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*** This review may contain spoilers ***
In order to save room, I won't go over the gameplay elements or storyline of the original Persona. You can go to the Persona IMDb page and see my review for that if you need to know.Persona 3 FES is divided into two parts:The Journey, and the Answer.The Journey is a sort of director's cut of the original. The entire original game is in there, with bonuses. These include new activities, new social links, more events, more personas, more requests, and a new fusion system that allows you to use your personas to create new weapons. The main storyline and such is exactly the same as the original, however this ne versio is worth giving a play not only for the new features, but c' mon, it's Persona 3, if any game is worth a replay it's that one.As you may have guessed from that tidbit, The Journey was the Triumph. Now we get to the disappointment.Warning:IF YOU HAVE NOT PLAYED THE ORIGINAL, THE ENDING WILL BE SPOILED IN THE FOLLOWING SECTION. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.THe second half is called "The Answer". This is an all new 30+ hour game that wraps everything up. The story takes place some time after the original. SEES is disbanding, Mitsuru and Akihiko preparing to leave while the others are moving to a new dorm. Eveyrone is still bummed about the death of the main character from the original game, especially Aegis. However they get litl time to mourn as they find themselves in a ne dilemma. They have been trapped in the dorm, and time is stuck on March 31st. This happens just after they meet Aegis's sister Metis, who initially attacks them. She leads them to a dungeon called the Abyss of time, which they must go through to find a way out.The storyline is awesome. We get more glimpses into the past of the characters, and especially towards the end becomes extremely emotional and intense, with some killer twists. The ending is touching and leaves you sad knowing the Persona 3 story is comeplete.However, I can not give the same praise to the gameplay. Losing the social links, school days and all the other tidbits that made the original so much fun really hurt the game. The only thing to do is fuse Personas, buy stuff, and dungeon crawl. Oh boy is the dungeon crawling hard! There is no eays mode, so once your character dies in a battle, it's game over and you have to start from where you last saved. The enemies are also wicked strong right from the beginning. Just like the original, there are floor bosses however while the original had a check point on the floor where you could go back to ground level if you were weary and be able to instantly go back to that floor whenever you wanted, "The Answer" dosen't have that. Which means if you want to face the bosses at full strength, you're going to have to dodge shadows for at least 6 floors. There are 7 doors, each with about two more doors before you get to the end, where a cut scene occurs.The gameplay is ABSOLUTELY PUTRID! It is simply awful, the most tedious kind of game I've played in a long time. The ONLY thing keeping me in the game was the story line. The soundtrack was changed, with mixed results. The final boss theme was no touch on the theme for the Nyx fight. However none of this can make up for such frustrating gameplay. You'll want to chuck your controller at the wall, you may just want to read a strategy guide to find the order of the cut scenes and watch them on YouTube because The Answer is just not worth playing at all.****NO MORE SPOILERS**** You can pick it up for the expanded version of the original, but you do no want to play "The Answer", just watch it on YouTube. You will save yourself a lot of grief by doing so.5/10
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