Do you enjoy Jrpgs or Rpgs in general? Persona 3 FES takes you through an everyday high school life with a twist. Of course you have the boring school day, filled with lectures and tests but at night is when the heat kicks up. You the protagonist get to fight during a special time of night called the dark hour. The dark hour being a time between 12-1. You and your friends fight with personas, manifests of power that have been awaken by the user. Your friends are limited to one but you can harness up to 12 different personas. Welding special guns called evokers that only work during the dark hour, you take on grueling dungeons and bosses making your way to the top of a huge tower named Tartarus. Each month you encounter a super boss that follows the power of a certain arcana. While still dealing with high school you work to manage both. With tragedy and obstacles in your way, you must fight to rid the world of the dark hour.

Persona 3 FES does have a similar combat system to Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne and the Digital Devil Saga series. The combat is a turn style with only the main character  being controlled by the player. The AI system is a very important part in the game. Although it seems to do the job, it sometimes lacks a little in this area. It does fairly well at choosing the correct skills and items at the time needed. Being able to choose the commands the allies use makes up for this though. This does give the players a control over what the party does while still maintaining the illusion that your allies are your friends and not just robots that you can tell when to do, which gives the game some credit.

Social links are a very important part of the game. It's the whole other aspect to this game. Besides fighting at night you get to develop social links with your friends classmates during the day. Each link provides you with side stories about the character to get to know them more. Developing social links can also help with creating personas to use in battle. The choices you make depend on how the rest of the link will play out. It's a wonderful way of handling the theme of responsibility, of giving it a real impact in the game, as it forces players to own up to the choices they make.

The soundtrack for Persona 3 FES was an unexpected shift in the style of series composer Shoji Meguro. His earlier works are more or a flexible style whereas Persona 3 FES has more of a modern rock and rap theme. This does make his work a little more unrecognizable but does show Mr. Meguro’s flexibility as a composer. The music flows well with that game but does get in the way of a character speaking at some points. The voice acting is pretty good as well but flows the same pattern of the music overlapping. Each ally has something to say during battle making it hard to focus on both the music and the game. Still, the music makes up for it with the unique style and sound.

Persona 3 Fes is closely related to Persona 3. Persona 3 FES adds a after story for what happened to the main character at the end of the game. This adds a tasteful after story that brings in the whole game. Being a game that came out over 12 years ago the graphics did age pretty well. Being on the Playstation 2 also helped it gain popularity in the gaming community. If your prepared for up to 100 hours of gameplay, then picking Persona 3 FES will be a blast for you. In the end, Persona 3 FES is a very well thought-out piece of game design that should appeal not only to series fans, but to anyone looking for a unique experience.

I give the game a 8/10. While it does have age to it I wouldn't mind picking it up on the weekend and giving it a play. Overall I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys jrpg or rpgs in general.