Persona 3

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 is a role-playing video game developed by Atlus. In the game, the player takes the role of a male high-school student who joins the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad…

90 13 July 2006

Adventure Role-playing (RPG) Action Drama Fantasy Science fiction

Persona 3 is an adventure developed by Atlus, released 13 July 2006 on PlayStation 2. The main story takes about 105 hrs to finish.

Verified 27 Sep 2026 Sources: IGDB , Wikipedia

What Persona 3 is

Persona 3 is an adventure game developed by Atlus and released in 2006. It is available on PlayStation 2 only. It runs on RenderWare.

The premise, in the publisher's words

A silent transfer student arrives at Gekkoukan High School and settles into a dormitory on Tatsumi Port Island, only to discover the Dark Hour, a hidden span of time that appears at midnight when most people transform into coffins and the ordinary world twists into something monstrous. During this concealed hour the school warps into Tartarus, a towering labyrinth crawling with creatures called Shadows. He joins SEES, the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad, a group of students who confront the Shadows by summoning their inner Personas with a gun-shaped device known as an Evoker. Alongside teammates like Yukari, Junpei, Akihiko, and Mitsuru, he balances the routines of daily school…

Description from the publisher · source

How it plays

It is played from a third person perspective. Its themes are action, drama, fantasy and science fiction. It is a single-player game with no multiplayer component.

Where it sits in the Megami Tensei series

Persona 3 is the 63rd of 151 entries we hold in the Megami Tensei series. The next entry was Shin Megami Tensei in 2006. Its critic score of 90 is 10 points above the series average of 80. The highest-rated entry is Persona 5 at 94.

See all 151 Megami Tensei games in release order →

How it was received

Persona 3 holds a critic score of 90 out of 100. That places it above 92% of the 7,525 rated adventure games in our database, which average 72. Games released in 2006 averaged 65, so it scored 25 points above the year average. Player ratings track closely with critics at 91, across 127 votes.

How long it takes, and what that costs

The main story runs about 105 hrs. Completing everything takes closer to 137.7 hrs, roughly 1.3 times the length of the critical path.

What it launched against

Persona 3 launched on 13 July 2006, within three weeks of FlatOut 2, LocoRoco, Titan Quest and Prey. It reviewed better than 3 of the 4.

Released around the same time: FlatOut 2, LocoRoco, Titan Quest, Prey.

Cheats and codes

We have not confirmed any working cheat codes for Persona 3 yet. Rather than reprint a list we have not tested, this section stays empty until one is verified.

Know one? Send it in and we will test it →