Some of my all-time favorite video games are in the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series, which I was introduced to by the excellent Persona 3. Since then, I’ve had a huge blast following the games’ casts of colorful and interesting characters while also discovering just how many demons and mythic figures I can find swimming around in my own head. This massive plethora of personas to discover and collect is obviously a huge reason why these games are so fun – in this respect, Persona is like a darker, more mythical Pokemon, only with legendary heroes and gods instead of a hundred different types of rodent and bird.
With so many different personas on display, though, it stands to reason that some will stand out more than others. Picking just one or two that are better than all others is impossible, as is picking just a single favorite. So instead, I’ve decided to narrow down the roster to just my top 10 favorite personas, explaining how and why I find them so appealing.
Inspiration for this idea comes from Youtube’s Faust and his own video “Top 10 Persona.” Go give it a watch if you haven’t already for a second opinion. I know one or two of our picks overlap, in many places for the same reasons, but that just means we both have good taste in video game quasi-demons and that the creative minds behind Persona did their jobs really well.
Some qualifiers before we begin: I’ve only played Persona 3, Persona 3 FES, Persona 4, and Persona 4 Arena. Persona 1 and Persona 2 (the PSP ports) are sitting on my shelf, but I haven’t picked them up yet, and I haven’t played any of the other Shin Megami Tensei games yet either. So all of my picks are going to be from the latest Persona games (barring Persona 4 Golden, because I don’t have a Vita).
Also, although I’d hope it would be obvious, there are going to be some spoilers here for Persona 3 and Persona 4, so don’t read this if you haven’t played them yet. Although if you haven’t played them yet, there’s not a lot of reason for you to be here reading this anyway.
So, in no particular order, these are my top 10 favorite personas of all time.
Yamato Takeru
Great versatility with both flavors of instant death, heavy-hitting physicals, and megido- skills all make Naoto a powerhouse in battle. Both this persona and Sukuna Hikona before it have interesting designs, but personally, I like Yamato Takeru’s better. It’s regal dress looks a bit more feminine than Sukuna Hikona’s without actually looking girly, and it’s bigger while still being fairly small for a persona.
This to me signifies Naoto’s acceptance of both her sex and her age, both of which she’d obviously been struggling with. Yamato Takeru seems to say that Naoto is finally embracing those factors that she cannot change about herself without letting them define her and without losing sight of who she still wants to be. Tiny Sukuna Hikona, with his super long sword and the visible bandages binding up his body, seemed kinda like he was trying to compensate for something. Yamato Takeru just exudes confidence.
Also, the physical attack animation with this thing is great, looking very stylish and dramatic.
Caesar
On top of boasting a strong mix of electric attacks and enemy debuffs (if you’re into that – I don’t care to use them, but the electricity gets me by fine on its own), Caesar is a big improvement, design-wise, over Polydeuces. Like Sukuna Hikona’s transfiguration into Yamato Takeru in Naoto, the evolution from Polydeuces to Caesar does a great job symbolizing Akihiko’s growth. Where Polydeuces looked like a tiny guy trying to fit into a set of super exaggerated muscles, Caesar exudes more believable strength, signifying Aki’s realization that raw power alone isn’t real strength unless you know what you’re doing with it and put it to good use.
I also like the little guy hanging out in the alcove in his chest, doing whatever’s going on in there. To me, it seems to say that there is still a person here controlling this power, not the other way around like how Polydeuces looked swallowed and smothered by his own muscles. As an added bonus, it also gives the impression that Caesar himself is some kind of mecha. And how cool does it look to literally carry the world in the palm of your hand in battle?
Amaterasu
With this one and Konohana Sakuya before her, not a skill is wasted. Amaterasu is an excellent fire powerhouse with all of the necessary healing skills, and each one grows better as Yukiko levels up. With a lot of party member personas, I find myself facing difficult decisions once they start learning advanced skills and you need to choose which old skills to overwrite. Not so with Amaterasu, who gets a solid base set and consistent upgrades all throughout. This well-planned usefulness made me want to keep Yukiko in my party for every dungeon and boss fight.
Also, she has a beautiful and elegant design befitting a sun goddess. Something about the way her body is made of pure light impresses me, and the way she makes solar panels look elegant is a clever touch.
Kamui
Let me start by saying that, design-wise, this thing is ridiculous. Between the huge grin, the superhero cape, and the missile sticking out of its ass, it’s one of the goofiest looking persona’s ever. But that meshes with Teddie’s personality and design perfectly, so I gotta give it that. If they gave a serious-looking persona to your party’s weaponized teddy bear, it would just be a disappointment.
In addition, Kamui makes a surprisingly stupendous support persona in battle, learning a perfect mix of healing spells and buff spells, plus just enough ice magic so that Teddie can still hold his own in a fight. Kintoki Douji/Kamui was one of those party member personas that gave me a hard time leveling up simply because it had so few skills that weren’t great that it became difficult deciding which to keep and which to let go.
Messiah
This guy is on here for obvious reasons. For the main character in both P3 and P4, I was sad when their initial personas became weak and ineffective, as I thought they both were the best compliment to their respective users in terms of style and design. Then you get Messiah in P3, and it totally makes up for it.
It looks a bit like an evolved Orpheus, perfectly matching the main character by that point, and manages to pull off a deceptively interesting design with only a single color. The broken string of coffins hanging from its wrists is a call-back to Thanatos and the Death that had inhabited the MC and overshadowed his life, seeming to me to be an acknowledgment of that aspect of himself that he carries with him without letting it hold him back. The hand over its chest is both a symbol of the peace and purity you’d expect from a persona like this and a call-back to Ryoji, who always adopted that affectation himself and who could very much be considered another side of the MC, a part symbolizing both death and sacrifice. And when it lifts its wing-things in battle, you even get a hint of a cross motif without it being super obvious or tacky.
Plus, the whole idea of a messiah figure rather blatantly foreshadows what you’re pretty sure by now has to happen to save the world from Nyx. Especially in the FES version, his skill set is incredibly useful, with some of the best almighty and physical skills available, resistances to almost everything, and the passive skills to keep your character alive and useful as long as possible. And if all of that weren’t enough, maxing out Messiah gives you the best equipment in the game for the entire party, so registering him right before his final level and summoning him again and again will outfit everyone with their perfect setup.
I almost didn’t want to include Messiah on this list because he’s so obviously designed to be a perfect and useful persona, but it would feel ungrateful not to appreciate such obvious hard work in so many areas.
Helel
Helel is a powerful badass, kind of like an evil Messiah in appearance and functionality. He has a great design that shows a great take on the Lucifer/Satan myth, with a beautiful young man who still has a sinister edge to him. This really captures the duality of the mythic figure as someone who started out at the highest level of glory but still with the potential to fall to the lowest level of abhorrence.
The Judgment Arcana version of Lucifer that you get from FES onward looks like a leveled-up version of this idea, with the same general pose and aspects but with all the beauty replaced by darkness and evil. But while that’s cool in its own right, it doesn’t hold the same interest and juxtaposition as Helel’s design.
Also, depending on how you create and level him, he can be turned into a major spell machine, a powerful physical attacker, an incredible healer, or a combination of the three. In both versions of Persona 3, having him and Satan together in your roster lets you cast the most powerful Fusion Spell in the game – Armageddon, a non-elemental super-megido that kills everything but bosses in a single hit. And, once he knows Victory Cry, Helel can make sure that you leave every battle completely unscathed. He’s so powerful and useful that it’s almost ridiculous.
Scathach
In all of her appearances so far, Scathach boasts elemental versatility and powerhouse magic; especially depending on how you fuse her, which can grant her even more magic skills at her creation. Also, design-wise, she’s a great mix of sexy and awesome. Her pale white skin mixed with her black eyes, cape, and hat are striking. Something about a wide-brimmed hat and cape combo just seems like shorthand for “esoteric badass,” probably because it’s been pulled off by such iconic badass figures as V (from V for Vendetta), Alucard (from Hellsing) and Darkwing Duck (from do I really need to say it?).
Her skill animation is also nice, as dispatching enemies with a wave of the hand always looks cool. The fact that her cape billows up and shows her thong doesn’t hurt, either. And in her back story, she’s a kickass witch/martial arts master mentor to a legendary hero to boot.
Loki (P4 version)
In Persona 3, I considered Loki a disappointment. His skills were bland for his tier, and his design was just boring – a purple guy wrapped in a white cape, with nothing else going for him or standing out. Then Persona 4 fixed that with a wicked design that really captured his mischievous, slightly evil spirit.
Like Scathach, P4’s Loki is a magical powerhouse that can be fused to cover a wide variety of powerful elemental skills. And he learns Niflheim on his own, which is both a nod to his frost giant origins and the best ice skill in the game.
I also like that he was made the max persona for the Fool Arcana, signifying his place as the ultimate trickster with an unpredictable potential. Loki has always been a favorite character of mine out of myth and legend, an incredibly interesting individual who starts out as a hero and relatively harmless trickster figure only to steadily grow into something much more sinister. This design captures that malevolent mischief of the later Loki really well.
Kikuri-Hime
As far as usefulness in battle, Kikuri-Hime is an excellent mid-level healer in both P3 and P4. Not uniquely awesome in this respect, but definitely not too shabby. But the main reason I put her here, other than to round out the list after making my easiest top choices, is her design.
A lot of the personas that the main character in either game can fuse don’t actually look all that impressive to me as personas. As imaginings of their respective characters and entities from myths and legends, yes, but compare them to the rest of your party members and the personas that the MCs start out with; each of these look carefully designed to have a certain style about them relative to their user but also unifying amongst themselves. You can look at Orpheus or Izanagi or Jiraiya or Trismegistus or what have you and identify them as obvious personas.
Comparatively, a lot of the MCs’ compendium just doesn’t have that same style to my eyes. But Kikuri-Hime definitely does. Between her elegant outfit, coloring, and general stylish otherness, for lack of a better word, she seems like she would have been at home as the single persona of a party member in either game. In fact, she looks to me somewhat like a female Orpheus. Which would be fitting, since both characters negotiated with the Underworld in their respective tales.
Seth
I wavered a bit on whether to include Seth on this list. Skill-wise, he’s good but not stand-out. In Persona 3, he’s a great fire magic user. In Persona 4 they changed this to wind but otherwise pretty much kept him just as competent with it. His skills do little beyond cause damage or make it easier to cause damage, but honestly, that’s usually all I ask for in a persona. I’d much rather hit the enemy and get it over with than mess around with buffs and debuffs and status ailments.
But the reason I caved and stuck Seth in my top 10 is because I’m always looking for an excuse to have him in my party, and this is primarily because of his design. Hot damn, Seth has an awesome design. Persona as a series has some great dragons in the compendium, but Seth is the only one in the Western style with those massive and imposing wings. He looks like an evil and thoroughly menacing final boss that flew straight out of some dark fantasy, the only one like himself in either game. And because I’ve got a huge weakness for dragons, I love Seth. The fact that myth paints him as an avatar of chaos and hardship eternally at war with Osiris and his family just makes him that much more menacing.
So after more deliberation than was probably necessary, these 10 picks ended up as my top favorite personas so far. Got a problem with my choices? Got a better choice of your own? Leave it in the comments and let’s start a properly nerdy discussion.
Next time: my picks for the top 10 most disappointing personas that I’ve encountered so far in the series.
