Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth

 3DS
  • Publisher: Atlus
  • Release Date: Nov 25, 2014
User Score
5.8

Mixed or average reviews- based on 428 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 212 out of 428
  2. Mixed: 45 out of 428
  3. Negative: 171 out of 428
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  1. BambiRue
    Mar 31, 2020
    4
    A spin off nobody asked for.

    The gameplay isn't for everyone and is grating if you were looking for the more streamlined playstyle of the other modern persona games. It isn't bad, but is clunky and takes getting used too and the mapping is less than fun. The plot, however, is boring. The new characters are flat and not memorable at all, the characters are dumbed down flanderizations    A spin off nobody asked for.

    The gameplay isn't for everyone and is grating if you were looking for the more streamlined playstyle of the other modern persona games. It isn't bad, but is clunky and takes getting used too and the mapping is less than fun.

    The plot, however, is boring. The new characters are flat and not memorable at all, the characters are dumbed down flanderizations that get old fast and tries way to hard to be funny.

    It feels more like a parody of persona game than an official game.    … Expand
  2. kuehnau
    Jun 4, 2017
    3
    Take everything that made Persona 4 amazing and get rid of it. Then take the characters from Persona 3 and 4 and thoughtlessly use them in a outdated JRPG engine from a different game and you have Persona Q.

    All the elements of the life sim from Persona 4 are missing. Instead of a large world to explore, you are stuck at your local school. Add in a outdated rpg trope where you need to    Take everything that made Persona 4 amazing and get rid of it. Then take the characters from Persona 3 and 4 and thoughtlessly use them in a outdated JRPG engine from a different game and you have Persona Q.

    All the elements of the life sim from Persona 4 are missing. Instead of a large world to explore, you are stuck at your local school. Add in a outdated rpg trope where you need to actually draw the maps of the dungeons you explore and you are in for a bad time.

    Was not impressed.    … Expand
  3. VidyaBum
    Jul 31, 2016
    4
    So here's the final word about Persona Q: it's boring.

    I've been annoyed a bit, had a bit of fun, it had some touching moments and lots of uninteresting pointless moments. And the final word is that it's boring. Genuinely boring. I finished the game and was glad to be out of the chore. To understand why it's so boring, let's make two reviews: one for a Persona game, and one for a    So here's the final word about Persona Q: it's boring.

    I've been annoyed a bit, had a bit of fun, it had some touching moments and lots of uninteresting pointless moments. And the final word is that it's boring. Genuinely boring. I finished the game and was glad to be out of the chore.

    To understand why it's so boring, let's make two reviews: one for a Persona game, and one for a game.

    As a Persona game, PQ is a complete failure. Persona, for good or bad, is characterised by very deep, very well-written characters and individual storylines. It's the complexity of their personalities that makes the series one of the best ever.

    In PQ, every single character is dumbed down almost to their simplest expression. And that's a killer for a Persona game. Thought Yukari's conflicting emotions about not wanting to be clinging to men like her mother made her kind of annoying but endearing? Well here, she's just annoying. Akihiko is just a meathead obsessed with protein, Kanji is a creepy moron, Mitsuru is cold and sometimes girlish, but if their original personality was at 100%, then the Q version is at 30%.

    Now my guess is that they thought that they had already spent their entire characters on Persona 3 and 4, and didn't want to add content to characters already fully portrayed in other games, and instead decided to focus on them all meeting each other and having fun times and growing into each other(I mean the P3 and P4 casts growing into each other).

    It's a fine idea.

    Too bad that doesn't excuse the dumbed down personalities AT ALL. You could have the same characters be just as serious or realistic and yet be put in a situation where there's fun to be had. At the very least, if they didn't want to expand on the characters, they could just have them meet new faces and find affinities. Instead they just sort of have pointless, not particularly fun talks for the entirety of the game, minus a few good moments.

    That's for Persona Q, now let's just talk Q.

    Q's fighting does better than all the Persona games before, which is still a far cry from the far superior 2003 SMT Nocturne.
    And the whole labyrinth mechanic from Etrian Odyssey is...let's say an original touch, if kinda badly made.

    But here's the deal. This game is:
    -A few pointless talks with dumbed down characters
    -A few laughs
    -A few really good scenes about the two characters from PQ, Zen and Rei(that only happen after the 4th dungeon ends, so wow good job having nothing engaging for 4/5ths of the game).

    What I just listed is 5% of the time spent in PQ.
    The other 95% are dungeon crawling. Yes, 95% of the game is spent playing, searching, exploring, selling what you looted, healing and the doing it again. And again. And again. And again until you're just about entirely spent and bored.

    There is no one killer element to PQ but the reason why it's so boring is in the COMPLETELY IDIOTIC refusal of the game to separate labyrinth exploration and fights.

    Example: let's say I have to explore a new level in any of the labyrinths, that contains roughly 200 steps to go from the entrance to the next level. If I count the backtracking due to FOEs blocking your path or chasing you, the 200 jump easily to 250-270. If I want the (precious) bonus for stepping on every tile of the map, that jumps to 400. Now out of these 400, I'll really be walking 1000. Why? Because the game DOES NOT offer a way to avoid random encounters. Or rather it does, midway through the last dungeon, aka way too late nope never happening nope nope nope. Because the game offers a system between magic points and inventory that encourages going in, searching a bit, looting a bit, then coming back to heal and go again, the amount of backtracking, reloading, and exploring through tiny increments is absolutely ridiculous. I do not exaggerate when I say that 200 steps will cost me the time for 1000. Because if I wanted to just explore the level quickly without being constantly interrupted by fights which provide loot to sell, it would take me roughly an hour, tops, for most levels of the game. There are roughly (some are big some are small) 16 levels in this game. So 16 hours.

    I completed Persona Q in over 80 hours.
    Yes. 80.

    Around the end of the game, the characters had a scene where they said they were tired of being in this game, which implied that they had been here less than a day(at least hadn't slept since they got there).

    From this scene and my playthrough, I can only come to the conclusion that PQ was a game meant to be played in 20 hours tops. And that all the rest is a horrible padding to stretch the game. Endless random encounters. Tons of time spent just walking on every last tile. Hours wasted just going back, selling, then walking back to where you were. Without this padding Q would be a solid 7 to 8, but with it, it's just an extremely long, and tiring, borefest. The gameplay improvements have made me optimistic about Persona 5, but the designed padding of PQ ruins it entirely.    … Expand
  4. klkevinkl
    Jul 3, 2016
    3
    First off, I must state that this game is an Etrian Odyssey game. If you were hoping that it is a Persona game, you are looking in the wrong place. The only thing here from a Persona game is some of the combat mechanics. While there is dungeon crawling in the game, it is not done in the fashion of a traditional Persona game. Instead, you explore with a group of 5 in order to reach the endFirst off, I must state that this game is an Etrian Odyssey game. If you were hoping that it is a Persona game, you are looking in the wrong place. The only thing here from a Persona game is some of the combat mechanics. While there is dungeon crawling in the game, it is not done in the fashion of a traditional Persona game. Instead, you explore with a group of 5 in order to reach the end of a dungeon. The problem is that because of the high encounter rates, you will often tire yourself out and have to backtrack several times in order to complete a dungeon. Your inventory space is extremely limited as well, forcing you to carry little to no healing items because your consumable inventory shares the same space as your drop inventory with a cap of something like 50 different items. Each consumable counts as 1 item by the way and each monster has at least 2 if not 3 different drops you have to collect. This feature makes the game very annoying.

    The game allows you to draw a map with the touchscreen, but it is tedious and the automatic filling leaves out many things still. There are no social links and only a few random conversations with some people to see them interact. Leveling up does not seem to grant you very much and 20 levels in, I still feel like I had the same amount of HP and MP that I did at the beginning of the game. There's no sense of growth in power, even as I switch out new Personae for all of my characters. To top it off, there are chests that you can only open by exploring a map 100% (often not possible until way later in the game due to the presence of absurdly powerful enemies) or if you spend absurd amounts of Nintendo Coins from walking around for a week to open them.

    In short, do not buy this game if you are a fan of Persona because of the gameplay. This game is a game for fans of Etrian Odyssey, not for fans of Persona.    … Expand
  5. SaltySupplyGuy
    Dec 11, 2018
    3
    If you are a fan of the Persona series, I cannot stress what a disservice this game does to the series. Immediately from the start, there is no reason to become invested in the story as it takes place before the endings of both Persona 3 and 4, and pulls the "memory wipe" card so that they can call it canon without thinking about the consequences. There is no social links, none of yourIf you are a fan of the Persona series, I cannot stress what a disservice this game does to the series. Immediately from the start, there is no reason to become invested in the story as it takes place before the endings of both Persona 3 and 4, and pulls the "memory wipe" card so that they can call it canon without thinking about the consequences. There is no social links, none of your dialogue "options" change the story or carry any actual importance, and the story will play out the same and only serve to disappoint you from what you've come to expect from a Persona game. The gameplay is the worst part of this entire "experience." Think of the dungeon crawling aspects of Persona 3 and 4. Now imagine if that was the ONLY thing to do in the entire game. Now imagine there was no mini-map in either of those games and you had to draw your own as you explore each floor. Now imagine the removal of the tactics of ambushing shadows and having free movement. That is the gameplay you can expect here. You move one tile at a time and cannot avoid enemy encounters. The only area that exists outside of the Labyrinth is the school's hallway where you can buy/upgrade gear, fuse Personas, and heal (which you have to use your precious yen to do, as the game will not automatically heal you after leaving the Labyrinth since there is not a calendar system like the other Persona games.) Fusing Persona's is also terribly implemented in this game as well. You can only have two Persona's at one time, because your teammates also have the ability to hold two now as well, but they didn't bother animating the Persona's when you use their powers. The only reason I didn't score this game any lower is due to the fact that the character artwork is nice (the drawn character portraits, the 3d visuals are outdated), the music is still as good as you can expect from a Persona game, and the voice acting is well done. Avoid this game and if you need a good experience to spend additional time with the Investigation Team, look at getting Arena and Arena Ultimax or Dancing All Night, as they are far superior spin-off titles. The idea of having the casts of the Persona series together in one game is sound, just terribly executed.… Expand
  6. Trey82
    Apr 4, 2020
    0
    This game is terrible! They take the best parts of other games.. (Persona and Etrian, of course) and make it the absolute worst game (SO FAR!) in the SMT universe!
    HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?!
    It starts off so innocently, it looks like it'll be some reminder of what p3/p4 was. It starts off with some nice banter between the old group, the new 2 people, the velvet room people and then you're off    This game is terrible! They take the best parts of other games.. (Persona and Etrian, of course) and make it the absolute worst game (SO FAR!) in the SMT universe!
    HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?!
    It starts off so innocently, it looks like it'll be some reminder of what p3/p4 was. It starts off with some nice banter between the old group, the new 2 people, the velvet room people and then you're off to the dungeon!
    Hell yeah, mapping out floors and grinding until you're an OP god! 20 hours from start, you'll be a fighter. 20 hours later, you'll be King Leonidas, 20 hours after that you'll be on new game+ and mop the floor with FOE's!! GUA HA H...hee....um, wait. How did they not figure out the formula?

    Alright, so here is the real summary:
    Story - no character development. Your favorie characters are now one-dimensional stereotypes that never, NEVER stop saying their stereotypical lines! Like.. there isnt even any conversation, just tropes. MEMEs. It gets obnoxious before you finish the first floor.
    Game: Grind all you want, buy all the best equipment, it doesnt matter. You never get stronger.
    As soon as you get some good equips, the enemies are impossible to hit.
    As soon as you raise the hit rate, they 'bind' the whole group.
    As soon as you become bound-resistant, they one shot you.
    You cant get thru any floor but the first with grinding and 'auto battle'. You literally have to babysit these guys EVERY fight. Which is fine, except you'll half the time not have a decent loadout of skills from your personas.
    Personas: You have your main and your sub and about a dozen skills possible between all that. You'll heal up a good bit inbetween battles by just walking and having some 'passive' heals. Which would be great if you didnt get one-shotted by eveyr other enemy.
    There is honestly no way to avoid the cheapness. Best equips? Grinding? Intelligent use of enemy weaknesses? Doesnt matter.
    So good news first: The old etrian style is here. Healing isnt free. You need to TP back to town to get anything more than the basics done. The item system is there, so USE IT. Unlike etrian, you will be making TONS of bank from harvesting spots. Too much, IF you compare to etrian where a dungeon run only nets you ONE item and a heal at the inn. Etrian is a grind, but at least you get stronger.

    Bad news: your equips dont matter. Items are too expensive. It gets super tedious to have to hit up the nurse's office/inn every 5 minutes because OMFG STOP ONE SHOTTING ME. If you like pressing A to heal, then A to harvest, then a to confirm choices, then a to choose 5 attacks x 5 confirms x 5 which enemy to hit.. its just so incredibly frustrating to babysit these losers. And its a shame cuz they were so much stronger in p3/p4.
    Bad: This game. INCREDIBLE GARBAGE. Not persona. Not etrian. It sh!ts all over the persona story, too.
    Anyone rating this game positively is your enemy. If you've played hundreds of hours of etrian, this game is an abomination to you. If you played persona 3/4, this game will be an abomination to you.

    Consider it all. Consider the ratings. If you want a REAL crossover in this universe, you want strange journey. The old one on DS, not the new one. Good lord the new 3ds strange journey changed the gameplay to ENCOURAGE pay2win. You'll see.
    If you want a 'dungeon crawler lite' there is always mystery dungeon's crossovers. If you want a good etrian, just randomly choose one. No matter what etrian you choose, you might get some bad traits.. but you'll get to figure out what works, what is OP, and the story doesnt PRETEND TO EXIST like Persona Q.    … Expand
  7. midipon
    Feb 16, 2015
    3
    Persona Q lacks the music, atmosphere, balance, and party building compared to other dungeon crawlers. The characters barely make up for it, as they are almost all incredibly gross caricatures of what they were in their original incarnations. Atlus tried painting over Etrian Odyssey with Persona and added a few flares to make it better and to make the paint less noticeable, but they failedPersona Q lacks the music, atmosphere, balance, and party building compared to other dungeon crawlers. The characters barely make up for it, as they are almost all incredibly gross caricatures of what they were in their original incarnations. Atlus tried painting over Etrian Odyssey with Persona and added a few flares to make it better and to make the paint less noticeable, but they failed at recreating what Etrian Odyssey does to make itself amazing, so we have a game that rubs the wrong way in almost every respect.

    Speaking of respect, Persona Q does not respect the intelligence of it's players. Every time it has an opportunity the characters will launch into a 2 minute conversation just to point out the painfully obvious, like how the spiked floor tiles will damage you or the moving tiles will move you. As if that wasn't bad enough the characters are always announcing every single treasure chest in front of you or telling you that a party member got poisoned in battle. Seriously, nobody playing this game needs this much hand-holding.

    To compare more to Etrian Odyssey, the F.O.E.s in this game are poorly handled in comparison. They work okay in that they are used to make you seriously consider where you go, but bad in that they have too much HP and give too small rewards for fighting them. In that respect, F.O.E.s are there solely to act as puzzle elements and should never be encountered with the intention of beating and getting good EXP from them or judging your overall power. Persona Q is a poorly executed game in every aspect but its visual design.

    One more thing, this game has no business having a horror dungeon in it. The Persona series has no horror to speak of, so people will be playing this game and suddenly get to an unannounced serious horror section that is more or less just there because it has to be because spook houses are a cliche of Japanese culture festivals.
    If you want to have horror, fine, but don't put it in a game whose series is not horror in the slightest. Nobody would have missed it if it wasn't in the game.    … Expand
  8. TemplarGR
    Sep 10, 2016
    0
    Totally overrated Etrian Odyssey clone with a Persona skin. As is typical with the various trash Atlus produces, kids and weeaboos swallow these things and hype them to oblivion, while an experienced adult gamer is looking in disgust.

    Etrian Odyssey games are boring grindfests with absolutely no challenge at all. The only thing they require is a kid with tons of free time and a love for    Totally overrated Etrian Odyssey clone with a Persona skin. As is typical with the various trash Atlus produces, kids and weeaboos swallow these things and hype them to oblivion, while an experienced adult gamer is looking in disgust.

    Etrian Odyssey games are boring grindfests with absolutely no challenge at all. The only thing they require is a kid with tons of free time and a love for completing repetitive tasks for hundrends of hours, in order to proceed. The only thing "missing" from the usual jrpg recipe was a story, so Persona Q adds a Persona story, which is cheesy and cringe-worthy but better than nothing.

    The game has good production values, suprizing for Atlus, but i suppose after getting so much money from gallible weeaboos in the past, they could afford to spend a little more on development this time. Still, the game is a chore and not worth your time. Avoid.    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

4
#4 Best 3DS Game of 2014
11
#11 Most Discussed 3DS Game of 2014
4
#4 Most Shared 3DS Game of 2014

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
83

Generally favorable reviews - based on 56 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 50 out of 56
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 56
  3. Negative: 0 out of 56
  1. Eurogamer Italy
    Mar 20, 2015
    80
    Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth is the perfect recipe for a lovely game, developed mixing up Persona and Etrian Odyssey.
    Read full review
  2. CD-Action
    Mar 17, 2015
    80
    One of the best RPG games for 3DS. [03/2014, p.77]
  3. DarkStation
    Mar 2, 2015
    60
    The best advice I can give is to not come into Persona Q looking for another handheld version of the previous two games. The changes made to the formula may seem minor but they have a huge impact on the experience.
    Read full review
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