Been thinking of picking this game up and the reviews seem good but never played any of these games before. Have a few questions before I buy it if someone wouldn't mind answering because I want to make sure its worth picking up because I don't have a ton of disposable income right now. Whats the story and battle system like and also does it have a lot of replay value?
The story follows a group of high schoolers as they follow and ultimately try to solve the mystery of a series of murders taking place in a small rural town through an alternate world inside a TV. It's hard to say any more than that without starting to reveal spoilers, but so far both the plot and characters have been extremely good.
The battle system looks like a standard RPG at the start (4 characters with HP/SP bars face off against a number of enemies), but the Persona system is what makes it unique. The protagonist can acquire and fuse a huge amount of Personae, each with different skills and elemental weaknesses/resistances and can switch between them in battle. Enemies have weaknesses and resistances as well, and exploiting weaknesses (and avoiding having your own exploited) is key, since hitting a weakness provides the attacker with an extra turn and knocks down the target. The battles tend to be pretty fast-paced, and you can attack enemies behind on the field to get a first-strike advantage. While not in the dungeons, you're free to live out your school life, and build relationships with other people, which are called Social Links. Each Social link boosts a different type of Persona, so you have to balance dungeon-crawling and maintaining your S links in order to really succeed at the game.
As far as replay value goes, I'm not 100% sure what post-game content there is, though I know you can start a new game+ with all the Persona from the previous game recorded, so you can re-summon them (provided you have the money). There's also multiple difficulty levels, and you may find yourself using different Personae than the ones you had during your first playthrough. A few social links are different depending on which choices you make. It's also important to note that this game is pretty long - most estimates I've heard range from 70 to 90 hours of gameplay for one playthrough.
Compared to P3, one other nice thing I've noticed besides the improved dungeons/higher difficulty is that there are a lot more social links available fairly early. I'm on 7/26, and I've unlocked all but 3, one of which is because my Understanding isn't high enough.
Also, Reach Out to the Truth is a great random battle theme, worlds better than Mass Destruction.
