Persona 3

Persona 3 is the fourth game in the Persona series. The game was developed by Atlus for the PlayStation 2. An epilogue and enhanced version of the game was released as Persona 3 FES. A portable version with a female main character, and visual novel type cutscenes, was released as Persona 3 Portable. Persona 3 also later received an anime film adaptation.

Plot
Set in 2009, Persona 3 begins with the Protagonist returning to the city of Tatsumi Port Island ten years after his parents died from an accident. He is introduced as a transfer student that has just moved into the Iwatodai Dormitory.

He is quickly brought into SEES (Special Extracurricular Execution Squad) when his awareness of the Dark Hour is revealed, and that he can summon multiple Personas into battle. With their help, SEES is able to explore Tartarus further and defeat Greater Shadows that appear every full moon, believing that by killing all twelve of them, they will be able to end the appearance of the Dark Hour.

Additional members join SEES over time, all students attending Gekkoukan High School: Junpei Iori, who had only recently discovered his ability to summon a Persona; Akihiko Sanada, whose arm injury prevented him from fighting; and Fuuka Yamagishi, who replaces Mitsuru Kirijo as the team's support member. After awakening to his Persona ability, the Protagonist is transported to the Velvet Room, which its proprietor, Igor, says is a realm between "dream and reality". Igor explains to him that his Persona ability is special: he is the only member of SEES capable of wielding multiple Personas in battle. In-game, the Velvet Room is where the player may fuse two or more Personas to create a new one. Igor also encourages the Protagonist to meet people and form bonds with them, known as Social Links. According to Igor, the power of his Social Links will determine his potential in combat.

On nights when the moon is full, the city is attacked by a Shadow more powerful than the ones found in Tartarus. After several of these incidents, Mitsuru is forced to reveal to the team the origin of Tartarus and the Dark Hour. Ten years earlier, the Kirijo Group, a research company founded by Mitsuru's grandfather, began amassing and containing Shadows. They studied and performed experiments on them, in order to harness their power. However, the experiments went awry, allowing the Shadows to escape and assemble into twelve larger creatures. Each is affiliated with one of the twelve Major Arcana. SEES's leader, Shuji Ikutsuki, informs them that, if they were to defeat all twelve of the greater Shadows, Tartarus and the Dark Hour would disappear forever.

As the year continues, the group adds two more Persona-users to their team: a boy named Ken Amada and a dog named Koromaru. While vacationing in Yakushima, Junpei, Akihiko, and the Protagonist encounter a robot called Aigis, who had recently escaped the laboratory where she was kept, despite having been deactivated for years. For reasons she cannot explain, she has a need to be near the Protagonist, even breaking into his dorm room at night to monitor him. Aigis is also enlisted in SEES.



On October 4th, 2009, Shinjiro meets Ken at the site where Ken's mother was killed, during the October full moon mission. He had no intention of resisting to Ken's attempt to extract revenge, but he warns Ken that if he continues, he could end up just like him. The two are interrupted by Takaya while Ken struggles to go through with his plan. Takaya takes a shot at Ken and Shinjiro jumps in front of the bullet, taking his own life. Just before he dies, he tells Ken to make his life matter and tells Akihiko to take care of Ken. With his last strength, Shinjiro stands up and takes a few steps away from SEES, telling them "This is how it should be." and collapses on the floor. This final sacrifice earns Ken's respect and inspires Akihiko's resolve.

SEES learns they have been misled by Shuji Ikutski; by destroying the Greater Shadows, they have freed parts of a being called Nyx who will bring about the end of the world if it is fully restored. It is revealed that the Kirijo Group was attempting to do this ten years ago, but Nyx was released prematurely in a laboratory accident that also created the Dark Hour and Tartarus. Aigis, a robot designed to fight Nyx, battled the being but was unable to fully defeat it, instead dispersing parts of it into the Greater Shadows, and installing the last part into that of a young boy nearby, revealed to be the Protagonist.

SEES encounters Ryoji, a teenage boy who tells him he is Death incarnate, the Harbinger, and that if they do not kill him by December 31, he will unwillingly usher in Nyx and the end of the world. The player is given the option to kill Ryoji at this point.

Alternate ending
If the player kills Ryoji, the members of SEES lose memories of the last year, and lead normal lives, living in blissful ignorance, until the inevitable end of the world occurs. This ending is non-canon.



Canon ending
If Ryoji is spared, then the game continues, and on January 31, 2010, SEES climbs to the top of Tartarus to face Ryoji, now in his true form of the avatar of Nyx. Though they defeat it, the avatar is able to still call forth Nyx; the moon splits open revealing a strange device that begins to kill people across the Earth. The protagonist uses all of his Social Links gained from SEES and other friends to create a seal to lock Nyx away forever, though sacrificing himself to do so. The world returns to normal, though the memories of the past year are lost to the SEES members. As they finish school, they come to realize that they each promised to gather on the school's roof should they make it to graduation day. There, they find the protagonist lying in Aigis' lap, smiling at the brief reunion with the other SEES members before he peacefully dies as he sleeps. This is the canon ending.

Characters



 * Protagonist: The silent protagonist of the story. He is an orphan, his parents having died in a tragic car accident 10 years before the beginning of the game's events. The protagonist transfers to Gekkoukan High School on Port Island as a second-year.
 * Yukari Takeba: A popular second-year girl at Gekkoukan High School. She is the first one the protagonist meets upon arriving at the dorms. Her father was a researcher for the Kirijo Group before his death 10 years prior to the game's events.
 * Junpei Iori: An energetic and perverted second-year. Though he flirts with most of the girls in his grade, he finds a genuine love interest in a girl named Chidori.
 * Mitsuru Kirijo: The elegant and bossy heiress of the Kirijo Group, a third-year at Gekkoukan. She was the first to awaken to her Persona. She and Akihiko lead SEES, and she is the initial provider of outside support during battle.
 * Akihiko Sanada: A third-year with Mitsuru. Competitive and ever diligent, he devotes much of his free time to his boxing and Shadow-fighting training. He grew up in an orphanage with his younger sister, Miki, and his foster brother, Shinjiro.
 * Fuuka Yamagishi: A shy, introverted second-year. She eventually replaces Mitsuru as the outside support during battle.
 * Aigis: A robotic Anti-Shadow Weapon. She states early on that her highest priority is to protect the protagonist. Later, she attends Gekkoukan High School as a second-year and begins to develop human emotions.
 * Koromaru: The loyal dog of the local shrine. Although his master has since died, he still walks the route his master would take with him, and he continues to guard the shrine.
 * Ken Amada: A young grade-school boy. Though mature for his age, he feels insecure about his size and age and tries to compensate for it in every way possible. His mother was killed in a Shadow-related incident two years prior to the game's events.
 * Shinjiro Aragaki: A shady loner type, Akihiko's foster brother. He was once a member of SEES alongside Akihiko and Mitsuru in the past, but has since abandoned them following an accident that claimed the life of a civilian.

Gameplay
Persona 3 combines elements of standard console role-playing games and dating sims. The game takes place over the course of a Japanese school year. Each day goes by, broken up into several periods such as "Morning", "Afternoon" and "Evening", with the Protagonist going to school and then participating in selected activities during free time. The player may opt to use the free time activities to buy equipment and items at stores, talk to other non-playable characters, or spend the remainder of the free time either to build a Social Link or to improve the Protagonist's attributes, such as by gaining courage by singing karaoke. Thus, the player must manage which activities or Social Links to improve in order to build up the Protagonist for the exploration of the Tartarus. Certain in-game events will occur on prescribed days; Major Shadows will appear on full moons, there will be midterm and final exams within school, and school holidays give the player more time to work on other activities.

At night, the player may opt to enter Tartarus, or otherwise allow the characters to rest and recover. Tartarus is a 250-floor tower which the player must eventually climb by the end of the game. Tartarus is broken into several "blocks", and various blocks are inaccessible until the Major Shadows are defeated on each full moon, thus limiting the progress through the tower. Most floors of Tartarus are randomly generated in a rogue-like manner, with a random distribution of treasure and wandering Shadows, but each includes a stairway to the next floor and many also include a one-way only teleport point that allows them to escape to the first floor. Other levels contain mini-bosses that must be defeated in order to progress; these levels also feature a fixed teleport point that allows the player to travel to any other similar teleport point that has been previously accessed, thus allowing the player to skip blocks when returning to Tartarus. The player may opt to keep the party together or have each member explore the level, recovering any treasure found and fighting monsters individually. As the party explores, their health will worsen, and a member that ends up "tired" or "sick" will perform poorly in battle and may drop out before the battle is complete; the only way to recover from these states is spend one or more nights without exploring Tartarus.



Combat is a turn-based affair. Each character can perform a standard melee attack with their weapon, summon their Persona to unleash an attack or spell, or use recovery and battle items. The player only directly controls the actions of the Protagonist. The other members of the party can be guided through specific tactics assigned to each of them, such as maintaining the health of the party, or going all out with Persona attacks. Each foe has strengths and weaknesses; by striking a foe with an attack it is weak against, it will cause the foe to be knocked down, and the attacker will gain one more immediate attack; this can lead to a chain of attacks against each foe if the attacks are selected appropriately. If all remaining foes are knocked down, the player can opt for an "All-Out" attack, with the remaining members entering a cartoon-like fight cloud, inflicting higher damage on each foe.
 * See also Status Changes in Persona 3.

Related Media
Due to the popularity of Persona 3, several related media releases followed. There is a loosely connected anime, a Persona 3 Manga, and several side games, such as Aegis: The First Mission, Megami Tensei Chaining Soul: Persona 3 and Megami Tensei QIX: Persona 3. It also spawned an enhanced epilogue and its modified combat engine appears in Persona 4. An updated PSP port, titled Persona 3 Portable was released. A translated version, along with the official translation were released in North America. It now features a new, female Protagonist, and a female version of Orpheus as her Persona.