Revelations: Persona

    

     After hearing a lot of internet commotion around the Persona series, and being stuck in quarantine this past six months, I decided to play through Atlus' Persona series. The Persona series is a spinoff of the Shin Megami Tensei franchise, and its first entry was released in 1996, titled Revelations: Persona. It was released for the Playstation 1, with a Playstation Portable remake released in 2009. The game was also added to the Playstation Classic's lineup of games. It's a JRPG featuring high school students using the powers of different identities, being personas, as they attempt to discover the cause behind supernatural happenings in their town. I played through the PSP version of the game from start to finish and I have some thoughts on it.

    First off, you may ask why I chose to play through the PSP version of the game, and we're already off to a complicated start. The Playstation 1 version famously has localization issues. A lot of it has been Americanized in numerous ways. Characters were made to look either more white or racially diverse. Famously the character Masao was renamed Mark and was race-swapped to be black. Most of the references to Japanese culture was also removed, which isn’t a deal-breaker to many, but it most certainly isn’t the way the game was intended to be experienced. Additionally, the North American release has some issues with battle outcomes, causing a lack of cash to buy necessary equipment some ways through the game.

On the other side of things, the PSP version has problems of its own. It goes back to the heavy Japanese culture and original character designs. The gameplay balance is also more in line with the original Japanese release. All of which are positives, however, the soundtrack was completely redone. Gone is the more tone appropriate music, but replaced with upbeat jpop. Not really bad music per se, but it can cause some tonal clash throughout the game. And, again not a deal breaker just not the intended way to play. Additionally, the game still looks quite bad. So which is the better version to play? Well, probably the PSP version since it is closer to the original vision but it still comes with its own cons. 

The story is that a silent Japanese or American depending on the version, kid and a couple of other high school students play the Persona game, a fortune-telling bloody mary-esque thing, which brings them to an encounter with Philemon, the series’ resident good guy God. He tells the gang that they are now able to summon Personas, powerful representations of their inner selves, which can be used in battle. Thus the cast is set to investigate supernatural happenings in their town. From there, there are two branching story methods, the SEBEC and Snow Queen quest, each of which are similar enough at their simplest. Both quests have the cast stop the end of the world by killing a God, with the central theme of being true to your self. None of the characters are that interesting, with a few exceptions, and the story itself never feels like it expands beyond “your typical RPG jaunt”

Gameplay-wise, the game is broken up into two sections; dungeon crawling and battles. The dungeon crawling is in a first-person perspective. You navigate through tight corridors in order to find objectives, items, and random encounters. The issue is that the corridors are so tight I found myself staring at the minimap more than the game screen itself most of the time. In individual rooms, the game goes back to a third person perspective you’re used to with classic JRPGs of the era. Despite much of the game being a fairly normal JRPG, the battles do have a lot more going on. The encounters are random and turn-based, but otherwise much of the mechanics are unique. Every character has different weapons from both standard melee attacks and firearms, which they attack in a grid format. This means that wherever your party is positioned can affect which enemies they can attack.

The aforementioned personas are where the biggest gameplay mechanics come into play. personas have most of your magic attacks and have type strengths and weaknesses. It isn’t unlike Pokemon in this way. However, each character can swap personas with new ones you get throughout the game. Each character also has different compatibilities with each persona. By talking to enemies and performing actions that raise the eagerness stat the enemies will give you persona arcana cards. There are several different arcanas. This whole mechanic is called “demon negotiating.” After collecting enough cards you can give them to the freak show in the Velvet Room, another series staple, in exchange for different personas. Which dialogue options do what and how many cards you get probably have a method to them, but you will spend much of the game thinking they’re completely arbitrary. There are other emotions you can make the enemies express which can grant you more xp, or money, or sometimes make them attack you more aggressively. I swear it’s not as complicated as it sounds, but it takes some time to get a handle on it. 

With all the descriptions out of the way, the million-dollar question is would I recommend Revelations: Persona, both on its own merits and as a necessary part of the franchise? The answer to both is no. Revelations: Persona is by no means a bad game, but there aren’t a lot of reasons to play it anymore. For starters, you have the obvious issue of the two different versions having their own startling downsides. The characters and plot are nothing to write home about, and the gameplay can often feel convoluted and drawn out. It doesn’t help that random encounters are never something that’s particularly enjoyable either. Even visually the game isn’t that bad, but it’s quite boring. Again, none of it is awful, but out of all the games out there, especially the JRPG’s of the 90s, it’s extremely bland. I played it in August and I still had to google a lot of info just to remember what the hell happened. 

I find a lot of the love for the first entry from longtime Persona fans are superfluous in their reasoning. A lot of people like the inclusion of Philemon and that other characters can use different Personas, both are noticeably absent from Persona games after 2, but 2 still has them nonetheless. I’d argue both aspects are more interesting in 2 anyways. Most of the mechanics, besides the board placement, are in future Persona games and are done better. You want demon negotiating, Persona 2 and 5 have that. The first person view for dungeon crawling isn’t fun but hey it comes back in the Persona Q spinoffs. Hell, even the characters almost all come back for Persona 2. All of these aspects aren’t unique to Revelations: Persona, nor are they that important or good in that game. 

Final Thoughts: Revelations: Persona is a fine enough game. It doesn’t do anything, besides the first-person dungeon crawling, particularly bad. The game is just bland. Even for its time, the game doesn’t hold a candle to JRPG’s like Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger. With time it has become even more mediocre with the series expanding to greater heights. The game isn’t really memorable, and at times the grinding can get annoying, as with most RPGs. If you really want to see the series roots and have a PSP, there are worse games to be playing. That said, I wouldn’t recommend it nor would I ever consider playing it again

2/5

ugh