Persona 3 - Destroying the world with Apathy-Syndrome!

You're probably gasping and thinking "Why are you dissing this game?" Yes I know it’s popular, but what I don't know is why? There is so much to say I don't really know where to start off. So let’s start off with how I came to play this atrocity of a game. I heard of it from a friend who assured me it was "kinda like tales series," by know I know he was lying and he had to tell this game to someone to ease the mental scarring from playing it. If you like the tales series, stay away from this. The first thing that pulled me to this game was the movie intro. Some catchy jpop music with some weird things being shown and it doesn’t seem too bad. Now you're probably wondering what happened to that friend who suggested this to me. Well, he's dead. He got cancer from playing this game. Good going persona 3.

A lot of people say they like the graphics. The cut scenes are all cartoon-animated which I don't mind but for some odd reason, for these cut scenes, the voice actors/actresses all sound like they are mentally retarded. For example, imagine a monotone robot. Now imagine the robot singing chords. Now imagine the robot being the characters and the chords being the words and emotions of the characters. The voice acting in the cut scenes are terrible. Not only are they slow and awkward they also try and force them to be all dramatic which just amplifies the awkwardness. Outside of these cut scenes though, the voice acting is good. One of the better ones I would say with the exception of a few. They try to make the characters talk in really high pitch or a really dead voice. Don't take my word for it the first cut scene when you start the game will tell you what to expect in the voice actors. The weird ghostly boy you meet talk in a voice that drills into your brain, literally. Hearing this voice will cause brain damage. I don't know what’s with Japanese games and high pitch voices. Do they really talk like that? Then the English voice translators will try and adapt that voice making it sound creepy and forced. I don't have a thing against high pitch voices. In fact I thought the woman (Lili Taylor) that played Eleanor in The Haunting (of house hill) sounded pretty hot. Her voice was high but not forced like the ones you hear in this game.

After getting past the cut scene and the aural cancer that you caught, you are most likely going, "hmm what’s with that girl trying to kill herself? Is this game supposed to be emo?" Yes it is. Right off the start you get a kid who makes you sign your name, which is pretty interesting because you put in both your first and last names and different people talk to you using either the first or last names. For example if you put down the name "Katherine Lang," most of your friends with refer you as Katherine or Katherine-kun while all teachers and people you aren't familiar with will call you Lang. Except during voiced scenes they call you, "him, you, the new transfer student, that guy." Yeah I know they can't say your name but it’s rude. They can just not voice your name out instead of saying one of the above. Then you meet two girls who you supposedly share the dorm with. And you get a menu on 3 different choices you can pick. This happens a lot in the game. Different choices change the answers they give but have no other effect on the game. Exception is the few that actually make differences but we'll get to that soon enough. Then you'll be brought to your room to sleep and told "the first day of school is tomorrow."

The second day you successfully go to school and what is the first thing that jRPGs do when you see a new place? Yes show a million cut scenes. After sitting through the terribly voiced cut scenes you end up at school. One thing I need to point out is. Everyone in the school dresses normally in uniform except her. She's wearing pink. Isn't the point of school uniforms supposed to make everyone look the same? Why is she wearing pink? Why pink? Anyways she's the "most popular girl in school" and since you came to school with her everyone is talking about you. After getting past some sexual innuendos from a guy called Junpei who happens to know the girl you were with, Yukari. I like to point out that they use slang a lot. Expect to hear a combination of these in every voiced scene, "lame, man, dude, you shits, punk, damn, bitch, Stupei." Yes Stupei, its Junpei but Stupei. You're probably thinking this "Am I playing the right game?" Yes you are. You are playing a RPG and a high school simulator in one!

How is this a RPG and high school simulator? Well let’s put it this way. By day you are a high school student and you must go to class and listen to lectures and write exams, then after school you have to hang out with people to establish "social links." These social links are what gives you super powers. Sounds lame? Well so is the story. You have to hang out with friends, and each one is a different arcana (tarot cards). For example the first one you meet is the magician arcane, a friend in class who has the hots for a teacher and wants your advice. Remember you also need to up your stats. There are three: Academics, Charm, and Courage. Academics help you in exams while all three help you with social links. Different people like different stats. For example with high charm you can seduce that pink wearing girl, Yukari, while if you have high courage you can hang out with weird businessmen at night all alone in the mall. When you finally get back to the dorm it becomes night. At night time you can talk to the rest of your dorm mates about the same thing they said the night before, and the night before that. Really there is almost no reason to talk to them as they repeat the same thing over and over again. If you're done with whatever you want to do you can go back to your room to "study" or "sleep." If you want to you can choose to go to "tartarus."Every night at midnight all time stops and it becomes the "dark hour" an hour where everyone transmogrify into coffins. There are 25 hours in a day but "normal people" can only feel 24. Tartarus is what your school transforms into at the dark hour. And as soon as the dark hour is over the school goes back to normal. What exactly is it you ask? Well it’s a randomly generated dungeon tower.

I don't have anything against randomly generated dungeons. I'm going to focus on the high school simulator first. When you play the game you need to have two things open at once. First is your ps2 which is probably plotting a way to kill you by now after you put in the disc. Second is a computer with google open. Why google? Because you're stuck without it. For example one question asked in class is "Why is salt placed outside restaurants?" Unless you are Japanese chances are you have no idea what it’s for. Chances are you'll be googling it up. It’s to bring in business. If that isn't enough to piss you off they give you retarded questions like "Who founded Theosophy?" You probably never heard of Theosophy in your life, and you probably don't care. Sure if you fail the quizzes in class its fine, but you are expected to remember them for the exam in the coming months (game time). Exams are made up of 40% quizzes, 40% lectures in class and 20% on your academic stat. The answer is Madam Blavotsky by the way. Yeah I never heard of her either. That brings me to another point. It you're like me and don't like to read up guides on how to do things you're going to wear out google's search engine. Then you find out they aren't on google because they're Japanese. Then you have to look up a guide to find the answers. Why do they need to make this so difficult? Can't they pick something where you don't need google? I wanted a game not another class.

Outside of school you need to make friends. Doesn't sound so bad right? Wrong, your friends are jerks. You can only hang out with them on specific days for example the magician is Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Then Yukari is say for example, Tuesday, Friday. The more you hang out with friends the higher the rank becomes. It’s almost the same for every person. Level 1-3 you start getting to know them they open up to you. At around 4-6 they become emo. When you think you can't get any worse 7-9 they completely trust you with everything from their secrets to their credit card numbers. They'll fall into a pit of despair and it’s up to you to save them. And finally last but not least at level 10 they get an epiphany because of you and you two become inseparable. Congrats! You got a freaky friend for life! That’s not the worst part. If you don't hang out with them they get mad. You'll need to hang out and apologize to them to make up. You need to hang out with them WHILE studying, gaining charisma, learning courage AND going into tartarus to train your body so you don't get your ass kicked the next coming boss. You also have tons of friends to hang out with. Worst part is you can "date" girls. It isn't really dating, but more like listen to them bitch and whine then turn emo and get an epiphany. Girls get jealous if you get them above level 6. That means you can't "hang out" with any other girls. Yes hang out. You can't even talk to another girl without them flipping into a bloody rage and carving out your picture with a blood stained knife in her room while reciting a lipstick-stained piece of poetry. For some odd reason, they don't get jealous of guys. You are technically bisexual. Your guy friends hit on you give you handmade bracelets and blush at you. I don't know about you but hearing "Every time I sleep I dream of you. Every time I close my eyes you are there," from a guy is probably something I want to avoid. Before you can slam down your button going "ABORT!" he goes emo now you have to "save him." Final screwdriver in your eye moment is when you have to pick choices while "hanging out" with them. I use hanging out loosely because it’s not hanging as its more like sitting there letting them talk about themselves and how everything sucks and you are the only one who understands them and the last flickering fire remaining in their life. If you pick the wrong choices they get mad and you have to waste another day apologizing and if you choose the wrong options while apologizing you need to spend ANOTHER day attempting another apology. Some friend they are.

While doing all of the above you are also the emo rangers at night. Apparently an evil appears and it’s destroying the world! With what? An army of people eating shadows? Zombies? Airplanes that shoots bubblegum at kids? Pyramid heads? No it does it with.....APATHY SYNDROME! OH NO THE HORROR! What exactly are the symptoms of apathy syndrome? Well when you get attacked by a shadow you don't die you become sort of apathetic and sit in the corner of your room muttering to yourself not doing anything. HOLY SHIT CALL THE EMO RANGERS! You and a group of kids must now venture into tartarus and train themselves while battling a big giant shadow that comes every full moon. The rest of the time you can do whatever you want and the story sort of hangs while you make friends and enter tartarus. At the full moon, the story moves on. It's probably the worst part of the game because they try so hard to make it dramatic, and the horrible voice acting doesn't help the mood. You're wondering why I keep using emo rangers right? Well every full moon something dramatic happens and one or more of the characters die/get scarred/goes insane. After that they become depressed and emo. Then one or more of your party members will go over and tell them stuff. Then they get an epiphany and their personas morph into a more powerful form and they come back becoming super powered. Great story right? Let’s talk more about tartarus. When you first enter the tower there’s like 150 floor? 200? I can't remember but it’s fairly long. Every 5 levels is a boss. Every boss level is a two way portal to the entrance. As long as you open it you can go back to the entrance heal up and go back to fight the boss. Throughout the other levels there will be one way exits to the entrance. Well bosses aren't exactly tough at the start and they all look like the regular monsters. At least it has more variety than Bioshock I guess, mostly re-coloured enemies though. Battle is another thing I'll get into. As you climb higher and higher the bosses become further apart. By the time you reach halfway to the boss your sp and hp are low. If you don't like using items you can either, go back to the start or rush past the next 10-15 levels to find the two way portal and then go heal and fight the boss avoiding the rest of the levels.

When you battle something you can see the shadow crawl towards you. If you swing your sword and whack it before it hits you, the battle starts normally. If you miss and it touches you they get first move and if you hit them from behind you get first move. Ok think rock paper scissors. Now think persona 3 with the same rules. In battle there are different types of attacks, 3 physical and the rest elemental. Slash, pierce and strike for physical. Fire, ice, wind, lightning, dark, light for the elements. Where's earth? Yeah it doesn't even have earth. Most shadows are either weak to a few elements/attacks or strong/immune/reflect elements/attacks. You have no idea what they are weak or strong against. Unless you "scan," which takes a few turns. If you hit something that has a weakness with its weakness it falls down on the floor and you get another free turn. This allows you to chain combos. If you hit a fallen one it gets up and you lose your chain. If you manage to knock every mob on the ground you get a super move that pretty much kills everything on the screen. Now here is the best part. Your hero can switch persona in battle. Each persona has different skills and you can morph persona together to make new ones. But each one of your personas has a different strength and weakness. Technically the shadows can do the same to you, and they do it often. Also I need to mention that if you are knocked down the next turn will be spent “getting up.” So you're dead if you have a weakness out. Your friends cannot change personas so their weakness and strengths are always there. And to put salt on the wound, they can't be controlled either. You can tell them to "support/heal, full out attack, no command, knock down, assist target." Those generally don’t do much. Unless you scanned the weaknesses, they will not knock down a target with the weakness. If you give them no commands they do whatever, and they usually do stupid things like waste all your consumables or randomly attack knocked down targets. If you use support/heal they heal you and then they start attacking. Where’s the support? Only if you give them no commands will they cast support skills.

Let’s put a situation here. A boss is a giant bird who is weak to nothing and strong against wind. It casts lightning and ice moves. You got a few allies. One is weak to ice strong on lightning one is weak to lightning but strong on pierce, one is strong on ice but weak to fire. One is strong to dark weak to light. One is strong to wind but weak to fire. Ok which ones to bring. Obviously the one that’s not weak to ice and lightning right? Well here’s the problem. You haven't trained them so you might as well bring the ones you trained right? Ok now the boss gets stronger. It casts full party lightning. Everyone is at half health and the guy is knocked down. It gets another move. It casts full party ice. The guy wakes up another guy is knocked down. It gets another move. The worst part is your party is bad at managing healing. You're down to 60/200 health another person is down to 200/800. The ai will heal the 200/800 because it’s technically a lower percentage than you. Ok now the boss flicks you with a feather. You flop. Game over even though the rest of your party is alive. Yes you die the game is over. You can resurrect others but they can't resurrect you. The best part is when everything can spam instant death. Instant death comes in two elements light and darkness. If you’re strong to light or darkness you get a less chance to get hit by instant death, if you're immune you don't get hit at all, reflect you bounce it back. If you are weak though, the chances increase. The best part is any random shadow will have it. You are grinding in tartarus you get ambushed by a pack of shadows 4 of them. Each one cast instant death. Mudoon for example, full party instant death 60% chance of success. If you are strong to dark or immune it usually means you are weak to light. If they cast Hamaon 60% chance of success light elemental instant death. You are dead because you choose to block Mudoon.

Sometimes they don't even need to do that. Sometimes a battle starts and you happen to use a persona that’s weak to ice, it cast bufudyne and you take 80% of your health. Now enemy ai is set that it will exploit weaknesses. And when they get a weakness they will cast another move to combo. For example a shadow called the red tank or something in one of the levels cast fire and has a skill called vile assault. Vile attack does double damage on fallen down targets. You have like 500 health. It casts Agi and it does like 30. You fall. You're thinking whew this guy is a pushover. Vile assault does 800 damage. You are dead. You lost one hour of grinding and now there’s a hole in your tv. After replacing your tv and getting the cast off your hand you can try again. Now we get to that big shadow looming over every full moon. Unless you train in tartarus you cannot beat it. But if you climb up high in tartarus you will eventually hit a stop. You can't go futher unless you defeat the shadow. This can technically be reached in the first few week of a month if you seriously sit down to grind. Also in tartarus you will get tired if you train too long forcing you to go back. When you are tired you do less damage and get healed less while being more prone to get critical striked. Why is critical bad? It’s like a weakness. You get bonus damage dealt on you and knocked down. Ok so we got to the end, what do you do for the rest of the month? Hang out with friends I suppose. By the end of the game, you're running out of friends and all your stats are maxed. The last few months are done going to class and sleeping the rest of the day. What’s worse is the game gives you two months of summer vacation. No classes and you can't hang out with friends from school. You can only wait for them to call you. They call randomly to hang out every Sunday. Thing is, you can't rank up on those days. You can only improve the relationship but the rank doesn't move unless YOU ask them out. So you can’t rank up you can’t do anything. Wait! What if I didn't train before the big boss comes? Well restart your game because you're stuck. You don't have enough days to train left because you'll get tired and your party members automatically leave you when you are in tartarus.

The best strategy is to go healer while setting everyone else to full assault. But the best healer is the lovers arcana. So what about the rest of the arcanas? They’re useless because the ai is just so unreliable at healing that you will have to do it yourself. Not to mention if they get weakness exploited they are useless. You can pick a healer without a weakness. The levels are horribly balanced as well. Most of the time the bosses in tartarus are harder than the bosses that come in the full moon. But unless you beat it you cannot move on. In persona 3 FES (festival) they added things in combat like maid uniforms, bondage gear, and swimsuits. Why the hell do you want to fight shadows in bondage gear?

Who the hell wants to fight shadows and got to school at the same time? They tried to make it unique, and although you have to admit it is, there are just too many flaws to this. I never played persona 1 or 2 or any of the series that spawned the persona series but it'll be safe to say, I don't care and I don't want to know.