Every Persona Game, Ranked

Every Persona Game, Ranked

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Compared to similar games, like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, Persona is one of the newer classic JRPG video game franchises. The first installment was released by Atlus in 1996 as a spinoff of Shin Megami Tensei, also known as Revelations. After 30 years, the Persona franchise has gone on to become one of the biggest JRPG franchises out there.

With Persona 6 coming out in the near future, it is worth looking back on the Persona series as a whole. As it turns out, one can rank the games based on their release date, making it a rare case of a franchise only getting better with each succeeding installment.

The First Persona Served as the Stepping Stone

Revelations Persona Gameplay
Image via Atlus

Revelations: Persona, originally released in Japan as Megami Ibunroku Persona, served as a stepping stone for the entire Persona franchise. The game largely contrasts with later Persona games in how much of a traditional JRPG it ends up being. This is to say that, unlike Persona 5, Revelations: Persona lacks the franchise’s signature day-to-day structure of later installments, focusing more on getting from point A to point B.

This is all set against the backdrop of a familiar Shin Megami Tensei plot, albeit one that isn’t wholly unlike that of Persona 5. Here, a team of high school students need to make sure humanity’s collective subconscious isn’t harmed by supernatural forces of evil. They can do so by summoning their titular Personas, which assist the player’s party in battle and can be used against enemies.

For such an early installment in the Persona series, and putting aside the lack of a daily in-game schedule and, compared to later installments, a heavy emphasis on dungeon crawling, Revelations: Persona already feels like the franchise knew what it was up to, which spelled good news going forward. The only downfall is that Revelations: Persona is hard to find cheaply nowadays.

Eternal Punishment Can Go On Forever

persona 2 eternal punishment
persona 2 eternal punishment
Image via Atlus

Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, despite its number, is actually the sequel to Persona 2: Innocent Sin. In fact, the game shares the same setting, in this case Sumaru, and many of the same characters as Innocent Sin. For example, the main protagonist is Maya Amano, who played a minor role in the previous game. Other returning characters include Tatsuya Suou, the main protagonist of Innocent Sin, and newcomers Ulala Serizawa, Baofu and Katsuya Suou.

Tatsuya Suou returns as an antagonist. He, along with Revelations: Persona antagonist Takahisa Kandori, is working to open up the Other Side, an alternate dimension where the two revel in victory. This is too much for the heroic party, who must take down both Suou and Kandori before they can enact their plans and cause a rift in time.

Whether it’s the PS1 original or the PSP remake, Eternal Punishment is enjoyable to play in its capacity as the middle child in the Persona franchise. There are elements from later Persona games that had their start here, including skill cards, which allow multiple party members to combine their attacks into one. This helps to make Eternal Punishment, and later installments, more intense than the previous installments.

Innocent Sin Isn’t the Most Innovative Persona Game

Nyarlathotep in Persona 2: Innocent Sin game
Nyarlathotep in Persona 2: Innocent Sin game
Image via Atlus

Persona 2: Innocent Sin, incidentally, is the predecessor to the confusingly named Persona 2: Eternal Punishment. Thankfully, just about everything else in the game is straightforward, including it being set in Japan’s fictional resort town of Sumaru. It is here in this otherwise peaceful city that a nefarious force, known as the Joker, is lurking in the background and threatening to wreak havoc on Sumaru.

Main protagonist Tatsuya Suou and his high school friends, including foreign exchange student Lisa Silverman, along with adult friends like news reporter Maya Amano, must all work to prevent the Joker from wreaking havoc. Thankfully, they are all equipped with fusion spells, which they can combine to form one massive attack against any enemy that they come across. This ends up making the game more intense and exciting to play.

In addition, Innocent Sin adds many quality-of-life features that have come to define the Persona franchise. This includes the third-person camera, replacing the fairly static camera typical of the Shin Megami Tensei series. Additionally, the main protagonist, Tatsuya Suou, is silent throughout. This means players can mold him into whatever character they want him to be, which is a luxury later Persona games provide as well.

Persona 3 Marks the Start of the Franchise’s Modernization

Persona 3 PS2 gameplay featuring the part in turn-based combat.
Persona 3 PS2 gameplay featuring the part in turn-based combat.

Persona 3 has been cited as the point where the franchise drifted away from its Shin Megami Tensei roots in favor of developing its own identity. For one, it adopted the series’ signature daily scheduling mechanic, which means certain activities become available at certain points of an in-game day. This allows players to take their time and explore the world the game is set in.

It’s 2009 in the company town of Tatsumi Port Island, which is run by the shadowy Kirijo Corporation. Around ten years ago, the corporation accidentally created Dark Hours, which forcefully transforms people into coffins and, more worringly, bends reality. The main protagonist, Makoto Yuki, teams up with an assortment of other concerned citizens, which introduces another innovation: the social link system.

The gist of the system is that, the closer the player is to their comrades, the greater their combat efficiency will land against enemies. In essence, the social link system encourages players to foster relations with individual party members, in a way showing that teamwork will get the job done. The fact that the social link system has appeared in evolved forms in Persona 4 and Persona 5 goes to show what impact Persona 3 had on the franchise.

Persona 4 Reinvented How Parties Worked

Persona 4 Revivial screenshot of protagonist and Yasuka
Persona 4 Revivial screenshot of protagonist and Yasuka
Image via Atlus

Persona 4 faced the daunting task of following in Persona 3’s footsteps. After all, given how the latter effectively gave the Persona franchise its own identity, Persona 4 had to work hard to enhance the franchise’s identity. Thankfully, it succeeded at doing that; it toned down the melancholic, gothic tones of previous Persona games and gave it a more kinetic, anime-esque bounce.

This starts with the game’s story, which sees Yu Narukami and his high school friends investigating a string of murders. All the while, they will make use of their Personas in order to take on supernatural forces that pose a big threat to Inaba, the town where the game is set. Notably, unlike previous Persona games that only had players control the protagonist, Persona 4 allows players to micromanage every move of each party member.

Combined with the evolution of the social link system, which allows party members to perform follow-up attacks against enemies, players are in full control in Persona 4 compared to previous installments, which makes it all the more enticing to play. It doesn’t hurt that Persona 4’s anime rendition is just as stellar.















































































CBR Exclusive · Quiz
WHICH FINAL FANTASY
HERO ARE YOU?
The Crystal Has Chosen You
From the slums beneath Midgar to the shores of Spira, from the burning ruins of Vector to the edge of a godless future — Final Fantasy’s greatest heroes carry worlds on their shoulders. Each one is a different answer to the same question: who do you become when fate asks everything of you? Fifteen questions. One destiny.


FFVII
Cloud Strife
Ex-SOLDIER


FFVI
Terra Branford
Magitek Warrior


FFX
Tidus
Star Blitzball Player


FFXIII
Lightning
L’Cie Warrior

01

The party is falling apart before the final dungeon. You:
Every hero faces the moment the mission starts to crack.




02

Your past is catching up with you. How do you carry it?
In Final Fantasy, no hero escapes who they were.




03

What is the source of your greatest strength?
Power in Final Fantasy always comes from somewhere real.




04

You must give something up to save everyone. You choose to sacrifice:
The hardest choices reveal a hero’s true values.




05

Someone tells you to smile more. You:
Small moments reveal the biggest personalities.




06

A prophecy names you the chosen one. Your reaction?
Fate is Final Fantasy’s oldest weapon — and its greatest test.




07

Your battle style in a crisis is:
The way you fight is the way you live.




08

The crack in your armor is:
Even the legendary have a weakness in the stats screen.




09

An ally betrays the party. Your response:
Trust is the most fragile currency in the Final Fantasy world.




10

The world is ending. What keeps you moving?
Final Fantasy always asks this. The answer defines everything.




11

Strangers meeting you for the first time would say:
First impressions in the overworld matter.




12

You discover everything you believed about yourself was a lie. You:
Final Fantasy loves this moment. So does character.




13

What does the party mean to you?
No hero wins alone. But why they need others varies.




14

The world that shaped you was:
Every hero is a product of the world that broke them.




15

Standing before the final boss, you think:
The last save point is behind you. This is what you’ve been building toward.




THE CRYSTAL HAS SPOKEN
YOUR FINAL FANTASY HERO

Your scores appear below. The character with the highest number is your match — read their description to discover which legend of the Final Fantasy universe has always lived inside you.


FINAL FANTASY VII
Cloud Strife


FINAL FANTASY VI
Terra Branford


FINAL FANTASY X
Tidus


FINAL FANTASY XIII
Lightning

You are formidably capable and brutally self-contained. You built walls so high that even you sometimes forget there’s someone worth knowing on the other side of them. Your strength is real — but it was forged in grief, and part of you has never fully left that burning town. What makes you extraordinary isn’t the sword or the silence: it’s that underneath all the cold precision, you still care about people with an intensity that frightens you. The ones who earn your trust don’t just gain an ally. They gain someone who will walk into the end of the world for them, without ever saying a word about it.

You are extraordinary and don’t fully believe it yet. Something inside you — something ancient and luminous and untameable — has always been there, waiting. Others have tried to control it, define it, weaponize it. What they never understood is that your power isn’t the dangerous part: it’s your heart. The capacity to love that you spent so long being afraid of is your greatest strength. You are not a weapon. You are not what was done to you. You are what you choose to become — and that choice, made quietly, every day, is the most heroic act in the game.

You feel everything at full volume and refuse to apologize for it. Where others calculate, you leap. Where others grieve in silence, you cry out loud and then help everyone else back to their feet. You understand instinctively that love is not sentimental — it’s the most courageous thing a person can do. You walked into a journey you didn’t fully understand for people you had only just met, and you gave it everything you had. That isn’t naïveté. That’s the rarest kind of bravery: the kind that smiles on the way into the dark.

You are relentless in a way that unsettles people who don’t know you — and humbles the ones who do. You buried everything soft about yourself because the world required it, and you made yourself into something no fate, no god, and no system could stop. What people mistake for coldness is actually grief in armor: you loved someone so completely that losing them rewired everything. Underneath the discipline and the precision is a person who would unmake the laws of the universe for the people they love. And has. More than once.

Persona 5 Is Waiting to Be Topped by Persona 6

Joker suits up for another heist in Persona 5
Joker suits up for another heist in Persona 5
Image via Atlus

Persona 5 first released all the way back in 2016; despite the ten-year-long gap in new installments, it’s clear that the game hasn’t grown tiresome. In truth, Persona 5 holds up as one of the best JRPGs ever made, a fact that can be attributed to many things, including the game’s story, characters and, most importantly, its surprisingly existential themes.

The game’s main protagonist, Ren Amamiya — code name Joker — is the leader of the vigilante group The Phantom Thieves of Hearts, which seeks to stop humanity’s undesirable impulses. Morgana, a key member of the group, is a cat who believes himself to be a human. He is the source of the game’s existential theme, pondering the blurry lines between reality and fantasy, with the two clashing in the game itself.

Of course, there is more going on in Persona 5 than its existentialism. There is the return of firearm, which hadn’t been included since Persona 2: Eternal Punishment in 2000. There also exist great refinements to the social link system introduced in Persona 3, which not only boosts relations among one’s party, but also impacts the player’s relations with non-playable characters. There’s a lot more to say as to why Persona 5 is as great as it is, which is too much to mention.

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