PAST
Nearly a century has passed since present-day. Advances in technology during this time had been exponentially more rapid, weaponry included. When a third World War devastated the planet, only the few most highly-advanced facilities and their inhabitants survived. With the majority of the Earth's landscape barren and inhospitable, and only educated guesses at how many other enclaves of humanity continue to survive, there was no choice: life must go on, but within the boundaries of safety. Life for these last humans would now be completely confined, and they would have to rely on only the resources they were left with.

PRESENT
... 2099 ...
... What scientists hoped to be the golden age of technology, what they projected would be past the epiphanous point of a singularity ...
... is now widely accepted as the twilight of the era of man ...

The Library of Alexandria, easily one of the world's foremost scientific research facilities, is one such place. All residents must serve in any capacity the Library faculty requires of them; in exchange the Library supports its residents with its vast array of advanced technology.

You are a student in the Library of Alexandria. You know the problems of the outside world, but you can't remember living there. Your only concern is obeying the Library's directives. At the completion of your freshman year of education, you were given a battery of strange tests, and determined to have 'the potential.' You're being transferred into a new dormitory in a different sector of the Library, a sector you've never heard of before. What is the potential...? What is the purpose of this special academic center...? Why does the Library so frequently pass down orders with no rhyme or reason, and what use could you possibly be to them...?


OVERVIEW
Persona:Reverse is new breed and a fresh take on the SMT: Persona series of games. You play the role of a silent protagonist, "Rylan." You decide what to do with Rylan's time, whether that is going to classes like "Gym Class" (intensive weapons training), working on homework assignments, emailing your friends or venturing into dungeons. You might recognize the familiar format of time management vs. dungeon-crawling balance. For those of you who aren't familiar, you are a student; half of your time is spent passing time-phases and deciding on time management. The other half of your time - or one of the decisions involved in managing that time - is how much time to spend in the game's dungeon. There are also a great many changes from the typical systems - Social Links have been repurposed, completing blocks of the central dungeon is meaningful to other gameplay areas, and the overall playing style and balance is freshened.


Unlike Persona 3, which tasked you with running up 250+ floors of tower, and Persona 4, which presented a fixed progression of updated but similar dungeons, the dungeon system is nonlinear. You may access any of the Dungeon Floors that you have unlocked at any time. Enemies in each one will scale up in level, skill set and overall intelligence as the player grows stronger. You can mess around and train in different dungeons to get different types of treasure, or focus on one dungeon to learn its tricks and solve it!


(Shin Megami Tensei, Persona, and all related trademarks are the property of Atlus and/or their respective owners. Custom sprites are Disgaea-series edits, which is the property of NIS.)