SMT's more popular spinoff, Persona takes some of the base elements from the mainline games (fusing monsters to make better ones, high school students fighting monsters) and puts them in an Urban Fantasy setting, as opposed to SMT's more After the end setting. It also focuses more on character development than big religious stories about the natures of freewill.
The first two games (or three, as Persona 2 was split into two halves) are very strange, being a more straight up cross between the mainline games and what persona 3 and 4 would do with the series. Hell, persona 1 was actually a straight up first person dungeon crawler like smt 1 and 2 and a few other series spinoffs. The story focused on the battle between a deity representing human strength (compassion, valor, etc.) and another representing human weakness (greed, lust, hatred etc.) They were mostly serviceable games, albeit with some weak and repetitive gameplay.
Persona 3 came out on the ps2 awhile after the second (third) game and it's here the series really found its legs and niche appeal. The deities are gone, with only Igor, the good deities assistant reprising his role, and are replaced with shadows (beings of negative emotion) as the main antagonist. The gameplay took a drastic shift for the better, with the game being set over the course of 1 school year, divided into days. During the day time, you go to school, can hangout with friends, go to the mall, eat at a restaurant, and other normal human stuff. However, each night at mid night, an event known as the dark hour occurs and you and your party of other high school students go out to fight shadows (read the persona 3 page for more plot info.) This game also introduced social links, a now staple of the series. Each social link represents a Tarot Arcana and the better friends you become with the person who represents the link, the stronger your personas of that arcana become. Also, you summon your persona by shooting yourself in the head. (Hence the title of the review)
Persona 4 is where the series apparently found mainstream appeal. It focuses on high schoolers trying to solve a serial murder case by going inside TV's. That's as normal as this series gets. Everything has been refined in P4, from the battle to the social links to the story pacing. It's arguably the best game in the entire franchise of SMT.
SMT's more popular spinoff, Persona takes some of the base elements from the mainline games (fusing monsters to make better ones, high school students fighting monsters) and puts them in an Urban Fantasy setting, as opposed to SMT's more After the end setting. It also focuses more on character development than big religious stories about the natures of freewill.
The first two games (or three, as Persona 2 was split into two halves) are very strange, being a more straight up cross between the mainline games and what persona 3 and 4 would do with the series. Hell, persona 1 was actually a straight up first person dungeon crawler like smt 1 and 2 and a few other series spinoffs. The story focused on the battle between a deity representing human strength (compassion, valor, etc.) and another representing human weakness (greed, lust, hatred etc.) They were mostly serviceable games, albeit with some weak and repetitive gameplay.
Persona 3 came out on the ps2 awhile after the second (third) game and it's here the series really found its legs and niche appeal. The deities are gone, with only Igor, the good deities assistant reprising his role, and are replaced with shadows (beings of negative emotion) as the main antagonist. The gameplay took a drastic shift for the better, with the game being set over the course of 1 school year, divided into days. During the day time, you go to school, can hangout with friends, go to the mall, eat at a restaurant, and other normal human stuff. However, each night at mid night, an event known as the dark hour occurs and you and your party of other high school students go out to fight shadows (read the persona 3 page for more plot info.) This game also introduced social links, a now staple of the series. Each social link represents a Tarot Arcana and the better friends you become with the person who represents the link, the stronger your personas of that arcana become. Also, you summon your persona by shooting yourself in the head. (Hence the title of the review)
Persona 4 is where the series apparently found mainstream appeal. It focuses on high schoolers trying to solve a serial murder case by going inside TV's. That's as normal as this series gets. Everything has been refined in P4, from the battle to the social links to the story pacing. It's arguably the best game in the entire franchise of SMT.