Persona 4: Individual Social Links

Since I have already summed up most of my general feelings about the Persona 4 Social Link system, it is time to look at some of the individual Social Links in depth.

Culture Clubs: Much like in Persona 3, you get to choose one club to join for each of two categories, and these clubs have associated Social Links. The big difference here is that the choice in club actually matters. In Persona 3, whether you picked the Art Club, Music Club, or Photography Club, you were still going to end up in the same club as teammate Fuuka and Social Link character Keisuke, which certainly makes you wonder why they bothered to give you a choice at all. In Persona 4, though, choosing the Drama Club will open up a Social Link of the Sun Arcana with a girl named Yumi, and choosing to join the Band will open up a Link of the same Arcana with a different girl (I don't really know who she is, since I am still on my first playthrough). This means the choice in club may not have any significant gameplay difference (as far as I am aware), but it does change the subplots and scenes that you experience across the game, which adds to the game's replay value and makes the player's choices feel more important. This is certainly a nice improvement.

Sports Clubs: As with the culture clubs, the choice of which sport club you join is far more significant than it was in Persona 3. However, it implements that significance in a different way. Both club choices have an associated character, but regardless of which choice you make you will befriend both of them (since they are close friends with each other). Far from making the choice irrelevant, though, your choice in club has a major impact on the storyline associated with that Social Link. Thus, you meet two great characters either way, and there is still a significant difference based on the choice. Also, having larger groups of people hanging out with each other in Social Link scenes makes them more interesting and dynamic, which helps a bit. I actually like this implementation of the club choice better than the culture club variation.

The Fox: This is a truly bizarre and fun Social Link, that doesn't work quite like any other. For one, the fact that it is a Social Link with a surprisingly intelligent animal that can't talk is strange enough, but but even more strangely it doesn't even use the same system to determine its growth as other Social Links. Rather than build up affection with the Fox, you must solve people's problems with the game's quest system in order to unlock higher levels of this Social Link. What is more, the Fox actually goes with you into the game's dungeons and provides special healing services there (and building the Social Link gives you a discount on those services). The unique way you build the Fox up makes it stand out as a refreshing change compared to other Social Links, and its added usefulness makes me wish that more Social Links were given side benefits and a role in the game's dungeons.

Margaret: This woman is another strange Social Link like the Fox. She is the assistant to Igor, the strange figure that fuses demons and Personas for the heroes in pretty much every Shin Megami Tensei game, and thus doesn't even really exist outside of the mysterious Velvet Room that only the hero can visit. As such, raising her Social Link is based around bringing her unusual Personas (this makes it a lot like the Fox), and doesn't even cause time to pass. The fact that there was no Social Link with Elizabeth, Igor's assistant in Persona 3, always seemed a bit strange (particularly in FES, where you can go on dates with her), so this is a nice touch. This unusual Link also adds some much needed variety to the game, and helps add to the number of plot important characters who have Social Links (a nice trend in Persona 4 that needs to be carried even farther).

The Dojima Family: Both the hero's uncle and cousin are Social Links in this game, and they are easily two of my favorite Social Links in the entire game. The simple fact that the game's nameless hero actually has a family is nice enough in of itself, but just as important is the fact that these are the only Social Links other than the ally links that are with plot-important characters with a large number of voiced lines of dialogue. As such, the Social Link scenes don't have to bear the entire burden of developing these characters and portraying the hero's interactions with them, and they appear frequently even if you never build up their Social Links. This means that, even though their Social Link scenes are dominated by central problems (in fact, both Social Links share the same problem, just with two different sides), these problems don't create the same issues to anywhere near the same extent that they do in other Social Links. Other than the ally characters, these are the only two Social Link characters who react to the game's plot and have an impact upon the greater story of the game. The Social Link system would really benefit by making more Social Links resemble the ones with the Dojimas.

None of the other Social Links are really notable enough to be worth mentioning, so I may as well wrap this up. I still need to write more about ally Social Links, but that is going to be its own post, and I need to play a bit more of the game first. I may need to shake off the grip The World Ends With You has over me before that can happen, though...

Persona 4: Social Links

Persona 4's Social Link system is one of the elements that has changed the least since Persona 3. I have already discussed both Persona 3's version of Social Links and a few ideas on how to change that system, and unfortunately many of the issues I raised earlier are just as problematic, if not even worse, in Persona 4. As long as the Persona games still use the classic Shin Megami Tensei system of acquiring new "monsters" and fusing them to create ever stronger "monsters" (which is its own issue), then the gameplay benefits of building up Social Links will be perfect as-is, but the actual process of building up those Social Links is still significantly flawed.

The greatest problem of the Social Link system is still the lack of presence and development of the Social Link characters. Most of the Social Link characters are still just random people that are completely unrelated to the main story of the game, so you really only interact with them in the ten scenes that build up the Social Link. Many still don't show up at all other than the times in which you can hang out with them, and none of them react at all to the main plot of the game. At the very least, the game designers could have given these characters the same constant presence that many of the nameless recurring NPCs in the game have. After all, every last person walking around the game world (other than a few who only show up for quests) has their own personality, quirks, problems, and reactions to the events of the game. there is no reason the game designers couldn't have given the same kind of dialog that the nameless NPCs use to convey so much to the player, in addition to normal Social Link development. Even such a minor addition could have added a lot. As it stands, it often seems like the Social Link plots and the main story of the game are so separate they may as well not take place in the same setting or involve the same main character.

Another great problem is the nature of the Social Link subplots. In almost every case, these subplots involve some problem that the Social Link character is facing, and how this problem gets solved. Often, this problem takes the forefront to the detriment of actual development of the character or portraying a believable friendship with the main character. This is actually a pretty major problem from Persona 3, but it has become more apparent to me since I last discussed this issue. A good example of how bad this can get is seen with the Social Link character Yumi, a girl the main character can meet if he joins the Drama Club. The first few scenes in this Link, which focus on introducing Yumi's love of acting and straightforward, strong-willed personality, are quite fun, but shortly afterwards the entire thing gets hijacked by a plot involving Yumi's estranged father falling ill. Almost the rest of the Social Link subplot is a long chain of scenes at the hospital in which Yumi laments her bad luck in life. These scenes don't even really portray how the hero helps her through this (that is just left as a vague implication), instead, they simply focus upon various stages of how Yumi's problem develops, almost completely ignoring the main hero's presence (and thus the player's importance). Even the idea that this is supposed to be the drama club Social Link is ignored by this subplot, which makes most of the fun parts of the first few scenes involving Yumi completely meaningless, and really stretches the question of why you can only see scenes involving Yumi in the hospital on days when the drama club meets. I am certain that the writers for the game intended this to be a fairly emotional story, but in creating a story about how Yumi deals with her problems with her sick father they completely forgot to actually tell a story about a growing bond between Yumi and the main character, which is what it should have been. This kind of focus on a character's problems, rather than on the character itself and how that character interacts with the main character, is far too typical for Social Links.

With all of that said, Persona 4 has indeed made a few significant improvements over Persona 3's version of the Social Link system. The two biggest are the addition of every Persona-using ally as a Social Link (which addresses a major problem I had with Persona 3), and the change to girls' Social Links so you don't automatically pursue a romantic relationship with every girl you know. The former change is probably worth its own post, so I'll get into it another day. The latter change is simply a much-appreciated improvement, since it means that you don't need to act like a two-timing skirt-chaser in order to build up every Social Link, and can feel more free to build up a girl's Social Link even if you don't want her to be the main character's girlfriend. Actually, considering some of the important secondary effects of building an ally's Social Link and the fact that many of the ally characters are girls, the latter change is practically essential to Persona 4. In addition to those two major changes, the added stronger link between Social Links and the hero's attributes, so raising Social Links both more frequently requires built up attributes and raising some Social Links will also improve certain attributes, also is a nice general improvement, and the pay you earn for Social Links involved with part-time jobs is another much-appreciated addition.

This is such a big part of the game that I still have quite a bit more to say, particularly about individual Social Links, but I should probably save it for another day. This post is getting long enough.

Persona 4: The Hero's Characteristics

A concept from Persona 3 that has been noticeably improved in Persona 4 is the set of attributes that represent the main character's strength of personality and ability to interact with other people. These attributes don't factor into combat at all, but they can have a significant role in the hero's day to day life. In both games, you improve these attributes by spending time performing certain activities,This is one of those elements that I didn't really like in Persona 3, but the changes made to the concept in Persona 4 have made me warm up to it. I may as well just go over each change one at a time.

1) The number of attributes has increased from three to five. Persona 3 had just three attributes (Academics, Courage, and Charm), but Persona 4 has five (Academics, Courage, Diligence, Expression, and Understanding). Charm was my least favorite of the original set of three, since the attribute it was supposed to describe (how popular the main hero is) was built up in the least logical ways (answering questions in class and drinking coffee?) and didn't make a lot of sense because of the Social Link system (why is popularity separate from the main measure of how many friends you had and how much they liked you?). However, it was removed, and has been replaced by three other attributes that make a lot more sense. Like Knowledge and Courage, these new attributes describe the hero's capability to do something, rather than the extent to which he has done something like Charm did, which better matches the actual function of these attributes. Also, the increase in the number of attributes greatly made it necessary for the game designers to increase the variety of activities you need to do in order to raise the hero's attributes, which adds to the variety of the game a bit. What is more, the added number adds to the difficulty of building them up, which forces the player to specialize a bit and adds to tough and interesting choices in daily activities.

2) Attributes have more uses now. In Persona 3, the hero's attributes only affected his grades on tests and limited your ability to unlock a small number of Social Links, but in Persona 4 they have many more uses, and these uses are more dependent upon individual attributes. Beyond just unlocking Social Links, high attributes are required to progress through some Social Links or get hired for part-time jobs. A number of conversation choices throughout the game require higher levels of certain attributes, particularly Courage and Understanding. Raising some attributes increases how much you get paid for part-time work. Raising Diligence lets you go fishing for longer periods of time. These changes make improving attributes worthwhile across the entire length of the game, so there is no longer a clear point where they start or stop being useful.

3) There are more ways to improve attributes now. In Persona 3, you primarily improved your attributes by going to class, going to restaurants or entertainment venues, and studying. There were a few fun alternatives, such as donating to the temple (in the original version only) or visiting the Nurse's Office while sick, but mostly it involved going to a restaurant and wondering why eating tuna improved your Knowledge. Persona 4 makes some much-needed improvements, so now it is much easier to raise attributes in a variety of ways. You can raise some attributes by going to club meetings and working at a part-time job (so it is now possible to strengthen Social Links and improve attributes at the same time), Courage can be raised by defeating powerful enemies, Understanding can be improved by choosing certain conversation options in plot events, and many attributes can be built up simply by reading a book (so buying books and obtaining rare books through quests and events adds some new versatility to the system). As a whole, you will see improvements to attributes far more often in the new system, and you don't have to make a choice between improving attributes and building up Social Links anywhere near as often, which is good because that choice is inherently one-sided in favor of Social Links.

All combined, attributes are simply more important to the game now, and add a lot more to the game experience. Of course, the system is far from perfect, but I am nowhere near as critical of it as I used to be. If the next Persona game simply takes the changes made in Persona 4 a step or two farther, it would probably improve the experience even more. For example, I certainly wouldn't mind seeing these attributes affect the dungeon exploration side of the game, or vice versa.

Persona 4: Day to Day Life

One of the most important aspects of Persona 4 is the tough balancing act between the countless different activities you need to accomplish within the limited time the game gives you. Just as in Persona 3, you need to attend class, hang out with friends and raise Social Links, improve the hero's attributes through a wide variety of activities, and still somehow find time to dive into the dungeons in order to fight the Shadows. However, Persona 4 is far from being a carbon copy of its predecessor, and features a number of changes and improvements to the system. If anything, just figuring out what to do each day might be an even more complex challenge than before.

One of the most important and visible changes to daily life in Persona 4 is the addition of changing weather effects. This plays a pretty important role in the plot, thanks to the Midnight Channel (which only appears on rainy nights) and the looming threat of the fog (which marks the deadline for reaching the end of every dungeon), and it plays an equally large role in the gameplay. On rainy days various people change their schedule, soccer practice is cancelled, restaurants change their selection, the main store offer discounts, the effect of studying at the library improves, different fish show up at the fishing spot, rare monsters appear in the dungeons, and countless other minor things all occur, making a rainy day totally different from a sunny one. This adds a level of complexity on top of the basic weekly schedule that drove Persona 3, adding some variety to an already interesting system. It is a bit of a shame that the distinction is so binary, though. Simply adding some more minor changes to cloudy days, or introducing windy days or something, would have helped. Certainly, foggy days should have been made more visible and notable, considering their importance to the plot, but as it is you hardly even see fog even on the days when it is actually important to the story.

An equally important change to daily life compared to Persona 3 is the shift to the characters venturing into the game's dungeons in the daytime, rather than the evening. Now, you need to give up the most important phase of the day in order to progress through the game's dungeons, rather than a lesser one, and now going into those dungeons even leaves you too exhausted to do almost anything in the evening, as well. You could choose to go into Tartarus pretty freely in Persona 3, since you never lost too much by doing so (there was always more time to do thing in the evening than there were things to do), but you have to give up important opportunities to build up Social Links every time you dive into Persona 4's TV World. This forces hard choices, and encourages the player to go through the dungeons in as few trips as possible. At the same time, many Social Links are reduced in availability or are even completely unavailable unless you have already completed the latest dungeon, so there is also an added impetus to clear through the dungeons quickly, which both balances out the impetus to wait and build up Social Links in order to get the added strength and changes the tome of the game quite significantly from how it was in Persona 3.

Thanks to the condition/fatigue system, Persona 3 made it impossible to clear through the dungeons in a very small number of trips and a short amount of time. You could only go so far through Tartarus before your characters became tired and had to leave, and whenever that happened it could take them several days to recover, especially if someone became sick. Persona 4 changes that, though, and completely abandons the condition/fatigue system. Even if you push your characters to the limit in the TV World dungeons, everyone is guaranteed to be in top fighting form the next day, so the only limit on how often you go into the TV World is the opportunity cost, which has been made more important. This places a lot more burden on the player to decide when is the best time to dive into the game's dungeons, unlike in Persona 3 where 90% of the time your best choice is to simply go into Tartarus every time you are in great condition and have a full team, without hesitation.

One final thing I like that mixes up the schedule is the addition of the Persona Forecast system. This system adds special rules and benefits to the Persona Fusion system depending on the day, and also lets you know what the special rule or benefit will be for the next day. In addition to tying in well to the game's weather theme, this can be a strong impetus to either try to raise a Social Link or dive into the TV World, depending on your situation and the exact benefit, which can either make your choices a bit easier or a bit harder, and certainly makes things more interesting. I do wish that they would let you see the forecast a bit further into the future, though.

Since this post is already pretty long, I think I will need to write about the activities you actually do during the day some other time.

Persona 4: The New March of Time

I am now quite a bit further into Persona 4, so it is about time I actually write about the basic flow of the game. Like its predecessor, Persona 4 is built around choosing how to manage your daily activities as time slowly moves forward. You choose when you dive into the dungeons of the game, but whether you choose to do so or not days will still slowly pass until events occur in the plot. However, rather than just using a direct copy of Persona 3's structure, Persona 4 implements the same idea in a very different manner.

The biggest change in Persona 4 is its much greater focus upon the dungeons you explore. In Persona 3, you go into Tartarus primarily to raise your level and gain the equipment you need for the event bosses, but the major events of the game and the battles against the event bosses are controlled by the date (the rise of the full moon), not how far you go into Tartarus. You don't even need to finish climbing the available areas of Tartarus before the next major event. In Persona 4, however, you must reach the end of every dungeon within the alloted time (before the fog sets in), since otherwise you fail your goal and get a Game Over. Instead of being something you do to prepare for inevitable battles that will happen regardless of what you do, going into the dungeons and defeating the boss in the dungeons' depths is your true goal in the game.

The changes made to the system are a big improvement, in my opinion. I once described Persona 3's Tartarus as a "Plot Desert", but because of Persona 4's changes the TV World dungeons are the stage for many of the most important events in the game. You must reach the end of every dungeon within a certain timeframe, so, unlike in Persona 3, the game designers know both when you are going into the dungeon and what characters are available. It also just feels more rewarding and natural to have the most difficult battle at the deepest level of the dungeon be an important story battle, rather than a meaningless battle against a generic foe. The structure of Persona 3 is ill-suited to putting a large number of important plot sequences in Tartarus, but a few slight changes to that structure reverses that flaw entirely.

Another important and beneficial consequence of the change is that it adds to the feeling that the main characters (and thus the player), are actively achieving something by doing what they do. Persona 3 is a great game, but the nature of the way the main characters fight their conflict is very passive. In that game, all you can do is just wait for the next full moon. Even if you complete your climb of Tartarus early, you must still wait for any plot events to happen. Once you fight and defeat the boss that emerges every full moon, the only thing left to you is to get ready for the next full moon, since the characters' only goal is the broad idea of "get rid of Tartarus and the Dark Hour" and every month's battle is only one more small step toward that goal. In Persona 4, though, your goals are almost always much more immediate, so you will either achieve your goal or fail to do so within a limited time-span after the goal appears. Because of this, there are periods of relative peace and tranquility between crisis periods, in which all of your goals are met and there is no new threat and dungeon coming up on the horizon. At the same time, the crisis periods are more focused upon a limited period of time, and the stakes seem higher, so they have a greater degree of tension. As such, the game fluctuates more greatly between periods of high tension (in which your goal is to reach the bottom of the newest dungeon as quickly as possible) and very low tension (in which you are free to pursue a number of optional objectives throughout the older dungeons at a relaxed pace). This helps the game a lot, I think.

Another important part of this change that I haven't touched on is the difference between the goal-posts used for measuring time in the game. Persona 3 is built around the lunar cycle, so every phase of the game lasts around 28 days, which is extremely predictable with no room for significant deviation. Persona 4 is built around the risk of "the fog coming in", which doesn't have a set and predictable cycle. This means that there is a widely variable amount of time that occur between crisis periods in the game, and once a crisis starts you can only really guess at how long you have before you run out of time. This improves the relaxed pace between crises, adds to the tension of a crises period, and, most importantly of all, gives the game designers a lot more flexibility regarding how the calendar is scheduled, which helps a lot regarding things like holiday schedules, unusual events, and exam weeks.

However, mentioning calendars is reminding me of how useful it was having one in Persona 3. The lack of one in Persona 4 is a bit annoying, even though I know it wouldn't be useful in determining how long I have left until the fog sets in. At least Persona 4 more than makes up for it by letting you roll back time if you can't achieve your goal, which prevents the nightmare scenario of being unable to progress any further, and thus having to start the entire game all over again, that is possible (if unlikely) in Persona 3.

Persona 4: Down, Dizzy, and All Out

Well, here I am, writing about a Persona game again. Persona 3 was easily my favorite thing to write about last year, so this was probably inevitable. Actually, I think I may be addicted to Persona 4 already. In many ways, it even manages to surpass its predecessor, which already stood as one of my favorite RPGs of all time. Persona 3 and Persona 4 are extremely similar games regarding their game structures, battle systems, and such, but their similarities only highlights the large number of little improvements made in the newer game.

One such improvement is the change to the way the Down condition works. I really liked the One More/Down/All-Out Attack system in Persona 3, so I was surprised and disappointed when I read in the manual that they actually changed it for Persona 4, but when I actually played the game I was impressed to see how well the change works. You see, in Persona 3, whenever you hit an enemy with either a critical hit or an element that enemy is vulnerable to, that enemy is knocked down and the character who made the attack can take another action. An enemy who is knocked down wastes a turn getting back to their feet (unless they get attacked, which means they stand up), and if all enemies are knocked down you can launch a powerful All-Out Attack, which does a lot of damage to all foes but also returns all enemies to their feet. This creates a great trade-off between relying on All-Out Attacks for damage and knocking enemies down in order to prevent them from attacking, and made targeting enemy weaknesses a very important strategy.

Persona 4 keeps that system, but changes it in three very important ways. The first is that knocking an enemy down no longer forces that enemy to waste a turn getting up, the second is that hitting an enemy who is already down doesn't cause them to get back up, and the third is that you can hit an enemy who has been knocked down in order to trigger the dizzy condition, which causes the enemy to lose a turn and remain in the vulnerable downed state until the start of the turn after the lost one. All-Out Attacks still returns all enemies to their feet, though. The reason I first thought that this new system was worse was because I didn't know about the second change, but with that change it vastly improves the choice to not make an All-Out Attack.

With the Persona 3 system, you pretty much have to hold back on attacking downed enemies and only attack standing enemies with their elemental weakness if you want to use the down condition to prevent enemies from attacking, but by doing so you can totally shut down their ability to attack. In the Persona 4 system, you can only prevent every other attack (because the Dizzy condition only ends at the beginning of a character's turn), but you can attack freely while the enemy is down and dizzy (and can deal a lot of extra damage that way). The value of All-Out Attacks is the same in either game, but now the alternative is a lot more fun. After all, it always more fun to go wild and attack rather than to sit back and wait for the enemy to get back up. At the same time, it adds a bit to the challenge because it is impossible to completely shut down an enemy just by using elemental attacks. It also adds some extra flexibility to enemy and boss design, because a boss can be allowed to be knocked down without fear of it being totally crippled, which means it is not as problematic to give bosses elemental weaknesses. The fact that down and dizzy are separate conditions, so an enemy may be susceptible to being downed but not dizzied, only adds to the flexibility.

I also have to mention that this change is also an improvement when you consider how it changes the way allies are affected by critical hits and hits against their weaknesses. In Persona 3, getting knocked down by an enemy is one of the most annoying situations you run across frequently. It means that either the character lost their turn, or you have an ally waste a turn in order to get rid of a condition that only makes you lose one turn. The skill that clears the down condition, Re Patra, is a waste of a valuable skill slot in that game. In Persona 4, however, merely getting knocked down is not a problem at all, since it won't cause an ally to lose a turn, but getting knocked dizzy causes an ally to both lose a turn and be vulnerable to attack for a period of time, making it worse than the old knocked down condition. As such, a skill like Re Patra isn't really needed to restore the down condition, but might actually be worth using to help a dizzy ally. Far more importantly, unless an enemy is particularly aggressive in attacking a downed ally, allies losing turns is a rarer occurrence in Persona 4 than in Persona 3, which helps reduce the chance that a single enemy attack can damage the team beyond their ability to recover and thus lead to a Game Over. This seems like a pretty good design move to me.

As a final side note, I have to say that I am happy that they changed it so you can get a One More attack even if you hit a weakness with an all-enemy attack. It makes enemies that use such attacks a bit more dangerous, but it also avoids a number of frustrating situations and slight ability imbalances that plagued Persona 3. It is amazing how much these minor changes can affect the game.

Persona 3 FES: The Story of The Answer

I completed The Answer yesterday, and thus I have finally seen the entire story of Persona 3 FES. It has taken me a surprising amount of time to reach this point, especially considering that Persona 4 is slated to be released in just over a month from now, but it has been well worth it. Persona 3's story has been fun the entire way.

Other than the opening section that introduces Metis and the threat of the Abyss of Time and the final section, the plot of The Answer is built around looking into the various characters' pasts using the doors found at the end of every section of the dungeon. Because of this, even though The Answer is an epilogue to the main game it ends up putting a lot of focus on stories that occurred before those characters became important to the events of the game. As a result, these windows let you see previously hidden parts of the story and unknown character motivations. Many of these, such as the revelation that Junpei's father was an alcoholic and the effect it had upon Junpei, cast a new light on events from the main game, and they all add to the incredible depth and complexity of the Persona 3 cast. However, as much as they add depth to the characters, these scenes don't really do a lot to progress the story of The Answer itself.

One of the most important ideas of The Answer is that the characters are unable to move forward with their lives because they have lingering doubts and regrets concerning the death of the main hero at the end of the main game. In essence, the Answer is a story about grief, the loss of loved ones, and how to deal with that kind of pain. This theme is very powerful in the most important moments of The Answer, and it is brilliantly merged into the game with the constant pursuit of the main hero's shadow throughout the Abyss of Time, but it simply does not play into any of the "scenes of the past" other than Aigis's. As a result, the main theme doesn't show up in the only real plot sequences you see for the majority of the 30 hours or so of gameplay you need to progress through in The Answer. This is really the only significant complain I have about the game's story, and I think the rest is pretty impressive. Well, it gets a bit preachy towards the end, I would have liked to see more elaboration on and reaction to the revelation that Personas are just tamed Shadows (which was similarly understated in the Old Documents of the main game), and the ending is a bit weak compared to the ending of the main game (which was a hard act to follow indeed), but those are minor complaints at best.

One thing that deserves particular praise is the way the complete disintegration of the party and subsequent battle between former allies was handled. This kind of sequence can very easily feel forced or illogical, but here it is surprisingly believable and realistic, given all the complexities of the various characters. The schism in the team is portrayed equally as both a tragic mistake that the characters recognize as such, and a necessity born from the different perspectives the characters cannot reconcile, and is certainly the high point in The Answer's story. Also, the battles against your teammates are a lot of fun and fairly challenging, which helps.

Another thing I really liked was Metis. Beyond being a valuable new ally in the game, she was simply a likable character who played an essential role in the story.


Since this is probably going to be my last post concerning Persona 3 itself, I might as well say that I really liked exploring the Abyss of Time more than Tartarus, mostly because it was less monotonous than Tartarus was. Unlike the blocks of Tartarus that remained uniform throughout, the different sections of the Abyss of Time changed from time to time as you passed through them. Perhaps more importantly, the actual music playing in the background changed from time to time, so you aren't stuck with a single background track for the entire game, like in Tartarus. This helps make the game feel less repetitive, which is a much needed improvement. It probably doesn't go far enough (both dungeons are far too thoroughly built upon a limited number of possible corridors and rooms), but it does help.

Persona 3 FES: Boss Battles

One thing I have always liked about Persona 3 is its boss battles. Because there is a boss guarding each major checkpoint in both Tartarus and the Abyss of Time, as well as a number of story battles, there are quite a few of these in the game. The quality of these battles can vary greatly (some are fun, others boring), as does the difficulty (some boss battles are a cakewalk, but others are unfairly punishing), so there are some issues with consistency, but as a whole these battles add a lot of challenge and excitement to the game. They take an incredibly solid core combat system and push it to its limit, making them far more tactically engaging and fun than typical fare.

However, any praise I may give the boss battles of Persona 3 doesn't apply to the various Full Moon bosses and other story battles. For the most part, these battles are far too easy, since if you have reached the target floor in Tartarus that month, then the Full Moon boss is too weak for your current ability level (as a rule, the bosses you need to clear in order to make that target are stronger than that month's plot boss). Also, these bosses tend to overly rely on unusual gimmicks that eat up their turns, so they are usually only challenging if you accidentally stumble into the "bad" way to fight them, and are otherwise poorly designed. For example, one boss is split into two parts, one of which can revive the other, but while they are combined any damage is split between then evenly. As a result, by the time one of them is weak enough for the revival ability to matter, the one with the revival power is just as doomed as the other. In addition, there is no particular advantage for them when they are combined, so their entire gimmick of combining and separating is just a liability that adds little to the fight. Some other boss battles, such as those against enemy Persona-users, simply lack either complication or challenge, even though they are some of the most important to the plot. As a whole, many of these battles are disappointing.

If the story battles are disappointing because of an over-reliance on gimmicks and low difficulty, the battles in Tartarus may swing too far in the other direction. These battles are just straightforward battles against normal-looking enemies who don't make use of anything but normal attacks and ordinary elemental immunities, but they make use of these attacks and immunities in amazingly creative ways in order to provide difficult challenges. Unlike normal enemies and story bosses, you can't analyze a Tartarus boss's strengths and weaknesses, so they need to be determined through experimentation, adding a sometimes frustrating but often fun part of the battle (something resembling the Megaman "which weapon works?" game). In addition, these enemies play with the idea of what it means for something to be a "weakness". Rarely, they just have a normal weakness, which lets you abuse the "One More" and "All-Out Attack" abilities to defeat them quickly. Other times, they don't have a weakness at all, and you need to rely on critical hits in order to get All-Out Attacks. At other times, an enemy has so many resistances that the one thing they are not resistant to can be exploited as a "weakness". In some battles, the enemy has a weakness, but their attack power is so unfairly high that your only choice is to knock them all down and forego an All-Out Attack in order to leave them on the ground, slowly eating away at their health while keeping healed. A few bosses protect weaknesses behind active defensive spells like Tetrakarn and Makarakarn, which reflect physical or magical damage. At least one boss bends the idea of "weakness" so far that it actually takes almost no damage at all from the element it is weak to, so you are forced to make a decision between dealing damage and knocking it down. Many more rely on eating up player actions through status effects. Most of these tricks are used by normal enemies, so these boss battles are really nothing more than scaled up normal fights, but the raw offensive power of these bosses, which can destroy even a good team in only a few turns, combined with their large hitpoint totals, forces the player to carefully balance offense and defense in an efficient strategy in order to even survive, let alone win. Unlike far too many other games I have played, these battles really reward (or even require) good tactics and strategy, and their high difficulty adds a lot of excitement.

Of course, one issue about these boss battles is that they can sometimes be a little too brutal. Bosses that have no weaknesses and constantly attack with "Megido" spells (powerful attacks that hit all characters and have no element, meaning there is no defense against them) are unbelievably frustrating and far less fun than others. I suppose this is because there is literally no other way to beat such enemies other than to have raw power or get lucky. An important aspect of other bosses is that it is possible to prepare for them. Against enemies that use Fire attacks, you can bring Junpei and Koromaru (who resist Fire attacks), equip Fire-resistance items, and equip a Persona on the hero that resists Fire, which helps even out the battle against these foes. Against an enemy that uses Charm attacks, you can bring Personas that are immune to Charm and items to resist Charm. If an enemy has a Lightning weakness, you can bring Akihiko and equip a Persona with Lightning attacls. Unlike other games, doing this kind of preparation doesn't make the battle easy; it just makes the battle possible. This is because a lot of these abilities are restricted to the point where you can't just give them to every character, giving the team an incomplete defense that helps, but is still vulnerable. One of the strnegths of this game is that most boss battles are won or lost in preparation, and because of this the few bosses that you can't prepare for are simply overwhelming and unfun.

Anyways, the reason I delayed in making this post for so long is because I wanted to see the bosses in The Answer before making final conclusions, and I am glad I did so, because the boss battles of the Abyss of Time are even better than the Tartarus bosses. A major limitation of Tartarus bosses is that they come in homogenous groups. If you are attacked by a group of bosses all at once in Tartarus, you are guaranteed to fight a group of three identical enemies (all bosses other than the last one in each section are like this). This is more interesting than fighting single enemies all the time, but it is nowhere near as interesting as the non-homogenous boss groups in The Answer. In addition to making the "what is it weak to?" game more important, this adds prioritizing targets to the realm of strategies the player needs to consider (I never used the "Assign Target" command once in the main game, but it is important in The Answer). You have to choose between attacking weak enemies (who might get replaced by a bigger enemy's summon skill), killing a larger enemy, trying to kill them all evenly, killing the healer first, killing the status-effect monster first, etc. Often, even figuring out which enemies are the easiest to kill can be tricky. All of this makes good tactics even more important, and makes these battles very fun. What is more, The Answer doesn't seem to contain any unfair bosses that can't be fought with good preparation and strategy (with maybe one exception, but it doesn't use Megido), making the whole thing a lot more fun. I have not enjoyed battles like these in a console RPG for far too long.

Before I finish up, I want to make a special mention of The Reaper. That was one of the best optional super-boss battles I have ever seen. It was both incredibly difficult, but because tactics play such an important part of the game I managed to defeat it about 20 levels before I probably should have thanks to a good strategy and a little luck. That kind of thing is what I consider to be the best possible sign that a game is giving the right type of challenge.

Persona 3 FES: The Answer

After a few months of distraction, I have finally got around to playing through "The Answer", the bonus epilogue story for Persona 3 that was added in the FES version. It has been a lot of fun getting back into the game, but I am surprised at how much a few changes can make to the game experience. The Answer has no passage of time, no Social Links, no Persona Compendium, none of Elizabeth's requests, and even no need to worry about character condition. The only goal is to reach the end of the new dungeon, the Abyss of Time, and every other distraction is simply gone. It makes the game a lot more focused, which matches well with the fact that The Answer is supposed to be a shorter extension to the main game, but also makes it a lot more repetitive. If it were not for Persona 3's great combat system and tactical variety, it would get boring.

Of all the changes between the main game and The Answer, one of the most notable is the fact that the story is now told from the perspective of former teammate Aigis, rather than the original protagonist. Using a different main character is necessary because of the story, but Aigis is an interesting choice. Based on the story of the main game, I would have expected Junpei or Yukari to have taken on that role. However, with the story being told in The Answer, it makes a lot sense for Aigis to take the lead, so it works well. I am glad that they gave Aigis the ability to use multiple Personas, just like the main hero did, since otherwise the game would be nearly impossible, but I wish that I didn't have to lose Aigis' Athena Persona in doing so. Giving Aigis a reliable fallback that leveled up with her would have helped differentiate her as a new main character a bit more, and would have helped balance out the fact that she can't make use of a lot of the tricks that made the original main hero so powerful. Of course, being able to ambush Shadows with a gun is nice, and I don't really mind the loss of Aigis' Orgia Mode thanks to Metis joining.

Metis is certainly one of the aspects of The Answer that I was not expecting. I knew that the character existed, but I had no idea that she would join the team, and I am glad she did. She has similar abilities to Shinjiro (heavy emphasis on raw power and physical skills, uses and axe), as well as access to multiple kinds of elemental magic and status attacks, which makes her very distinct from any other available character, adding something fresh and new to the game experience (which was very much needed). The fact that she uses Strike-damage Axes and Rods helps balance the weapons out a bit (since otherwise only Akihiko would have one), and the introduction of another user of wind and ice means that all four attack elements finally have two different people to use them. Rather than being a replacement for Aigis, Metis balances out the team perfectly in her own unique way, adding a lot. Also, her Neo Orgia Mode works beautifully, since the added ability to have free skill use and longer timer balance out an ability that was already too heavily limited by reduced control and limited time, turning Orgia Mode from something I forgot exists into something I regularly use in battle. Finally, mechanics aside, Metis is simply a good character who brings a new perspective to the characters and story that makes the small bursts of plot throughout The Answer more fun.

Another thing I was not expecting in The Answer was the fact that the Abyss of Time simply does not work the same way that Tartarus did. In Tartarus, bosses were always found immediately after shortcuts that let you freely move between that floor and the entrance (where you automatically healed and could save), so you could always fight a boss at peak condition. However, in the Abyss of Time, you need to defeat the bosses in order to reach the equivalent shortcut, which means that attrition brought on by fighting through the previous floors stays with you for the boss fights, so if you had to ditch a character on a previous floor, or your main healer has no SP left, defeating the boss may be impossible. Fortunately, boss fights come with some warning and you can save beforehand, so you don't need to worry about getting ambushed by one or having to fight your way down to one again because you lost, but it still adds a new element to the game that changes things up and adds to the challenge. It is not as hard as it would have been if the main game had this set-up, since there are much fewer floors to climb in each section of The Answer, but it does make me worry about saving SP a lot more than I used to.

Thanks to all of these changes, and my desire to finish this up before Persona 4 comes out, I have actually been getting through The Answer very quickly. It took me well more than 120 hours to clear the main game, but I cleared half of The Answer in only around 12 hours. This is mostly because The Answer is more focused and shorter than the main game, but it is also because the added focus has pretty much removed my desire to do anything but progress forward. In the main game, I constantly wandered aimlessly and worked hard to clear every optional objective and keep my whole team leveled up, but I don't see any reason to do that in The Answer. There are no side-objectives and Metis balances out my favorite Yukari/Aigis/Junpei team so well that I do nothing but progress onwards with that one team. It goes by quickly, but that speed is the one thing that keeps The Answer from becoming annoyingly repetitive.

Persona 3 FES: The Images of the Dark Hour

One of the things that impressed me when I first watched a trailer for Persona 3 was the bizarre and disturbing imagery associated with the Dark Hour, Tartarus, and the Shadows. The shutting down of all electrical devices, the eerie green glow, the red splotches that look like pools of blood covering everything, the blurring effects, the surreal tower of Tartarus rising up amidst a terrifyingly quiet city, and most of all the unsettling effect of Transmogrification in which every normal person is turned into a coffin... The images of the Dark Hour are very powerful and work incredibly well to transform an ordinary-looking town into a nightmare world where monsters roam. The city during the Dark Hour is one of the most ideal backdrops for a secret battle against a terrible, inhuman enemy that I have ever seen. The only problem with this imagery is that it just isn't seen often enough.

With a setting as perfect as the city during Dark Hour, you would expect the game designers would make as much use of it as possible, but instead I think I can count on my fingers the number of times you actually see that imagery across the length of the game. As far as I can recall, you only encounter Transmogrified people in two full moon missions, the opening movie, three or four plot events (including one animated cinematic), and the "end of the world" sequence at the end of the game. You only see a good exterior image of the tower of Tartarus two or three times. You are never even given a chance to actually wander around the town during the Dark Hour. The images of the Dark Hour are incredibly important to the themes and story of the game, but far too often these are simply glossed over.

One major symptom of this effect is the fact that it sometimes feels like the Dark Hour isn't very dangerous in of itself, even though the Dark Hour is the great problem that the heroes are trying to eliminate. I think this is mostly caused by the fact that the Dark Hour doesn't even seem to exist unless the player chooses to go to Tartarus or a plot event happens during that time (which is either rare, predictable, or a harmless visit from Pharos). The Dark Hour, the most important phase of the day for the purposes of the story, is the one phase of the day that is completely ignored and invisible during the course of a normal game day. The feeling that the Dark Hour is insignificant in of itself is only amplified by the fact that, supposedly, normal Shadows almost never leave Tartarus and the heroes must enter Tartarus in order to fight Shadows. This transfers almost all of the focus from the Dark Hour to Tartarus, and what little focus is left on the Dark Hour is taken up by the full moon events, making the full moon seem more dangerous than the Dark Hour. It seems like a waste of the setting's potential, though I admit that it would be hard to make better use of the Dark Hour without completely changing important parts of the game's structure.

One thing the game designers could have done to make better use of the setting would be to create more scenes in which the sudden transition from the normal evening hours to the Dark Hour takes place. Perhaps they could have created a sequence in which the members of SEES are doing some normal event, like hanging out with some friends from school, up until the stroke of midnight, at which point the Dark Hour comes, Transmogrifying everyone but the Persona-users and leaving them alone in the darkened and distorted city. More scenes like that could have even helped make the isolation and hardships of the Persona-users, the people who care forced to see the hidden dark side of the world in a way no one else can, much more clear. Simply having some kind of scene where a Social Link character is visibly Transmogrified or pulled into the Dark Hour and threatened by a Shadow would have helped. After all, since normal people can't remember anything that occurs during the Dark Hour, characters could be pulled into the struggle for a short time without permanently affecting the daytime school stories. Even just having Dark Hour events occur during the Yakushima or Kyoto trips would have been interesting to see.

It really is a shame that the incredibly strong imagery and well-designed concept of the Dark Hour were not used to their fullest in Persona 3. According to what I have seen, Persona 4 will be using a completely different framework, so it looks like the Dark Hour may never get a chance to live up to its full potential as a setting.

Persona 3 FES: Endings 2 (the end to The Journey)

There is a lot I could say about the ending to Persona 3, but I am having a lot of trouble narrowing down how to start because it simply has so much good stuff packed into it. I guess I may as well just summarize a few thoughts I have had about it.

1) The set-up for the final battle and ending, including the final climb up Tartarus across January (which builds up the Judgement Social Link and unlocks the ultimate Persona), the last meeting between the SEES members in which they make the pledge to meet again even if they lose their memories, and the last battles against the members of Strega, is nearly flawless. I suppose the entire cult thing was pointless, but other than that the last month, with its severe change in tone and music, was very good.

2) The final battle was really dramatic and well-done. There was nowhere more appropriate for the final battle to take place than the top of Tartarus, and the final battleground set amidst dark clouds beneath the full moon was spectacular. The battle itself, involving the countdown of all of the Arcana used by the Shadows building up towards Nyx Avatar unleashing its true power, was also very dramatic and sufficiently impressive for a final battle.

3) The sudden revival of Nyx Avatar, the revelation of the true, monstrous Nyx within the moon, and the beginning of the end of the world were expected, but still very welcome twists to the game. After all, given all of the discussion over the past few months of the game of how Nyx was invincible, and the importance of the hopelessness of the heroes' battle to the game, the battle shouldn't be won that easily. No videogame with a story based around saving the world should finish before the end of the world is in full swing.

4) It is a cliche story twist that has been parodied time and again, but the whole "in the world's darkest hour, the hero gathers the power from his friends in order to gain new strength" idea is a logical and believable conclusion to the entire Social Link system, so it actually works rather well when it is used here. I like the fact that all of the Social Links that have been maxed out are referenced, I like the resulting, undefined ultimate Persona card (which is certainly The World card even if it is not called such), and most of all I like the fact that the elevator-shaped Velvet Room actually reaches its destination and opens its doors to the light for the first time, as if it is symbolically carrying the hero to his final battle and the conclusion of his story.

5) The scripted battle against the core of Nyx strikes a nice balance between dramatic elaboration and keeping things focused and to the point. I like the fact that the enemy's ultimate attack goes from nearly killing the hero to be completely ineffective against him as the power of his allies surges into him. Also, the fact that the Great Seal move uses up all of the hero's HP is an important detail that properly foreshadows how the game ends.

I was really expecting the ending to conclude shortly after the battle against Nyx, but I was rather pleasantly surprised to see that the ending had only really just started by that point. The hero returns from his battle, the world is saved, and time jumps forward to a month later at the beginning of March, where the parts of the ending I really want to talk about take place.

In a moment of great parallel between the two endings, the next part of the ending starts out exactly the same way as the "Kill Ryoji" ending began, with everyone having lost their memories and continuing on with their lives, speaking about fellow members of SEES as if they were total strangers. However, instead of ending the sequence there and jumping to three days later like it happened in the other ending, here it continues on to the rest of the day that follows, and control is given back to the player as if it were a normal day like any other in the game. This phase is the best part of the whole ending. At this time, the player is free to explore the town, and in doing so can see special scenes for every Social Link at the maximum level that give an epilogue for each story and subplot, as well as scenes involving other members of SEES that show that they have not completely forgotten the bond they share and the things that have changed their lives. It begins just like it did in the "Kill Ryoji" ending, but the freedom that comes afterwards is such a significant divergence from the other ending that it makes it feel like something completely different.

After a few days of being free to see Social Link epilogues, it reaches Graduation Day, the day which both marked the end of the "Kill Ryoji" ending and was decided to be the day in which the characters would meet again even if they lose their memories. Whether it was that promise or just the fact that the SEES Social Link would have maxed out (and thus become unbreakable) twice over between the time Ryoji asks for a decision and the final battle, it is clear that the continuing memory loss would actually be broken in this ending, and when Aigis approaches the hero at the beginning of this day speaking as if the hero's memory has returned (or was never really lost at all), that divergence from the bad ending is confirmed. The final sequence in which Mitsuru slowly gets her memory back in the middle of the same speech she was making in the "Kill Ryoji" ending is almost magical with how effective it is in reversing the tragedy of the heroes' lost memory in the bad ending, but in a odd way that reversal is reflected by another reversal: instead of going out with his friends to sing karaoke, the hero rests his head on Aigis's lap, and slowly closes his eyes...

In a way, there is really no other way that Persona 3 could have ended other than with the hero's death. Much like the idea of the Hero's Journey and the concept of the tarot, the entire story of Persona 3 is essentially a giant metaphor for a person's life. Even more clearly, the hero was bound to Ryoji, an incarnation of Death itself, and was haunted by Thanatos from the very beginning. The hero was given the contract by Death under which he was supposed to assume responsibility for his own actions, and was promised a single year within the game. Because of all of these, I was certainly expecting the hero to die, but I was surprised and impressed at both the fact that the game designers actually went and made it happen, and the way in which it happened. The common, cliche way such things usually happen in stories is that the hero sacrifices himself in the final moment and never returns home, but in this game he does return from his battle with Nyx and lives long enough to enjoy that time and see the happy result of his struggle. Most notably, the way the hero goes is incredibly peaceful and joyful. The hero simply lays his head on Aigis's lap while listening to the sounds of his friends coming to meet him again, and closes his eyes as if for a nap. rather than a tragedy, the hero's death is portrayed as a long-awaited, well-deserved rest. If it were not for a large array of subtle foreshadowing and the oddly sad tone in Aigis's voice as she talks to the hero, it would be impossible to guess that he had even died. Honestly, more than anything else I consider it to be a beautiful ending.

As a whole, this lengthy ending touches on pretty much everything you could hope for in an ending to a videogame as involving as Persona 3, and beyond that it is exciting, touching, dramatic, and bold. It may very well be one of my favorite videogame endings of all time.

Persona 3 FES: Endings 1 (bad endings can be good too)

One of the most important moments in Persona 3 FES is when Ryoji gives the player the choice to either kill him or spare him on New Year's Eve. The choice to spare Ryoji, and thus fight against the undefeatable goddess Nyx, is clearly presented as the correct choice because the player's allies unanimously decide to go that route, but it is within the player's power to go against that decision and choose to kill Ryoji, which means the heroes lose their memory and live peacefully until Nyx destroys the world. It is a classic choice between the easy road that leads to a bad, "the world is destroyed" ending, and the hard road that leads to the good, "the heroes save the world" ending, but Persona 3 puts a new spin on this choice that makes it far more interesting than usual.

The typical set-up for a "bad" ending brought about by a conversation choice is that the ending is short and pretty much inconsequential. One of the first games I ever saw with such an ending was an old SNES game called EVO: Search for Eden, where you were given several such conversation choices (the choice to join forces with the Tyrannosauruses or Birds in the middle chapters), and in every case choosing the "bad" choice just gave you a short "this is how you die" sequence before kicking you back to the map screen. Another one I can recall from that era is the Breath of Fire 2 "let the gate remain sealed" ending, which mostly just leads to an ominous image of an army of demons, and little else. In both of those examples, and a few more that I can recall off of the top of my head, such as in Suikoden 2 and Suikoden 5, the "bad" ending doesn't even give you a proper roll of the credits, just a brief bit of narration and a few images. For the most part, these endings exist solely to say "you made the wrong choice", often by showing the world ending or something like that, and very little else. The "kill Ryoji" ending in Persona 3, though, is very different.

One factor that makes the Persona 3 "bad" ending so unique is that it is a full ending in of itself. The actual ending is fairly lengthy, featuring a large amount of conversation between the most important characters, and while it is nowhere near the length of the game's true ending, it is still fairly complex and is not an unreasonably-sized ending at all. Further, it features a full credit-roll, almost the exact same credit-roll seen in the true ending, including the fantastic ending song. In addition, you can save "game cycle" data with this ending just as if you had beaten the final boss and brought the game to full completion. In fact, I have seen lengthy games end with shorter and less-satisfying " true endings than this game's "bad" ending. However, these facts alone are not what makes the "kill Ryoji" ending so interesting to me.

What truly sets Persona 3's "bad" ending apart is that it does not rely on any cheap gimmicks to get its point across. It would have been easy to just show that killing Ryoji was a bad choice because it leads to the end of the world, since all the game designers had to do in that case was show Nyx destroying the world, but that would just be a predictable, boring ending that would do little but say "if you want to save the world, make the other choice". Instead, the actual "kill Ryoji" ending doesn't even bring up the end of the world of Nyx at all, but rather focuses on the themes that actually matter to the choice. After all, the heroes are not making the choice between saving the world or letting it end, they are making the choice between losing their memories so they can live peacefully until the end and keeping their memories so they can fight a battle that is supposed to be hopeless. As such, an ending that features Nyx destroying the world would go against the spirit of that choice, because it would be saying that the reason killing Ryoji is bad would be because the heroes would be running away from a battle to save the world, and implying that going the other way would lead to a victory over Nyx. However, by ignoring the entire "end of the world" angle in the "kill Ryoji" ending, the game puts the emphasis on something far more important to the themes of the game: the fact that giving up their memories for the sake of peace is too terrible a price for the heroes to pay in of itself.

As I tried to describe in my last post, the core cast of likable characters who grow tremendously and form a strong bond with each other is one of Persona 3's great successes, and the "kill Ryoji" ending works incredibly well because of that success. The ending portrays the members of SEES at a time several months after losing their memory, in which all of their growth and all of their friendships have been lost. Rather than looking up to their upperclassman as mentor figures and friends, Yukari and Junpei hardly even know Akihiko and Mitsuru and regard them distantly without any of the familiarity that would have become common by the time you make the choice. The characters have forgotten Aigis entirely, and she is doomed to just watch on from a distance, completely forlorn. Mitsuru has forgotten the way her father died and the reason for his death. Everything the characters gained from their many months of struggle and sacrifice is gone, and instead they are making hollow statements that echo the words of Takaya, the misguided and possibly insane man who is one of the game's major villains. The entire effect feels incredibly tragic, as if the hero undid everything that SEES managed to accomplish and destroyed everything the members of SEES believed in with a single act of betrayal. This ending truly works well to show exactly why the choice to kill Ryoji is a terrible one, and as such manages to surpass almost every "bad" ending I have ever seen.

One more thing I want to mention about this ending is the way it parallels the true ending of the game so well, but that will have to wait until I actually get a chance to write a bit more about the true ending. However, I will say that that because of both that parallel and the nature of the "kill Ryoji" ending as I have discussed above, this is the one of the few "bad" endings (and the only such ending that occurs before the end of the game) I have ever seen that really adds to the experience of watching the true ending. This is one of those endings that should really be watched by anyone who plays the game.

Persona 3 FES: The Growth of SEES

In a lot of my writing over the last month I have been pretty critical of Persona 3's storytelling, so I have decided I am just going to write a lot about how the game managed to redeem those failings and turn the whole thing around into a pretty good story.

The single factor that covers up most of the weaknesses in the game's story and makes the story truly enjoyable is the strong central cast of characters: the members of SEES. These characters, the main characters who fight alongside the main hero and struggle through many victories and tragedies alongside him, are likable, interesting, believable, and complicated characters who grow and change greatly across the course of the game. In many ways, I consider the core cast of Persona 3 to be one of the best groups of characters I have ever seen in a videogame.

Two of the SEES characters, Yukari and Junpei, and particularly important to the game experience. These two characters are introduced at the start of the game, and they are the very first characters to join the hero in battle (in fact, you need to climb the entire first block of Tartarus with only their help). They are also the hero's classmates and dorm-mates who sit right next to him in class and struggle right alongside him through all of the troubles of his double life. Just like the hero, they start the game as ordinary students who have just joined SEES and have no real experience with the Shadows or the Dark Hour, and in the end they stand by the hero in the final battles, risking their lives alongside his. In many ways, they are the most believable characters in the game, and the events that help them change and grow are the most memorable and endearing scenes in the entire story. Because of all of these factors, these two characters mitigate the impact of one of the game's greatest flaws.

As I wrote at length about before, I don't consider the main hero of Persona 3 to be a very good character, but in many ways the strong presences of Yukari and Junpei throughout the game helps make up for that weakness. Yukari and Junpei are alongside the hero through the entire game, but unlike the static and silent hero, they speak up and have their own stories, and as a result they often supplant what should be the hero's role in the game. When a hero needs to say something but the silent protagonist remains silent, often it is Yukari or Junpei who will step forward and respond in his place. One place in which this is done very well is in the case of Ryoji. The bond between the hero and Ryoji is what is essential to the game's story, but all of the interactions between the hero and Ryoji are brought about because Junpei befriends Ryoji immediately. Junpei's automatic friendship with Ryoji is not all that important in of itself, but it works to make up for the limitations of the hero's silence. In another example, a minor plot element important to the game, the initial fear and hesitation the members of SEES feel regarding their Evokers, is explored entirely through Yukari, and it is left vague whether the hero struggles with that at all. Beyond all of that, Yukari's grief over her father's death and struggle to understand why he died works well to fill in for the game's lack of development regarding the hero's dead parents, and Junpei's involved and touching romance with Chidori helps add a lot to a game where the hero's own romance subplots are detached and often flawed. The strong similarity between the hero and those two characters, and the strength of their stories, works well to make a strong story out of a game with a weak main hero.

However, Yukari and Junpei are not the only interesting characters in the game; just about everyone in SEES is a great character. Akihiko and Shinjiro's old friendship, marked with tragedy and disagreement, and way Shinjiro's death moves Akihiko to become a much greater person, works incredibly well. While it develops a bit too rapidly all at once near the end of the game, the story of how Aigis, a robot built only to destroy Shadows, tries to find a place for herself in the world as a living being is surprisingly moving, particularly due to the Aeon Social Link, and is probably one of the best versions of that kind of story that I have seen in quite a while. I can say similar things about almost every member of SEES, really. Even minor subplots, like Junpei's struggle to overcome his jealousy of the hero and disappointment with his own limitations or the way Ken is embarrassed about and tries to hide the simple fact that he really is still just an elementary school kid who misses his mother and likes superhero stories, make the game characters feel genuine and help the player empathize with them.

As a whole, the members of SEES go through a classic "heroic journey", where they start as normal people and after many trials end up changing their world for the better. At the same time, they go from being a group of people who hardly know each other and often don't get along into a group of people who have formed an unbreakable friendship and are willing to face certain death in order to hold on to that bond. The grow up from just being a group of people trying to serve their own interests and become a band of people who are willing to abandon an easy road to happiness in order to build a better future. It is a very common kind of story, but this game proves the general rule that as long as you put a lot of effort into making a story good, it doesn't matter how common it is. Also, in this game where the main hero is left undefined, having the entire central group of characters undergo the heroic journey helps a lot in implying that the hero himself has changed and undergone such a journey, even though the game system does not support such a journey very well in of itself.

Persona 3 FES: Conversation and the Hero's Identity

A few days ago, I finally managed to complete the main section of Persona 3 FES, "The Journey". I have been playing this game quite a long time, and the final part of the game was fantastic, so I am quite happy. Now that the game is complete, though, I may as well write a bit about a topic I have been meaning to address since I first started the blog: the story role of Persona 3's main hero.

It is quite clear that Persona 3's game designers wanted to let the player control the identity and personality of the main hero as much as possible. Other than the few voiced lines the hero speaks when summoning Personas in battle, he is a classic "silent protagonist", and every line he speaks in the story (when he even speaks at all) is presented as a conversation choice for the player. The player can choose to have the hero be kind, rude, quiet, or anything else. In theory, this should let the player give the hero whatever personality he wants, but in practice this does not work out very well at all. Important factors in this are the vagueness and completeness problems that are almost pathologically inherent to the conversation choice system. Half the time, it is just hard to figure out how characters will react to a particular choice, and the other half of the time the given choices never really seem to cover how you really want the hero to respond. Beyond this, though, there are two problems that are particularly glaring in Persona 3: advantageous conversation choices and a lack of any permanence for the player's choices.

In Social Links in particular, it is simply to the player's advantage to just say whatever the person he is talking to wants him to say. In almost every conversation choice presented to the player during a Social Link event, there is a single "correct" choice, and selecting that choice will (quite visibly) help build up the affinity between the hero and the Social Link character, making it easier to build up the Social Link to the next level. Since there it is to the player's advantage to build up these levels as quickly as possible, it means that in all of the conversation choices presented in Social Links (the lion's share of all conversation choices), the player is strongly encouraged to say what is advantageous for him to say (usually what the Social Link character wants to hear), rather than what the player wants to say or thinks should be said. This sabotages any possibility of characterizing the main hero in a coherent manner, since the hero is encouraged to act like a carefree goof-off when talking to carefree goof-offs and act like a driven workaholic when talking to driven workaholics. At times, it can feel like the game is encouraging the player to make the hero act like an insincere brown-noser, which is hardly the kind of character I want to play in a game like this.

The other major problem is that, other than Social Link level and affinity between characters, the game doesn't seem to actually make a record of what choices the hero has made. Almost any dialog choice made by the player will only affect a few sentences' worth of game dialog, before the conversation possibilities converge again. Whether you do something to make someone happy or do something to make that person angry, five lines later the dialog will continue the same way regardless. In the longer term, even if you do nothing but be rude, spiteful, and insulting, the characters in the game will never start acting accordingly, and will just act like the hero is a generic nice guy. The game simply does not give the player any feedback for giving the hero a consistent personality, and as such there is really no reward for doing so. No matter what the player does, the hero will be just as generic and undefined at the end of the game as he was in the beginning as far as the story and characters are concerned.

With all of that criticism said, I should be a bit fair by saying that the impermanent, undefined, and necessarily inconsistent personality of the main hero does actually fit with some of his limited characterization and the mechanics of the Persona system. Unlike the other characters, who have a consistent personality and a single Persona, the hero has an ever-changing identity to match his ever-changing array of Personas. Personas are supposed to be a reflection of a person's identity, and the hero has over a hundred and seventy of them, more than a hundred contradicting reflections of his "true self". The game even supports this idea by giving you a bonus to Social Link growth if you have a Persona of the same Arcana as the Social Link you are trying to build up, and thus have an "identity" that is compatible with the Social Link character. I actually have to applaud the way the game designers managed to make story and game mechanics compliment each other in such a way, but I think that the failings of the current system are too great to be outweighed by such a small benefit.

The main hero may be portrayed as having nearly infinite flexibility in characterization, but that just means he ultimately is never developed as a character at all. At no point can the player really do anything to turn the main hero into someone they can identify with or empathize with. For example, you can have him say to other characters that he has a reason to fight, but you are never allowed to establish a particular reason for him to fight as a fact within the game. I can make the decision that the hero is fighting to end the Dark Hour for Yukari's sake in my own head, but I can not have the hero act on that decision in any way, even though the question of "what are you fighting for?" is central to the themes of the game. It may simply be a limitation of the conversation choice mechanic itself, but ultimately, the player only gets to decide what the hero says, but not what the hero is thinking or what the hero believes, so any characterization made by the player is shallow and short-lived.

Finally, I should at least briefly mention that the one system the game actually does provide for characterizing the hero, his Academics, Courage, and Charm attributes, is fatally flawed in its own right, for similar reasons to those I described above. To illustrate this, in my last playthrough I played a hero who started with maxed out Academics, so the hero aced every test at the top of his class without ever needing to study once, but still needed to go to Summer School because Mitsuru was worried about his grades falling behind because of too much time spent as part of SEES. There are so many inconsistencies and flaws with that I can't even begin to get into it all, but the main problem is that what the hero does, what the hero is capable of, and what the other characters think of the hero are all disconnected from each other.

Persona 3 FES: Personas

The title creatures of Persona 3, the Personas, are certainly an important part of the game. Acquiring them, building them up, and fusing them together to create new Personas are all activities that take up quite a lot of time and energy. Almost every choice made in the progress of the game is reflected by the incredible variability of the Persona system. This system, the Persona series' inheritance from the broader Megami Tensei series, is essential to the experience of the game. In many ways, Persona 3's adherence to the traditional Megami Tensei system is both a great strength and a great weakness for the game.

The basic scheme of the Persona/Megami Tensei system is very similar to monster-collection games, though a bit less so in Persona than in the main Megami Tensei series because Personas don't fight directly and you can't build teams of them. One of the biggest differences, though, is that unlike more typical monster collection games such as Pokemon, the Megami Tensei makes holding on to your "monsters" and raising their level a less-than-optimal choice. Personas level at about half the rate that the hero does even if you put all of your effort into raising their levels, and raising the hero's level lets you acquire even more powerful Personas who have even stronger abilities, so it is most beneficial to use low-level Personas for fusion than to try to level them up. This means that the player will only use any particular Persona for a very limited time, and there is a clear progression of ever-stronger Personas. In many ways, it is a far simpler system for the player to use than other kinds of monster collection game because the basic choice of what monster to use is so much more clear. It is particularly good for a game like Persona 3 in which the "monsters" do not take center stage, because it makes it a lot easier for the player to make use of a great variety of "monsters" without having to spend a lot of effort acquiring them and individually raising their levels. Because of this, the basic system works very well for Persona 3, though there are flaws in the details.

One of the most noticeable flaws of the system is actually in the designs of the different Personas. In that area, Persona 3 may have taken a bit too much from the greater Megami Tensei series. All of the Personas used by your allies and enemies in Persona 3, from Junpei's Hermes to Aigis's Athena, all have a really great unified look to them, mixing human-like forms with surreal elements to create creatures that look like they are subconscious echos of the Persona-users, and they quite nicely incorporate a lot of the same design elements seen in the enemy Shadows (some Shadows, like The Reaper and some of the Twelve Shadows would actually make great Personas themselves), but the problem is that only three out of more than a hundred and seventy Personas available to the hero use that look (Orpheus, Thanatos, and Messiah). The rest of the hero's Personas all take their designs (and possibly models) directly from other Persona games, and don't look like anything else in Persona 3. I suppose the fair way to interpret this is that the designers wanted to keep the looks of the creatures the same between all Megami Tensei games for brand reasons (the unfair interpretation is that they were just lazy), but I don't think it was the best choice. The difference is just too glaring.

Another flaw is actually related to the three Personas that actually do match the rest of the game's aesthetics. These three, the hero's first Persona "Orpheus", the plot-central Persona "Thanatos", and the ultimate Persona "Messiah", are all among the most important Personas in the game, but in the end they are treated just like any other Persona. Orpheus is incredibly weak and should be abandoned quickly, Thanatos is just another Persona who will be acquired and traded out eventually (despite his important symbolic role in the game's plot), and as far as I am aware Messiah is just acquired normally and treated like just another Persona (even though he appears on the game DVD and in the credits). I admit that this is only arguably a flaw, but it just seems that these three Personas simply don't get the kind of special treatment they deserve. They seem to be the hero's equivalents to the Personas that everyone else in the game uses, so I wonder if it would have been better if they worked more like Junpei's Hermes or Aigis's Athena, which level up along with the Persona-user and transform with the plot, and less like normal Personas. If nothing else, it would have provided a reliable "always available" Persona (or three), which would at least be useful for showing off the hero's Persona abilities in plot scenes.

A much more pressing concern about the Persona system is that fusing Personas is just too time-consuming and annoying. My brother touched on this a while back, but one of the biggest flaws is the random nature of passing on skills through Fusion. Passing on good skills is essential, but it can take dozens of random combinations before a good combination of skills can be passed on (and even then passing on ideal skill sets is nearly impossible). In addition, it is impossible to even know what kinds of skills a fused Persona can acquire from its component Personas unless you go through this tedious process a few times. Trying to pass on a rare and powerful skill like Samsara or Thunder Reign through several generations of Personas can be difficult even without trying to pass on skills like Hama Boost or Elec Amp that are needed to get the most out of them. Trying to pass on great combinations involving three or more skills (like Auto-Maraku + Auto-Mataru + Auto-Masuku) is almost impossible. This issue just amplifies the annoying fact that it is hard to figure out what skills to give to a Persona that does not have a central theme to its innate skills. The whole thing would have been a lot better if the game was more explicit about the ability-transfer rules and it was possible to simply select the skills you want to pass on from a list.

One final point where the game has some room for improvement is the way experience is handed out to Personas. I think it would just be better if every Persona gained at least some experience from battle, rather than only the Persona you end battle with. There are ways around this limitation (such as the Growth skills), and the game does not really need it to function, so all it does is force the player to give the Growth skill to Personas he wants to build up a bit (a major annoyance given the system I just described above), or for him to use particular Personas in battle far more than necessary (and to the exclusion of many others). It simply intrudes upon the basic flexibility the hero has in being able to easily switch Personas in battle, and makes it harder to actually make full use of a full team of well-built Personas.

Anyways, I want to end this by saying that I really do like almost everything about the hero's Persona system. It adds an incredible amount of customizability and tactical variety to the game system, and can be a lot of fun. If it were just a bit more user-friendly, it would be an ideal game system for people like me who enjoy seeing the benefits of putting a lot of thought into building characters, and an equally ideal system for the plot and themes of the Persona series.

Persona 3 FES: Fuuka's Support

One of my favorite things about Persona 3 is the character Fuuka and her role as a kind of distant information analyst and navigator for the party. Even ignoring Fuuka's role as a character in the story, she serves an incredibly valuable role in the exploration of Tartarus, and her presence is one of the things that makes Persona 3 so unique. One of the most important things to mention about her is the fact that, even though she never participates in battle directly, she gains experience, grows in level, and learns new skills just like any combat character. A lot of her individual abilities are very similar to the kinds of things you see in other games, but the fact that they are tied to a particular character is what makes Fuuka unique.

First off, Fuuka's most important role is battle support. She does not participate in battle directly, but she observes battles from a distance and can be ordered to perform actions through the same Tactics menu that commands every other character. Her main battle command is Full Analysis, an upgraded version of the Analysis command that the original support character, Mitsuru, uses. Mitsuru's Analysis only identifies an enemies Arcana and weaknesses, but Fuuka's Full Analysis reveals all of that and the attacks an enemy can use. Also, as Fuuka increases in level she eventually learns Oracle, an ability that will trigger a random effect once per battle when called upon. Both of these abilities only take effect when called upon, but they are both controlled by the support character's own abilities and are independent of the composition of the battle team. Most RPGs that have such effects link them to a battle character (so you can only use something like Analysis if you bring a combat character who has that ability) and force you to use up a battle characters turn in order to use such an ability, but Persona 3 doesn't, so abilities like Analysis are reliably available and much more easily used. In many ways, this set-up makes many kinds of abilities that could otherwise be a poor choice into something incredibly useful.

In addition to her active combat support abilities, Fuuka has a few passive ones as well. Fuuka's Support Scan and Third Eye abilities both change the information available to the player in normal battle. One lets you see what buffs and debuffs affect selected targets, and the other modifies the main target selection cursor so it will tell you whether an attack will be effective or not. Both of these abilities are unlocked as Fuuka rises in level, so it can be said that raising Fuuka's level changes the game interface and the kind of information available to the player.

Finally, Fuuka has several important roles and abilities relating to the exploration of Tartarus. She provides you with information about what is happening, such as telling you about unusual events that occur on some floors, warning you when a character is low on health, or warning you when the Reaper appears on a floor. This means that important gameplay information is relayed to the player through a character in the game, which is always a good thing. As Fuuka raises level, she gains the ability Healing Wave, which heals the whole party whenever you climb a set of stairs, and Escape Route, which lets you warp back to the entrance whenever you like (making Access Points and Traesto Gems obsolete). Much like some of her combat abilities, these abilities essentially change some of the rules of the game, and tie those changes to Fuuka's level growth. Simply put, it becomes much easier to climb Tartarus as Fuuka rises in level. Overall, linking rule changes to a character's growth is a very elegant way of allowing the player to have more options as the game progresses.

My only complaint about Fuuka's role in the game is that they could have given her so many more good abilities. Perhaps she could have gained abilities that improved the game's mini-map/radar, an ability to read how much longer you can last before your characters grow tired, or an ability that made finding rare treasures easier. Certainly they could have given her more combat abilities, such as the ability to read what attack an enemy will use next, or some other direct combat effect like Oracle. Other than that, though, I think she does nothing but contribute greatly to the game.

Persona 3 FES: Tartarus the Plot Desert

Persona 3's Tartarus is a very well executed version of the randomized dungeon concept, but it has not quite escaped one of the biggest flaws of that archetype: the lack of plot. Persona 3 is very good at giving the player interesting short-term goals and a sense of making progress into the tower, but it doesn't do quite enough to make that progress a part of the game's story. At times, it seems like the characters themselves do not have a real reason for climbing Tartarus, and that the only reason to go into the tower is to fulfill Elizabeth's requests. Often, it just seems unsatisfying to reach the top of a block, only to have nothing happen.

Just about the only story-related things to be found in Tartarus are the Old Documents, the items found at the top of each block. However, instead of being deep insights into the truth behind the game, they are only small snippets a sentence or two long, and more often than not they are a statement of the writer's confusion rather than anything helpful. Talking to random people in town tends to give better information than the Old Documents, and major plot events reveal far more. What is more, what little information those documents do provide is never even acknowledged by the characters. The Old Documents are among the most time-consuming pieces of information to acquire, yet they might as well not exist as far as the plot is concerned.

In addition, there is not a lot of character interaction in Tartarus itself. Other than the few times where you must go to Tartarus for plot reasons, there really isn't even much in the way of dialog. Sure, characters have all the things they say in battle and when responding to commands, but other than that, the only dialog you see are Fuuka's status reports as you climb the tower, but those are not very much. Most of the time, all Fuuka talks about is whether she can she can locate the next target floor or not, and a lot of that dialog repeats itself over and over again as you climb the hundreds of floors. When you confront one of the powerful bosses near the top of each block, all Fuuka says is that it is a really strong lone Shadow, and nothing else occurs. Even reaching the false top of Tartarus, all you get is Fuuka wondering "is this the top?" with a single sentence, and not much else.

The problem with all of this is that the entire structure of Tartarus, with its segmented blocks and barricades that only vanish as the main plot progresses, is very well suited to having significant plot scenes occur within it. Places like the permanent teleporter rooms, boss battle rooms, and the barricades that separate blocks would all be great places for unusual events to occur. Maybe a boss Shadow would do something unusual, or talk to the character briefly, or attack just as the characters find some clue about the true nature of Tartarus. Maybe the characters could find a room that was originally part of the lab beneath the school that spawned Tartarus ten years prior, and get a glimpse of the events that unfolded there at that time, or maybe find the remains of one of the other Anti-Shadow weapons like Aigis. Maybe reaching certain places would cause Pharos to appear and speak with the hero briefly. No matter what they might be, having even small events like that scattered throughout the tower would go a long way to make trips into Tartarus feel like a more significant part of the game's story.

With all of that said, I can understand some reasons why the game developers chose not to do so. After all, progress through Tartarus occurs somewhat independently of progress through the main game, so events would be almost impossible to synchronize. Further, the characters available to you for any given trip to Tartarus can vary greatly from day to day, and characters getting sick or tired affects that even more, so it would be impossible to create events that depend on the presence of a particular character. However, these problems are not insurmountable. In fact, the entire Social Link system shares the synchronization problem and was still implemented well enough. That problem can be overcome for Tartarus with the same solution that helped the Social link system: keeping the different plots isolated from each other. Have the events in Tartarus depend to a reasonable extent on the events of the main plot (based on the barricades), but don't have events in the main plot depend on what happens in Tartarus. In such a case, Tartarus events and the character interactions inside would dictate how much the characters actually know about what is going on, and discussions of "where do we stand?" and "what do we do next?" would mostly take place there. Balancing all of that might require a lot of planning, but it is possible.

The other problem for putting events in Tartarus, the unreliability of characters, is not that unusual of a game design challenge, so it is actually less of a concern. There are at least two characters who are always present in Tartarus trips (the hero and Fuuka), so there will always be some kind of reliable basis for character interaction and events. Beyond that, it is a simple matter of changing scenes slightly to reflect who is available, something that occurs in a large number of games and often makes such games a bit more interesting. Having a few more scenes that might change depending on who is present would add a bit more variety to the game.

As it stands, it seems like a glaring contradiction in the game that the character's stated reason for entering Tartarus, a desire to learn more about the Dark Hour and find a way to stop the Shadows and end the threat of Apathy Syndrome, is the one thing that does not happen at all in Tartarus. Far too often, it just feels like exploring Tartarus isn't important.

Persona 3 FES: The Great Plot Twist

I have been taking a break from the game for a little bit longer than I intended, but I am already getting back into Persona 3 FES. I am really glad that this break from the game wasn't as permanent as the break I took in the middle of my first Persona 3 playthrough. Anyways, I want to write a bit about the major plot twist that occurred right before I took my break. Major plot spoilers for the game follow.

For most of the early stages of the game, the characters are given a clear goal: defeat the Twelve Shadows that appear during a Full Moon. The characters believed that, by defeating those twelve enemies, they would end the Dark Hour (the source of all of the problems facing their world) and bring their battle to an end. As such, the battle against the last of the Twelve Shadows, Hanged Man, would have been their final battle. Many events in the game point towards this battle as being the final one. For one thing, in the month before the battle against Hanged Man it became possible to actually reach the top of Tartarus, which has been one of my most important goals in the entire game. In the the last few weeks before the battle, the characters spent a lot of time talking about the upcoming final battle and their hopes for the peace that would come afterward. Even more importantly, the number of giant Shadows that serve as bosses was explicitly limited to just twelve, and the only other enemy, Strega, makes their last stand right before the battle against Haged Man, so after Hanged Man was defeated it seemed like there should be nothing left to fight. With Tartarus fully explored and no more bosses, it seemed difficult to imagine how the plot could continue.

Yet, even though a number of signs pointed towards the defeat of Hanged Man as the end of the game, it could not be ignored that there were countless indicators saying otherwise. From the beginning of the game, it was made clear that the player would spend a whole year in that world, but the battle against Hanged Man was nowhere near the end of that period of time. At the same time, there were all kinds of game elements that made it clear it was not the end yet. As just a small example, there were countless Personas left to create, there were many of Elizabeths requests left unfinished, and many characters had not yet undergone a transformation of their Personas. In fact, some of Elizabeth's few outstanding quests specifically mention areas of Tartarus that supposedly do not exist. Alongside all of this, there were a number of plot elements left unresolved, such as the true nature of the mysterious boy Pharos, the nature of the "end of the world" that Pharos speaks of, and the reason behind Aegis's desire to stay by the hero's side. With all of these factors, it is fairly clear to anyone playing the game that the defeat of Hanged Man would not be the true end, even if the aftermath of its defeat would be a complete mystery. This combination of the character's certainty of the end, the player's doubt, and the uncertainty of what will happen makes the build up to the plot twist quite exciting, and is a great success.

The final phase of the lead-in to the plot twist is one of the best parts of the whole thing. Right after Hanged Man is defeated the characters move straight into getting ready for their celebration, but signs that their goal was not really achieved appear immediately. Even though the Dark Hour was supposed to end after Hanged Man's defeat, it did not end immediately after the battle, and even though the characters do not take much notice of this fact, it may stick in the player's mind. After that, time passes in the same manner it always does, but the hero wakes up in the morning to discover that Pharos, the mysterious phantom boy and Death Social Link who has only appeared during the Dark Hour, is in his room during the daytime and speaks ominously of finally having his memory fully restored. At this point, a lot of really odd events throughout the game suddenly clicked into place for me, and Pharos' true (dangerous) nature suddenly became a lot more clear. After that, time continues on (again just as if it were a normal day of gameplay), and the characters all gather for the celebration, with two characters mysteriously absent. At the end of the celebration, though, the game cuts to the usual "broken clock" image that heralds in the Dark Hour, and a series of events occur in which Ikutsuki, a man long thought to be an ally, suddenly reveals a sinister hidden agenda, betrays everyone, and reveals that the heroes might have unwittingly doomed the world rather than save it. This betrayal is hardly hinted at (in fact, it is only really hinted at by the fact that Ikutsuki's connection to the the dark Hour problem and his ability to move freely during the Dark Hour were left unexplained, as well as the fact that he seemed unusually eager in researching the Shadows and pushing people to join the fight against the 12 Shadows), but the very fact that the player is expecting some kind of drastic plot twist at this point helps the betrayal feel more like a interesting development and an awesome moment than it might otherwise have seemed to be. Finally, Ikutsuki reveals the name of the ultimate Shadow, Death, and his intention to bring about the end of the world using Death's power, making any remaining doubt about my earlier guesses regarding Pharos to vanish from my mind.

I still have not gone very far past that point, but I am really curious as to how the game will go from here. This plot twist not only extends the length of the game, but it transforms the nature of the story entirely. So far, the game has mostly been a story about the heroes following orders given to them by Kirijo and Ikustuki as they slowly defeated the "Monsters of the Month" one by one. Now, the characters have no clear goals, no one more knowledgeable than them to guide them, and no clear "Monster of the Month" to fight. The structure of the game itself has not changed, but the plot can not remain as it has, which means that this next part of the game may have an even more complex and interesting plot than the first part.