Persona is a spin-off of a series called Shin Megami Tensei. It came out during the PS1 era and was basically this JRPG dungeon crawler about high school students who could summon their "Persona" to fight for them. A persona is basically the mask that we wear in our day-to-day interactions with others. It wasn't a very big commercial success in America, but there was a sequel spread across two games. We only got one of those games brought over. The original Persona games were cool because you could bargain with a lot of the monsters you fought so that you could get their "card" (there's a lot of tarot symbolism in the game) and use it to make more personas that you can summon.
Persona 3 came out for the PS2 and became a pretty solid hit. It had more of a life-simulator element than the other games, so it became this weird social-interaction game with a dungeon crawl part. That seems to be the formula for the Persona games now, because 4 didn't deviate a whole lot from the formula of 3.
The plots of the game are really trippy, usually combining Jungian psychology and a dash of hermetic mysticism. Like, in Persona 4, a serial killer is throwing your friends into another plane of existence inside televisions and forcing them to work through mental hangups until monsters inside work themselves into a frenzy and kill them. You have to go in after them and pull them out.
Also, the Persona games have some of the best music ever. I actually got into the series because my wife let me borrow the Persona 3 soundtrack. I had to play the games after listening to it.
Persona 1 was re-released for the PSP, and I recommend at least picking up Persona 3.
Persona 3 came out for the PS2 and became a pretty solid hit. It had more of a life-simulator element than the other games, so it became this weird social-interaction game with a dungeon crawl part. That seems to be the formula for the Persona games now, because 4 didn't deviate a whole lot from the formula of 3.
The plots of the game are really trippy, usually combining Jungian psychology and a dash of hermetic mysticism. Like, in Persona 4, a serial killer is throwing your friends into another plane of existence inside televisions and forcing them to work through mental hangups until monsters inside work themselves into a frenzy and kill them. You have to go in after them and pull them out.
Also, the Persona games have some of the best music ever. I actually got into the series because my wife let me borrow the Persona 3 soundtrack. I had to play the games after listening to it.
Persona 1 was re-released for the PSP, and I recommend at least picking up Persona 3.
![[Image: BZneHYK.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/BZneHYK.jpg)
No Gods and Precious Few Heroes
