Persona is an amazing series of JRPG's (Japaneese role-playing games) that literally keep the genre alive.
Persona's unique mix of half high school life simulator and half intense dungeon crawler where you put your life
on the line to save the entire world has attracted many fans over the years. It's newest installment (Persona 5 Royal)
released this March and added about 50 hours of gameplay to the already 120-hour game. What I'm trying to say is,
Persona games are big.
Another great reason to pick up a Persona game is that all Persona games take place in the same world but are
unrelated to the previous entries meaning you can play any game in the Persona series wtihout any previous experience
and not feel like you're missing something. I think that's a pretty neat thing especially considering that the creators
of Persona, ATLUS, have pretty much burried the first and second game to such an extent that even the biggest of fans have only
played three, four, four Golden, five, and five Royal with the spin offs and dancing games (don't ask) also reciving a bit of love.
You would think that, and you would be right. Except, just a month ago Persona 4 Golden, my favorite persona game,
(because it has many great characters that I don't have the time to talk about) was released on steam, a computer game service.
This means that you can play a wonderful hd remaster of a previously PS vita exclusive on PC!
As I mentioned before, Persona games share the same general premise, but all vary darastically. The general premise is that your character
is sent to a different school for a year for one reason or another. Then, you discover the shadow world and awaken your persona, a manifestation
of your desires and use it to fight and usually save the world. You get stronger by getting social links with people by getting to know them better.
this is where some of the best story elements come in, and they are completely optional (but important to the game). Also, you as the player have the
ability to make new personas and change personas, almost like pokemon, thanks to Igor (who I will talk about later).
In Persona 3, there is a discreet after school club for persona users,
and the shadow world is "the thirteenth hour", a place most other people don't know exists but the world get's weird for an added hour after midnight.
You are just stuck there for that hour every night if you have a persona, and you fully awaken your persona using an evoker, a gun like thing
that you shoot yourself in the head with).
After your archeologist parents send you to live with your uncle for an entire year in persona 4, murders keep happening in the small town of Iniba,
dead bodies with no wounds are found tied in telephone wires and hanging from telephon poles, and you discover that the murderer is using the shadow world,
which is now inside the television. You draw this conclusion because all of the people who die are shown on the midnight channel, an urban legend regarding
finding your sole mate by looking into an unplugged tv screen on a rainy midnight, don't worry about it. Also, you awaken your persona by meeting and accepting your shadow self.
this shadow self tells you your deepest darkest thoughts, and when you deny that you sometimes think those things, it attacks you. Your friends only survive because
you (the P4 protagonist's official name is actually actually Yu) already have your persona thanks to Igor (the only recurring character) who runs a place called
the velvet room. He fuses and creates personas for you, so he is in every game. Anyways, after you fight the person't shadow self, you force them to accept it and return to
your detective work.
In Persona 5, Joker (the main character's nickname) stopped a powerful man forcing himself onto a woman, and was promptly arrested for assult. He is expeled from his school
and sent to live with Sojiro, a small cafe owner, while on probation. He accidently stumbles into the shadow world (now called the metaverse) and almost dies in a "palace",
a place where somebody's intensely warped desires take shape. He summons his persona through a stressful moment when he almost gets executed. the palace turns out to be a castle
that represents how a perverted teacher veiws the school as his castle and his volleyball team as slaves for beating and sexually assulting.
(it is at one point implied that he rapes a teenage girl, these games are not for the feint of heart) Joker learns that he can make the palace dissapear and change the ruler's cognition
to make this personconfess their crimes with their own mouth (the only solution, as most teachers, the principal, and the parents know but let it happen) so Joker starts
The Phantom Theives of Heart, to make the world a less corrupt place.
Persona games are great, because they make you feel. You feel awesome during combat, you feel so very heart broken when it ends, and most importantly,
they drop one or two monents that drop your jaw all the way to the floor with the most amazing and unforseeable plot twists that I still can't get over to this day.
And that, is why I cannot stop loving everything about Persona.
Oh yeah, and all of the music in every game is sooo great. Just listen to Shadow World. It's the P4G (Persona 4 Golden) opening theme.
P.S. All of the games have a theme. P3 is about death and the passing of time, P4 is about finding truth, and P5 is about justice and how nobody is immune.
P.P.S. I'm trying to summerise the 400 hours of gameplay across 3 games into this, and even then, my plots thing is only the first 10-20 hours of gameplay.
I would love to talk about some of the best characters, but I don't have the time, as there are about 40 social links (read, individual intensely moving stories) per game.
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