For us who can’t get enough of Persona 3, Atlus steps in to cure the craving with the FES edition. You could think of it as a director’s cut of the original game; both gameplay and storyline receive the gold treatment with many new bells and whistles. There’s also a brand-new epilogue chapter in which members of SEES attempt to come to terms with the past while facing a new, unexpected threat ... something that ultimately tests their bonds of friendship. For anyone who has yet to play Persona 3, grabbing FES should be a no-brainer. Those who already have it might ask, what’s in it for me? Well, read on.

Persona 3 FES divides itself into two parts. The first of these is called the Journey, which is an enhanced version of the old game. I wrote an in-depth review of Persona 3 earlier, so those curious about gameplay details may want to head over there, but here’s a quick recap of the premise: You, the main character, discover your capacity to summon Personas — manifestations of your psyche — during a run-in with Shadows, mysterious creatures inimical to humans. You are quickly drafted to SEES, a group of similarly gifted people, to combat the Shadow menace during the Dark Hour, a hidden time when their home tower of Tartarus exists in our world. Time’s march is inevitable, and you must balance school life and social life with fighting Shadows while questing toward Tartarus’ summit in search of answers to Dark Hour’s mystery.

To answer one of the bigger questions straight off, your Persona 3 game data can be loaded into FES, but only certain achieved milestones will carry over. Your calendar progress won’t carry over — you must start the game from day one. As a new feature, you may choose hard difficulty mode to really test your skills.

A bunch of new personas have been added to the game, bringing the total to a breezy 170. Mara, which was dropped from the previous version, is now in. As usual, you hardly need most of them to be able to finish the game, since you can easily level yourself past even the final boss in Monad block, but for the catch-em-all people, there’s a reason to spend many more hours experimenting with fusions in the Velvet Room.

Speaking of the Velvet Room, Elizabeth has double the number of job requests now. Many of them are used as opportunities to crack little jokes, but perhaps the best are ones in which you have to accompany her as a guide around the town. She has a definite unique way of looking at things and an understanding of the real world that mostly seems to come from books, so her observations have rather ... exotic angles to them. Unfortunately, you are not given a social link to build up with her. Boo.

There is one new social link in FES. Before you waste hours in fruitless search, I should add that it will not open until the latter parts of the game. Old social links have gotten some minor polish as well. As far as I can tell, you can, for example, confirm the identity of the mysterious “Maya” of the online game social link, if you haven’t guessed her name already.

Once Koromaru joins SEES, you’ll have the option to take him on walks. He might be a dog that can summon a persona, but he’s still a dog. These late-evening outings mostly serve to bring you into additional contact with your social links, like the old Sunday meetings with them.

And this is certainly not all. For example, the command room’s security camera might have caught something interesting now and then, and there’s hidden extra content revolving around some of the story’s more poignant moments.

On gameplay side, there are several interesting additions. You can collect special clothes for each character, which will alter their appearance on field and in combat — but the ladies of SEES will voice their thoughts if you have them wear those... more special garbs. Incidentally, the special weapons have been preserved so that you can still fight with a toy bow or bus-stop sign if you wish.

Another big new feature is weapon fusions — once the antique shop opens its doors early in game. By combining loot from the elusive golden Shadows with your personas, armaments of various properties can be assembled. Final qualities depend on fused persona’s level and arcana, but specific powerful personae will result in very powerful, unique weapons.

Oh, they’ve also changed all the classroom quizzes so that you can’t depend on older walkthroughs to bail you out if you don’t know the answer. No cheating in school!

The second part of FES is called the Answer, playable straight out of the box if you want to skip the original story. The Answer is an epilogue chapter for the main story with some 30 hours of gameplay, switching the point of view from main character to the android Aigis. In the beginning of the chapter, one month has passed since the final scenes of Persona 3. The actions of SEES may have averted the Fall, but the full cost of this has become apparent only during the intervening month. This weighs heavily on their minds as they gather one more time to disband SEES.

Subtle signs that something is amiss start to manifest soon, but things come to a head when the android Metis, claiming to be sister model to Aigis, bursts onto scene. Although claiming to protect her “sister,” she has ill intent toward rest of SEES, and the confrontation causes an awakening in Aigis — to that same unique power the main character held. The Velvet Room receives a new visitor.

After initial confusion is over (with Metis joining the party) and some explanations are made, their predicament becomes fully manifested. A phenomenon called the Abyss of Time has trapped them and the dorm building. They cannot leave, and their world is on a constant replay of March 31. The only path forward is the Desert of Doors that has formed beneath the building, leading into the bowels of the Abyss. Something powerful has reached out at the members of SEES, grabbed hold of their lingering doubts and regrets, and snared them. But what it is? Where did it come from? And what does it want?

Gameplay-wise, this confinement means no social link events or working on your three main attributes. Instead, focus is purely on moving deeper into the Abyss and unfolding its secrets through story scenes. The time loop also has the effect of eliminating rest mechanic; you don’t need to worry about the characters getting tired in the Abyss, because they won’t.

The Abyss of Time works much like Tartarus in inverse. Instead of climbing up, you descend deeper with each level you take. Although it breaks into seven major sections (a thematically fitting nod toward the seven levels of hells) with entranceways dotting the Desert of Doors, the next area opens only after the previous has been conquered. In essence, this means linear progression like Tartarus. The familiar boss floors mechanic also is present, with modifications. There’s a save point available now, but the exit is one way. If you leave without fighting the boss, you must do the descent again. A two-way entrance becomes available only after the boss is dead.

Overall, difficulty level has been raised in the Answer. In part, this comes as more difficult monsters or withholding of certain game elements. The Velvet Room is not offering you access to the persona compendium this time, so you’ll need to consider every fusion very carefully. No fusion techniques beyond triangle fusion are available. Weapon fusion is not available either, once you regain access to the mall’s shops.

Boss fight difficulty ramps considerably toward the end. Some of them even seem perfectly aware of the weaknesses of whatever persona you are using that round; others get really cranky if you try immunizing yourself to their attack types, starting to dish out unstoppable attacks — you fight on their terms, or you get wiped. Also, there’s no equivalent to Monad extra block for fast level grind if the last bosses prove to be too much for you. This all makes the Answer a challenge, but fortunately not overwhelmingly so.

Unfortunately, Atlus has not taken this special edition as an opportunity to smooth out some of the game’s few kinks. Equipment management is still the same pain in the backside as before: You need to speak to the person in question if you want to change their gear. In combat, it is impossible to check which of your personas had which skill unless you switch to that persona — and you can switch only once per combat round. Outside battle, in persona details screen, you can tell what skills each has, but you no longer have access to explanations as to what they do, unless you have memorized the meanings of their cryptic names. Your skills screen does give you an amalgamated list with explanations concerning their effects, but you can’t tell which personas possess the skill.

Beside the staggering number of floors on Tartarus, this “guess what this persona knows” game is perhaps the most frustrating aspect of Persona 3.

The artificial intelligence routines have received no love either. It is as competent as before, which is both good and bad. It gets you through nearly all battles just fine, but there will come times when your comrades in arms act bizarre. They might decide that instead of giving a finishing blow to that nearly dead, dangerous Shadow, it is a better idea to waste the round buffing up attack power. Likewise, they will routinely attempt to use skills on boss monsters that rightly won’t have any effect on them — charms and one-shot killers. And they will try again even if their inefficiency was clearly observable.

On the plus side, all the relevant voice actors seem to have returned to lend their voices to the new addition. Listening to both their old and new performances, I am again impressed by the talent and how they bring the characters alive. Elizabeth in particular gets her 15 seconds of fame (and then some) during her visits into the town. There are a few odd choices in supporting cast, but I suppose it has more to do with voice direction rather than performances. This time around, I noticed I was most bothered by Shinjiro, who has a needlessly edgy and dark tone to give his character some rough edges. Most impressive is no doubt Junpei — Operation Babe Hunt, oh yeah!

Well, if this all isn’t enough to convince you Persona 3 owners to upgrade to FES, I don’t know if anything is. If you’re a fan, you’ll be missing out on some great content, and it’s all your fault. I know Junpei would agree on that.