Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3
PS2, 1 player, $79.95
******
By Andrew P Street
It’s a testament to how far game technology has progressed that the award-winning Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 looks downright quaint: Sims-ian 3D models gesticulate wildly in the in-game play while anime cut scenes intersperse the chapters (and dominate the first couple of hours of play).
Released in Japan in 2006, it all looks adorably low-fi compared with the slew of next-gen games that have emerged in the interim. You play as the unnamed main character, an orphaned teenager who turns up at Gekkoukan High School and finds himself enlisted into SEES (the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad) after using his “persona” (a powerful spirit avatar) to defeat the monsters that are taking over the school and are somehow connected with Tantalus: a massive tower that mysteriously appears in the school at midnight.
Like Buffy, your battles against the dark forces must be balanced with successful completion of real-world tasks like study and school club activities: the development of social links and skills in the “real” world of the game is necessary for your character to strengthen your various Personae.
More controversial is that characters access their personas by firing their “evoker”, which looks much like a handgun, into their head; every battle is a bunch of teenagers seemingly blowing their brains out (although the lack of Shin Megami Tensei-themed teen suicide cults suggests that parents shouldn’t start picketing THQ just yet).
If you have 80-odd hours to kill, Persona 3 takes the familiar tropes of JRPGs to create something impressively original.