Persona....

[CDink]

I've heard 3 was great and 4 is amazing...I've never once played a persona game...but it seems interesting...what is the gameplay like?

[Warp]

"Amazing" might be pushing it some, especially if you go into either game expecting the best thing since sliced bread. They're both enjoyable games with solid game play mechanics, but whether or not you enjoy them will depend primarily on how much free time you have, how you feel about RPGs and whether or not you like or can manage dungeon crawlers.

At their core Persona 3 and Persona 4 are both dungeon crawling RPGs with standard turn-based battle systems. Those battle systems use a weakness and resistance system similar to the one you find in Pokémon, and battles mostly revolve around finding and exploiting those weakness to end the battles quickly. Any time you hit an enemy's weak point or score a critical hit that results in an enemy being knocked to the ground, that character gets another turn; the same works in reverse in regards to enemies knocking you down. It's a pretty simple system, really, and you'll spend a good deal of time in battle.

The dungeons themselves are randomly generated with square or rectangular-shaped rooms (with varying themes), and you just explore the individual floors until you find the stairs leading to the next. Bosses appear every 5-15 floors, largely dependent of the dungeon itself (they all have a set number of floors), and beating those bosses is either your primary goal or a means of getting stronger to prepare for event battles.

Outside of combat Persona 3 and Persona 4 are a sort of school/life simulator, where you explore your new town, meet people and forge friendships. Most of what occurs with those people, referred to as Social Links in-game, doesn't really affect the story itself and often show no signs that anything is even amiss in the city around them. As your bonds with the Social Links increase the Persona/Demons affiliated with that Link's Tarot Arcana receive a bigger boost during Fusion, effectively giving them 1-5 free levels. You can also date the female Social Links (you're forced to in P3, while P4 makes you "earn" the right), but again that doesn't really add much of anything.

The original Persona, Persona 2: Innocent Sin and Persona 2: Eternal Punishment have little in common with their younger siblings.

[CDink]

So it's not an rpg in the same vein as a final fantasy or the like? I'm just deciding whether to blow the money on it...i can get p4 for 30 bucks at my gamestop..they luckily still have a copy.

[Warp]

Well, it is a turn-based RPG like the majority of the Final Fantasy games, and Final Fantasy does have dungeons that you need to clear. So on that front, yeah, they're pretty similar.

If you like Final Fantasy there's a good chance that you'll like Persona (and the rest of the Shin Megami Tensei series), just keep in mind that they try to do entirely different things.

[Sigs Minock]

Originally Posted by Warp

Well, it is a turn-based RPG like the majority of the Final Fantasy games, and Final Fantasy does have dungeons that you need to clear. So on that front, yeah, they're pretty similar.

If you like Final Fantasy there's a good chance that you'll like Persona (and the rest of the Shin Megami Tensei series), just keep in mind that they try to do entirely different things.

the only difference between the Persona series and the FF series is- the characters are actually entertaining, even if the main characters in both games are silent.

though as warp said, if you like the "whack'em til they're dead" strategy of Final Fantasy, then you would like Persona. though, again you aren't travelling the globe to save the world from the 'ultimate evil.'
in both Persona games you're pretty confined to the town the game starts off in.
it's not a bad thing either...

if you're interested in the other game in the MegaTen series, be warned- Persona 3 and Persona 4 are rather easy compared to the unforgiving SMTIII: Nocturne.

if you have a PSP, the original Persona has been remade and ported to the PSP recently.

[Warp]

Originally Posted by Sigs Minock

again you aren't travelling the globe to save the world from the 'ultimate evil.'

This is one of the things I love about the Persona series. If the fate of the world is at stake, you don't even become aware of that fact until near the very end of the game. Prior to that it's more about discovering the mysteries surrounding your new town or tracking down serial killers. Almost always about exploration and discovery as opposed to "epic" stories of betrayal and world domination.

Originally Posted by Sigs Minock

if you have a PSP, the original Persona has been remade and ported to the PSP recently.

It's not so much a remake as it is a (proper) re-release. There's quite a few CG scenes added, but thus far they haven't been anything that noteworthy. Everything else feels like a polished PSX title.

Not sure if Persona Remake is a good place to start with the series, though. Story hasn't come close to living up to P2EP/P3/P4 (about to finish with the  SEBEC Headquarters Building  and most of what I've seen and/or learned has been entirely optional/missable), and while the game is relatively easy encounter rates are pretty high as was the norm in the late 90's. The music is also completely hit or miss. It's got way too many vocal tracks for my liking, plus with battles being so short it's like having a two track setlist in any given area and pressing "skip" every ten to thirty seconds. Gets old quite fast, as you could imagine.