SMT: Persona 3

Here Atlus shows us how to renew a good rpg:

- Step 1: Face-wash, adapt the graphic style to a more current and attractive one, while keeping the cool "disgusting" style of some designs. Also the jump from 2d to 3d is very well done. Same with music, it choose to go with pop music which gives it a unique style, plus the songs are excellently composed, I absolutelly love the soundtrack!

- Step 2: Maintain the core mechanics, dark atmosphere, challenging turn based combat, dungeon exploring, demons, fusions... Though it dropped the demon negotiation which is still a core feature on the Shin Megami Tensei main series.

- Step 3: New additions, appart from fusions, personas are obtained as a post-battle reward. And the main addition of the game are the social links. This consists in doing social activities with the many characters that appear on the game's world which allows to obtain more powerful fusions, new personas plus experiencing little but very interesting side-stories (damn you sun arcana!).

As negative points I would mention that exploring the tartarus can get a bit repetitive and the other negative point is that on combat the rest of the party are controlled by IA, giving problems from time to time. But thankfully this is solved in the PSP version of the game where the player can control the entire party.

Finally the story is dark, long and engaging as always, maybe this time I didn't become too fond of some of the allied characters but this was compensated by the other social link characters. Also the ending... it just left an awesome feeling on me, Cry Count = 2 (Chrono Cross was the first).

Did I like it? Yes, at the end I was speechless.
I think you will like it if you:
- Don't mind a "happier" Shin Megami Tensei atmosphere
- Like jrpg
- Don't hate anime style

I rate my experience with a 9 out of 10.