Managing time as a student can be one of the hardest issues to tackle. While balancing school, clubs, jobs, sports and social life, it can even be hard to find time to sleep. Some students might wish for just one more hour in the day. But what if that extra hour was spent climbing a spiraling tower to rid the world of shadows making zombies out of the human race?

This is the problem faced by a player of “Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable,” developed by ATLUS and released July 6th for the PSP. Though the original version was released on PlayStation 2 in 2007, “Persona 3 Portable,” dubbed “P3P” by fans, is not a direct port of the game, but adds new difficulty levels and a completely new storyline with the option of a female lead character.

But for newcomers to the game and series, “P3P” offers the original male character’s storyline of a boy named by the player who must, along with his dorm-mates, use the power of “Persona” to save the world. They do this during the “Dark Hour,” an extra hour placed after midnight, where normal people are asleep and transformed, or “transmogrified” as the game puts it, into coffins and school turns into the spire of Tartarus, where demons freely roam the hallways.

Sure, it sounds farfetched, but only half of the game play is devoted to beating baddies and saving the day. The rest is spent at school and with friends building relationships. That might sound disjointed, but the bonds the character builds will strengthen his Personas during the Dark Hour, as the mysterious man Igor warns early on. These bonds are called “Social Links” and build as the player learns more of each character’s story.

“Persona” can easily become repetitive with constantly climbing in Tartarus and dealing with the character’s school life everyday, but this is easily remedied by switching between the two fairly often. One thing that cannot be avoided though is the repetitive music. Persona games are known for their jazz-style music, and while it is entertaining at first, after spending several hours throughout the game traveling around town or talking to characters in the dorm, some tracks can quickly become annoying.

However, for the new PSP version, composer Shouji Meguro created new songs for the female track of the game.

In the original version, much time was spent walking from location to location in town and school, but “P3P” eliminates this with the use of the square button, which allows the player to jump to their desired destination. In fact, the only time the player is walking is when climbing Tartarus – the rest of the game uses a point-and-click cursor interface. Other characters are represented by on-screen pictures. That comes as a big change for veteran players, but it is easy to get used to and does save time.

All in all, “P3P” is much more than just a transfer of “Persona 3” onto Sony’s portable system. It adds twists to the storyline and new difficulty levels, along with fixing some of the original game’s more bothersome aspects. But the spirit of the well-loved original is still there – “P3P” should charm old fans and new ones alike.