Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth

Honestly, short and sweet does the job for this review: if you haven't played Persona 3 and Persona 4, this game is just not worth it. Now, I'll get in depth. It constantly references both of those games in a way which makes it feel almost vital to understand the backstories and motivations of these characters. The game confuses difficulty for tedium, with just increasing enemy HP and increasing their attack power every time you go up one difficulty level. Characters are way too easy to build into overpowered units, which is brought by the use of items that come from chests that take 100% of the map to be explored to be able to access. In a way, that game shoots itself in the foot constantly. You're not rewarded with items that you feel as if you earned for exploring every area and defeating every mini-boss, you're rewarded with items that make you feel as if you barely have to think and strategize your way through battles. Not that the game should be played for the story either, since barely any aspect of the story that's trying to be told is intriguing enough to bog through the extremely repetitive gameplay. Ironically, the game gives you 20 characters to choose from for your party, which consists of 5, but, in reality, it consists of 3-4 characters, since the two characters created specifically for the story of this game take up one slot, and I wasn't going to play the game without using the two characters that were just introduced that have an insanely good move pool, and of course you should choose one of the two leaders the game presents you with. Enough rambling; if you want to get Persona Q because you've played every other mainline game and you just want your fix, go for it. But if you're looking to get into the series through this game, like I did, don't get it. The music, if that's what you're into, is available through streaming, which is worth checking out because it's phenomenal, and the high quality design and motion graphics work of this game is present and better implemented in other titles. PS: There's no reason this should be on the 3DS other than its mapmaking mechanic that gets pretty stale pretty quick, the game lowers in framerate drastically when you turn 3D on.