year, visiting the Tartarus and fighting Shadows at night, and that's why I like it more on PSP, where it's easy to play in short bursts. The battles keep things interesting from the gameplay perspective - there are a lot of Personas and skills to use, and a variety of Shadows you have to work your way around exploiting their weaknesses and not letting them exploit yours. It should be noted that Tartarus is much simpler than the dungeons known from main Shin Megami Tensei series (it has randomly-generated floors), and the Persona acquisition method (the shuffle) is also a lot simpler than the traditional Shin Megami Tensei method - negotiating with the demons. The most interesting thing about this game is the story and how it fits with the gameplay. It just really feels like you're a student first and foremost, only saving the world in your spare time. You need to balance your time training, upgrading stats and of course acquiring social links, which offer a lot of side stories, and gameplay-wise they power-up your Personas during fusion. So yeah, repetitive, but I keep coming back for the story, as if it was an interactive anime, and I think that's why so many people love Persona, and it's something more than a dumbed-down Shin Megami Tensei.
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After having played a portion of this game and now finished Reload, I kind of wish I stuck with this one because I found that Reload almost made Tartarus trivial and too fun. Looking back, I think that Tartarus in the original was a much more effective metaphor for depression, but games that are more conceptual that sacrifice gameplay enjoyability for something that suits the themes of the game more will always be controversial; look at Rain World. I think I'll go back and play FES someday, but if I had actually finished my FES playthrough when I started it in 2021, the ending might have hit even harder when I was at probably the lowest point in my life.
Weird comparison but I always found a weird cross between this game and the album Mount Eerie idk something about the way both portray death has been stuck with me for a while I can’t really explain it
(Not cheap at all just not over 200€)