Author: Mo Sanwu
The original Goddess Rebirth is a main-view RPG game born on FC in 1987, based on Nishitani's SF legendary novel Digital Demon Story. In the nearly thirty years that followed, the Goddess Rebirth series endured, developing multiple branches and forming a fairly large system, one of the representative series of JRPG.
In an era when Sega SS and Sony PS were competing for supremacy, ATLUS adopted an interesting strategy, choosing to launch the Demon Summoner sub-series on SS and the Persona (officially known as PERSONA) sub-series on Sony PS. "Demon Summoner" is regarded as the orthodox successor to "The Rebirth of the True Goddess", and "Persona" can also be found to be the positioning of the sequel from the name. Until recent years, the power of this spin-off series seemed to have greatly exceeded that of orthodoxy.
The original generation of "Persona" inherited the traditional elements such as the demon session and the demon fusion of the Goddess Rebirth series, added a new setting such as PERSONA, made a lot of changes to the system, and the script enabled the newcomer at that time, Nao, and the overall positioning of the work was to catch players who had not been exposed to "Goddess Rebirth" before (even so, the difficulty of the game is still very high). The emphasis on the characteristics of the character performance, as well as the theme of teenagers exploring themselves, have played a key role in capturing new users.
However, looking back at the history of the "Persona" series, we can divide it into pre-P3 era and post-P3 era, and the styles of works in the two stages are very different. This time we will talk about this watershed "Persona 3".
Persona 3
First, the world has changed dramatically
The three films that preceded Persona 3, Persona 2 Sin and Persona 2 Punishment, are all about young people growing up in adventure through the power of Persona. Compared with the later "Persona 3", the first three games are centered on the protagonist's team, depicting the growth troubles of the subjects from teenagers to adults. The focus of the three generations is on campus life.
The first three games in the series were well received among the veteran players of the Goddess series because of their outstanding and rich storylines. But in terms of attracting new players as originally conceived, it is really not very successful, which may be because the foreign and highly individualistic style of the gold horse makes it difficult for newcomers to get used to, or because the game system is not very good, or the plot that uses a lot of psychological terms is connotative, but it is also a little obscure.
Since the release of Persona 2 in 2000, the series has been silent for seven full years. It wasn't until 2007 that Persona 3 was released, and compared to the previous three games, Persona 3 has changed so much that it's hard to believe that it's a series of games.
The most obvious change is the change in the art.
Prior to Persona 3, the artists of most of the Goddess Rebirth series, including the Persona series, were made of gold. It can be said that he is one of the iconic characters of the Goddess Rebirth series. His painting style personality is extremely strong and strange, there are people who like his painting style, and there are many people who hate his painting style, but after seeing his paintings, there are almost no people who have not left an impression.
Kaneko Kazuma draws the protagonist of "Persona 2" Zhou Fang Daya
Kaneko Kazuma's strong personal style is very suitable for the Goddess Rebirth series, which is known for its heterogeneous atmosphere, but the original intention of the Goddess Chronicles series is to attract players with original intentions, and the extremely personalized style of painting is not necessarily appropriate. In Persona 3, the artist is headed by Nariki Fukushima, who has a more accessible style. This can be described as breaking the conventions of the series for many years, highlighting the different positioning of this work from the previous work.
The popular character of "Persona 3" drawn by Nariki Fukushima
The screen represents the style of the game, and the biggest embodiment of the style is still in the plot.
Three generations ago, the worldview setting and script were Nao, and like Kaneko Kazuma, the story style was also very personal. The stories he creates have a strong cultural flavor, and in the legend of digital demons, another reincarnation of the goddess that Satomi served as the original case, he integrated the full set of Hindu karmic reincarnations into science fiction stories, creating a scientific fantasy story like Roger Zerazni's "The Lord of Light". In the first three films of Persona, this unique atmosphere of science and fantasy is also very strong. The first three works of "Persona" also have a large number of psychological academic settings - the collective subconscious, Persona and other from Jungian psychology, as well as constellations, Greek mythology and other fantasy elements to join in, this practice of integrating science and fantasy is a major feature of the goddess rebirth series. The three pre-goddess chronicles created by Nao Satomi adhere to the traditional style of this goddess rebirth system.
Compared with Satomi, the three generations created by Qiao Ye are more mainstream, the story focuses on the campus life of high school students, the previous strong cultural atmosphere (secondary two atmosphere) has faded, and various mythological terms and settings have been greatly simplified although they exist, and they are more of a name than a setting that affects the plot. The cute elements that we are all more familiar with, such as the machine lady, the harem, and the love, have joined in, and the whole is more in line with the tastes of young people.
Campus life is more to the taste of young people
The series is all about the growth of high school students, but the three generations are beginning to focus more on the daily life side. The game system incorporates elements of GAL, and the protagonist can interact with many characters to develop favorability. In addition to the members of the protagonist team, these characters also have a large number of NPC characters, they are basically ordinary people everywhere, there are the protagonist's classmates, frequent small shop owners, teachers, etc., these ordinary people's branch plots also tell the stories of ordinary people, which together constitute the protagonist's daily life and occupy a considerable proportion in the plot.
In general, the changes in the plot are in the same direction as the changes in the artists, and they are more mainstream and younger.
The changes in the system of the three generations are mainly reflected in the addition of a large number of GAL elements.
Three generations ago were orthodox RPGs, with a maze-by-maze challenge as the plot progressed. In the third generation, it is similar to the GAL plot development. According to the advancement of time to develop the plot, day by day forward, to the designated date will occur the main line plot, and the ordinary days that do not occur in the main line plot in addition to going to the maze to brush money, brush tasks, brush experience, you can also participate in a variety of daily activities, such as part-time work, go to the library to read books, fishing and so on; You can also interact with the characters, hang out with friends, and participate in club activities. These daily activities are rewarding, you can improve your character attributes, or brush up on your character's favorability, and so on. A very rich daily activity is a major feature of this game, creating a strong atmosphere of college life. In addition, developing intimate relationships with female characters is also an important part. It can be said that nearly half of the experience of the game is GALgame's.
The daily GAL element is the focus
In terms of combat exploration, the difficulty drop is very obvious. A random maze of hundreds of layers is boring, but it is actually not very difficult to walk than before. The battle system largely refers to the "True Goddess Rebirth 3" that is particularly excellent in combat, and while changing the battle system of True 3 to be easier to use, it retains the essence of the battle, and uses the attributes to overcome the enemy with The Persona, which is easy to use and equally rich in changes compared to the difficult "True Goddess Rebirth 3". Persona synthesis is also striving to be close to the people, which was not enough at the beginning, but in the enhanced version and PSP version after three generations, various humanized hints are constantly added, such as knowing which skills will be inherited before crafting.
The combat system is very easy to get started with
The addition of a large number of GAL elements and the adjustment of the ease of getting started have made the three generations clearly distinguished from the previous works.
Overall, the first three games in the series still retain the dark and heterogeneous atmosphere of the Goddess Rebirth series. From the third generation onwards, a large number of cute and popular elements have been added, and there are many more galgame experiences in the process, making campus life more cheerful, modifying combat exploration more easy to get started, coupled with the trendy and rhythmic music of Shoji Meguro, so that the original dark atmosphere has been swept away by a large part. These are the places where Persona 3 differs significantly from previous works.
2. Inheritance in change
Although there has been a huge shift in the style of the picture music plot, a large number of classic elements of the series have been preserved.
The word "PERSONA" occupies an extremely important place in the Persona series. The word means personality mask and comes from jungian psychology's discussion of the problem of consciousness. In the game works, "Persona" refers to "another personality" that appears as a mythical creature such as a god, a demon, and so on. To put it bluntly, it is similar to the stand-in in JOJO. This is common to all works in the series.
"The Exploration of the Self" is the constant theme
As the title of the series PERSONA suggests, "The Quest for the Self" is the biggest theme in the entire Persona series.
For example, in "Persona 2", there is a shadow setting (later inherited by four generations), shadow simply put, is the embodiment of the dark side of the protagonist, they come from the protagonist, symbolizing the protagonist's side that the protagonist does not want to be known. By fighting Shadow, the protagonist and his party recognize their true selves and accept their dark side. In this way, I can realize my own growth and take a big step towards the integrity of my personality.
For three generations, the exploration of the self remains an important theme. The three generations of protagonists start out as a blank personality who lives for the sake of living, but as the plot of the story progresses, he constantly has people around him to establish bonds and slowly change. His final Persona Messiah symbolizes the fruits of his quest for his own personality.
In addition to the theme, there are many interesting details that have been inherited. For example, "Persona 1" quotes an allusion to the "Zhuang Zhou Meng butterfly" - Zhuangzi explores the view that it is impossible for people to accurately distinguish between real and illusory through the event of changing into a butterfly in a dream and reverting to himself after waking up. This allusion is a good adaptation of the Persona series' style of switching between the everyday and the non-everyday. The butterfly is the symbol of the 1st generation, and it is used until the 3rd generation, and in the animation at the beginning of the 3rd generation, we can see the familiar butterfly.
Zhuang Zhou Mengdi
There are also tarot card elements from the second generation, linking the character to the cultivation of demons and tarot cards, and the tradition of this series continues from the second generation to the latest fourth generation.
Systematically, the iconic compositing system of the Goddess Rebirth series, as well as the perverted hidden BOSS, have been preserved, and PERSONA's complex and interesting synthesis is in line with most of the works in the Goddess Rebirth series, which is a very important part of the game. The hidden BOSS Elizabeth facing after the real ending can be said to inherit the usual perverted strength of the series hidden boss, and the protagonist must fight with it one-on-one and abide by a series of rules, otherwise he will be directly killed. To defeat her, not only must you practice to the full level, but you must also consciously synthesize PERSONA with specific skills. It is a double challenge of PERSONA synthesis and practical operation.
Tarot cards have almost become a series tradition
Third, there is no radical change
Persona 3 is a work that began the transformation of the Persona series in order to expand its audience. As the first work of transformation, it has continued a lot and changed a lot. It's just that there are some things that are not complete, which have become the most criticized reasons for this work.
The change is not complete
The plot of "Persona 3" has no lack of light elements of the campus story (some branches are particularly happy), but in the main story line, it is still the serious style of the series, and there are many bento in the later stages of the story, and the plot is somewhat heavy and sad. The labyrinth of night shadow time is even more permeated with a dark atmosphere. The joy route was not followed to the end.
Single ending (BADEND doesn't count) is a point of criticism. Obviously, there are so many girls who can be attacked, but no matter which girl you choose, no matter how you brush your good feelings, the final outcome is the same. This is largely contrary to a large number of GAL elements in the game. It can only be seen as immaturity in transformation.
Works before the 3rd generation are more complicated because of the relationship between the times, and the 3rd generation maze is not complicated, but it is quite boring. The work has only one labyrinth—a tower hundreds of stories high. As the plot continues to deepen, the upper layer of the high-level will continue to open up. Although the scenery of the tower changes every ten or so floors climbed, it does not change much, and it will feel very uncomfortable after a long time in the maze.
Of course, it now seems that all this immaturity is the foundation for the perfection of Persona 4 Gold Edition.
Fourth, improve the enhanced version and carry version of the work
From the incomplete transformation of "Persona 3" to the "Persona 4 Gold Edition" that is perfect in all aspects, there is a process of accumulation and improvement. In this process, the three-generation PS2 enhanced version of "Persona 3 FES" and the "Persona 3 Pocket Edition (P3P)" on the PSP have played a big role.
Persona 3 FES
The addition to "Persona 3", "Persona 3 FES", is roughly a bit of a peerless series of fierce legends. "FES" is short for festival. In addition to adding new plots, new difficulties, and new demons to this information section. Most importantly, there is an "Episode Aegis" mode, which is the story after this article.
Episode Aegis features the popular robot girl in this episode, with a new character. The process is not short, and it takes about 30 hours to complete the whole game. Mainly to walk the maze, the character ability does not inherit this part, the player can play this mode directly. The plot is a variety of completions to this part, and a blood-spitting true ending.
Persona 3 Pocket Edition is a PSP transplant of Persona 3. This pocket edition was released in 2009 after Persona 4. Persona 4's various human optimizations for three generations of operations have been retained in the pocket version of the PSP. In addition, according to the convention, a large number of new elements have been added, the most eye-catching of which is the heroine route - when starting to choose the main role, in addition to the original male protagonist, you can also choose the female protagonist. Don't look at the heroine route is just a change of gender, the details of the change is really a lot, NPC lines and interaction, the protagonist's special Persona have been affected.
Persona 3: Portable Edition adds a new heroine route
The screen is a little shrinkage relative to the PS2 version, such as the usual movement of characters on campus is replaced by icons, but the impact on the game experience is minimal.
Whether it is "Persona 3 FES" or "Persona 3 Pocket Edition" is a kind of completion and enhancement of this article, it is this continuous completion that will have the birth of the "Persona 4 Gold Edition" that is excellent in all aspects later.
Fifth, the animation that attracts more fans
The Goddess Rebirth series was originally adapted from a novel, originally a cross-media project, and before "Persona 3", there were many animations and TV dramas.
For example, the "True Goddess Rebirth Demon Child" series, this series is a series of spin-off games for young players. Among them, according to the "Book of Black" and "Book of Red", it was adapted into a manga and anime "True Goddess Rebirth デビチル", translated from Taiwan as "Magic Baby", and changed to the anime "True Goddess Rebirth D チルドレン ライト&ダーク" according to "Book of Light" and "Book of Darkness". It was clearly influenced by Pokémon.
The Rebirth of the True Goddess: The Book of Darkness
In addition to the "True Goddess Rebirth Demon Child" series for children, the TV series adaptation of "Demon Summoner", which is also a branch of the series, is obviously aimed at young audiences. Originally scheduled for 13 episodes , it was aired so popular that a second installment was added. The film stars Masaki Soji, who plays the goat Saisha in SuperStar, Chiharu Kawaai, who plays Yuki In the Mirage, and Hiroko Tsukii, who plays the team member of the Tsukihime team.
Live-action Demon Summoner
The filmization of "Persona 3" is very different from the first two, and it is aimed at the otaku anime fan group. The first related animation of Persona 3, Persona - Trinity Soul - (Holy Soul), although original, inherits the worldview of the post-Persona era and tells the story of Ten Years Later in Persona 3. In addition to the various details restored for gamers, the plot and music are also very careful, this animation is not satisfied with being a promotional film for the game, but wants to make a work that can attract more anime fans.
Trinity Soul
Probably because "Persona - Trinity Soul - (Holy Soul)" is not particularly successful, and later the animated adaptation of "Persona 4" is to take the route of the original adaptation of the game, and never play the original again. After that, the plot basically follows the original "Persona 3" theatrical version.
The production quality of the theatrical version is excellent, and although the popularity is not as popular as it is, it is generally stable. Released on June 7, 2014, the theatrical version of Persona 3 Chapter 2 Midsummer Knight's Dream ranked ninth on the first weekend of June. The previously released theatrical version of "Persona 3" received the seventh place at the box office in the first week when it was broadcast in November 2013, which shows that the theater version has received the support of a stable fan base.
Theatrical version of Persona 3
This kind of non-original smashing animation also reflects the idea of serving the popularity and image of the game to a certain extent.
VI. Conclusion
Compared with the later "Persona 4", "Persona 3", as a transformation work, has such and such unsatisfactory places. But the quality of the game itself is outstanding. Close to 90 hours of mainline game flow, powerful hidden bosses make this game very playable. For those who like the works of the post-persona era, it is a masterpiece that cannot be missed.
The quality of Persona 3 is unquestionable
Persona 3 was just launched on PS2 in 2007, at the end of the golden age of JRPG. At that time, "Persona 3" was not particularly conspicuous, and the sales were not particularly amazing. When the three generations were more eye-catching, it was the PSP portable version, which broke through the 100,000-unit sales mark in just one day. This greatly affected the decision of the A Society to later move the second and fourth generations to the handheld.
The post-P3 era opened by Persona 3 has had a great impact on the fan base of the Persona series. After the release of the theatrical version of "Persona 3", according to a survey by a film research agency, the main group of audiences is 10 to 30 years old, of which women account for a large proportion.
Obviously, "Persona 3" has attracted more younger fans and female fans in the new era, and the original intention of the series to expand the user base is relatively successful. Of course, for old players, the changes in the post-persona era have made the series lose some of its original traditions, such as the character of Jin Zi Yima, the setting and plot of traditional cultural elements. It has attracted the dissatisfaction of some old players. However, "Persona 3" and the next four generations in the game, animation, and surrounding sales are good, and the merchants who taste the sweetness will not give up this road.
As a player who has been in contact with the Goddess Rebirth series since 2006, and is neither old nor young, I maintain an optimistic view of the development after the "Persona" series. After years of years, this old and new sub-series has finally found its own way to distinguish the traditional. Having new players gives you a future, and I believe the experience of Persona 3 is an inspiration for many older game series.