NOW IT’S PERSONA-L
Bizarre and winding is the road to playing through just Persona’s core entries, though it has to be said, every game in the series has been released officially in English, which is more than you can say for a lot of Shin Megami Tensei. No doubt its presence in English since the ’90s has helped establish this subseries as the usurper it is today.
The first game was originally released as Revelations: Persona in English (and UK players had to be import it from the US). Retaining SMT’s first-person dungeon crawling with top-down overworld navigation, it plays similarly to those older entries with the big change being that multiple human characters summon demons – known as personas here – for magical attacks, rather than the demons being party members themselves. Fights also take place in third-person across a grid layout, better visualising some of the concepts from earlier titles.
Everything takes place in a town overrun by the subconscious of a high
“HUMAN CHARACTERS SUMMON DEMONS – KNOWN AS PERSONAS – FOR MAGICAL ATTACKS.”
school girl; it’s up to her classmates to save her by combing through maze-like dungeons. The notion of accepting the persona given by the mysterious Philemon gives the party an opportunity to face their own inner demons as well. The sequel duology Persona 2: Innocent Sin, and Persona 2: Eternal Punishment takes this further with deeper character writing, and expands on the idea of the shared consciousness of a population having the power to shape the world around them (eventually bringing conspiracy theories to life).
However, for the English-language release of Revelations: Persona some bizarre edits were made, including the axing of the Snow Queen route (a sort of extra-challenging bonus campaign that nevertheless has some great narrative moments). And of Persona 2’s PS1 releases, only the sequel, Eternal Punishment, was translated into English. It wasn’t until PSP’s launch, along with enhanced releases of Persona and Persona 2: Innocent Sin, that we could appreciate them as intended (frustratingly, the similarly enhanced PSP version of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment never came out in English – though the classic version was at least downloadable on PS3.
SEES OF CAKE
With Persona 3, which introduced huge changes that paid off big-time, this sub-series began to take off. You play as a transfer student who discovers that Tatsumi Port Island exists in the spectral shadow of Tartarus, a huge tower that appears only during a hidden ‘Dark Hour’ and sends out shadows to drain the life of the town’s citizens. Attending school doesn’t just provide ample structure to meet and team up with fellow persona-users in order to put a stop to all that, it forms the backbone of the school-year-long story as it plays out day after day. Managing your social life to power up your persona’s abilities is as important as grinding through the dungeon.
The release of SMT III between the second and third Persona games meant that when it came to combat Persona 3’s developers had muchimproved foundations to build upon, evolving Press Turn into the OneMore system. It was a simpler approach to the momentum-based combat that rewarded players with powerful All-Out Attacks. However, in dialling into the essentials the
developers perhaps went too far when it came to the game’s AI-controlled party members, though thankfully you’re given direct control again in the PSP release and the recent remake. While demon fusing also returned, this was simplified as well, with enemies replaced by shadows, so you earn demons as cards rather than battling and negotiating with them.
Persona 4 took all this further without changing the combat too much. Instead, the focus was on having a stronger, more complex narrative that saw you unravelling a small-town murder mystery and progressing through multiple dungeons instead of a single tower.
It’s easy to see how Persona 4 led to Persona 5, with the discrete dungeons getting built out into fully explorable spaces. Each is a psychological space within a character’s mind (as Phantom Thieves, you’re stealing the hearts of corrupt figures). But P5’s developers also looked back to prior SMT games when seeking areas to improve. Demons return in combat. As do negotiations. And while the baton pass made the One-More system slicker, previously cut elements and equipment types (such as guns!) returned to add a smidge more complexity to how you build your team, with this further enhanced in P5 Royale through demon attributes.
None of these SMT sub-series is truly siloed off. Though each feels unique, there’s been a constant exchange of ideas throughout its history. SMT V isn’t just a sequel to SMT III and SMT IV, it’s also a sequel to Persona 5, to SMT: Devil Summoner, and more. It’s history in the making.