A FES-tivus for the rest of us: Persona 3 FES Hits PSN Tomorrow

PlayStation.Blog readers,

There’s a new PlayStation 2 Classic coming to PlayStation Network. I want to talk to you about it. Instead of just getting to the darn point, though…LET’S DRAG THIS OUT.

Join me, won’t you, as we take a trip back in time? Step into this police box with me, please. Get the door behind you? Thanks.

Ok, the year is 2008. You just saw Al Pacino’s 88 Minutes in theaters. It was terrible.

You’re on your way home, your head hung low in abject disappointment, when you pass by your local INSERT NAME OF YOUR FAVORITE VIDEO GAME RETAILER HERE. What’s that? New releases? You wander in to take a closer look, thinking that a new game might help cleanse your mental palate…

Whoa. Wait, didn’t Persona 3 come out in 2007? Sure, it was one of the best RPGs you ever played, introducing one of the most memorable casts of characters ever and a ridiculously sweet half-dungeon RPG/half-social sim gameplay mechanic that let you balance the everyday demands of a high school student with the every night demands of a world-saving, Persona-wielding badass.

And then there was FES. It took the original game, which was now known as “The Journey,” and added: a new Hard Mode selectable from the start, new Personas, a new Social Link with new Arcana, new classroom pop quizzes, a new Weapon Fusion system, over 50 new requests from Elizabeth, new nighttime events with Koromaru, and a few secrets as well.

But FES also offered “The Answer,” an entirely new chapter that dealt with the events after The Journey’s ending. In The Answer, players control Aigis as she works to solve the mystery of “time skips” that have trapped the S.E.E.S. members in the same repeating day. The Answer gives players who have completed the Journey a formidable challenge: conquer hundreds of new floors filled with enemies and bosses harder than anything in The Journey’s Hard Mode, and do it all without the benefit of The Journey’s Persona compendium.

Persona 3 is widely considered one of the finest JRPGs ever made. Persona 3 FES takes all of that even further. It has an 89 on Metacritic, getting perfect scores from sites like Destructoid.com, who raved: “Persona 3: FES manages to take one of last year’s best RPGs and make it even better, trumping the original with loads of gameplay and fantastic value.”

Anyways, we’re back in 2012 now. Please get out of my time machine. No, seriously, I’m tired of having to watch you out of the corner of my eye. Second of all, and perhaps more importantly, Persona 3 FES is available tomorrow as a PS2 classic via PSN.

Own a PS3? Always wanted to play Persona 3 FES and never got around to it. NOW YOU CAN!

Well, it’s been fun. I’m off to 1999. I go back to it a lot. I sit outside of big movie theaters and watch peoples’ reactions as they shuffle out of Phantom Menace. Schadenfreude is an addicting thing.

Until next time!!