Persona 3 Portable Review — I Bought This Game Three Times
I have to hand it to Atlus and the Megaten team, they sure know how to make a good game. I first bought Persona 3 way back in 2007 when I heard about it through the grapevine of controversy over the sight of teenagers shooting themselves in the head to summon demons. Then, not more than a year later, I picked up Persona 3: FES, the rerelease that included brand new story elements and a tweaked gameplay system. Now, two more years have passed and, like a sucker, I bought Persona 3 AGAIN for the PSP. While I totally thought this was just going to be another rip-off, Persona 3 Portable turned out to be better than both Persona 3 and Persona 3: FES. Only one problem … the game came out in July. Doh! Big thanks to Gametrailers.com for reminding me that I should have reviewed this a long time ago.
If you are reading this, I can probably safely assume you have played some form of Persona 3 before. However, just to be safe, it’s basically a turn-based RPG with dating game elements. You play a high school transfer student who has the mysterious power to summon demons known as “personas” from his psyche. With the help of his classmates, he explores the many floors of the demon tower, Tatarus, in order to unravel the mystery of the hidden 25th hour of the day, the Dark Hour. During the day, the game is a social simulator, which has you going through the motions of a basic high school life, except your personas get stronger as you make friends, get involved in relationships, and sign up for after-school activities. At night, the game switches over to a dungeon crawl RPG, which has you wandering through randomly generated labyrinths in an attempt to reach the next checkpoint. Your time in the game is limited, and every so often you will be forced into a boss fight or story-significant event. As such, it is a constant struggle to manage both your demon fighting life and your normal school life, and that’s where most of the fun of the game is derived.
Since I gave you a basic rundown of the game, I don’t have to go in to how awesome the persona fusion system is, or how outstanding the plot is. Take my word for it, the game was an award winner the first two times it came out. So instead of going into just what sort of game it is, I’ll review the new elements added to the PSP version instead.
The first thing they fixed was my biggest personal gripe with Persona 3 … THE MUSIC! No longer will we have to feel like do do do do do (that’s an inside joke but people who have played Persona 3 before will get it.) Persona 3’s soundtrack was kind of repetitive and got very grating after a while. Persona 3 Portable has a redone soundtrack that has just as much rap and pop music but it’s nowhere near as repetitive this time around. It makes the game much, much, MUCH easier to play for longer periods of time. This alone makes the game worth getting.
More substantially, you no longer run around on the map during the day time. Instead, you simply point and click on icons that represent where you want to go and what you want to do. Then, special events and social links play out in first person scenes, kind of like a dating sim. While you don’t get to see your character on screen, the game makes up for this by creating many more character portraits to accurately show what each character is doing in each scene, as well as giving portraits to characters that previously didn’t have any. In addition, many social scenes that were silent in the original game now have all new voice acting to compliment them. The game actually feels more immersive even though it is showing you less, and that is good game design.
Persona 3 was notorious for having a social game that was nearly impossible to complete on your first run. Persona 3: FES got a little easier, but Persona 3 Portable is the easiest of all. Social links have a lot of leeway now, and there is a lot more customization in how you want to spend your time. You can choose to remain friends with your classmates rather than immediately getting involved in a relationship with them if they are of the opposite sex. You can hang out with friends together to work on multiple social links at once and there are far fewer negative consequences for ignoring one of your social links for too long. The new point-and-click style immediately shows you when something will cause you to spend time, before you spend it, so you never partake in an activity you don’t absolutely want to. The calendar is more simply laid out, navigation is extremely quick, and you no longer make time pass simply by going back to your dorm room.
There are new changes to the RPG style gameplay as well. The game features new costumes, new personas, new skills, and a boss rush mode. The menu has been redesigned to allow you to tweak your allies’ equipment very easily, and in battle you actually get to choose your party members’ individual actions if you like, which was something we all really wanted in Persona 3. In the original, you used to get tired as you wandered through Tatarus, and this effectively put a cap on how far you could explore any given night. However, now your stamina never changes while inside Tatarus. Instead, it only adjusts the next day after you sleep, making it easier to explore deeper in at lower levels. There are also new side missions to partake in, skill cards which instantly teach your persona a skill of choice, special items that let you learn special fusion abilities, and much, much more.
Not everything has been changed for the easier though. Now you have to pay for healing at the entrance of Tartarus, while before it was free. This is a carry-over from Persona 4, much like many of the other game tweaks. Your main character’s weapon choice is also limited, whereas it wasn’t before. In addition, there are five difficulty levels ranging from Beginner for those of you who really want to focus on story over gameplay, to Maniac, for the masochists out there.
In terms of story, certain elements have been changed as well. There aren’t any anime cutscenes anymore, which is a bit of a bummer, and the bonus chapter The Answer has totally been removed, which is really unfortunate. However, many elements of the story have been changed, and certain scenes have been extended. There is even one particular event that was story-centric in the first Persona 3, that you can totally change the outcome of in this one. Sorry, I can’t tell you what it is, it’s a spoiler the size of an elephant.
There are a couple other cool story tweaks such as cameos from Persona 4 characters, new social link conversation trees, different outcomes for dates, and more, but really the biggest new option is the ability to choose to be a female protagonist when the game starts. The female protagonist basically has an entirely different story than the male protagonist. All of her social links are different, she can get into relationships with her male friends, even the events she experiences over the course of the game differ. The dialogue is totally different for her as well, and she has to employ an entirely unique strategy both in social interaction and in battle than the male protagonist. She also has her own multiple endings and new game+, so it’s kind of like you are playing an entirely different game.
Let me say that again … ENTIRELY-DIFFERENT-GAME! Atlus managed to re-release a game they released twice before, and still somehow managed to make it feel fresh. I don’t know how they did it, but hell, it’s still worth the money. If you have a PSP, and are a Persona fan, then you really should pick this up. Yes, it feels dirty buying Persona 3 again. At this point I have spent well over a hundred bucks just on this one game. Still, it was totally worth it, so yeah, I’m recommending you go out and buy Persona 3 … again.
(25 votes, average: 2.80 out of 4)
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