Niahak's Place

I picked up the PSP remake of Persona last week.  Thus far I’ve found it to be mostly superior to the original, with some relatively minor negatives.

The biggest positive is that the relatively low-quality and occasionally downright strange original localization has been replaced with a spiffy, high-quality and more accurate job.  No longer does the game pretend to take place in the sleepy U.S. town of Lunarvale, and no longer does Guido Sardenia plot to do evil things to said sleepy town.  The localization work in PPSP is overall great and, near as I can tell, accurate (aside from one small gaffe [/edit: Not actually a gaffe, the gaffe was mine; see comments]; apparently the “Hiremon Stone” is in St. Hermelin’s courtyard, rather than the Philemon Stone).

The only negatives I’ve seen thus far have to do with sound effects.  While I do miss the original voicing (remarkably good for the time) the new stuff is better.  But the small pieces that formed a greater feel for the game – the sort-of-scifi sound effects, the Persona summon sound effect, even the surprised scream when you walk into a trapdoor – all are missing, usually simply silent.  When the Deva System goes into overload, there’s no indication whatsoever.

While it’s still worth picking up – I can’t help but think that it still lost something in the process of gaining a new subquest, improved translation and reworked soundtrack.