Review by: Jason McMaster

Persona 3, a nearly straight up miniaturized port of the PS2 game released in 2007, gives PSP owners a great opportunity to play one of the best JRPGS of this generation.

For the uninformed, you play a student, going to school in the day and fighting at night, providing one part social simulator and one part dungeon-crawling RPG and the twp gameplay elements blend together surprisingly well. A typical day starts off waking up and going to school. After school, you can take part in many different activities that range from after-school jobs and sports to goofing off and studying. Each action you take builds statistics that actually mean something in the game.

At night, things dramatically change.

Normally, kids don’t fight monsters, but desperate times call for desperate measures. You awaken one night, early in the game, to a large rumble and find the dorm being attacked by monsters. Finding one of the student’s weapons - an odd, gun-shaped summoning device called an “evoker” that requires you fire it into your head - you unleash your first Persona. Personas are powerful spirits that are a manifestation of one’s own psyche, which you can use to help fight against your enemies.

Your character can switch between Personas at will, allowing you a larger range of attacks. The Personas are discovered and improved by mixing and matching your currently owned stable, winning new Personas in battle, or by increasing your social links in the more... mundane parts of the game. For instance, if you become close friends with Junpei, certain levels of Personas will become available for creation. These creatures can use different types of magic that range from light and dark to ice and fire, most of which can be used as a weak point in the shadows you fight.

Combat in Persona 3 PSP is a bit improved and borrows a few pointers from Persona 4. In the original, and FES release, Persona 3 allowed only for the control of your character, with your teammates being controlled by the AI. Not this time. Your team can be controlled individually, taking out a lot of the frustration that could stem from a stupid AI choice. Also notable is that, if the main character gets knocked out, you lose the game, but now your team will sacrifice themselves to take a death blow for you. This is super handy after grinding for hours just to have to restart at the last moment. There’s nothing worse than losing a lot of work due to a clumsy misstep.