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Persona 3

Developer / Publisher: Atlus
16 July 2006
Persona 3 - cover art
Glitchwave rating
4.04 / 5.0
0.5
5.0
 
 
1,540 Ratings / 12 Reviews
#123 All-time
#5 for 2006
A new transfer student moving to Gekkoukan High School discovers their potential to enter Tartarus, a mysterious realm where shadows lurk in the dead of midnight. - otherwise known as the Dark Hour. Their encounter with this strange world triggered the awakening of their Persona, whose duty is to protect their partner from the dangers of Tartarus.
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2006 Atlus  
DVD
JP 4 984995 900155 SLPM 66445
2007 Atlus  
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JP 4 984995 900285 SLPM-66690
2007 Atlus  
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US 7 30865 53021 2 SLUS 21569
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2008 Atlus THQ  
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AU NZ 5 060073 303960 SLES-55018
2008 Atlus  
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XNA 7 30865 53026 7 SLUS 21621
2008 Atlus Koei  
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IT 5 060073 305490
2008 Atlus Koei  
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DE 5 060073 305520 SLES-55354
2008 Atlus Koei  
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GB 5 060073 305483 SLES-55354
2009 Atlus  
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JP 4 984995 900469 ULJM-05422
2010 Atlus  
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XNA 7 30865 60014 4 ULUS-10512
2011 Atlus Ghostlight  
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XEU XAF XOC
2012 Atlus SCE  
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2023 Atlus Sega  
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persona 3 portable persona 3 portable
2023 Atlus P-Studio  
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2023 Atlus P-Studio  
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It’s fitting that the most memorable and engaging social link quest in the game is the Dying Young Man’s tale. The player encounters a 19 year-old man with a terminal illness who clings to the main character, imparting the story he wrote in his final year to the one he grows to trust. Persona 3 does not beat around the bush: it’s a game about the inevitability of death–the acceptance of death, and perhaps the necessity and importance of death. This becomes apparent quickly the first time the player finds himself running away from the Reaper in Tartarus. Constantly, the game tells you to take a rest, to make good use of your time, and so on. In the end, no matter how much effort you put forth, everything will come to a close. However, the ones you made an impression on will remember your actions, and ultimately the game provides a nice sense of closure.

Persona 4 built what I think is a more entertaining game off of its predecessor’s blueprint, but after finishing Persona 3 I can see why it’s considered the true original of the two games. The dating sim elements, the importance of the schedule, and the push toward the future make a whole lot more sense in Persona 3′s context; they’re more important to the story, and I have a lot of respect for this. With that said, I’d much sooner replay Persona 4; it has more interesting characters and refined gameplay mechanics. I say this without intending to tarnish Persona 3, though, as it’s a great experience too.

The structure of Tartarus hurts the game somewhat. In a story that’s otherwise so tightened around a core concept, you’d think the place where the most time is spent would fit, but it doesn’t. Tartarus is lengthy, repetitive, and honestly quite uninspired. If it had the variety in environments seen in Strange Journey, I could be a little more forgiving, but I found myself wanting to fast forward past the dungeon and get back to goofing off with Social Links.

I have to address one elephant in the room: shooting yourself in the head to summon a Persona doesn’t make any sense to me. I played through this entire game and never arrived at any satisfactory explanation for it, which is bizarre as it’s such a prominent thing. The game makes a huge deal of this, including lengthy animations and a few scenes focusing on the act toward the beginning. What did it all mean, though? Maybe this is explained in the FES version, but I feel a little unsatisfied even if that’s the case; it should have been made clearer in the main storyline and just feels goofy without an explanation.

There are a lot of tiny things I could harp on about this game, but in the end I did enjoy playing it. The battles are classic SMT, the dialogue is often amusing and has some rewarding moments, and the level of challenge is honestly just right. Persona 3′s destined to be a classic RPG and I would recommend it to anybody who likes them and can tolerate the long dungeons and learning curve involved in monster fusion.
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jsh357 2016-04-02T23:24:23Z
2016-04-02T23:24:23Z
3.5
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I couldn't get into Persona games on PS2, I thought they're just too slow, but the Portable edition better fits my style of playing the game. Of course, the game is repetitive by design - you're a school kid working your way across the school year, visiting the Tartarus and fighting Shadows at night, and that's why I like it more on PSP, where it's easy to play in short bursts. The battles keep things interesting from the gameplay perspective - there are a lot of Personas and skills to use, and a variety of Shadows you have to work your way around exploiting their weaknesses and not letting them exploit yours. It should be noted that Tartarus is much simpler than the dungeons known from main Shin Megami Tensei series (it has randomly-generated floors), and the Persona acquisition method (the shuffle) is also a lot simpler than the traditional Shin Megami Tensei method - negotiating with the demons. The most interesting thing about this game is the story and how it fits with the gameplay. It just really feels like you're a student first and foremost, only saving the world in your spare time. You need to balance your time training, upgrading stats and of course acquiring social links, which offer a lot of side stories, and gameplay-wise they power-up your Personas during fusion. So yeah, repetitive, but I keep coming back for the story, as if it was an interactive anime, and I think that's why so many people love Persona, and it's something more than a dumbed-down Shin Megami Tensei.
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I Have No Friends So I Must Game
In its opening minutes, Persona 3 requires players to sign a contract obligating them to "accept responsibility for [their] actions"—failure to execute the contract means failure to progress. It is as if the game requires any player who wishes to proceed to promise that they will see Persona 3 through to its ultimate conclusion. Three months ago, I signed that contract, and only last night did I finally fulfill my promise by beating the final boss. Now that I've fully discharged my contractual duties, I am left somewhat satisfied but with a lingering sense that my 100-hour ascent to the peak of Tartarus (the game's 264-floor dungeon) was perhaps not worth so much time and effort. Though Persona 3 delivers a stylish, often mechanically engaging experience alongside sometimes thoughtful explorations of death and human connection, it suffers from a number of structural problems that undercut its central message that life derives its meaning from social bonds.

Given the current widespread popularity and influence of the modern Persona games, it may be difficult for some to appreciate just how radical Persona 3's game design was at the time of its release. Whereas many of its JRPG contemporaries adopted a traditional RPG gameplay loop of combat and exploration, Persona 3 splits its gameplay loop between long bouts of dungeon-crawling and social simulation, and the result, despite some shortcomings, is surprisingly compelling. Typically, the decision to divide a game's mechanics vertically between two distinct genres entails enormous risks. Juggling two distinct gameplay genres successfully requires developers to distribute an already limited pool of development resources between two radically different sets of mechanics such that both components of the gameplay loop remain separately engaging while still combining to form a cohesive whole. It is difficult to imagine two genres more diametrically opposed than dungeon-crawlers and social sims (both mechanically and tonally), so the risks Atlus faced in combining these genres in particular in Persona 3 were exponentially higher. That Persona 3 manages to have such a cohesive vision while embracing two unique genres is, as a result, highly impressive.

To be sure, Persona 3 does suffer in some respects from its split-genre approach. Had Atlus not needed to spread its development resources thin between both dungeon-crawling and social-linking, perhaps the dungeon-crawling mechanics could have been deepened, or the social simulation elements might have been expanded. As it is, both Persona 3's dungeon-crawling and social link mechanics are fairly rudimentary. The randomly generated level designs on each floor of Tartarus quickly become repetitive, as does the routine of attacking new enemies with every elemental skill until discovering their weakness and commencing an all-out attack. Only when players encounter bosses and a handful of late-game shadows does the combat become truly challenging, and a few of these battles only become challenging due to questionable decisions made by the party members' AI at inopportune moments (I grew to hate reading the words "Marin Karin" and "Wind Break" by the end of the game). The social simulation mechanics are similarly simplistic—dialogue options in social links never lead to branching storylines, for instance, and raising the player's charm, courage, and academics fails to open up unique dialogue options, as occurs in subsequent Persona games.

However, although neither the dungeon-crawling nor the social simulation mechanics would be complex enough to sustain an entire game on their own, they combine to create a game mechanically greater than the sum of its parts. Much of the success of Persona 3's genre combination derives from the way it capitalizes on the differences between the two genres to create a natural flow between its two styles of gameplay. The challenge and tension of the dungeon-crawling offsets and balances the more subdued and comfortable social simulation mechanics. And because Persona 3 allows players the freedom to engage with the dungeon-crawling mechanics largely when they see fit, players may take as long or as short of a respite from the risk-versus-reward dungeon-crawling as they need (within certain reasonable limits—each section of Tartarus must be completed before the next full moon arrives in-game). The gameplay loop also benefits from a few key mechanics that serve to connect each vertical slice of Persona 3's gameplay: collecting and fusing Personas in Tartarus has the additional benefit of advancing social links more quickly, while advancing social links allows players to earn additional bonus experience when fusing new Personas. These mechanics entice even those players who are interested primarily in only the dungeon-crawling or the social-linking to engage with the other half of the game more deeply, thereby helping to lessen the apparent incongruity between Persona 3's disparate genres.

Although Persona 3 handles its genre-straddling gameplay loop effectively, the game is clumsier in handling its themes, as the gameplay and story offer inconsistent messaging on the theme of human relationships. Perhaps the most oft-repeated theme in Persona 3's main story and its many, many subplots is that life derives its meaning from building and maintaining social relationships. This notion appears prominently throughout Aigis's storyline—initially an emotionless machine with no internal sense of purpose other than killing shadows, Aigis, after forming bonds with the protagonist and his friends, declares by the end of the game that the "joy of living comes from those who care for you." Various social links also repeat this message—Akinari, for instance, struggles to find a reason to live in the face of certain death from a genetic condition, but by the end of his social link, he resolves that what matters in life is "what others think of [your] life or what [you] are able to do for [them]" and states that "people can't survive without help from others. ... We all depend on one another." Many mechanics even support this theme—for example, the developers apparently decided to implement AI control of party members specifically to enhance the thematic message that one must rely on one's social bonds to conquer the fear of death (see pg. 302 of the Persona 4 strategy guide for further explanation: https://archive.org/detail...strategy-guide/). Persona 3 thus elevates the formation of social relationships into one of the most important facets of human life—doing so is necessary, as Akinari says, to "survive."

However, there is stark irony in Persona 3 delivering this thematic message when players must spend upwards of 100 hours (or a little less, if skipping The Answer, the game's very long epilogue) alone in front of a TV before they can reach the ending of the game. Playing Persona 3, as well as most JRPGs, is an inherently solitary activity, and it goes without saying that time spent playing enormous single-player games is time spent not socializing—seeing the cold, dead-eyed, slightly sweaty reflection of yourself in your television screen, sitting alone, during every loading screen is a grim reminder of this fact. Every time Persona 3 repeats its reminder to the player of the importance of building relationships, that player must reflect on the fact that the very act of playing Persona 3 to completion prevents building social bonds in real life. Perhaps this is a strange point to make, as it is a criticism that could be directed at numerous single-player games and, indeed, even at works in other media, like very lengthy novels, but the unshakeable feeling I had while playing Persona 3 was that its length and solitary nature heavily undercut its core themes. When I play Persona 3, I am constantly reminded via the themes of the narrative and the social links that my time would be better spent talking with my parents while they're still alive, reuniting with old friends before we drift apart into our own separate lives, or striking up new friendships with other lonely people. Instead, here I am playing Persona 3. To be clear, I am not critiquing Persona 3 for its thematic reminders of the importance of friendship—its message is an undeniably healthy and laudable one—rather, I am critiquing the conjunction of this message with Persona 3's absurd length. Had Persona 3 been considerably shortened, it could have made a much more poignant story of social connection, one that could have left players more time to focus on building social relationships of their own in real life rather than advancing the fictional bonds of their blue-haired protagonist.

Perhaps, some might say, the value of Persona 3, despite its length, is that it is instructive in how to build social relationships, i.e., players who are chronically alone may be able to learn from the game how to approach forming friendships. But this theory is undercut by the way the game presents the minutiae of social interaction. Throughout each of the social links, players are presented with social situations that resemble simplistic multiple-choice problems and must choose the "correct" dialogue option to advance the social link. This simplistic ludological framing of friendship hampers any didactic appeal that Persona 3's social links might have had. Beyond its oversimplification of social interactions into multiple-choice guessing games, the social link system frequently rewards players for "people-pleasing," or simply choosing the dialogue option that the character would feel least threatened by, rather than the one that reflects the player's honest thoughts. The optimal way of advancing Hidetoshi's social link, for example, is to pick dialogue options that fail to challenge his stubborn hardassery in response to a cigarette found in the school bathroom, while the optimal way through Kenji's social link is to encourage his immature pursuit of a teacher many years his senior. Other examples abound elsewhere (Tanaka's social link stands out as an especially egregious example of rewarding players who choose passive, non-threatening dialogue options), and each instance undercuts Persona 3's thematic message. Lasting social bonds in real life are rarely built on lies or half-truths, but they frequently are in Persona 3.

With little didactic utility for players in real life, the social link system begins to resemble a mere form of escapism. The very same players who may have stood to gain some friendship-building know-how from Persona 3's social link system instead may turn to the game as a means of avoiding the much harder task of making friends in real life. In many ways, Persona 3 presents an ideal escapist fantasy for the social recluse: its social situations are all easily navigated with a few quick button presses, dozens and dozens of characters all simultaneously want to befriend and date you merely because you have good grades and drink pheromone-laced coffee, and, best of all, you are completely and utterly alone while playing it for its full 100-hour playtime, meaning that you will never have to confront any real-life consequences for any social interactions gone awry while playing your virtual friend simulator. This unintentional result seems antithetical to the very message Persona 3 presents at its core—the game's narrative was never about running away from building real-life social relationships (quite the opposite), but its design principles have allowed Persona 3 to become a perfect tool for doing exactly that.

Ultimately, this awkward disconnect between Persona 3's game design and its core message left me with a sour taste in my mouth. Though I believe Persona 3 is undoubtedly a good game, I am unsure that I can label it good art due to its conflicting structure and messaging. Its mechanics are engaging, its gameplay loop is unique, its characters and story and soundtrack and art design are top-notch across the board. But the impact of Persona 3's themes is heavily blunted by the realization that your time is better spent off the couch outside, talking with friends, instead of losing your hundredth hour to the towering mazes of Tartarus or your hundred-and-first to advancing the protagonist's fictional friendships at the expense of your own.
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persona 3 moment
Falta amor nessa POHA.

This game do not have love, atlus why? just why ?
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degurechaff 2023-02-11T21:56:25Z
2023-02-11T21:56:25Z
7.8
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Maybe it's just because it's the first one I played (specifically, the PS2 FES version), but Persona 3 has not been topped as my favorite Persona game. It's far from the most refined in terms of how it plays or looks, and there are various individual elements of P4 and P5 I like more, I think P3 does the best overall job of bringing together its story, characters, and vibe into a compelling whole. That is, until the last boss fight, which is so excruciatingly long and tedious it has single-handedly discouraged me from revisiting the game.
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blargh4 2022-01-26T04:59:48Z
2022-01-26T04:59:48Z
4.5
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Watch yourself with that edge you might cut yourself.

Worst SMT easily. Miserable joker-moment early 2000s Death Note anime aesthetic, Atlus short-released it so it's like 300 AUD for a used PAL copy, and you cannot control your party members if you don't play on the PSP. Skip this game and play Persona 4 instead.
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eamonntheblade 2022-07-22T15:05:50Z
2022-07-22T15:05:50Z
1.0
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deez_nutz_fan69 Persona 3 Portable 2023-11-28T17:52:51Z
PSP • XNA
2023-11-28T17:52:51Z
4.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
DancePunk Persona 3 2023-11-28T17:01:44Z
2023-11-28T17:01:44Z
5.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
hevykofe Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 2023-11-25T21:33:29Z
PS2 • US
2023-11-25T21:33:29Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
aminori Persona 3 2023-11-25T07:14:14Z
2023-11-25T07:14:14Z
5.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
TheAceAttorney Persona 3 2023-11-25T05:57:15Z
2023-11-25T05:57:15Z
5.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
ixzo Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES 2023-11-24T23:51:23Z
PS3
2023-11-24T23:51:23Z
5.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
katoka Persona 3 2023-11-22T06:22:17Z
2023-11-22T06:22:17Z
4.0
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Useless1118 Persona 3 2023-11-20T23:32:31Z
2023-11-20T23:32:31Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
daraghp Persona 3 2023-11-20T12:21:14Z
2023-11-20T12:21:14Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
OphieSchmofie Persona 3 2023-11-20T02:35:21Z
2023-11-20T02:35:21Z
4.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
DimeTree Persona 3 2023-11-19T12:20:39Z
2023-11-19T12:20:39Z
3.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
God_Praiser7 Persona 3 2023-11-19T06:50:50Z
2023-11-19T06:50:50Z
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Content rating
CERO: B
Player modes
Single-player
Media
1x DVD
Franchises
Also known as
  • Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3
  • Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES
  • Persona 3 Portable
  • ペルソナ3
  • ペルソナ3 ポータブル
  • ペルソナ3フェス
  • View all [6] Hide

Comments

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  • Previous comments (123) Loading...
  • JGar40 2023-07-05 06:28:17.972455+00
    Am disappointed about The Answer but nonetheless I take back my comment about this generation being doomed to a shitty version of P3 ( P3P) as Reload could possibly be the most definitive version ever made.
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  • Fuzzeh 2023-07-05 20:21:59.253666+00
    playing FES, currently in august, considering dropping it. tartarus is unimaginably boring, i essentially rush to the last teleporter everytime and completely avoid the place when i've reached the end of the block. the story progresses at an absolute snail's pace as well, so i've already had evenings where there's just nothing to do.

    also, i have only played persona 1 so i don't know how later games utilize the social links, but it definitely seems rudimentary in this game. i dislike how they try to draw them out by often just saying: "you spent some time with this person". some of them are fucking awful as well, tanaka is a creepy asshole and kenji is just obsessed with a teacher.
    reply
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    • Fowlawneeshafow 2023-07-11 07:34:29.162877+00
      Things pick up around September so you're getting close. By then the slice of life stuff is mostly over and you'll finally have the last party member, and the plot starts to pick up steam. I would stick with it until halfway through October, if you still don't like it by then, then it's just not your thing.

      And also it probably says "you spend time with this person" a lot because you're not utilizing the mechanics to progress the social links. Bring a Persona of the corresponding Arcana before you do a Social Link, and always give the answer you think the person wants to hear. Persona 3 has the worst quality control of Social Links, the bad ones (Gourmet King) are awful, but the good ones (Sun) are fantastic. If you don't care about the gameplay skip Bebe and Gourmet King and do the good ones like Sun, Tanaka, old couple, sports team, and the party member girls like Aigis, Mitsuru etc. It's very difficult to finish all the SLinks in one run in P3 without a guide.

      It's a dungeon crawler though, if you don't like dungeon crawling then you're just not gonna like Tartarus. The combat system is very good and the main driving force behind Tartarus, it's kinda meant to be an arduous task getting to the top.
    • Fowlawneeshafow 2023-07-11 07:39:45.21821+00
      all that said if you can't get over the dungeon crawling elements, but you like the premise and other elements I'd just skip to Persona 5. It's the most accessible game in the series and the easiest for newcomers to SMT or Persona. The dungeons aren't randomized, the social links are more forgiving, systems are streamlined and it plays faster.

      playing the Persona series in numerical order is probably the single worst thing you could do, none of them are connected and the first one is pretty mediocre. Like I said, jump to P5 if you want and wait for the P3 Remake which will streamline the game to P5's standards and change Tartarus.
    • pink_9320 2023-07-20 02:03:37.968657+00
      i have absolutely no idea how you get to the point where aigis is introduced and not be emotionally invested
    • Fuzzeh 2023-07-20 20:20:48.042249+00
      @betaaaaaa
      i was told the combat in persona 2 is not great so i'm not too intrigued.

      @Fowlawneeshafow
      i likely didn't understand the social links then. tartarus though... there are no puzzles, no gimmicks, no traps, no real surprises other than your party getting split up occasionally. it lacks any kind of visual variety, even most enemies are variations of eachother. i love dungeon crawlers but this is just incredibly mundane. i hope it gets a serious rework in the remake, i'd enjoy the game much better.
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  • blackemerald00 2023-07-14 21:56:00.265054+00
    hide Removed by mod
    This post was removed by a site moderator.
    • betaaaaaa 2023-07-21 09:39:46.639609+00
      fake shin megami tensei
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  • inunonaizo 2023-08-14 16:34:05.652491+00
    fuck yeah, i love evangelion
    reply
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  • Xaman_ 2023-08-18 21:36:52.87768+00
    had a good time with this one, enjoyed the addictive grind of it all and the wonderful character interactions (and the direct commands in P3P are a godsend), though I really wish the version I played kept the polygon-based cutscenes instead of using a visual novel-esque presentation which really hurt the impact of some scenes (the climax taking the biggest hit in that regard), and almost all of the male protagonist's female social links being forced into romance mode is super lame (also, goes without saying, but the music is banger after banger)
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  • frogseller 2023-08-19 21:37:12.032+00
    Played FES until September in-game, dropping this until Reload hopefully fixes everything I hate about this game. Really a shame too considering how much more immersive I find this to be over P4 storywise.
    reply
    • Xaman_ 2023-08-28 08:03:11.873725+00
      It's around September when things get a bit more interesting, actually, but yeah, it's frustrating how every version of the original game has some serious flaws that prevent it from being amazing overall even if there are some fantastic elements amidst those flaws; if Reload manages to take care of most of those flaws, that would be great, but we shall see.
    • Fowlawneeshafow 2023-08-29 06:43:33.672685+00
      yeah Persona 3 is a slow burn but once it gets going it hits you, lots of twists

      Reload looks great so far imo but I hope they go into depth about the Tartarus changes soon because I know that's the #1 thing for a lot of P5 fans that they dislike about P3.
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  • lillhium17 2023-10-05 15:53:14.272449+00
    i really like persona 3 portable because i like being a girl
    reply
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