Persona 3 Portable (2009)

I finally beat the superbosses and got the remaining achievements! I'm still sorta shocked I didn't burn out on this game, since I did a second playthrough directly after finishing my first. It was a fantastic experience and I might bump my review up a star for it.

I really enjoyed playing through as the female protagonist. The social links feel much better rounded out and you're given more options for nighttime activities throughout the game, which helps evenings feel more worthwhile even as you approach the end. That said, I'm glad I got the "original" experience by playing as Makoto first since otherwise I wouldn't have a point of reference for the improvements they made. Now I'm just kinda sad they didn't include both as playable options in Reload...

For anyone who might be interested in going for all the achievements in this game, I just confirmed that getting the bad ending still counts as finishing the game for whichever protag you're playing as. This means you can technically get the achievement for playing through once with each of them and never fight the final boss (which has its own achievement), or if you're like me, and want to skip fighting the final boss a second time in playthrough #2 you can do that.

Now I just need to max out the few remaining social links and deal with the optional bosses and I'll be done!

I'm nearing the end of my FeMC playthrough to nab all the remaining achievements and somehow I'm not burnt out yet. It helps to be almost max level, so combat is quick and easy this time around. But also...

The social links in this protag's story feel like such a massive improvement over the original's! I love that every ally gets a social link now and even some of the ones that were available before have been improved. The writing and stories that are being told hit a lot harder for me as well. Saori's in particular has been simultaneously depressing and relatable. I'm excited to see how they finish it in the rank 10 scene.

I started this two years ago when it came to PC but I finally finished it tonight after binging the hell out of the game over the past couple weeks and spending probably way too much time grinding and fusing personas for fun. I had a great time and will probably write up a review after I get some sleep. I think I'll check out the FeMC route soon as well, because I've heard very good things.

...

What an odd coincidence that Persona 3 Reload just so happens to currently be on sale on Steam...don't mind if I do...

I'm having a hard time dealing with the amount of grinding this game seems to require. 30 hours in, I'm enjoying the story and social links a good deal, but even with the "more experience" setting turned on it feels like I'm super underlevelled for basically every boss encounter I run into. Grinding itself isn't hard but having to run around and find the enemies between each fight plus the low exp numbers even with the one setting toggled makes it take forever just for a couple extra levels.

It feels like I'm doing something very wrong but I'm not sure what. This isn't my first Persona game either, so I know how to manage my fusions properly. It's just... the sheer tedium of grinding in Tartarus, I guess. It's making it tough to want to keep pushing on with it, despite the rest of the game being great.