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Persona 3 FES: The Journey.

The Dark Hour is an anomaly unknown to most people, hidden between 12:00 and 12:01 AM, it's a period where all humans turn into coffins, electronic equipments turn off, and monsters known as Shadows roam the world, in the middle of this is the mysterious tower of Tartarus, a bizarre building full with shadows that only appears during the Dark Hour.
You take control of the field leader of SEES (Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad) a group of students that have the ability to keep their form during this phenomenon, and it's up to you to unravel the mistery of the Dark Hour, Tartarus and the Shadows.

Part RPG, part Social Sim, P3 works on a very interesting time system.
The mornings are taken by your school, the life of a student isn't easy, so be prepared for the quiz questions, exams and all other kind of surprises that may come your way.

The afternoons give you the most freedom, the games has large supporting cast with which you can establish "Social Links", do you want to join a sports club? Maybe get yourself a girlfriend? Shouldn't somebody take care of the lonely girl in the park? It's up to you, the Journey may be set but the characters you interact with and how you do so is up to you, just be sure to remember: Time never stands still.

The night brings with it the Dark Hour, exploration of Tartarus consists of escalating it's randomly created floors and fighting the Shadows within it, combat is turn-based, but quickly paced, it's a classic elemental weakness system, but exploiting it grants you extra turns, and makes encounters fast and exciting.

The one thing combining everything together is the Velvet Room, here you can summon Personas to aid you in battle, but the amount and strength of them is derived from your Social Links, and likewise having the correct Persona in your arsenal can help your social interactions.
It's an odd combo, but it works perfectly.

As for the story, it's really engaging, the first few months are kinda formulaic (full moon, fight boss, get a party member) but the mystery of the whole situation keeps you going, and by the second half of the game, everything becomes an unforgettable rollercoaster ride with enough twists to last a lifetime.




So all in all it's a solid experience, even without the gameplay improvements of it's sucessor.... and yet... I can't help but love this one more.

I think there are two main elements to this.
First is the way the character interaction works, the main character is another silent, perfect and completely stoic RPG protagonist, but the game pokes fun at this, you will get called on that, one of your party member is clearly mad at your geenral attitude and more importantly, the character development doesn't gravitate around you, sure, the Social Links do, but the character arcs of SEES are for the biggest part independent of your interaction and have great development.
Another factor is in the combat, you can't control your party directly, so you have to learn to trust em and know their tactics to work efficiently, every character has it's own skills and priorities in combat that reflect their personalities, and that adds a new layer of attachment to them, whether it comes to Akihiko weakening the opponent, Mitsuru using Charm or Koromaru spamming Mudo every chance he gets (seriously dude, it never works, please stop.) every single one of me has it's style, and as much as thy may annoy you at some point you can bet they will save your ass after you mess up.

As for the other, it's a matter of the central motif, Persona 4 is poem about life, but Persona 3 is a grim reminder of death.
We may die at any point, and we will, that much is true for all humans, but that doesn't mean we should stop living our lives, if anything that is more reason to enjoy life to it's fullest, because even if all Journeys lead to the same goal, the way they unravel it's up to each one of us.