The PSP is having an exciting year. Not only was the PSP Go recently revealed, but a handful of exciting titles are due out for the portable system later this year. Third-party publishers have also started supporting the PSP again, and Atlus is no exception. The masters of RPGs excited Shin Megami Tensei fans everywhere earlier this year by announcing that the original Persona would be coming to the PSP. The game was on display on the E3 show floor, so naturally I took some time to get my hands on it.

Even though I absolutely loved Persona 3 and Persona 4, I have never played the first two games in the series. Since it’s pretty hard to find reasonably-priced Atlus games after they have been discontinued (especially games from the PS1 era), I never had a chance to see how the series began. With the last two Persona games my only basis for comparison, I noticed some similarities and differences in the original. Like the other games in the series, Persona follows a group of high school students, and the school setting seems to be a central location. Many of the same spells are usable as well, so your characters will still be casting things like “Garu”, “Bufu”, and “Hama” while in battle.



There are also some notable differences to those only familiar with the more recent Persona titles. Interestingly, the dungeons in Persona are all viewed in a first-person perspective, giving the game an old dungeon crawler feel. There are no social links, but every character can use multiple personas (though not at the same time). Additionally, enemies can be contacted in battle, and your characters can try to persuade them to give up “spell cards”, which are used to summon new personas. Of course, if your skills of persuasion aren’t up to the task, you may just enrage foes in battle. This adds another layer of strategy to each battle; do you just attack, gaining experience, or contact your foes for new spell cards, risking enraging them?

Even though the game feels a little different, it’s still clearly a Shin Megami Tensei game, and fans of the franchise are probably going to enjoy it. I’ll be picking it up later this summer, and I can’t wait to get the whole story. Even if you’ve played the original, new cut scenes, a redone localization, and other additional content should draw you back in and keep the game from feeling dated. This is one of the PSP exclusives I’m most excited about this year, and I hope I get many hours of enjoyment out of it.