Persona 3 Reload + Episode Aigis

From Persona 3 onwards, this is the definition of the ‘school-life JRPG.’ That is to say, Unlike other CRPGs or JRPGS which have you do a grand quest going from town to town, region to region, continent to continent (and in some cases, across time, dimensions, planets) Persona 3 has firmly in the fictional city on the bay Tatsumi Port Island. You play as the blue haired protagonist, any name you wish on him (Though canonically he’s known as Makoto Yuki) who transfers back in after a 10 year absence to Iwatodai Dormitory. Barely having enough time to settle in, you’ll have spooky boy Pharos make you sign a contract, and you’ll notice some strange happenings, people being robbed of desire and motivation. You’ll be soon be drafted to fight monsters known as shadows in the magical time known as the Dark Hour, the time after midnight, where time stands still, and stranger things come about. You are on a barely flexible time frame, as you have the start of the school year from when you transferred, to when you move on to year 3 to figure out the Dark Hour, make friends, get strong enough, get additional weapons, armor, accessories, get as many Personas for the final battle.

Unbeknownst to them, you also have Igor, the long nosed guide who cryptically explains the plot when you sleep, and Elizabeth, now your attendant who keeps track of your your Personas via a compendium and assists in fusing them to create additional Personas. A little later, you realize you’ll have to climb up the tower known as Tartarus getting to know existing allies of the Specialized Extra Curricular Execution Squad or SEES, as well as meeting new ones. Aside from specializing in a particular melee weapon, you’ll summon various creatures, mythological gods and goddess known as Personas which give you elemental powers, divided by the 23 tarot major tarot cards, but also have weakness as well. You as the protagonist (Or protag, or MC) have ability to summon multiple Personas, whereas your allies will master one.

The non-combat gameplay is well explained, you’ll pick up on things such as social links, Persona fusions, leveling up social stats, crafting items, all blend well together. If I went through every thing here, it would make this less a review and more of an instruction manual. It assumes this is your first Persona title, though if it isn’t, its a good refresher, can pay attention to the exclusive features and mechanics Reload brings.

Now for the combat portion, when you and your allies are ready, you can take the night slot and explore Tartarus, the goal is to reach the highest floor you can in that particular run. Once you call it quits for the night, you go into the next day, and while you can usually go again, that night slot doing dungeon crawling means that you’re not improving a social stat, missing a social link, etc. Also, some characters may not be able to join you, they too have their own lives to live. So when you when you are in Tartarus you’ll have to be locked in and make full use of the time you have. This will be an endurance test as while you can get items to heal HP, SP which is Persona’s term for magic, they are expensive by design so once your team gets to a certain HP/SP point, it might be time to turn in. Your various sojourns also have deadlines so if you didn’t complete a certain section, beat a boss by that time, its game over, load up from the previous save.

Each of your SEES teammates plays a certain role, and with Reload, you’re encouraged to lean in their specialties. Yukari Takeba for example, our archer surpreme is also the party’s main healer and the more do that, a special meter fills up where you can unleash a Theurgy. Usually, its a special attack that does massive damage, helps to shorten a fight, soften that boss up. Akihiko Sanada aside from his puglism, buffs the crew, and Mitsuru Kirijo debuffs enemies and so on.

For Episode Aigis, it takes place after the events of Reload where they somehow are stuck in a space beyond time, and must work together to make their way back out with the assistance of Metis, Aigis’ sister model who has been there the whole time, as they reflect on the recent journey the undertook. This is much closer to the mainline Shin Megami Tensei titles, where the social aspect/social link is out, and lots of dungeon crawling is in. There are still cutscenes peppered throughout, but the loop that you got accustomed in Reload is replaced with a narrative that is more about reinforcing existing bonds than building up new ones, aside from Metis. You have the option to carry over your compendium from Reload if you wish, which should cut down time needed to recapture, do fusions of higher level Personas again.