4/5 ★ – Kalle_Deimos's review of Persona 3 Portable.

*Spoilery Review* TLDR: It's a slow burn. Quite possibly the slowest burn to ever burn. Gameplay: The tartarus can be very boring for those who have played either Persona 4 or Persona 5. Or any RPG with actually designed dungeons. But at a certain point, I pushed through the boredom and entered a zen-like state while exploring it and it was quite nice. This isn't an excuse but still. There is a certain addicting quality to be constantly rolling rewards through shuffle time, getting Persona's and then running down to fuse them. I've created many-a persona that I spent a lot of time trying to create to be as powerful as possible. Only to be very sad once they become outdated. To be honest, I'm a little confused on how the developers intend for us to progress with our Personas. Should I just up and fuse them for that instant power boost? Or do I stick with them and grind out EXP for them? I mainly fuse and always had a rotating cast of Personas because grinding EXP takes AGES. Enemies grant very little EXP for most of the game. This is counteracted by having a very high encounter rate. This isn't necessarily bad in any way, but it get very repetitive considering there are not that many enemy permutations. You will be encountering repeats of the same gang repeatedly throughout dozens of floors and sometimes all I could do was look at an enemy and think "nah...not today" and avoid them. Most of these issues were alleviated by the end of the game. Once I was in the final block of Tartarus, had some ultimate personas to make and the Monad Depths, I took off. I loved creating all these wild personas with unique abilities based off religion and mythos. Even if I was so OP because of it that there wasn't any challenge anymore, it was the best part of the game for me hands down. Outside of Tartarus there is a shocking lack of things to do. You can raise your social stats and social links. Take the occasional side quests and that's it. Activities do not get unlocked, new parts of the map are not discovered, what you see is what you get. It can get very repetitive and I felt like I was missing out on something during my playthrough. I felt like I wasn't capitilizing on some mechanic and I was doing something wrong. Did some research...and nope. I was doing everything I could. There is simply not a lot to it. Which is why I'm very excited for the P3 Remake, because I think it really needs it for a modern audience. I had to take many breaks to finish Persona 3. I had to take a big break to finish Persona 5. I had to take 0 breaks to finish Persona 4. Granted, we were in the middle of pandemic lockdown. So do with that information as you wish. Story: Persona 3 still has some aspects of SMT. The science fiction aspects, shadow organizations and robots and 'evokers' and suppresants and science. While it works in SMT because of it's setting, usually a completely apocalyptic setting, I don't think it all fits the modern school setting. You have to suspend your disbelief A LOT because sometimes things simply don't make sense. Biggest Example: SEES and the Kirijo Group. There's a whole organization researching the shadows? How the hell does that even work. How do you hire for an organization like that? What are your employees like? How do you even keep that a secret. What happened to everything when Tartarus was wiped from peoples memories? Did a bunch of scientist clock in monday morning and think "what the hell is all this". There's research and stuff right? Theres videos, data and documents? Does that go away? How the hell does that work? Whats the point of the memory wipe??? Persona 5 sort of made the science fiction aspect seem kind of a little bit in the ball park of reality, BARELY. But SEES and Kirijo Group is a bit too anime for my anime. Other than that, the story is great...once you're 60+ hours in. Until you hit November, P3 moves at a snails pace because there is not a lot of urgency in anything thats happening. Sure, things get exciting around every full moon operation but during the down time there is not a lot happening besides rare plot / character development. Then suddenly when you're nearing the finish line all of the character and plot development pays off so well that you almost break your neck from the whiplash. I was stunned with how they turned it all around in the end. So stunned I almost forgot about the other 3/4ths of my playtime. ALMOST. Also I'm not a huge fan of yes-manning my way through social links but whatever. Graphics: It's a PSP game...it's not gonna look good. In fact, most of the game looks like a point and click to save room for a 3D Tartarus. It can get tiring to look at the same art for most of your playthrough with no change. 3D scenes really fill in the gaps for something like this and even though I got used to it, I wish I was able to experience these settings more intimately. Other than that, the game looks pretty good. The art style still has that early ATLUS crustiness but it's pretty good. Sound: Lots of hip-hop / funk vibes in this soundtrack. Which is fine but is not necessarily "my vibe". It can come off as cheesy and a bit repetitive compared to P4 or P5. None of these tunes are ones that I will bump to after I turn the game off. But I will admit, Mass Destruction goes hard. Extra: There is 80 requests which act as sidequests in this game. And these require you to put in a SHIFT man. I was working hard for these requirements. If you got time to kill and have the patience, it can be fun because you get some cool rewards. Otherwise, I don't blame you for ignoring these. At the end you unlock the Monad Depths which is the ultra challenge area where you can level up super quick. Any RPG that has the "grinding challenge area" gets a fat thumbs-up from me. Favorite Thing: ANATA NO TELEVY NI JIKA-NET TANAKA MINNA NO YOKU NO TOMO !!! Not My Favorite Thing: I thought Mrs.Toriumi was Yukari's mom the entire time because of their hair. Is that a common thing?