This is a super rough draft for a review I’ll likely have done in the new year.
I wanted to get this done now whilst a lot of this was still fresh. Once I’ve done the editing I’ll also share whatever results from that, but for now here’s something much more loose and sloppy.

I hope you enjoy.

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I finished Persona 3 Portable a few hours ago and I want to get my thoughts down now rather than later when I’ve thought about them too much.

I first saw a trailer for Persona 3 back in… 2006, I think. I’d bought Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne Maniax (or Lucifer’s Call in places outside of Japan; a game that functions more of a meme featuring Dante from Devil May Cry than it does a game at this point) in 2005 due to thinking it looked interesting and from there I found myself becoming quite interested on all the SMT-related games. I’d joined Megaten Haven kind of around that time and then rejoined when it moved to a different host. But anyway, I saw the trailer for Persona 3 and I’m pretty sure I didn’t know what to think at the time. It looked like it was going to be heavy.

Now, I’ve tried to find this teaser and it does not seem to exist anymore. It may have been from the intro and it’s possible that I saw it in 2007. I’m fairly certain it wasn’t one of the trailers that are readily available to view. Of course I could be misremembering but I do remember the trailer focusing on the evoker. If I ever find it again I’ll update this, but for now I just cannot for the life of me remember correctly.

Anyway, I saw a teaser of sorts and it may have covered the introduction and I thought it looked like it was going to be heavy. I’m pretty sure I then forgot about it for a while. I know I was more interested in getting hold of Digital Devil Saga somewhere around that time and maybe that had to do with it; I’m pretty sure I also saw the main character and didn’t want to play as some emo kid, or at least had some hesitation of the idea of doing so. I didn’t get into that scene much, if at all, and whilst I’m aware I’m being incredibly reductive when I say this, at the time it seemed to me that a lot of that scene was just shallow stuff and full of scene chasers. Eventually I heard emo music that wasn’t representative of the immediate idea of what emo was and that certainly appealed to me more, but I was into more intense stuff at the time. I was beginning to move into and out of Nine Inch Nails as I moved toward more “experimental” music. I also eventually discovered Godflesh and got into Napalm Death, Coil… anyway.

I didn’t have to worry much about whether I’d play the game or not anyway as it took a while to reach Australian shores. Eventually I bought Persona 3 FES at some point in… 2009, I think. May have been 2008. I didn’t start playing it until late 2009, however, though it may have been early 2010.

I kind of enjoyed what I was playing though I wasn’t entirely sold. The congealing of social simulator and RPG was interesting and still is, really, but I was put off by menu lag mostly. Being only able to control the main character in battle wasn’t something I thought was a good idea and I know that I wasn’t a fan of how you could end up missing a lot in one playthrough if you didn’t know how to do everything correctly and so I used a guide for my first attempts. However, it was mainly the menu lag that put me off and so I put the game down.

Since then Persona 3 onward have led to Atlus becoming quite successful out of Japan, or at least it seems to be the case. It is a spin-off series that has seen pop-cultural proliferation to the point where it overshadows what it is a spin-off of, and that is helped in part by its sense of style found in aesthetic design and soundtrack form. The games hold strong plots and the gameplay loop stays balanced for the most part.

So Persona 3 is the first of the Persona games and has four different versions. There’s the original, Persona 3 FES (a sort of expansion / “director’s cut” [From what I’ve read, “FES” is derived from “festival”]) and Persona 3 Portable, a Playstation Portable version that takes some mechanics from Persona 4 and plays more like a visual novel than the prior-mentioned two; it also lacks part of what was introduced in FES. The fourth version is the (as of this writing) upcoming remake of Persona 3.

When I heard about Persona 3 Portable (henceforth P3P) way back I was a bit turned off from trying it out due to how a lot of its exploration was reduced to static screens where you’d move a cursor over a marker (most being able to be toggled on and off) and move from there. Admittedly the original game didn’t have the most motion-filled and lively areas, but there’s something to be said about how being able to run around in a setting can help it feel more believable. It also bears mentioning that this change was likely concession made to have the game run on The PSP. It’s quite possible that that isn’t the case and it was to have game adopt more social simulation influence. However, considering that the graphics were reduced, cutscenes were heavily simplified to mostly static screens and the audio was compressed, it’s likely the former rather than the latter.

The version that ended up being re-released this year was P3P and, even though there has been some upscaling on graphical fidelity, it is very much unchanged from its original release. It’s also the version that I’ve finished.

In P3P you play as a stylish young person who, with a swarthy team of young upstarts, helps to fight against diffident shadows in the hour between hours. You and your team work to protect humanity’s justice whilst trying to uncover the mysteries about this strange hour and the shadows, as well as Tartarus, a tower whose innards reshape on a regular basis.

P3P’s story plays out on a semi-regular basis. It’s a game set over a mostly firmly defined period of time. That’s broken down into days which are further broken down into parts. Your main character is a high school student and so they need to go to school. After school ends (and on days off) you usually have a period to do some things, followed by an evening period where you can do more things which includes exploring Tartarus. Aside from some exploration and taking care of other things, doing something will usually take up that whole period and so you keep moving forward. As such, you’re going to be hitting the story on a somewhat regular basis, though it might be more apt to say on an expected basis.

Essentially you’re often “moving forward” in the game and so you know the plot is going to be happening. It’s not something you can easily put off indefinitely as most things will bring you closer to an event.

Socialising is what helps power you up and it’s handled through a series of individual characters with their own stories that need resolution. Each character (aka a social link) represents a major arcana of the tarot and, as you talk to each character you need to select the right options to increase the rank of the social link. This helps by allowing you to have stronger persona (Personas? Personae?) of the corresponding arcana when you fuse new ones.

In combat you’ve the usual fighty fight stuff and without getting too much into the details, it’s a fairly straightforward thing. Your powers (and most of your stats) are defined by which persona you are using. You can carry a few on you at any given time but can only use one at a time, and all fall under one of the major arcana represented in the game. You can get new ones from battles but you mostly get new ones by fusing two to five together.

To get back to social links, they are probably the largest part of the game… outside of exploring Tartarus. The stories are mostly interesting; some aren’t, some are emotionally affecting, and some feel far more condensed than they should. Some of the characters are shitty people; some are nice, but a lot of them are going through some pretty relatable stuff. They’re all a series of small, personally important moments where you play a role in helping people realise sometimes, or become better. What’s nice is that, whilst they all revolve around you, most of them don’t feel like they are there to serve you.

To access some of these you need to raise three social stats (academics, courage and charm) which are handled through some activities. Much like socialising these usually take up a period and so, between those as well as plot advancement and exploring Tartarus there is an emphasis on managing time effectively. Socialising can happen a little faster by selecting the right options as well as having a persona of the same arcana on you that matches the arcana of the NPC you’re talking with, but even so, it can make the game feel a bit like busywork. This isn’t necessarily helped by the change from being able to move around the setting to static screens.

On one hand, you move much faster through static screens than you do walking around each area. This can help quite a lot with getting to things and getting through things at a much snappier pace. However, it also means that there’s a lot of character animation isn’t there. Instead you’re relying on character portraits with a varied, albeit limited range of changes for expression which, whilst nice, also feels lacking. It also throws the game’s balance off a bit as you now spend far more time exploring Tartarus (which is explored in ful) and in combat relative to the time you spend doing other things.

As I played through P3P I felt like I was missing a few things in terms of plot as it seemed like there were a lot of things were missing. I think this has more to do with the condition in which Persona 3 was developed. It’s a game with a pretty complete story but it came out in a period where parts of the story that you experienced would feel like rough leaps if too close together. I feel the original release (and FES) do run a little slower than necessary due to slight lag. However, I think it’s worth mentioning that time spent moving between things factored into how the narrative flowed and how much time your brain would have to fill in gaps. The story wouldn’t feel as though it’s missing chunks.

With the change in how the setting is presented some parts of the narrative feel more like leaps due to missing chunks and so, whilst you get through things faster, the pacing of the plot feels off.

It’d be remiss for me to say that this style of plot and narrative design doesn’t happen now, but I do feel it was more common up until somewhere around the last ten or so years.

Tartarus is okay to explore for a while. It’s a dungeon with a random layout for the majority of its floors and, whilst the visuals and music are fine enough, it becomes increasingly dull, especially when you are likely to now spend less time away from it. To be fair, getting through Tartarus, whilst necessary to a point (helps you get stronger so when you go against story bosses you’re going to get through them easier), doesn’t have to be done all the time, but you’re going to have to tackle it sooner or later. It’s also a long dungeon. You’ll likely spend your time doing it in chunks, unlocking more as the game progresses and this helps cut down on some of its tedium. By the end of the game you’ll have to have gone through all of Tartarus, but thankfully it’s not all in one go.

The biggest change in combat compared to the original P3 and FES is bringing over some of the changes P4 introduced. Unlike previous versions, in P3P you can control all party members in combat if you so choose. Whilst this does take away from the idea that the party members are their own people, it also reduces the difficulty due to programming that wasn’t up to the task of making sensible decisions. As such you’re likely to get through combat faster than in previous versions.

As I write this I realise I’m not really saying much about the game. It runs through a series of cycles and it taps into (or, at least tries to tap into) concerns surrounding high school students, but it clearly comes from an adult perspective. It’s a game that can feel hokey at times and like a bit of busywork, but there are a lot of touching moments. It gets pretty heavy toward the end but it also punches well above its weight. However, it’s really interesting as to how P3P, much like remasters of older games, reveals issues with how it was designed as the formula it was running with was yet to be improved upon. P3 is a game with clunk but it worked around that clunk. P3P changes some things around and gets rid of some of that clunk, but also makes some of it more obvious as it’s no longer a series of conceits we accept, knowingly or otherwise.

Something that’s interesting about Persona 3 is how it’s quite clearly a product of when it was made. It’s become a period piece due to its aesthetic considerations, language, attitudes (some problematic) and presented world, but a lot of its themes and stories remain quite current, and likely will for a long time. Beyond that it also managed to be (unknowingly likely) prescient on some things too.

However, above all it tells an effective story that, whilst perhaps not entirely relatable at this point in my life, still has a strong themes that are worth thinking on. It also has some hard punches and genuinely moving moments. It can be hard to live life to the fullest at the best of times; it’s not always doable, or not often, but that’s something worth striving for.