It’s a little late in the game to be be telling anyone about Persona 3. They re-released the game back in April with an expansion, so people have had two full chances to hear about it by now. But hey, it’s a good game, and plenty of people haven’t given it a try yet.

If you’ve heard anything about Persona 3, you’ve probably heard about the game’s main mechanic and most potent imagery: When first faced with the evil spirits of the game’s world, your main character grabs a gun dropped by a supporting character, points it at his temple, gives a rictus grin, whispers “Per… so… na…” and blows his own brains out.

Now it’s not a real gun, of course, not that the main character would seem to have any way of knowing that. It’s an “evoker,” a device the characters use to summon the titular Persona alter-egos that cast various spells. They point the gun at their heads, pull the trigger, there’s a loud bang, and a spray of crystalline fragments comes out the other side of their head. So… yeah. Not a real gun at all, honest.

I’m not here to say what others have already said better. We’re all big kids here, we can buy M-rated games.

Atlus has always published Japan-centric games, and Persona 3 is no exception. The localization team took a light touch to translating the game, perhaps because the game just wouldn’t work otherwise. When you’re not plumbing dungeons, your time in the game is taken up by managing your social links over the course of a school year. The stronger your relationships with those around you, the more powerful your personae become.

Would it be at all possible to translate things like Golden Week or the Kendo club into some kind of broader American equivalent? Probably not, and they’re front and center in the plot. So, the game doesn’t really bother. Everyone has their original Japanese names, a rarity by itself.

The game probably could have stood a little localization when it came to the classroom quizzes, though. Am I really supposed to know what style of housing was prevalent during a specific period of Japanese history? Oy.

Just as the bubbly dating-sim atmosphere of the day gives way to a the escher-goth alternate reality of night, the game swings between schoolyard crushes and some of the heavier aspects of modern Japanese culture, things like the shut-ins and the ostracized and bullied suicide victims.

Between those topics and the evokers, I’m waiting to see if all these themes unite coherently. It’s going to be a fine line between empty edginess and ham-handed Evangelion-style CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE CHILDREN. I guess I’ll just have to see as the game progresses.

If you’d like to get on board the Persona train, the next installment comes out in December.

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