Story's insanely hit or miss, with like one good scene in between every few ass ones. Main cast is either some of the best written and well developed characters in a JRPG (namely junpei and yukari) or so simple and underdeveloped it's comical (most everyone else). Painfully dull like fifty percent of the time.

If you complain about the tactics system tho you're a massive dumbass. Coming from someone who doesn't like tactics based combat, I can say there's basically nothing wrong with this games combat. Just dont be dumb.

also nobody cares about the answer lol

Full Disclosure; I used an EXP x4000 gain cheat before the final day due to reasons I will explain later, also this review is specifically for The Journey, I will be reviewing The Answer separately once I play it.

Coming hot off the heels of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment I was really, REALLY looking forward to playing the first real Persona game, Persona 3 FES, which is why I'm so disappointed in how let down I am in this game.

Persona 3 FES has an incredibly bare-bones story, with shockingly weak antagonists and a refusal to allow any development of them. At a certain point in the game there seem to literally be no antagonists whatsoever, and the pointlessness of it all would stick more as an intentional meta-narrative story device if I didn't feel like there wasn't an antagonist for the entire rest of the game as well. Also the Yakushima Beach scene has an incredibly, horribly poorly aged transphobic joke which left a sour taste in my mouth for some time.

The social sim half of this game certainly does a lot for differentiating it from its numerous Megaten siblings but it's quite underbaked in FES. Romance of most female characters is forced, which is not the based Ethical Non-Monogamy win it could have been, but then again these characters are teenagers so go play Hades for your polyamoury kick. Eventually I ran out of social sim activities to do at night, which is way more boring than it sounds, and what Social Links I did have available to me I quit halfway through most of the time due to either, A; the aforementioned forced romance, or B; shit like Kenji wanting a date a teacher and Maya being a teacher wanting to date a student. However first attempts are rarely home runs so I'll cut the game some slack for that.

The battle system revamp coming from Eternal Punishment kinda sucks, actually? Knockdowns don't really feel great to use because the enemy can recover from a knockdown and attack in the same turn but your party must waste a turn recovering from that same knockdown, there should be equality here in my opinion. All Out Attacks aren't the most satisfying either once the novelty wears off (fast). Party AI is actually interesting to play around, it's a worthwhile addition to a somewhat uncompelling battle system, and anyone who refuses to play this game without a party control cheat have been lied to about Mitsuru spamming charm, the Tactics menu was invented here for a reason, use it. Shuffle Time as a mechanic is incredibly underwhelming when compared to Eternal Punishment's purely perfected Demon Contact system (despite that system's flaws in Persona Cards), Shuffle Time especially disappoints when 9/10 times the best choice is EXP card, that or money.

The difficulty curve is also just straight fucked. Tartarus guardians will sometimes outlevel the corresponding Full Moon boss for no good reason and spam Maragidyne in your face until you realise you can cheese it with Magic Mirrors or Narcissus Charm Boosted Sexy Dance. By the end of the game I was staring down a final boss rush at level 70 being told I would need to be about level 80 to beat it, which doesn't sound like that bad of a grind but the EXP even at the top of Tartarus is pitiful, and the only way I could defeat the Reaper and access the Monad Depths is Thunder's Reign cheese, but after unlocking the Monad Depths I came to a horrifying realisation, every single enemy would party wipe me with Megidoloan, so I just used an EXP cheat to max out the protagonist, my party, and personas. It was either that or quitting and watching the ending on Youtube. Sorry for ruining the ludonarrative weight of the final boss I guess.

And yet, after this scathing take down of Persona 3 FES, I still have to give it 3 stars, because damn, the characters and certain isolated story beats are just incredible. I love Akihiko, I love Shinjrio, I love Junpei. Anyone who's played this game would be able to rifle off impactful moments of character development, Akihiko's ultimate persona awakening, Junpei's and Mitsuru's too, practically any time Akihiko and Shinjiro are on screen together its guaranteed to hit hard.

All in all, I kinda just wished I could see what everyone else does in this game.

Persona 3 is a pretty flawed game. Tartarus, though the layout is a lot more interesting than Persona 4’s hallway dungeons, requires you to get through 20 floors in order to reach a teleporter which are essentially checkpoints, which becomes very repetitive very quickly. Social links have a timer on them in which if you don’t hang out with them for a while, their social link will reverse, which on paper sounds interesting but just ends up bringing unnecessary pressure in trying to keep track of when to hang out with who and how long until the timer runs out rather than just going at my own pace and choosing which characters I want to hang out with. There is also very little to do in this game, especially at night, there are only a handful of places to increases social stats, even then, during the daytime you want to save as much time doing Social Links because there are only 2 social links at night, which means you spend pretty much half the game going to the arcade because it gives you the biggest increase in social stats out of anything else in the game.

However even with that said, to say that Persona 3 isn’t something special is a huge understatement. The atmosphere that this game creates is unparalleled compared to the rest of the series, the feeling of dread when exploring Tartarus, the feeling of nervousness when things get tense, the feeling of hope in the final month of the game and so on are all so well done. The characters were really fun and complex (though I wished they were more events where we hung out together) and I love the spin that having a Persona isn’t actually a great thing, the social link characters are pretty enjoyable as well, I like how it feels as though you are just hanging out with a friend, not a sudden saint ready to help somebody in need. The Tartarus bosses are extremely challenging and will truly test your abilities. The soundtrack is so good and the story, though starts off slow, quickly soars in quality near the end to give the best ending of any Persona game.

If you get past the clunkiness and repetitiveness, you will be in for an unforgettable experience!

Esse jogo é um caso bem complicado, sinceramente eu não gosto da estrutura de progressão dele, não gosto de como você é obrigado a farmar muito mesmo na dificuldade mais fácil, faltou um pouco mais de balanceamento, ou ao menos um modo mais fácil, e me arrisco a dizer que umas fontes externas (mais conhecidas como hack), podem até melhorar a sua experiência com o jogo.
Mas de resto, o jogo é simplesmente perfeito, a história, os personagens, a trilha sonora que MEU DEUS, o final do jogo também é coisa de maluco, todo o tema do jogo sobre vida e morte também é simplesmente lindo, e aquela batalha final, hein...
Se esse jogo tivesse acertado um pouquinho mais na gameplay ou se pelo menos o jogo ficasse REALMENTE mais fácil nas dificuldades mais fáceis, eu facilmente daria 5 estrelas... até o the answer.
Eu não vou nem tentar explicar o porque o the answer é uma merda, até porque eu nem terminei ele, eu droppei e li a história, mas cacete cara, como pode estragar tanto um bagulho, parece que eles só queriam tirar leite de pedra continuando uma história que já tava muito bem consolidada.

I played this game 2 times, and on my second playthrough it really set in how mediocre and slow paced this game is. Nothing really happens in the story that's interesting until around after September in the game's calendar. The game's main dungeon, Tartarus, is an amazing depression metaphor, but in gameplay, it's just the game randomly generated floors with bosses every 10-13 floors 264 times. The soundtrack is easily the worst in Shoji Meguro's discography. Songs like Joy or Want To Be Close are played nearly every day in game and get worse almost every time you hear them. The battle mechanics are fun, if not a little frustrating at times. The AI controlled party members add a nice bit of strategy to the game that you don't find in a lot of modern RPGs, but if you're not a fan of the turn-based AI there is a fan patch available. The characters in the game are incredibly cliche and shallow, with the exception of Yukari and Junpei. Overall, I wouldn't recommend this game to people who haven't played a Persona game prior.

I did not talk about the music in my Persona 3 review that is why I am doing it here. I really love the soundtrack of this game. Really embodies the urban feeling and is also really charming. The sound mixing is not the most ideal but I would say in some cases the bad mixing also enhances some songs for example the loud drums in Master of Tartarus. It gives the song a punchy feel that sounds like a beat down or something like that. Oh I forgot to mention my favorite songs in the game:
1.Changing Seasons
2. Memories of the City/School
3. Living in Determination Iwatodai Dorm Mix
4. Deep Mentality
5. Darkness from The Answer
Also be writing a review for Persona 3 portable where I shortly go over about my experience with the female protagonist route.

...eh. It’s ok, I just don’t really like it. My experience was probably soured on it due to playing it right after P5 (my first megaten game) and having to adjust to what I consider pretty dated gameplay. But even after playing all of modern persona and multiple mainline games, I just don’t really think it’s for me. I think the pacing was pretty bad and I hated the gameplay and found Tartarus very boring. Social Links ranged from like 2 good ones to the rest being either boring or insultingly bad. And the story and main cast, while decent, is still just kinda meh. In comparison to other rpgs I’ve played, it isn’t anything special imo. Something I don’t really understand is why this game is specifically praised in comparison to 4 and 5 because most issues I have with those games, I have with 3 as well. Overall I can see why people like Persona 3, I just don’t think it’s for me personally.

This game sort of feels like a parasite stuck in my body that irks me every once in a while. I am legitimately unhealthily bothered by this game in a way that's absolutely weird, especially for a game I dropped halfway through and I just decided to watch the rest of on YouTube (But hey, that's how most Persona fans experience the games anyways). Its a game that I've tried to review multiple times, but every time I tried, it feels either really generic or forcefully unfunny, and this one will likely feel the same after a while.

Anyways, Persona 3's story consists of meaningful and complex themes being dumbed down into safe and easily digestible "anime cringe", where the story wants to actually be about a factory produced, self-insert twink being overpowered and beating blatantly evil bad guys, with side characters who only exist to suck the main character's dick (both figuratively and literally) and with half-assed, uninspired development and backstories that were slapped on top for the sake of some sappy melodrama. The story feels more like if you told Chat GPT to write a shonen anime (including the horrible fanservice and blatant pedophilia) with elements of philosophy and less like it came from someone who had a unique vision and insight of grief and death that they wanted to tell.

The weird part is that its the same exact issues that made Persona 4 and 5's stories so atrocious. But Persona 3 seems to get a pass instead, and I feel like its less so based on this game's own merit, but rather as a reaction to the popularity of those games, or idk, it might just be the Persona effect, where their stories are amazing as long as you don't bother thinking critically about them at all.

That isn't to mention as well that nearly every other aspect of the game is mediocre at best; with mind numbing dungeon crawling; mediocre combat; a long and drawn out calendar system; menus that feel more like PowerPoint slideshows; the repetitive and uninspired tracks that drown out the good ones with how you only seem to listen to the same 5 songs on repeat; and whatever the fuck happened to the beautiful art direction between SMT 3/DDS and Persona 3.

I'm ok with a game being relatively weak on the core gameplay if it at least has one great redeeming quality, but Persona 3 almost has fucking nothing. You'd genuinely believe the storytelling of this shit would be on the level of Scorsese or Orwell based on how people almost completely disregard the gameplay and praise the game almost entirely due to the story and atmosphere, but no, you basically get some im14andthisisdeep shit (although its fitting considering the target demographic). Probably tied for the most drastically overrated thing I've ever experienced with Revenge of the Sith.

With the release of Persona 3: RELOAD, I have the strong feeling to talk about this game in some capacity. Especially in regards to the properties of nostalgia, my interpretation of the origins of this game in relation to other SMT games at the time, and what I think of the game along with the "modern" Persona series at large.

First thing's first, just a quick timeline of when I played this game. I got this game mid 2014, while in the middle of watching a Persona 4: Golden LP from my favorite Gaming Youtuber "NicoB", and only started playing it roughly a year or so before the worldwide release of Persona 5. I am a relatively new fan of the Shin Megami Tensei series at large, and while my interest leans more towards the SMT side, I do greatly enjoy the Persona sub-series. Again, it's likely due to my first experience to Persona having been just watching someone else I like play it, but sometimes it just takes someone else's charisma to convince you to try something you never considered.

Persona 3 (be it the original game, FES, or Portable) is a classic and the origin of the "modern" Persona series. Beloved by many fans that straddled the line between the mainline entries and said sub-series, it was either the start of their admiration for Persona, or was eventually one they'd seek out after the others. Regardless, it's no secret that a lot of Persona and its fandom is attributed to this game in its three incarnations.

But, what exactly is this game? For the uninitiated that have never tried modern Persona, Persona 3 is a stratagy, Turn-Based RPG with time management and social simulation elements. By day, you're an ordinary student, going to class, hanging out with friends, and perusing the town at your leisure. By night, you climb an evil super-tower that houses monsters of the abstract variety in order to learn its secrets and prevent a mass affliction known as "Apathy Syndrome".

Gameplay is obviously split into two, with the Turn-Based RPG dungeon diving relegated to a specific nighttime event, and the social-sim confined to day-to-day actions and activities. In terms of the former, the RPG elements are relatively basic. Dungeon crawl through the labyrinth that is the tower of Tartarus, get into fights (approaching from behind gains advantage), fight in turns, hit weaknesses for bonus damage/extra attacks, gain items/money/experience, and climb to bosses/stopping points. The only time you fight outside dungeon exploration is when a full moon hits, and a major, story-driven boss appears, which upon defeating opens the stopping point to allow further dungeon exploration.

In terms of the latter, you spend the majority of your days chatting up the local populous, especially fellow students, sometimes participating in class and extracurricular, hang out in the neighborhood and local mall, buy stuff as needed (or wanted), and then return to the Dorm to determine your nightlife, whether it be further studying, bouncing around the city for more local shenanigans, or just head to bed early to probably feel better for the next day. Night or day, you can spend time with a wide variety of characters, improving your social standing with them, and thus powering up the classes of Personas.

Yes, the name of the game, the true purpose of interacting with other characters in the waking, normal world is to strengthen the variety of spiritual summons known as Personas, granting you better EXP bonuses for the Personas you collect and allowing for higher tier personas to be created. Further, a little while after the first act of the game, you can take your personas to a special shop and turn them into gear and weapons, and create some truly monstrous items at your disposal.

All of these elements, fortunately, feed very well into quite the solid gameplay loop, and really becomes an entertaining challenge just trying to find a good work, school, battle balance in your year long student life. It's no wonder that the series only became more popular as time went on and new games dropped over the years.

But what's a story driven game without its story? Thankfully the story itself is quite entertaining, where we go diving into a supernatural sci-fi world of a strange alternate universe just behind the veil of reality, with said world slowly leaking into the real world due to a city wide epidemic where people slowly lose their minds, becoming veritable zombies (without the hunger for human flesh, at least). Meanwhile, you, the protagonist, join up with a secret organization called SEES, where you fight back against the strange encroaching nightmare and try to uncover the truth of its existence. But all is not what it seems, as outside forces push back from time to time, hindering the heroes as often as they can, and are somewhat connected to what's going on in an unknown way. It's a plot that's tad basic with an appropriate amount of twists and turns, but I do think it's biggest strength has to be its atmosphere.

Persona 3, by and large, is a mood. From its very intense opening, its strong use of blue to bring a dour and melancholic look, even during bright sunny days, its use of imagery of death in all forms, to the music being a blues/jazz/rap mix that gives it a contemporary, moody feel. The heavy emphasis of nighttime, including when the player is able to jump into the dungeon crawling aspect of the game, also lends itself to how the game feels.

My major gripes with the game would mostly come down to "1st Game Syndrome", where "1st" is a bit of a misnomer considering the prominent "3" in the title. Dungeon crawling is rather straightforward and tedious, with very little variety in and out of fights. Only half of the Social Links (the optional social interactions) are actually interesting and worthwhile (with a couple of them being downright terrible). You're forced into the romance route when you social link with most female characters, creating rather awkward situations when the game almost reprimands you for doing so, which can really sour your 100% social link run (which is required if you want to unlock all the best persona in the game). You don't have direct control of your party and thus rely on the very minimal options for the party AI to hope things will work out when in tough situations (unless you play P3: Portable). Also, it's very possible you'll dislike many of your party members' personalities until about mid to late game, depending on your tolerance for their behaviors (save for a select few).

However, if you can forgive the gripes, attune to the dourness of the atmosphere, don't mind the dungeon crawling being a bit mindless, then you just might enjoy this game for years to come. And all of the games praises exist in, under my personal assumption, the idea that this might have been a budget title in the SMT series initially. It's very clear with its somewhat more simple design, especially when compared to an SMT entry that came out at roughly the same time that looks like it had a MUCH larger budget (both graphically and mechanically). But, I'll talk about that one another day...

In fact, I might just jump back into an NG+ playthrough for P3:FES that I left behind a while back. Time to hit abstract monsters in the face with my "Midnight Stick" and perhaps challenge the basement floors for a bit.

Oh, one more thing. FES comes with an extra chapter called "The Answer", and it takes place directly after the events of the game, and has you take control of one of the more prominent characters on her own journey of self-discovery. I haven't actually beaten it yet, so I can't really give a full critique on it, but I know for sure it's mostly devoid of the social sim aspect of the game, so if you actually enjoy the dungeon crawling and didn't care for the day to day stuff, it might be up your alley, but I strongly advise you to play "The Journey" first so you don't get spoiled on later game events and characters.

That's all there is to say. Persona 3 is a classic. Go play it.

Good game, but i don't think it is the best Persona or even top 10 Megami Tensei, the story is really good and the themes are very well done, some of the characters like Aigis and Mitsuru are also pretty good, but it doesn't offer much more, dungeons are virtually non existent and tartarus is boring, combat isn't as bad as people say because if you set the tactics right the AI is not bad, but it is boring not having party control, social links are shit, there are less than 5 actually good and because of the fucking dumbest choice Atlus ever made male party members aren't social links, which makes them have way less character development, oh and did i mention EVERY SINGLE GIRL falls in love with you in a super cringe and unnatural way if you max the social link (i will say though that reverse SL is a cool mechanic and i would like to see it back), soundtrack imo is the weakest of the series but that's just personal taste, oh and the villains are garbage.

But after all that i still give it a 3, it has a lot of merit for bringing the series where it is now and not being afraid to change.