SMT Persona 3 Story

At the coming of midnight, the night glows green with scattered pools of blood, people turn into coffins standing across the city, lights and electronics fail. They call this period the Dark Hour, the 25th hour which happens between the crossing of one day to the next. This is the world of PS2's Persona 3.

Playstation 2's Persona 3 is set around the Dark Hour, played in a half simulation half role playing style. Player controls the protaganist, a transfer student at Gekkoukan High School, who has moved to stay at a dormitory in the city, his new home. Disguised as an ordinary school curriculum club, the dormitory is in fact run by a group of students who possess the potential to resist the evil of the Dark Hour. Led by the club's chairman, the students investigate and fight the Shadows while ever looking out for new potentials to join their team.

With the use of guns known as Evokers, they are able to summon their Personas to counter the Shadows' powers. Shadows are dark presence that prey on those who are able to experience the Dark Hour, in other words, people who are not sleeping inside their coffins during this hour.
During this hour, the Gekkoukan school grounds turn into a near endlessly high tower called Tartarus, which is believed to be the Shadows' nest.

Students by day, Shadow hunters by night, the group of Persona users explore Tartarus hoping to find the solution to put a stop to the Dark Hour. By a turn of events, the students discover the unleashing pattern of mighty Shadows on every full moon, each representing an Arcana of the Tarot, 13 in all and each one more powerful than the previous.

Throughout their new school year, they seek to locate and destroy all 13 of them, which they deduce to be the source of the Dark Hour.

The story is extended in Persona 3 FES, released also for the Playstation 2, acting as a mini sequel to the original Persona 3.