My history with Persona 3 is an interesting one. Back in 2012 I started the game, I didn't have many SMT or Persona games under my belt at the time, so I was relatively inexperienced with it. I was going through some tough stuff in my personal life, and I got distrated by something else and put the game down for a while. I finally picked it back up in 2017 after finishing Persona 5. I ended up just starting over, and I was enjoying the game mostly. I did have some gripes about it which I'll elaborate more on in a bit.
I made it to the final boss and lost to that final phase. I leveled up some, tried again, and again, and again, and always I kept losing to the same thing: The dumbass AI. Now I know you can change the AI's tactics, and understand how to use it, however there's a couple of major flaws with it, particularly on the final phase of the final boss: You only can change the tactics on the protagonist's turn. For a bit, Nyx gets predictable with when it will turn Moonless Gown on and off (Moonless Gown insta-kills anyone who attacks it, including with Almighty Magic). The entire game, the AI understands what the spells Tetrakarn (reflects physical attacks) and Makarakarn (reflects magical attacks), but then when it comes to Nyx's Moonless Gown, despite Fuuka clearly warning them? They have no idea and will run into it like moths in a bug zapper. The thing is if you had to revive party members over the course of the battle, the turn order gets screwed up, and would often end up where Nyx acts right after the protagonist. So for a while he's predictable, then he stops being predictable and you're missing out on attacking or not attacking when you shouldn't. I know people like to say that the AI system is good because you're supposed to manage it, but in this battle it just becomes downright frustrating and up to chance sometimes, and that's a shame because the boss is cool otherwise. And then you have when Nyx uses Night Queen, a spell that deals a lot of damage to the whole party and inflicts random ailments. If the protagonist dies, it's game over, but of course the party members don't live by that. If the protagonist gets hit with a condition that makes him unable to act? You're fucked. You can't change the ally AI, and the worst thing was a couple of times where I had him down to a sliver of health, and then the protagonist gets hit with Fear, and someone else gets hit with Charm, and they attack the protagonist, critical hit and kill him. After losing many times to this type of bullshit, and not really being interested in long grind to 99 so I somehow can't possibly lose, I picked up Persona 3 Portable. I wanted to play FeMC's route anyway.
So P3P has a major downgrade in the presentation, however that does make the game go faster, since you aren't doing a lot of walking all over the place, that adds up. They used the Persona 4 ability to hit Square and be able to just go anywhere in the map instantly. Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 did this too and it was a nice feature. It definitely doesn't look as good as FES though. The dungeon gameplay is fully 3D just like the PS2 versions, and for a PSP game it looks good. I eventually finished P3P last night, and got through Nyx in one try. However often the first point people bring up about P3P, and rightfully so, is how the ability to control the party members makes it easy, and they're right, that's one aspect of it. However I honestly would rather that than the unfair difficulty of the AI in FES. I regret not playing P3P on hard, but I think it does have some changes that try to make it harder in general. The weakness/knockdown system is changed significantly. In FES, if a character gets knocked down by a weakness or critical hit, they'll spend their next turn "getting up". If they're hit again by anything, whether it exploits a weakness or not, it will automatically get them up. If you hit enemies with an AoE attack and only some of them have weaknesses exploited in FES, you don't get a "1 more". In P3P, you get up and can act in the same turn. If you get hit by a weakness-exploiting attack when you're knocked down though, you're "dizzy" and take an extra turn to get up. Normal hits on knocked down characters do not change anything. You can get an ally back up if you use Re Patra on them. One of the other big changes is the healing in Tartarus: In FES, going to the lobby would fully heal your whole party. In P3P, you have to pay for healing. Late in the game, these prices can be pretty significant, and can easily cut into your Persona Compendium summons for fusion budget. It often means you have to go for the Coin cards in Shuffle Time instead of the Wand or something else. However there was a weird thing about the final night (1/31). The lobby doesn't heal you for free, but if you go to one of the landings where you fight Jin or Takaya, you get healed fully for free there! I kind of wish they stuck to charging you for healing, as since you can't get tired on the last night, you can go as long as you want to fuse for whatever Personas you want, so you need to also keep an eye on your money still.
My biggest beef with both version of the game though was the dungeon's lack of end goal. The only real dungeon in the game is Tartarus, which is just a tower of randomly generated floors, containing 6 blocks (and a bonus 7th underground block). There's a boss every once in a while and they'll tell you when it's coming, but exploring this place for 90% of the game has ZERO objective other than exploring it, leveling up, getting items, and better Personas for the next Full Moon operation. It feels more like a game of waiting for the thing to happen rather than actively working towards a goal. In Persona 4 and Persona 5, all the dungeons had a goal at the end. Persona 5 had Mementos, which was similar to Tartarus, however it wasn't the ONLY dungeon. Persona 3 has Tartarus and that's it (other than that Love Hotel mini-dungeon, but they never did anything like that again for some reason). People like to say Persona 5 is a slog, but I don't understand that complaint when Persona 3 exists and has it 10x worse than Persona 5 ever has. Persona 3 has a ton of "dead time" in the calendar. There's so little to do at nighttime, since you can only stay at the dorm or go to the mall. Once you finish all the social links available at night, and max your social stats, there's just about nothing to do at night. You can visit the shops, go to the arcade for stats for your Personas if you really want to, or walk Koromaru, but for December and January I just went to bed early at night. I really hope a remake potentially addresses this issue.
The Social Links are very hit and miss in Persona 3. I played the male protagonist all the way up to the final boss, and also played FeMC, so I'm going to bring up S-Links from both. The first one you're introduced to is Kenji, of the Magician Arcana for the male protagonist. He's this kid that wants to talk to you about how he has a crush on a teacher, claims he asks her out, and she says yes, then proceeds to talk about how in love with her he is, and they're going to get married. Then it's revealed in the end that no, she didn't really say yes, and the wedding stuff was about getting married to her fiance, and he just kind of goes "Whelp, oh well." I really could not stand that kid. You can't imagine my disappointment to see the fact that Rio would date him in the FeMC route. Ken's social link...I didn't go past stage 1 of that one when I saw one of the options being "I'll ask you out again."...what kind of shotacon garbage is this Atlus?! Some of the winners though were Akinari, the dying young man, Maiko, the little girl with the parents getting a divorce. Mutatsu, the monk, and the businessman seemed just weird and silly but trying to throw a hint of serious in there. I'm kind of eh on those two. I only completed Aigis' social link on the FeMC run, and I'm not sure if they count that as dating her or not? At first I thought you would be having a lesbian relationship with her, even though she's a robot, but the game doesn't seem to count it as that? I'm guessing the s-link is mostly the same for the male protagonist though.
Junpei Iori I absolutely cannot stand. He's a mysoginist for 99% of the game (and even still sort of is in his "redemption" moment with the FeMC). He's also a moron and almost got himself and the party killed (and technically did get himself killed one time). "Hello oddly dressed lady when I'm quite aware there's Persona users hunting us, I do this cool thing at night where I summon these powers and fight shadows and shit, isn't that dope?" And then she fucking takes him hostage on the next Full Moon operation, and then after this he's STILL somehow in love with her despite her trying to kill him 10 minutes ago, and then again tries to kill him before she gives her life to revive him.
I think one thing I like most about Persona 3's cast in general though is that it's more diverse than P4 and P5's.
In Persona 3 you have:
5 average highschoolers (6 if you count Shinjiro)
1 elementary school kid
1 dog
1 robot
In Persona 4 you have:
6 average highschoolers
1 bear thing
In Persona 5 you have:
6 average highschoolers (7 if you count Akechi)
1 cat
I would love to have more oddball party members in the other games. That was something I thought Persona 3 did particularly well. Having Aigis as the only one that could understand Koromaru was cool.
As for the Answer, I might go play it in FES eventually, although I really wish there was a way to play it as the FeMC. However I have heard not so great things about it's gameplay, and if I don't like it I'll probably watch the story bits on YouTube.
Overall I liked Persona 3, despite it's flaws, some larger than others. I think a remake could address a lot of these issues, particularly things to do at night and the AI. It would take a massive overhaul to make each block of Tartarus have an end goal, but I would wish for something like that too.
As for what's next, I started Persona 4 Golden immediately after. I'm really enjoying that so far, but given how easy P3P was, and what I had read about P4G's difficulty, I decided to put P4G on hard. So far (I'm barely into Yukiko's castle), I think I made the right decision.
I made it to the final boss and lost to that final phase. I leveled up some, tried again, and again, and again, and always I kept losing to the same thing: The dumbass AI. Now I know you can change the AI's tactics, and understand how to use it, however there's a couple of major flaws with it, particularly on the final phase of the final boss: You only can change the tactics on the protagonist's turn. For a bit, Nyx gets predictable with when it will turn Moonless Gown on and off (Moonless Gown insta-kills anyone who attacks it, including with Almighty Magic). The entire game, the AI understands what the spells Tetrakarn (reflects physical attacks) and Makarakarn (reflects magical attacks), but then when it comes to Nyx's Moonless Gown, despite Fuuka clearly warning them? They have no idea and will run into it like moths in a bug zapper. The thing is if you had to revive party members over the course of the battle, the turn order gets screwed up, and would often end up where Nyx acts right after the protagonist. So for a while he's predictable, then he stops being predictable and you're missing out on attacking or not attacking when you shouldn't. I know people like to say that the AI system is good because you're supposed to manage it, but in this battle it just becomes downright frustrating and up to chance sometimes, and that's a shame because the boss is cool otherwise. And then you have when Nyx uses Night Queen, a spell that deals a lot of damage to the whole party and inflicts random ailments. If the protagonist dies, it's game over, but of course the party members don't live by that. If the protagonist gets hit with a condition that makes him unable to act? You're fucked. You can't change the ally AI, and the worst thing was a couple of times where I had him down to a sliver of health, and then the protagonist gets hit with Fear, and someone else gets hit with Charm, and they attack the protagonist, critical hit and kill him. After losing many times to this type of bullshit, and not really being interested in long grind to 99 so I somehow can't possibly lose, I picked up Persona 3 Portable. I wanted to play FeMC's route anyway.
So P3P has a major downgrade in the presentation, however that does make the game go faster, since you aren't doing a lot of walking all over the place, that adds up. They used the Persona 4 ability to hit Square and be able to just go anywhere in the map instantly. Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 did this too and it was a nice feature. It definitely doesn't look as good as FES though. The dungeon gameplay is fully 3D just like the PS2 versions, and for a PSP game it looks good. I eventually finished P3P last night, and got through Nyx in one try. However often the first point people bring up about P3P, and rightfully so, is how the ability to control the party members makes it easy, and they're right, that's one aspect of it. However I honestly would rather that than the unfair difficulty of the AI in FES. I regret not playing P3P on hard, but I think it does have some changes that try to make it harder in general. The weakness/knockdown system is changed significantly. In FES, if a character gets knocked down by a weakness or critical hit, they'll spend their next turn "getting up". If they're hit again by anything, whether it exploits a weakness or not, it will automatically get them up. If you hit enemies with an AoE attack and only some of them have weaknesses exploited in FES, you don't get a "1 more". In P3P, you get up and can act in the same turn. If you get hit by a weakness-exploiting attack when you're knocked down though, you're "dizzy" and take an extra turn to get up. Normal hits on knocked down characters do not change anything. You can get an ally back up if you use Re Patra on them. One of the other big changes is the healing in Tartarus: In FES, going to the lobby would fully heal your whole party. In P3P, you have to pay for healing. Late in the game, these prices can be pretty significant, and can easily cut into your Persona Compendium summons for fusion budget. It often means you have to go for the Coin cards in Shuffle Time instead of the Wand or something else. However there was a weird thing about the final night (1/31). The lobby doesn't heal you for free, but if you go to one of the landings where you fight Jin or Takaya, you get healed fully for free there! I kind of wish they stuck to charging you for healing, as since you can't get tired on the last night, you can go as long as you want to fuse for whatever Personas you want, so you need to also keep an eye on your money still.
My biggest beef with both version of the game though was the dungeon's lack of end goal. The only real dungeon in the game is Tartarus, which is just a tower of randomly generated floors, containing 6 blocks (and a bonus 7th underground block). There's a boss every once in a while and they'll tell you when it's coming, but exploring this place for 90% of the game has ZERO objective other than exploring it, leveling up, getting items, and better Personas for the next Full Moon operation. It feels more like a game of waiting for the thing to happen rather than actively working towards a goal. In Persona 4 and Persona 5, all the dungeons had a goal at the end. Persona 5 had Mementos, which was similar to Tartarus, however it wasn't the ONLY dungeon. Persona 3 has Tartarus and that's it (other than that Love Hotel mini-dungeon, but they never did anything like that again for some reason). People like to say Persona 5 is a slog, but I don't understand that complaint when Persona 3 exists and has it 10x worse than Persona 5 ever has. Persona 3 has a ton of "dead time" in the calendar. There's so little to do at nighttime, since you can only stay at the dorm or go to the mall. Once you finish all the social links available at night, and max your social stats, there's just about nothing to do at night. You can visit the shops, go to the arcade for stats for your Personas if you really want to, or walk Koromaru, but for December and January I just went to bed early at night. I really hope a remake potentially addresses this issue.
The Social Links are very hit and miss in Persona 3. I played the male protagonist all the way up to the final boss, and also played FeMC, so I'm going to bring up S-Links from both. The first one you're introduced to is Kenji, of the Magician Arcana for the male protagonist. He's this kid that wants to talk to you about how he has a crush on a teacher, claims he asks her out, and she says yes, then proceeds to talk about how in love with her he is, and they're going to get married. Then it's revealed in the end that no, she didn't really say yes, and the wedding stuff was about getting married to her fiance, and he just kind of goes "Whelp, oh well." I really could not stand that kid. You can't imagine my disappointment to see the fact that Rio would date him in the FeMC route. Ken's social link...I didn't go past stage 1 of that one when I saw one of the options being "I'll ask you out again."...what kind of shotacon garbage is this Atlus?! Some of the winners though were Akinari, the dying young man, Maiko, the little girl with the parents getting a divorce. Mutatsu, the monk, and the businessman seemed just weird and silly but trying to throw a hint of serious in there. I'm kind of eh on those two. I only completed Aigis' social link on the FeMC run, and I'm not sure if they count that as dating her or not? At first I thought you would be having a lesbian relationship with her, even though she's a robot, but the game doesn't seem to count it as that? I'm guessing the s-link is mostly the same for the male protagonist though.
Junpei Iori I absolutely cannot stand. He's a mysoginist for 99% of the game (and even still sort of is in his "redemption" moment with the FeMC). He's also a moron and almost got himself and the party killed (and technically did get himself killed one time). "Hello oddly dressed lady when I'm quite aware there's Persona users hunting us, I do this cool thing at night where I summon these powers and fight shadows and shit, isn't that dope?" And then she fucking takes him hostage on the next Full Moon operation, and then after this he's STILL somehow in love with her despite her trying to kill him 10 minutes ago, and then again tries to kill him before she gives her life to revive him.
I think one thing I like most about Persona 3's cast in general though is that it's more diverse than P4 and P5's.
In Persona 3 you have:
5 average highschoolers (6 if you count Shinjiro)
1 elementary school kid
1 dog
1 robot
In Persona 4 you have:
6 average highschoolers
1 bear thing
In Persona 5 you have:
6 average highschoolers (7 if you count Akechi)
1 cat
I would love to have more oddball party members in the other games. That was something I thought Persona 3 did particularly well. Having Aigis as the only one that could understand Koromaru was cool.
As for the Answer, I might go play it in FES eventually, although I really wish there was a way to play it as the FeMC. However I have heard not so great things about it's gameplay, and if I don't like it I'll probably watch the story bits on YouTube.
Overall I liked Persona 3, despite it's flaws, some larger than others. I think a remake could address a lot of these issues, particularly things to do at night and the AI. It would take a massive overhaul to make each block of Tartarus have an end goal, but I would wish for something like that too.
As for what's next, I started Persona 4 Golden immediately after. I'm really enjoying that so far, but given how easy P3P was, and what I had read about P4G's difficulty, I decided to put P4G on hard. So far (I'm barely into Yukiko's castle), I think I made the right decision.
