PSP World

Persona 3 Confirmed, Massively Improved for PSP

We pretty much knew it was coming, but Atlus today confirmed that the next installment in the successful PSP remake series will be released in North America. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable, the handheld adaptation of one of the greatest role-playing games of all time, will arrive in North America for the PSP system on July 6th, 2010. Like previous Persona PSP releases, it will be available as both a UMD and digital download.

Persona 3 for the PSP adds dozens of additional hours of gameplay to a game that already exceeded 100 hours of total play time. Numerous additional improvements and enhancements serve to streamline the experience for optimal handheld RPG enjoyment. Perhaps the biggest change is that players now have the option of going through the story as a female character, something that completely changes the dynamic of certain social relationships.

When it originally launched on the Playstation 2 back in 2006, Persona 3 introduced a revolutionary social element to role-playing games. Players weren't just progressing through a story; they were a part of it, and their decisions and the relationships they chose to foster or neglect became a powerful complement to the game's combat. Atlus says that while the PSP version makes numerous enhancements to the formula, the basic things that made the original so good have been translated to the portable format.

The story, for those unfamiliar with the series, Persona centers on the lives of young highschool students who face a demonic threat. In Persona 3, the player takes the role of a high-school student who joins the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad (SEES), a group of students investigating the "Dark Hour," a time period between one day and the next that few people are aware of. During the Dark Hour, the player enters Tartarus, a large tower containing Shadows, creatures that feed on the minds of humans. You must wield your inner power-Persona-and protect humanity from impending doom. Will you live to see the light of day?