How? Why? There are a couple of theories. One says that Atlus ran out of time and was unable to localize this part of the game. Ran out of time to localize fully one-third of the game? Who came up with those time estimates? I don't buy this one. Another theory says that this storyline is very hard to complete, perhaps too hard for delicate American gamers. Indeed, I have read that some of the dungeons can take over 10 hours to finish. However, the rest of Persona was already much harder in the Japanese version and had already been declawed for the American market, so why not the same for the Snow Queen storyline? No, the only plausible explanation, as stupid as it sounds, is that one of the creatures you fight in this storyline looks like a giant penis, and they just couldn't have that in a video game over here. I know, I know. I mean, why not just replace the sprite? Good questions.

These two factors lead me to believe that Persona is a game to be taken much more seriously than it appears. It appears to be rather straight-forward, with lots of throw away characters, dangling story threads and an abrupt ending, none of which is true. Oh, and the dialog. The dialog, the dialog. There are moments where the American translation is pretty funny, intentionally I think, such as when ToiletKid asks you not to fuse her with a large persona, as it might clog up her bowl. But oftentimes the text is bland, unintelligible or just plain goofy. Could Mark and Brad really have been that lame in the original? Was Mark all "No he didn't!" and Brad all "Wassap Baby!"? I tend to doubt it. The grafting on of tired American colloquialisms and movie and TV references ups the cheese factor immensely. The rest of the game (graphics, music, design, themes) leads me to believe that the dialog was originally at least a bit dark and quirky, perhaps even with a certain amount of pathos.

Moving on to the game proper. I enjoy all the battle elements. The minimalist graphics (a trademark of the MegaTen series) lends itself well to excellent in-battle animation (but only in-battle, the rest of the time characters looks like floating GI Joes). The melee weapons and the guns have a real feeling of heft to them, in large part thanks to the excellent sound effects. Negotiation at first seems overwhelming, but in the end, seems underused, like wasted potential. This is probably because the number of random battles was reduced in the American release, down to 25-33% of the original by some estimates. This is a double-edged sword if there ever was one. On the one hand, I felt the number of random battles was just this side of annoying. 3 or 4 times as many does not sound good. On the other hand, the spell card/negotiation system was built around the idea that you'd be meeting new demons all day long. Less battles means less opportunity to explore this feature. Your spell points auto-recover quickly. Another mark of the original frequent-battle design.

This leads me to another tangent: is the game just too easy? With the right Personas, yeah I'd say its pretty easy. And you don't have to work very hard to get those. Make sure one has a healing spell with "ALL" in the name. Make sure the rest have attack spells, preferably with "ALL" as well. Be reasonably diligent about upgrading your weapons and armor. Super Guido took me one try to kill with one resurrection, my levels in the low 40s. He, err.. it never posed a real threat. Perhaps a tip off that this is not the real end. Maybe the portion after the bad ending is harder. The Snow Queen storyline sounds much harder. The Japanese version is already harder. Yes, the game is probably too easy.

The Moon Phase system. In almost all scenes, the phase of the Moon is displayed, ranging from New Moon (0/8) to Full Moon (8/8). The age of the Moon apparently has an effect on all aspects of the game. I did not notice this at all. In fact, I think it would take some experiments with some design to them to figure this out. Let's fuse this Persona at 1/8. Reload and do it at 2/8. Repeat. Talk about obscure. Am I doing more damage because of the Moon phase? Will this store's inventory change with each phase? Or in groups of phases? I can see this being really interesting… to some people. Maybe those people are MegaTen fans, who've played them all. This was my first one, and I played the worst version of it. How lame is that. The only other member I've played is Maken X. Not exactly the world's foremost authority, am I?

Anyway, even today, the modern day setting feels very fresh. Far too few role playing games take advantage of this. No, the Final Fantasy games don't count. I don't look outside my window and see floating pirate ships and massive spheres of water. Persona is high school, the mall, the subway. This is kind of cool. Best use of guns in an RPG ever. While I'm at it, best song in an RPG ever.

OK. There is a casino as well. It follows the Dragon Quest model of using money to buy tokens, using tokens to win more tokens, trading tokens for items. Dragon Quest VIII's casino brought me much misery, so I decided not to bother, but it looks like you mainly trade tokens in for fusion items. Fusion items are things you throw in the mix when fusing Personas that can give beneficial side effects, such as more spells, higher attributes or even a different Persona all together. This may have been more important in the original, harder version, but now only those with the pokemon-esque "Gotta catch 'em all" attitude will involve themselves.

Looking at the manual, I notice a host of "Good Status"es listed. Cloak, Puppet, Counter, Berserk, Mad, Wolf… I did not see any of these, even once. Are they really in there? I'm starting to question if I really played this game at all. Or, perhaps, it's simply a game that demands replays. Perhaps I would acquire an entirely different set of Persona's and experience another side of things. In fact, the fifth slot in your party can be occupied by four different characters. The thing is, once you've accepted one of them, you are blocked from the rest for the remainder of the game. No switching about at your convenience. Once you allow Brad in early on, which you have no reason not to, as far as you know, you are stuck with him until Kingdom Come. This explains why his dialog is especially inane, suffering from Optional Character syndrome. You can't count on him being there, so you can't give him anything important to say or do.