![]() I think this story is one every new Persona convert should experience, but it’s a big ask without the variety (both in slice-of-life activities and dungeons) of the newer games. By October and November, more than 60 hours in, I finally understand the stakes. The plot really kicks off in September, though, after I’ve met the full cast and have a swarm of characters I can drag along dungeon crawling. In July, I finally encountered my main enemies they benefit from the Dark Hour and will do anything to thwart my attempts to end it. The game starts at the beginning of the school year in April. ![]() It also takes much longer to reach the meat of Persona 3’s story, compared to later entries, and there are long stretches of time between significant story beats. (Mitsuru is cool, but maybe not 100 hours of new game plus cool.) I haven’t completed the game, but I don’t think I’ll ever become genius enough to hang out with intimidatingly icy Mitsuru, our team founder who is also student council president and rides a motorcycle, no less. But some social links are gated behind the highest stat level. That streamlines some of my activity choices, and I don’t have to stress about raising my kindness. ![]() There are three, not five, social stats to manage: academics, courage, and charm. I worried I might have been missing something crucial. I had little to do at night for the first few months besides study, work in a cafe, or chat with one social link who I quickly maxed out. By comparison, Persona 3 Portable is pared down. Later Persona games added a lot more activities and diversions to the slice-of-life, calendar-based side of things. This feels a bit out-of-body, and while I’m not wasting time locomoting around the labyrinth of Gekkoukan High, it also means the social elements are fleeting – small palate-cleansers before I take another plunge into Tartarus. In the daytime overworld map section, I’m limited to a fixed overhead view and a cursor. Tartarus and boss fights are the only instances when I’m allowed to freely move my character. The grind sometimes feels comfortable in its rhythms, but it also sometimes requires a podcast to alleviate the monotony. ![]() While it’s possible I overprepared for each boss fight by running through each new section of floors more than once, it felt necessary, at the time, to ensure that my characters were strong enough. Persona 5 elevated the dungeon experience by giving its palaces unique gameplay conceits, so the regression for players, like myself, who are playing the series in reverse chronological order will be very stark. The combat and its menus strongly resemble Persona 4 Golden, but without the variety of different dungeons. This means spending hours grinding through randomly generated floors that rarely vary in their color schemes, sneaking up on shadow enemies, and targeting their weaknesses, over and over again. Scaling Tartarus’ myriad floors is critical in gaining experience before larger boss battles, which happen once a month at the full moon. Persona 3’s turn-based combat portion largely takes place in an infinite-dungeon tower called Tartarus, which only appears during the Dark Hour. Persona 3 Portable tells the darkest story in the modern Persona franchise - it assails me with death at every turn And most of the social links I spend my afternoons and evenings developing involve tragic figures struggling through depression. Every student has a terribly tragic past – many are orphans, or have rocky relationships with their parents, if they are alive. Persona 3, however, assails me with death at every turn. Yes, Persona 4 follows a murder mystery, but there is plenty of levity and humor. Persona 3 Portable tells the darkest story in the modern Persona franchise. Although the game warns me at the start that the female protagonist is supposed to be played the second time around, I dive in anyway. Her dialog is more fun, and the option to date men is refreshing, though same-sex pairings are still sadly off the table in this port. Persona 3 Portable’s option to choose a female protagonist is a welcome change after two silent men. It’s also especially important considering the obsolescence of stores on Sony’s older platforms. There aren’t vast leaps forward from the PSP version here it’s simply the same game available to a much wider (and activated) audience. ![]() Īnd it really will be a blast from the past, because Persona 3’s port largely optimizes the 2009 PlayStation Portable release, itself an improvement on the PlayStation 2 original, released in 2007 in America. If you want curated lists of our favorite media, check out What to Play and What to Watch. When we award the Polygon Recommends badge, it’s because we believe the recipient is uniquely thought-provoking, entertaining, inventive, or fun - and worth fitting into your schedule. Polygon Recommends is our way of endorsing our favorite games, movies, TV shows, comics, tabletop books, and entertainment experiences. ![]()
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