Friends, Time, and Loss in the Persona Series
Claire Brownstone, Contributing Editor
The Persona series is a unique franchise because it feels like playing two separate games at once. On the one hand, you have a very engaging high-school social life simulator. On the other, it’s a turn-based JRPG with seemingly limitless dungeon crawling, intense boss fights, and super powers that you unleash by summoning your Persona – basically a giant demon that fights by your side. Bridging these two phases of the game is the constant overarching theme of managing your time wisely. Once you’re past the introduction, the games give you opportunities to decide how to spend your free time. This can include grinding in dungeons, progressing your Social Links, improving skills, working at a part-time job, or simply progressing the day. Social Links, or S Links, are bonds that the main character forms with various characters, and they progress sequentially each time you hang out with that person, which unlocks a higher level of the bond and introduces a cut scene. However, there are usually due dates by which you must complete a certain dungeon, or risk losing the game. The time limitations in these games makes the player fret over what to do each day, wondering if the decision they make is the most efficient use of time, or if it will lead to a snowball effect that locks them out of cultivating an engaging S Link before the game’s end.
The fortune teller Chihaya, a useful S Link that allows you to use time more efficiently in Persona 5. Image Source: supercheats.com
The main stories of Persona games are mostly told through the JRPG dungeon exploration parts, but the true joy of Persona are all the extra stories you obtain through your S Links and associated events. The S Links can be to your party members, classmates, or other people you run into around town. Having higher S Link ranks with your friends helps you in the dungeon by allowing you to create higher-level Personas, or in the case of Persona 5, unlocking special abilities. For example, the fortune teller Chihaya Mifune unlocks perks such as increasing the rate at which your skills increase, acquiring more money from battle, and at one point even allowing you to further your bond with any other character without spending time with them. But all of these bonuses are really a secondary benefit next to the experience of getting to know a digital character to the extent that you will cry over them…I’m looking at you, Akinari Kamiki! More on him later.
It quickly becomes apparent that the best way to progress through a Persona game is to complete the dungeon portion in as few visits as possible. If you can complete a dungeon in a single day, this leaves you the maximum amount of days to complete the S Link events that most interest you. Of course, this is difficult especially at the beginning of the game. While you are in the dungeon, you use both your Health Points and Skill Points to attack various enemies. As you progress in the dungeon, the enemies get harder, requiring you to use more and more of your skills. And there is always a major boss fight at the end. Of course, leaving the dungeon and sleeping recovers your HP and SP, but who would want to waste so much time?!
The mysterious fox that you can pay for healing in Persona 4. Image Source: www.siliconera.com
Thus begins the inevitable time manipulation that occurs in all Persona games. I found myself spending multiple, real-life days in a single dungeon as I tried various tactics to complete the dungeon in a single in-game day: switching out party members, finding SP items in lower levels to help with boss fights, paying exorbitant amounts of money to refill my party’s HP and SP, and fusing different Personas with different skill sets to see if they would give me just the edge I need to finish the level. Once I accomplished this, I was able to blissfully go about experiencing the more light-hearted daily high school life with the remaining two weeks of in-game time.
And those two weeks go by fast! The life sim part of the games depend heavily on deciding which days to perform certain actions or hang out with certain people. Some S Links are only available on certain days. Each game has one S Link that’s only available on Sunday – so you better make sure to clear your schedule on that day! Other S Links are available more often, but not when it’s raining outside. Furthermore, you do run into certain S Links that are gated, requiring you to either reach a certain level in a skill or reach a certain point in the main story to progress. And of course, the game brings the day to an end after one or two intervals of time with some excuse. Often times it is just a thought bubble with the words, “You’re Tired.” But in Persona 5, a talking cat named Morgana literally forces you to go to bed, which irks many players to no end. Eventually I realized that I was playing this game like I should ideally plan my own life – managing hanging out with friends, going to school or work, and improving skills by meticulously scheduling it all in a calendar to make sure no part gets neglected.
Morgana, the talking cat, who forces you to go to bed to progress to the next day in Persona 5. Image Source: nichegamer.com
Persona 3 in particular leans heavily on the theme of time. The general overarching theme of P3 is acceptance of mortality. With this subject comes an impending sense not only of limited time due to the progress of the calendar but also the knowledge that death awaits us all. Without a doubt, the most depressing of the modern Persona games, it’s also the most emotionally charged. This is particularly noticeable in a few of the S Links. The Sun Arcana, Akinari Kamiki, is otherwise referred to as the “Dying Young Man” in the game. When you first meet him, you learn that he faces the knowledge that he has a degenerative genetic disorder and won’t survive to the next year. Throughout your conversations with him, he struggles to find meaning in his limited time on Earth, wondering whether there is any worth to his life. In the end, he decides to try and follow his dream of publishing a children’s book. Playing through Persona 3 certainly made me realize how important it is to use time wisely, and to not take moments, or people, for granted.
There are a few key moments in the main story of Persona 3 that deal with loss, grief, sacrifice, and time lost. There is nothing that demonstrates that more than the ending of the game. The final boss, Nyx, is a celestial being that was summoned to bring about the end of the world due to the overwhelming apathy and nihilism of humankind as a whole. The party collectively decides that rather than waiting for the end, they will go and fight the coming apocalypse. There’s a lot to unpack regarding the ending of Persona 3, but the message is that no matter how tough life is, there is still something each of us can do to make life worth living, something worth fighting for. Whether that is talking kindly with strangers, helping classmates overcome personal challenges, or just being there for your friends, all of these actions matter. At the very end of the Nyx fight, the main character ends up sacrificing his life force to seal away the impending destruction of the world. Each S Link that you form gives you a message in turn that increases your power. Perhaps it seems a little childish to call it the “power of friendship,” but I think the ending is a perfect synopsis of the point of Persona 3. Every connection you make has an effect on both halves of the relationship. The protagonist gave his life force for his friends, knowing that they will survive, living with the gift of more time. His own time is cut short, but he knows that he’s made it count. And that is the message of Persona 3, to live life to the fullest and make as much of an impact as you can with the time you’re given.
Akinari Kamiki from Persona 3, one of the most tragic S Links in any of the Persona games. Image Source: gameinformer.com
Playing the Persona games with these temporal questions in mind raises the question of which portion of the game is the “real” game and which is the distraction? The main story line is told through the dungeons, but the social part of the game is where you try to spend most of your in-game time. The writing in the social events is as good, if not better, than the main story game. It’s reminiscent of games such as The Witcher 3, Skyrim, or Breath of the Wild that have hours upon hours of side quests that, while enjoyable, are not directly integrated into the main story. Yet the Persona games manage to link the side quests to the main quest by tethering your power level to the strength of your bonds with your friends. In the end, you realize that all of these social activities have their own value. Even activities that could be considered a waste of time enrich your experience. For example, having the main character play video games in Persona 5 gives you great opportunities to level up your stats. Even taking a relaxing soak in a bath will level up one of your stats. The game seems to suggest that there’s no such thing as wasting time – so take the time to explore what the game has to offer, especially the “distractions.”
As calendar-based games, there’s a specific end date to each Persona. You must finish the main story before that terminal moment. Some S Links also have a time limit, even if the game never tells you. This makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to experience every single S Link by the end of your playthrough. This difficulty adds to the feeling that the time spent in these games is fleeting, and to be cherished. This feeling is emphasized particularly in the extra semester in Persona 4: Golden. The song that plays in the background as you walk about the snow-strewn landscape of Inaba is called “Snowflakes,” and a section of the lyrics read:
snowflakes falling on your face
a cold wind blows away
the laughter from this treasured place
but in our memories it stays
And if that doesn’t sum up the feeling of a fleeting, treasured, high school life, I don’t know what does.
