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

despite feeling extremely aged, in part due to the scaled down graphics and crunchier ported audio of the port, i do still believe that persona 3 continues to hold up even in comparison to the newer persona installments. albeit now looking poor, there’s still a lot of charm to persona 3’s gameplay. the social simulator, while harder to juggle compared to later installments, is difficult, yet very simple, making for an experience that is different, but still enjoyable. it does get monotonous, but, for the majority of the game, it’s really satisfying! however, i will say that, agreeing with most, tartarus has definitely aged poorly. yet, the one-more combat system is still satisfying and fun as ever, especially with some pretty fun and creative boss fights (though this game does suffer from some ending fatigue). although it takes a while to kick in (since the first few weeks feel like dawdling, somewhat), and this feeling seems to return around the end of the game, the cycle of social life and dungeon crawler that makes a persona game persona truly was genius from the very beginning. however, the most valuable part of persona 3, to me, is its story and characters. although its recurring human villains are definitely weak, persona 3 makes up for it with the unknown and supernatural elements of the game, with this looming sense of dread and unease persisting throughout the game. it’s probably the best modern persona game when it comes to the handling of its themes: it’s very well done and very strong in its story, but, unlike newer counterparts, isn’t over-the-top or on-the-nose. it’s definitely helped by the way it handles the topic of death and how it isn’t afraid to give characters real consequences (well, aside from some changes that you could make, but i purposely avoided in order to keep the themes). though sometimes clunky, this game’s story is far from formulaic, and flows extremely well in such a satisfying and cathartic manner. this persists through the characters as well, with the sun social link probably being my favorite social link out of all the modern persona games due to its simplicity, impact, and ties to the core themes of the game. while this isn’t true of all the social links, which are extremely straightforward and simple, i feel that they’re all, at the least, very short and sweet, and their simplicity just adds to the simplistic, minimalistic nature of the first modern persona game’s social system: something that i think just fits. however, nearly all main characters are all written in a way that makes them feel real while still connecting them to the main ideas of the game, further reinforcing that idea—they all have backstories that are so well written and pulled off so well, it makes you wonder where all this juice went in recent years. i think a lot of people end up picking the first persona game they played as their favorite in the series. however, now that i’ve played all the modern persona games (still waiting on that persona 2 remake that i voted for in the atlus survey), i don’t think i have a favorite. they all really blew me out of the water in their own ways, and, this one is no exception. it’s truly amazing and still holds up, and i’m truly amazed at how great it continues to be. (this is written from the perspective of the male mc route, though if i feel anything new after the female mc route, i’ll probably write a new review.)