Megami Tensei: Persona 3 was the Third installment in the Persona franchise (excluding Innocent Sin), and is widely considered to be one of the best Games in all of Megami Tensei history. In Persona 3, you play as Makoto and have the power of a Persona. The game takes place over a year where you make friends, and allies in order to fight shadows in Tartarus, which is where the games combat takes place. All in all, Persona 3 has an amazing story, which I recommend you check out (you can find a link at the bottom that takes you to the persona 3 reload page in steam) but that is not what this article is about.
In the early 2000’s Atlus was taking a decline in sales, and Persona 3 was scheduled to be the last game before Atlus closes all together. Originally, it wasn’t supposed to release in America, because according to statistics, this game wouldn’t make enough money there. Whilst is was supposed to be the end, Katsura Hashino decided otherwise. For the past Persona games, they were made under a different lead director. Whilst the past Persona games were quite popular in Japan, they were not sure if they would as popular under the new director. In 2006, Persona 3 came out in Japan and it was super successful. It was the most popular persona game to date, and here’s why. Persona 3 took an entirely different take on the concept of Personas. Instead of being able to use them all the time, they were only available during the dark hour, while during the main day, you were free to do activities such as, socializing with the characters, going to school, shopping, and much more. This made the game more engaging to the player, which made sales increase. The dark hour gameplay was also different, which allowed you to roam Tartarus freely. The combat was also different, because you could change your persona and evolve it, unlike in the preivious games.
A year later, it was released in the US which made it even more popular. Because of all this success, Persona decided to keep making games, and in 2008 they released Persona 4 which was even more popular than Persona 3! In conclusion, Persona 3 went down in history as the game that was able to save the franchise from a total collapse, and has one of the best stories in JRPG history.
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