Persona 3

Persona 3 combines elements of traditional role-playing games and simulation games. The game follows the protagonist, who balances their daily life of going to school and building relationships with others with fighting the monstrous Shadows during the Dark Hour. Each day is divided into daytime and evening segments. Except for scripted events, such as plot progression or special events, the player is free to choose how each day is spent, with most activities causing time to pass.

The types of activities and characters that can be interacted with vary depending on the day of the week and time of day. Additionally, some activities are limited by the protagonist's three attributes; Academics, Charm, and Courage, which can be built by performing various activities or making certain correct choices. During the evening, players can choose to visit Tartarus, the game's main dungeon, where they can build their party's experience and gain new items. On the day of the full moon, players will participate in a boss battle to progress the story.

The story of Persona 3 takes place in 2009 and is set in the Japanese city of Tatsumi Port Island, which the Kirijo Corporation built and funded. Experiments conducted ten years prior to the game's events created the Dark Hour, a period of time that exists between days. During the Dark Hour, most people are transmogrified into coffins and are unaware of it; however, there is a select group of people who aren't. In addition, reality is warped; Gekkoukan High School, where most characters attend during the day, becomes a labyrinthine tower called Tartarus, where monsters called Shadows roam the area and prey on the minds of those still conscious, leaving them in near-catatonic states outside of the Dark Hour.

The "Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad," or SEES, was formed by a group of high schoolers to investigate and learn about the Dark Hour, Shadows, and Tartarus. They are capable of summoning beings called Personas to combat Shadows, which the instruction manual describes as being "a second soul that dwells deep within a person's heart. It is an entirely different personality that emerges when a person is confronted with something from outside this world." Persona users usually summon their Persona by firing a gun-like object called an Evoker at their head.

Persona 3 began development in 2003, after the completion of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne and Digital Devil Saga. In March 2006, the first details on Persona 3 were unveiled in the Japanese gaming magazine Famitsū. In addition to announcing the game's Japanese release date of July 13, the three-page article detailed the game's premise, combat systems, and the social link system (known as "community" in the Japanese version). It also profiled three characters—the protagonist, Junpei, and Yukari—as well as their respective Personas: Orpheus, Hermes and Io.

The main character artist and art director for Persona 3 was Shigenori Soejima. The previous Persona titles' character artist, Kazuma Kaneko, gave the job to Soejima so he could gain more experience. Soejima felt a degree of pressure when designing the characters as he did not want to disappoint the series' fanbase. The goal was to make players of the Megami Tensei series feel gratified that they had supported the Persona series.

Persona 3 received positive reviews upon its release, earning a Metacritic score of 86. Shane Bettenhausen of 1UP.com called the game a "refreshingly new take on the MegaTen [Megami Tensei] concept", and "the best RPG hitting the PS2 this year." He praised the "excellent" AI created to direct the actions of party members during battle, which he felt created "the series' speediest and most dynamic battle system to date." Jeff Haynes from IGN criticized the system, finding that it would occasionally result in the death of the player's character, which causes a game over.

GameTrailers called the game "a rare supernatural delicacy", stating it is an RPG that fans of the genre shouldn't miss out on. GameSpy's Patrick Joynt praised the social elements of Persona 3, calling the game's social links "almost universally fascinating." While he suspected the simulation elements would "probably be the biggest hurdle" for fans of role-playing or Megami Tensei games, in his review, he wrote that he "can't stress enough how well-done it is." Heidi Kemps of GamesRadar found the game's teenage themes to be "a refreshing change" from those of other games in the genre, as they touch on "the social awkwardness common at that point in life."

An internet meme about a typo turning the game's signature song "Burn My Dread" into "Burn My Bread" went viral.

Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth is a dungeon crawler RPG developed for the Nintendo 3DS. It features both the characters from Persona 3 and the ones from Persona 4 and includes some gameplay elements from the Etrian Odyssey series. The Persona 3 campaign starts two weeks before October 4. Just as SEES prepares to enter Tartarus that night, they are pulled into the Velvet Room and sent to a school they have never seen before.