Midnight strikes, the dark hour opens, and a high schooler points a gun at his own temple to summon what lives inside him.

The gut ranking is clear: Persona 3 gets ahead of 92% of games when people choose without thinking. And for once, the detail contradicts nothing, it confirms. Attachment, ahead of 98% of titles. The one you would take to a desert island, ahead of 96%. Art style, ahead of 97%, on the largest sample in its profile. Soundtrack ahead of 82%, controller feel ahead of 82% too. The only line that dips is the wish to rediscover it for the first time, barely above average, and on few votes. Odd, for a game this memorable. Maybe because its power is not in the shock of a first encounter, but in the whole year it makes you live, day after day.

Against the Japanese RPGs of the PS2 era, it invented a balance nobody has really matched: half mundane school life, half nocturnal dungeon, and meaning born from the friction between the two.

So, who is it for? For you if you are willing to let a game take over your calendar and talk to you about death in pop colours. Much less if managing a school schedule between fights pulls you straight out of the experience.