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...

This was my first Persona game ever, and after this experience, I definitely want to play the rest of the series. Unfortunately, there isn't a true "definitive version" of Persona 3, as each release has its own quirks that are missing in the other versions—even Persona 3 Reload.

"Tartarus" annoyed me at times because it’s quite repetitive, and the instakills from enemies were sometimes just frustrating. Towards the end, I often just hit "Rush" to get through the battles as quickly as possible. However, the boss fights, both in Tartarus and outside of it, were cool and (mostly) fun.

The story takes a while to really get going. However, that didn’t bother me much, as it helps to get to know the characters better. I really liked both the protagonists and most of the social links. The ending of the story hit me emotionally, even though I can imagine that in FES or Reload, the final boss fight is even more epic and the ending is more emotional. And the soundtrack? Fantastic!

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.

Persona 3 Portable impressed me with its mature handling of the themes of grief and depression as well as how well it laid the groundwork (social links and combat) for the franchise's modern entries. It features an excellent main cast of characters that I would have gladly spent an additional few dozen hours with on top of the 87 I already had and a spectacular soundtrack that still had me nodding my head along to the beat even after hearing the tracks loop hundreds of times over.

However not all is perfect here. The main (and only) dungeon, Tartarus, is incredibly dry as it doesn't introduce any significant new mechanics across its 200+ floors. As a result it gets pretty stale within the game's first ten hours and fails to improve past that point. By the end I think I had stockholm-syndromed my way into enjoying the dungeon crawling to some degree out of the sheer love of grinding out experience points and money to allow for more persona fusions but I really can't find anything concrete to praise regarding this. It's a very bare-bones JRPG dungeon experience and nothing more.

Thankfully, the story was solid enough to keep me interested, but the real draw here has to be the characters. They're colorful and fun but also feel grounded-- they're complex enough to be endearing in a way you don't see too often. I'm already thinking about the NG+ playthrough I'm intending to do and how I'll get to dig into them a bit more, this time with a different protagonist. Maybe I'll get to see some new sides to some of them. That's an exciting prospect.

While the presentation of this version of Persona 3 has clearly taken a hit vs the original release, even as someone who never played it, I never felt like I was missing too much in the name of portability. The static 2D backgrounds are a bit lame, but this version is no slouch when it comes to sheer volume of content. A single playthrough is long enough on its own, but Portable also offers two protagonists to choose from. Much like the choice between Jill and Chris in the original Resident Evil, your decision of protagonist gives you a different perspective, even if the underlying events are the same. There are also secret bosses I have yet to check out and social links I barely had a chance to develop prior to the game's end, even in all the time I spent playing.

Ah, social links. Persona 3 deserves some massive credit for introducing these lifesim-lite elements into the established Shin Megami Tensei JRPG gameplay. They're addictive and offer the player the opportunity to spend more time with some of the supporting cast, which helps the world feel a lot larger than it really is. In this game, they're a bit of a mixed bag, though. For every character arc that touched me emotionally, there were just as many that were either boring or just kinda shitty. They're fun to pursue regardless, and I love how they provide benefits for the JRPG side of the game, but you can easily tell which ones feel particularly inspired (Sun arcana) vs the ones that just don't (Chariot arcana).

To sort of circle back to the core themes of Persona 3, the game cobbles together this crazy amalgamation of various theologies and bits of philosophy in support of its exploration of death and grief. It's wild to experience, like you can almost see the developers all sitting together in a room with a massive corkboard, colored strings connecting images of Jesus, Vishnu, and a wide assortment of gods, demons, and other mythological creatures. Yet somehow it comes together in a way that is surprisingly cohesive and well thought out with how it ties back into the tarot deck that serves as the core of the game's aesthetic.

I had such a great time with this game that I think I'll jump straight into a NG+ playthrough at the risk of burning myself out on it. I also think I want to eventually play the remake that came out last year to see how that stacks up. I could see myself adding in a fifth star to this review a few months down the line, depending on how the game sits with me, but for now I feel that its downsides are enough to knock it down to a high four stars. I highly recommend it regardless.

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.

The game that changed Persona forever. To be completely honest, for me this is the weakest game of the modern Persona games, and the biggest reason why is because the pacing of the story is absolutely terrible, nothing happens for like 70% of the game, I am not kidding, but even then what makes the story ultimately worth it is the phenomenal ending and the themes it touches.

The characters are the best part of the campaign in my opinion, they are very likeable and they grew on me as I progressed through the story. The gameplay is actually pretty great, it's typical turn based combat with some additional clever mechanics that were later improved in the newer games. This was the first Persona game that added the social simulator aspect, which is a little bit toned down here, but I always loved exploring the world and meeting new characters, making bonds with other people and interacting with the side content, this is what makes Persona unique and interesting.

What I didn't really enjoy is Tartarus, think of it like this, there are hundreds of empty levels where you do the same thing over and over again, just fight Shadows until you reach the end, it's incredibly repetitive and straight up boring, the entire gameplay loop literally made me drop the game multiple times, and the boss fights are straight up bad... which is a shame because there's definitely some wasted potential.

As for the music, it's really good, it's a solid soundtrack overall and it has some beautiful songs. I enjoyed this game a lot, there are some things about it that are outdated for sure, but it's still a fun experience, it's the game that made the Persona series popular, it reinvented the wheel and it succeeded in doing so, but for me it just didn't hit as much as Persona 4 and Persona 5 did.

When Atlus announced this last year to bring back Persona 3 to the modern generation. I was happy that they did pick this version mainly due to being able to play the female protagonist. I have seen the male side to this game but I will probably not play that side myself due to Reload coming out next year so a lot of my views are playing from the female route (which is one of the reasons to play this version).

First off I want to address the music which is always A+ for these games. With this game, though both characters have their own soundtrack, and all of it is worth listening to because persona soundtracks are addicting to listen to. The other thing to praise is the story, even though this is all in a vn form (due to this being originally for PSP) this is one of the better stories out of the 3 modern personas. Also, all the SL were well done.

The only con I give this game is combat can be easy (and even Tartuas is a slog). In this version, we were given the choice to control the party members so this game is not very balanced to that (because FES had uncontrollable members). Especially with sliders (which the new releases of this and P4G had) made it so that this game if known right then it could be very easy. And then there was the elephant in the room the main dungeon in the game was such a slog that around 100+ hours of gameplay it just got tiring, and every time I went into it I had to groan by just how much time I was in there for. The main dungeon is very podcast time or audiobook time (at least it was worth it due to the music not getting too boring).

Overall though Persona 3 Portable is worth it for the female route that sadly won't be in the remake coming next year, and with this on-game pass this is hard not to recommend to try. Rating from me 7/10

I did, and still do, have a very potent aversion to turn-based RPGs. As beautiful as the art direction might be, as compelling of a story it might have, I usually find myself getting bored. It begins to feel like a job. I want to press a button and see something happen. I'm an "instant gratification" sort of gamer. This has happened to me time and again, with all different RPGs. Then one day a very special person recommended a game called Persona 3, and it is no exaggeration to say that my life has never been the same since.

Persona 3 is a game about loving those whom you don't understand. It is a game about how to show empathy, sympathy, and kindness to people who are different from you. In turn, you figuratively, and quite literally, become stronger.

From a gameplay standpoint, it is the first of the "modern" Persona games that shaped what many today understand the series to be. There is a key "weakness" mechanic baked into the combat, which enables you to end fights more quickly, a big plus in my book. Some have cited the one, main dungeon as monotonous, and a slog. I can see where they are coming from, but I strangely did not have a problem with it. The most fun aspect of the game occurs during the sim section (daytime), as you attend school and hang out with friends in events called social links, which not only treat you to engaging narratives, but also level you up for combat. Being a well rounded, caring human being makes you stronger; what a concept! Each social link is ruled by a major arcana of the tarot deck, and for every step you level up in a social link, you gain access to even more powerful personas from that arcana to use in battle (the nighttime, dungeon crawling part.) Even better, the story arc of each social link demonstrates both the upright, and inverted aspects of the arcana they represent. The supporting cast of characters are loveable and quirky, and if you don't love them right out of the gate, you will by the time your journey nears its conclusion. By the end, I cared for these fictional characters as if they were my true friends. Superb writing!

More pros: The music. The MUSIC. My god. There is a reason Atlus is known in the industry for having some of the best scores. The music accentuates any situation in which it plays, making a scene blood pumping, joyful, or devastating. Great track examples include: "Mass Destruction", "Want to be Close", "The Voice Someone Calls", "Living with Determination" and of course, the inimitable, iconic and timeless " Poem of Everyone's Souls". Most personas are based on real-world figures from mythology, religion or folklore from all over the globe. Each is sorted into one of the major arcana of the tarot deck (as are your social links.) The brilliance is in HOW these personas are sorted. For example: Satan, Helel and Lucifer are all different personas, all in different ruling arcana. Satan to Devil, Helel to Star, Lucfer to Judgement. When you examine the mythology of each different aspect of the same character, you realize that their arcana makes complete sense. Helel strived to be Yahweh's equal, and was struck down for his ambition, exemplifying the reverse Star arcana. Lucifer is Helel at the end of his arc, the supreme ruler of Hell, judging evil souls, thus he belongs to Judgement, the penultimate major arcana. Each of the 170 personas were carefully organized into their respective arcana, and it's a blast to read up about each deity or being and piece together why they fit with their arcana!

There are only two faults that come to mind, one being a very brief instance of transphobic humor (extremely unfortunate, as it seems to undermine the game's core virtue, if only for a moment) and the Moon social link in its entirety (the only heavy person in the game, portrayed as a pretty bad, sleazy guy. A rare implementation of a lazy trope). Please be warned if these issues are very sensitive for you. I have to stress, as bad as these missteps are, they are made all the more glaring and incongruous for how nurturing the entire rest of the game is to the human condition.

At the risk of this being an essay, I'll try to wrap this up. I could write about this game for what feels like an eternity. What truly makes this game compelling is the allegory, the narrative, and the theming. The Persona series is my favorite game franchise from a purely narrative standpoint. The game's core message is a crucial one, and that compels me to recommend it to anyone and everyone. As an (overly) sensitive person, and someone who feels that their personality is less-so a coin and more-so a 20-sided die, this game resonated VERY deeply with me. The real world needs more compassion, more love; this game consummately demonstrates that sentiment. The plot is exciting, and will contain twists and turns that will thrill and devastate you (do NOT look up spoilers, it's best experienced blind.) If you love mythology, a suspenseful and exciting story, sims, RPGs, the occult, action, killer music...hell, if you love great games: just play it. I cannot recommend this game enough.

TL;DR: This is a truly gripping experience for folks who feel and love deeply. Amazing story, characters, gameplay and mythos. A world you will get lost in. I beg you to play it. It will stay with you for a very long time. DON'T LOOK UP SPOILERS.

After gathering my thoughts for a week I’ll quickly write down my thoughts about Persona 3 FES. This was my first actual Persona experience (I’ve tried Persona 1 for about an hour or so though, but couldn’t get into it) and it was my 3rd try to get through the game. With my previous attempts I gave up after like 10-15 hours playing. If I had to summarize my thoughts of Persona 3 into 1 word it would be: Grinding. At the end of the game I really was sick of the grind. The floors all look the same and enemies keep returning but with a different color. Combat is fun, but very basic, and repetitive. Bosses are pretty cool though.

The most fun I basically had were during the special events once a month. During those events you encountered cool bosses and interesting environments. I especially remember the hotel section. That was really cool and something different.

The best thing about Persona 3 are the characters and “Social Links”. Those are the npc’s you can improve your relationship with, by doing so you’re able to make stronger personas of a certain type. Some of those character interaction were pretty boring, but most of them are pretty good with standouts like Mitsuru and Kazushi. They were interesting and you really felt the characters grow. Unfortunately you don’t see any effects of your improved relationship outside those social links, for example in the conversations in the overworld, which is a missed opportunity. I’m not going to spoil the ending, but I will say it was a satisfying ending.

Overall I can say I did like the game (I put about 105 hours in it), but more as a visual novel, and not an rpg. I am looking forward to playing Persona 4 and 5, but first I need to take a persona break 