Persona Q Review - Plenty of Personality
What happens when a spin-off of a hardcore JRPG crosses with a hardcore dungeon crawling JRPG? JRPG-ception, that’s what, and with Persona Q: Shadows of the Labyrinth I’m more than happy to continue going deeper…
It’s the series that’s become so popular even Atlus have decided to forget about it ever being a spin-off. Shin Megami Tensei’s Persona series has been catapulted into JRPG stardom since Persona 4, and the Persona franchise is now arguably much more well known than Shin Megami Tensei itself (especially in Europe, thanks to an absurd SMT4 delay). So Atlus’ decision to take the Persona universe and mix in a huge dose of Etrian Odyssey (another hugely popular JRPG franchise) makes both perfect sense and is a potential recipe for disaster; after all, Etrian Odyssey’s dungeon-crawling map-drawing thrill ride is quite a bit different to Persona’s social links and labyrinth exploration.
Happily, Persona Q meshes the two together so very well that you would never guess that this is a crossover game, heck, without prior knowledge you wouldn’t believe a game of this quality is a spin-off…
Here we have two teams to pick and play with, the cast of Persona 3 and the cast of Persona 4. Both casts are pretty fantastic; deep characters with huge amounts of high-quality voice acting and their own take on story events create a brilliant experience that gives a really very good reason to play through a second time. The only issue here is that, as the game is set after the events of Persona 3 and 4, the characters have already done a lot of progression and development, leaving any players new to the Persona franchise a bit baffled. Why is a blonde child occasionally popping out of this “Teddie” character? Why does this biker-looking type have an affinity for baking? Why does the grey-haired kid think so highly of his fists? These questions are all answered in earlier Persona games, so anyone not already versed in the ways of Persona might find bits like this a tad confusing.
Away from the characters and into the labyrinth; dungeon crawling here is pretty much identical to Etrian Odyssey, just with a Persona skin. You explore dungeons in first-person while drawing a map of where you’ve been on the 3DS touch screen, making sure to mark down where shortcuts, items and places of interest are. Once you have completed a floor map and set foot in every square on that floor a chest unlocks, granting bonus items to your party – needless to say this encourages exploration, and the map is essential in seeing shortcuts, where they lead, where to exit the level and more. First-timers might be tempted to ignore the map-drawing mechanic from Etrian Odyssey, but they would do so at their own peril. The obvious advantages aside, completing a floor map is a satisfying feeling.
Floors are also crawling with random encounters and FOEs – making a return from Etrian Odyssey Untold. These are larger, tougher monsters that walk around floors, either in a set pattern or heading directly towards you, forcing you to think about each step taken. They can be pretty frustrating to deal with, but luckily I didn’t have as much of problem dealing with them here as I did in Etrian Odyssey. Random encounters are – of course – random, appearing fairly often; all enemies have elemental strengths and weaknesses, the usual Fire, Ice, Electric elements, but added to this are Bash, Cut and Stab affinities given to you physical attacks. This at least gives a bit more variety, as if your character doesn’t necessarily have many strong elemental abilities they can still potentially hit hard.
When out of the labyrinth and away from enemies the only thing to do is prepare for your re-entry into the dungeon. Each of your characters has their primary Persona which you will recognise from the main games, but can also equip a secondary Persona to level up, which will grant new skills to use in battle and different elemental defences/weaknesses. This is a new addition which is invaluable in battle when enemies with unusual elemental affinities show up. Of course, outside of the labyrinth you can also equip weapons and armor, manage your inventory, heal your party: all the usual things you would expect from an Etrian Odyssey game are intact, just given a Persona coat of paint, which is essentially what the entire game is.
But that’s no bad thing, because Persona brings with it the series’ staple sense of style. The incredible music that can be found in Persona 3 & 4 is remembered fondly by most gamers, and equally catchy and infectious songs are present in Persona Q, with the battle music being a standout. Happily there’s also a huge amount of voice acting, which helps bring across the personalities of the characters and polish of the game.
Another stylistic choice is the chibi-like character models. Characters that have relatively normal proportions have been shrunk down to have large heads, tiny limbs, big eyes and it works. Characters look “cute” and they fit in with the stylised world perfectly.