Way Back Wednesday: Revelations

Revelations: Persona is the first part of the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series, originally produced by Atlus and released in North America on October 25, 1997. The game was then re-released in North America on October 1, 2009. While the game underwent a massive facelift from it's first release, the game itself remained the same.

Persona has a large cast of characters, including the cliché silent protagonist that the player controls. Based on the player's actions, different characters can be recruited each time the game is played. Revelations: Persona was the first of the series. to implement a first person view of the dungeon or area the player was walking through at the time.

While I enjoy most of the games in the Persona series, the original Persona as well as bits of Persona 2 really confused me. The combat was lacking as there wasn't a concrete tutorial on how a player should contact demons and obtain new Personas. Instead, the player has to go through tons of trial and error, grinding, and hair pulling to even obtain a demon's card. The player needs two or more cards to make Personas, having to fuse them together in the velvet room.

The story, also confusing, has the player traversing through a world with absolutely no direction. If Revelations: Persona is put down for a long time before being picked back up, there's a good chance the player will have to start over again just to have the smallest idea as to where to go and what is going on.

The graphics, for the time in which it was released and remastered, were pretty decent. While I was hoping

Revelations: Persona would be something remotely close to Persona 3 or Persona 4, it's not entirely a bad game. The music is catchy, the battle controls are easy to learn, but aside from that the game is very complex.

I give Revelations: Persona a 6/10. The game was decent, but not enough to hold my attention the entire way through. Fortunately though, Persona 3, Persona 3 FES, and Persona 4 were amazing titles to make up for Revelations: Persona being confusing.