as an important note, this review was lifted directly from my backloggd, which is where most of my reviews for games specifically end up going. the Mr. Bones review was lifted from there too, so if you wanna go check that page out, click here. and now that that's been addressed, no more stalling, here's me talking about Persona 1 for way too damn long.

alright ive got a LOT to say about this one. persona 1 was a fuckin baller game, im so glad i finally played this and i had a great time overall. it's got its problems, yes, but i can excuse them for what it brings to the table in terms of story, atmosphere, characters and an awesome negotiation system that i personally think is a lot more interesting than mainline smt or the later personas.

(before we begin, i must clarify that i ended up on the SEBEC route for this playthrough. i also played revelations: persona before the psp version, although i only got up to about the end of the SEBEC building there.)

first, i wanna begin with what i loved about this game. the first two personas (first three if you count both the games in the persona 2 duology as their own separate entities) are a lot closer to SMT than the modern personas, those being p3 and onward, and i like that format a lot more. they feel like more traditional rpgs, and i just mesh with that way more than the social sim thing the modern personas have going on. i also think this game's presentation is impeccable, the spritework on display here is super clean and good looking, and i've always really liked the first person dungeon crawler thing that early smt has going on, although i acknowledge that it isn't for everyone. each enemy has loads of unique animations for specific moves, and i really like a lot of the persona designs, mokosh and gozu-tennoh are some ones that come to mind. the protagonists were great, i got super attached to em, especially nanjo and brown. nanjo's arc with yamaoka was really captivating to me, and i liked brown's character development, it's a pretty silly concept (if you know you know) but it didn't dive too deep into that silliness and kept things pretty grounded in the end. i also think that the story and setting have this really surreal and unique atmosphere that's super reminiscent of something like SMT if... which makes sense, considering that if... is usually associated with being somewhat of a proto-persona. i think that being inside a character's mind made for an undeniably unique atmosphere that had a lot of pretty wild moments, with stuff like the harem queen, tesso's fight, and alaya cavern's scene where the protagonist literally talks to himself, it's got this sort of creepy vibe to it that i can't get enough of. i also like that this game wasn't afraid to get freaky with it at times, pandora's first form comes to mind, that shit was NUTS to see for the first time. i also didn't find myself needing a guide all that often, the game does a good job of letting you know where to go which i was not expecting. i only ever used a guide to figure out where to go when i hadn't played for a couple days and couldn't remember what the last story beat was, which is pretty impressive for an rpg from 1996. and like i said in my preamble, i think the negotiation system here is super fucking good, it's a lot more intuitive than mainline smt and feels a lot less reliant on luck. if you know your enemy's personality types well enough, you can somewhat intuit what the best things to say would be to get what you want, whether that be a card, a certain status effect, taking an enemy out of the battle or getting a certain item,and it feels like it's a lot more intertwined with the combat than something like mainline smt, where negotiation and combat feel VERY isolated from each other. unfortunately, with that said, this leads me into one of the things i like the least about persona 1, and just persona in general.

let's get into my issues with this game now. issue one, i really don't like the fusion mechanics at play here, and that kind of applies to all the personas, from what ive seen of them. unlike mainline smt, you dont directly recruit and fuse demons, instead you get their card, which you then fuse to create personas, which are what you equip in battle. personas determine what skills you have, your stat distribution, and even stuff like your weaknesses and resistances. if you've played smt3, think of personas sort of like magatamas from that game. i think that that part of this system is pretty cool, and i dont really have any issues with that. my main problem comes from the fact that once you create a persona, you're stuck with it, and you cant use it to fuse another persona or anything like that. that, along with the lack of a compendium, makes creating the exact persona you want a REALLY frustrating task at times, because for every persona you make, you have to go out and find the demon you want the card of, negotiate with them to get it, and that's not even accounting for if youre the right level to get the card in the first place. it just makes things needlessly tedious, and on top of that, certain personas require you to get a special totem to fuse them, some of which can only be gotten by maxing out the rank of another persona, then returning them to get the item they turn into. ranking up personas takes EONS here, and it's what made my endgame grind take so damn long. speaking of that endgame grind, during that i found out that being able to summon personas isn't determined by your character's level, its determined by their persona level. i went 141 hours in this game without fully understanding this mechanic, and it doesn't feel intuitive or necessary at all. in normal smt, the demons you can summon are just determined by your main characters level, which makes perfect sense. here, they feel like it's necessary to split them up into two separate levels, which just feels dumb. i also didn't really vibe with the battle system, it seems cool in concept, having to take your party's locations into account in order to be able to attack enemies with certain attacks, but in practice it just felt like more of a hassle than anything. this leads me directly into my next section, stuff that they changed in the psp version from the ps1 version!

so like i said in that little note near the beginning, i started out playing the ps1 version of this game back in like february or something, and played the game for about 40 hours and only got up to around the end of the sebec building. the ps1 version, while being a really fascinating creature that i'd love to delve into at some point, felt crazy archaic and slow at times. one thing that especially confused me was the battle system, sometimes i'd go to attack and it'd say things were out of range and give no further explanation. in the psp version, they added markers on the ground to show your attack ranges, which is a great addition that really helped me to understand things more. the psp version is also a lot faster in general, ESPECIALLY in battle. the battles in the ps1 version drove me nuts, every animation, while being pretty cool and full of character and great sprite work, were pretty lengthy and slow, and just made every encounter feel like a slog. the psp version speeds things up by giving an option to skip battle animations, which is greatly appreciated. of course, the most well known thing about the ps1 version is all of its crazy localization changes, which i find endlessly fascinating. they changed so many character designs, names, and even took out an entire route for some reason. the script translation was also pretty rough, and a lot of dialog just doesn't hit the same. that being said, i think the ps1 version's attempts to "westernize" persona are really interesting, especially with the name changes. if you ever get the chance, go look at the cutting room floor page for persona 1, it's a great read. with all that said, the psp version de-localizes the game, keeping things pretty much entirely intact from the original japanese ps1 version. the script is a lot better and sounds more natural, the characters retain their names and designs, and the story is fully intact. but... i dunno, i kinda like how shitty the ps1 version is. it doesn't help that the psp version has a completely different (and, in my opinion, lamer) soundtrack that's meant to be more in line with the later persona games. (although it definitely grew on me as i played, especially Bloody Destiny, that song fuckin rocks) they also changed a lot of the menus that i thought were pretty cool looking in the original, but even i can admit that they're just a lot more practical in the psp version. but like... i dunno, i kinda liked how shitty and weird the ps1 version was. i'll never not call nanjo "nate", or brown "brad", those names just sorta stuck with me more. they also added all these 3D prerendered cutscenes in the psp version that just... don't look all that great to me. to be fair, the ps1 version also has a handful of 3D prerendered cutscenes with philemon, but like those are kinda cute and charming with how jank they look. in the famous words of MarshSMT, the psp version's cutscenes look like a canadian cartoon show from the 2000s. also, this is a SUPER minor nitpick from me, but they changed some of the battle cry sound effects in the psp version, and maki no longer says "you're dead!" when she summons her persona for a spell, and i dont like that :(

overall, persona 1, while flawed in a few areas, is ABSOLUTELY worth your time, and really struck a chord with me that not many of the other personas really did. if you're willing to put up with some weird mechanics and look up a few resources (specifically the persona 1 wikidot, that thing was essential in my playthough) you're sure to get a lot out of this game. i know it looks like i had a lot more bad to say than good about p1 but that's just cuz i went a bit more in depth with those points, and honestly, a lot of those are just my personal preferences. if you like modern persona, you've got to at least give this game a shot, it has a lot of merit and can still be enjoyed today.