Well, Persona 3 is out on current gen consoles and you know what that means: it can be on my game of the year list. So I’m calling it now: P3P, GOTY 2023. What a time to be alive.
Persona 3 Portable was the PSP port of Persona 3, with an additional protagonist who had different social links and character interactions, and menus in place of an overworld you can freely explore. The combat had some neat additions also, the best and most noticeable of which being the ability to control every party member directly, something that really changes the dynamic of fights. It’s been years since I played it: the version I played more recently was P3FES, so it was interesting to relive it on a big screen having become more accustomed with, and a lot better at, Persona games. My favourite is still P5 Royal, but 3 is dear to me as well; I love its sombre, melancholic tone and the constant underlying sadness that accompanies even the game’s most triumphant moments. It’s bittersweet.
You are a new transfer student arriving on Tatsumi Port Island to attend Gekkoukan High. Right away Portable has one up on the other versions by giving you a choice of protagonists. The original, male lead offers the same experience, but there’s a new female main character who has social links with the male members of the party, letting you hang out with the whole team. She also has the ability to keep relationships platonic rather than the male MC having to romance every girl he hangs out with. Anyway, Kotone Shiomi, as she’s officially called now, is just getting started with her new school life when her dorm is attacked by a monster and she awakens to two different personas, one of whom ferociously rips said monster apart. Turns out her dorm mates are members of the Specialised Extracurricular Execution Squad or SEES, which despite the name somehow masquerades as a regular school club, but in actuality hunts the monstrous shadows during the “Dark Hour”; a hidden period of time that kicks in at midnight where the moon turns green, all water turns to blood, regular people turn into coffins and Gekkoukan turns into a massive tower called Tartarus. The story is quite straightforward compared to other games in the series, but it has some great ideas and its tone and atmosphere are superb. The core theme of the game is death: as an unstoppable force, a natural part of life, a spectre that’s affected everyone in the main cast personally and something everyone has to come to terms with; “Memento Mori” is explicitly stated in the game’s opening cutscene. The Dark Hour is still, creepy and intimidating and there are no elaborate, themed dungeons. There is only Tartarus; a cold, imposing tower stretching into the eerie green sky. One really cool plot point that’s oddly never been touched since is characters with personas who go berserk, and it has to be kept in check with pills that ruin their bodies and drastically shorten their lifespans. The game’s best boy Shinjiro Aragaki doesn’t need to take the pills but he does anyway, because one time his newly awakened persona went out of control and killed a civilian. It’s not all doom and gloom though; SEES are all likable, helped by Kotone having social links with them all. Some of them are stand outs for the series as a whole, especially best girl anti-shadow robot Aigis, super smart dog Koromaru and the aforementioned Shinjiro. It has the best boss in the series too, at least of the ones I’ve played. I won’t spoil what it is, but it has a great design and it’s a cool fight with two fantastic remixes of other in-game songs.
Gameplay wise, it lacks the bells and whistles of Persona 5 and punishing difficulty of SMT 3; it’s quite meat and potatoes, but those meat and potatoes are still really tasty. It does have a couple of mechanics that really should have been updated, however: inactive party members don’t gain XP, something P5 handled with a certain social link, and when you fuse personas you can’t manually choose what skills the resulting persona will inherit. They’re picked at random by the game, which removes a whole layer of strategy from persona fusion. One change that is a real improvement over the other versions is the ability to directly control every member of your party rather than just giving their A.I orders. That alone makes up for the social parts of the game being handled with menus, and along with the presence of Kotone makes this the superior version, in my opinion. The only problem for me is that I really would have liked for FES’ epilogue “The Answer” to have been included, for the extra context it provides to the ending of the main game. What I really wanted was a full remake using the models from Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight, but this is still Persona 3 on modern consoles. As a remaster it’s fine, but nothing special: no changes have been made, it still looks and sounds like a PSP game but the graphics have been given an HD coat of paint that brings it up to modern standards in terms of resolution.
Persona 3 is fantastic. Portable is, in my opinion, the superior way to play it, and it’s easily available for modern audiences having been freed from the constraints of the PSP/Vita. It’s not as good as the all-consuming juggernaut that is 5 Royal, but I liked it better than P4G (which I’m planning to replay since it’s on Gamepass). It’s a bittersweet, affecting story about friendship, personal growth and dealing with the inevitability of death married to fun, rewarding turn based combat. Can’t believe I get to talk about Persona 3 as a new release. Go play it.
By James Lambert
@jameslambert18
The Reviewing Floor 