(Image source: Atlus.)

“What gives you life? What makes you realize you’re alive?”

Those are the questions The Answer, Persona 3 FES‘s bonus chapter, purportedly addresses. However, after sinking 30-plus hours into the add-on, gamers will be inclined to suggest “How do we entice fans of the original P3 to buy P3F and then proceed to alienate them?” as a reasonable alternate.
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(Image source: Persona 3 FES ending.)

There are moments when Persona 3 FES, a game from a Japanese developer, seems very Japanese.

That the writer(s) were concerned with the way Japanese society was heading is clear from the allusions in the game to the hikikomori and Aum Shinrikyo. And it’s telling the game’s attitude towards The Lost, the hopelessly apathetic victims of the Shadows, is handwringing about the effect on society rather than heartfelt concern for the individual victims themselves. The collective comes before the individual in Japan, and self-sacrifice as a means to protect others is a recurring and another very Japanese theme in P3F.

But there are also moments in the game when the player is faced with more personal yet universal concerns. There are few games that leave you contemplating life, death and what it means to live with the knowledge of its inevitable end.
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After 108-plus hours played, I’ve completed Persona 3 FES. What an extraordinarily annoying final battle that was. It took me three tries to beat the Ultimate Bad Guy in what were protracted struggles that epitomised everything that’s awful about boss battles. Gaming as a whole will be much improved when designers finally manage to distinguish between challenge and tedium, and recognise gamers should be presented with one and spared the other.

What followed afterwards was equally extraordinary but more welcome by several orders of magnitude. There were several powerful and affecting moments in P3F’s finale that would leave only the most stonehearted of gamers unmoved, with plenty to reflect upon after the console has been shut down.

The Journey has come to an end, but The Answer remains undiscovered.

(Original image source: Persona 3 FES intro.)

The player character in Persona 3 FES is a mystery even to the player. An orphaned teenager with powers far beyond his SEES teammates, he may well be the single most powerful entity in the game.
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One of the things I like about RPGs is that they tend to be long. There’s no five-hour RPG and a 10-hour RPG would be a notable aberration. A 20-hour romp would seem to be the norm these days and a game that takes double that time from start to finish would not be uncommon. The genre usually offers a lot of game for your buck.

In writing terms, that allows plenty of time to develop story and characters, to give both body and nuance. In gameplay terms, there’s enough time to accommodate complex game systems. Skill development can be deep and combat systems can be sophisticated since players have plenty of time to explore and experiment.

RPGs can, of course, wear out their welcome. Final Fantasy XII was a game too long for its own good. I gather the game can be completed in 40 hours and I’m assuming that was accomplished by a gamer experienced with the mechanics and not averse to referring to FAQs and forum posts for help when stumped. I took 100 hours to finish FF12 — that’s excluding the hours of failed attempts — and I was ready for the game to be over at the 50-hour mark.

It was particularly frustrating because Square Enix never made good use of my invested time. The story elements were barely developed and the characters never fully realised. The game was just dragging on. Once the “I beat the game!” buzz wore off, I looked back on the experience with little fondness. I expect I might pop in the DVD-ROM again at some point in the future to complete the optional content I bypassed but there’s absolutely no way I would want to replay the game from beginning to end.
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