Today hes1jo (the greatest game reviewer of all time) is here and he's not going to talk about the Reload version which came out a few months ago, that a lot of people, at least a lot of people in the Persona subreddit, are playing, but he's gonna talk about the FES version that came out 16 years ago, which no one cares about. Bring some food with you because this is gonna be a long one. Even the food you bring with you will end, add two or three more pieces of bread, take some mineral water out of the fridge and drink it, and eat ice cream on top. I'm not sure if I should start reviewing the game after all this slapdash nonsense. Because there are still questions in my head. I wonder if it's right to criticize a game that released for PS2 16 years ago, if I played it when it was probably the most popular game for people back then, if I could enjoy it much much more, if I should praise it for evolving the series, or if I should condemn it because it's a very, very primitive version of the existing games etc. etc. But if there's one thing I can tell you it's that it's impossible to go back in time. In other words, if the only way to enjoy this game is to play it when it was released, things will go south. Because I like to criticize things. Let's get FES out of the way in this review, and if I can finish Reload, I'll look at what that improves etc. separately. If I try to combine the reviews into one now, this review will be much much longer, so the reader will get bored, and the it will take so much longer to write the review. Whether I make a 2-hour review now or two one-hour reviews, there's not much difference actually, but choosing long-term convenience for the sake of short-term discomfort is not present in the human DNA. This is why it took so long for agriculture to become widespread. I don't want to make this review a history lesson. While writing a current text here, I'm deleting a paragraph that I find unnecessary. Otherwise, agriculture, fruit picking, hunting, etc. I could have seriously explained the ancient human diet here. The transition to the next sentence will be a bit blunt due to the absence of this words, but there's nothing to do.
O yeah da da da. Baby baby da da da daa da da ...

Anyway. I'm starting directly from the story. Also I'll just review the game's Journey. It would be better for all of us to not mention the Answer because it is a disgrace to both characters and gameplay, so you won't be upset and my work won't be delayed. If I review that too, I'll be chased by this game's fans with torches. Something I criticized in the story section has been solved in the Answer, but since I'll act as if the Answer never existed throughout the review, the thing I criticized will not actually be solved. Now that we've set the rules, let's start.

STORY

There's a cliché saying among Persona fans, if you're browsing Reddit or something, there's a very high probability that you've seen a post about it or read it in the comments. They say the best story is the third game, the best characters are in the fourth game, and the best gameplay is in the fifth game. This saying is quite strange. Because in my opinion, the best game in all three of these is the fifth game. And characters are also a subheading in a story. So if we're taking characters away from the story, it would be more accurate to call the story "plot" instead of, story. Because if you don't, you can increase confusion. Anyways let's go back to the cliché saying. If the best story is in the third but the best characters are in the fourth game, the third game must have an incredible masterpiece magnificent plot with characters that are garbage, raw stew; or the plot in the fourth game is very predictable, very ordinary, boring, the dialogues are shallow and empty with the characters that are very vivid, versatile, the ones who shed light on life and make it enjoyable. Because unless one of these two options are not present, the old games are not that good to be the best in these two categories. And remember what I said at the beginning? In my opinion, the fifth game is already the best of the series in these subjects. So I sadly state that the fourth and third games are not magnificent. I happily state that they are not disastrous monsters. I think they are at the middle ground. But let's tell the story first, shall we?

There is a warning I have to give while telling the story, you will read 10 hour worth of spoilers. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't take 10 hours for the game to give you freedom. It just takes 10 hours or smth for you to udnerstand what you are fighting exactly. So if you suddenly get spoilers from me while you are planning to play this 16 year old game, stop reading. Let's start.

We start the game as a silent blue haired high school student who is and orphan, and moved to another city. We choose our own name but the main character has a canon name: Makoto. So I will refer to him as Makoto. Makoto transfers to Gekkoukan High School and moves to a dormitory in the city. On his third day in the city, at a strange leap hour, the shadows attack the dormitory. Makoto takes the opportunity to use Yukari's Evoker, a symbolic weapon that is used to activate the Personas. He awakens his persona and defeats the shadows. When things calm down, the dormitory residents give Makoto simple information about the 25th hour and the shadows.

This leap hour is called the "Dark Hour." This is an hour that only a few special people with potential are aware of, other people turn into coffins and shadows roam the ground. There are strange conditions such as electricity not working at this hour. While people who turn into coffins continue their normal lives, the shadows attack those unlucky few who cannot turn into coffins. When shadows manage to attack people, they spread a disease called Apathy Syndrome. This disease causes the victim to lose all their hope and will to live, and they transform into a vegetative state. These people are called the Lost. Another subject related to shadows is Tartarus. Long story short, Tartarus is a skyscraper that Gekkoukan High School transforms into during Dark Hour.

Makoto is hired by the SEES, who works hard to eliminate the Shadows and this mysterious leap hour.
One day, a shadow that is much much stronger than the average shadows in the Full Moon is detected outside Tartarus. Makoto and his team head out there and kill the shadow. Days pass, another Full Moon occurs, and a bigger shadow is detected. Of course, Makoto and his team kill the big shadow again beautifully. After a few Full Moons like this, Mitsuru Kirijo, one of the top members of SEES, is forced to explain the origin of Tartarus and Dark Hour to the team. A research company founded by Mitsuru's grandfather years ago, the Kirijo Group, started working on gathering and controlling shadows. Their aim was to try and somehow obtain the power that the shadows have. However, the experiments have gone wrong, the Shadows have escaped and transformed into twelve great creatures, these special shadows with specific Arcanas that we fight in Full Moons. Shuji Ikutsuki, the co-leader of SEES, tells our team that when they defeat the twelve great Shadows, Tartarus and the Dark Hour will disappear forever. With this knowledge, our 50 hour long adventure begins.

In Persona 4 and 5, shadows remained outside the central focus of the story, and were constantly used as obstacles in our way to reach our goal. The reason for this was that the existence of shadows was connected to the systems such as people's subconscious, deep personalities, etc. etc. And the stories had main villains that needed to be defeated. The existence of shadows in Persona 3 is not connected to any psychological reason. Well, it is actually with documents etc. but the game doesn't make an effort to show you. The objective goes directly to elimination of the shadows. So what happens when such wimp creatures who is used as an obstacle in other games, who does not have an importance in itself, is taken, given high importance and made our main objective? My level of caring about the story decreases. The problem with the story in the fifth game is that it is easy to tell apart the good and the bad, the plot is too easy to guess, it constantly pulls out childish dialogues that hold people by the hand and there being contradictions of the messages in the story, while my problem with the story in Persona 3 is directly based on its subject and theme. Look, although I found the story in the fifth game problematic, it made me smile a little bit because it was about being against society and the oppressers. Therefore, instead of deducting one point from the game, I was merciful and deducted only half a point. I did not enjoy this game that much. The fact that the existence of shadows is not related to any reason is another problem.

It would be nice of the writers show us a background story about where the shadows came from and how they came into being. Anyway, how the Kirijo Group found the shadows, when they roamed before the Dark Hour, would they make people sick back then, etc. the answers to these questions are not shown to you. As I said, the rare people who play the game and read the documents do not get answers to every question, but they do get some information. If you are someone like me who does not read the things in your inventory, all you are told is: There used to be shadows, the Kirijo Group took them captive, experiments gone wrong, and they spread around. So when I look at this game, I feel like I should applaud the story of the fifth game. In the fifth game, Morgana explained in detail what happened and why, what mementos are, the reason for the existence of palaces, what shadows are based on, and made sure you did not forget them throughout the story. I do not remember exactly what shadows were based on in the fourth game. But there are some bits and pieces that remain in my mind. For example, in the fourth game, the goal was to find a killer and kill (spoilers - Izanami) - shadows were used as obstacles on the way to the objective. The reason for the existence of shadows is probably human-based like in the fifth game.

I think the writers at Atlus realized their mistake after they made the goal about things that shouldn't be in focus in the third game. Because they gained experience in story writing and put real antagonists in their other games.

That's all there is to criticize in the first quarter of the story. After passing the first quarter, the story starts to get a little better. For example, characters who are supposedly antagonists start to enter the story. They mysteriously kill people in Dark Hour etc. When I first saw them, I thought they were a group that used their persona abilities for their own benefit, that they didn't want us to destroy Dark Hour because they would be unemployed. Well, they are a bit like that, but I can't exactly say that they do stuff out of fear of being unemployed. "Okay, now the characters we will compete with and our main rivals have arrived." I was saying while watching the cutscenes of this group, but unfortunately that didn't happen. This group called Strega doesn't want us to destroy Dark Hour because... well, even I don't understand why they want it that way. I get it, I get it, don't worry, I'm just saying that their goal is lame. Strega starts a cult for no reason at a certain part of the story. I won't go into detail about the cult's demands, what it worships, etc. since it would be a huge spoiler, but just know this: It's a very meaningless and purposeless cult. It doesn't matter if you join or not, it has no purpose. They're just a so called cult. The guys don't organize any actions, the cult just has a name and reputation. All they do is go on TV and say "Join our cult, it's a great cult, it's really great". Of course, the reason they recruit people for the cult is connected to something in the story, but since we'll reach that conclusion no matter what, the game makes you say "Was it really necessary?". Oh well. This group called Strega is once again acts as an obstacle to our goal of killing the shadows and ending the Dark Hour. In other words, this time, the exact opposite of the other games occurs. While in the fourth and fifth games, the obstacles are shadows and the goal is to defeat the rival characters, in this game, the obstacles are the rival characters and the goal is to defeat the shadows. I can tell you this much without giving away any spoilers.

We keep chasing after the 12 Great Shadows throughout the game. In other words, these great shadows are actually acting as antagonists in the game. I don't know if there is a need to repeat it, but I can't resist and I'll say it. While in other games, we have a rival that we focus on, and for example, the rival is one person for 10 hours of the game and another person for the other 10 hours, it's annoying that in this game, the rivals are constantly shadows. This doesn't create excitement as the story progresses. It doesn't make us ask how crazy or evil the next person we'll fight will be, because shadows are not human. They're just... things... we need to kill.

I keep saying shadows, shadows, shadows, but there's nothing to do besdies it, the game is completely based on this. So, I'm not to blame, friends. After talking about the theme of the story and our rivals, let's touch on an another problematic issue, rarity of cutscenes and the tempo of the game.

Since the story progression in the game is based on full moons, the number of days you can watch a proper cutscene is limited to 13. Well, this is the maximum number of full moons that can happen in a year. There are also some story pieces sprinkled between full moons so as not to bore the player. But they are very short. I never thought I would say this, but I wish the game were to focus more on story-advancing cutscenes instead of providing freedom, and were to wast our time. Because it would have had time to explain the formation and purpose of the shadows, and it would have shortened the boring metre of the game. If a game whose story can be summarized in one page takes 50 hours to finish, you see the events bit by bit, so it gets really boring. This is why Persona 3 is ranked second in the series in terms of story quality, in my opinion. That is because Persona 4's story is so ordinary, has no surprise value, the villain is easy to guess, and the villain itself is shallow, that even stories with plot holes where nothing is explained properly are better.

At the beginning, I mentioned the cliché saying among Persona fans. This story section is the first reason why I don't agree with that statement. Now we'll come to the second reason, the characters. But before we get to the characters, let's ask that important question: Which literary movement was the story of Persona 3 influenced by? The answer to this question is the same in all Persona games, if you think the answer will be different because the game's ending is heartbreaking, you're wrong. Anyway, what were we saying? Heh, which movement is the question. The answer is romanticism. There's no different answer. When does a Persona game write a realistic story? When the main character is flawed, when our opponent's goals are not about being pure evil, when we fight with our opponent like two gray people with intersecting goals instead of fighting absolute good vs. evil's battles, and when we experience events that we can't get out of it without a scratch. Only one of these few conditions is present in the game and it's not enough to make the generally romantic story realistic. Also, since all Persona finales follow similar concepts, one can more or less guess what kind of fight there will be at the end of the game. Anyway, let's get to the characters now.

Characters.
If Atlus is going to release Persona games until I die, I won't need to do a character section in my reviews. Because I'll say the same thing in every review, which would be boring. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, let me explain it like this; there are fixed roles in persona games. The main character's best friend, female character, the second female created so that the first one doesn't have to be alone, the strange character, the supporting character, the character who causes the supporting role to change later, etc. The roles never change. Only the characters in the roles have different personalities. I said the roles don't change, but I actually lied. Two roles can merge into one role, or in some cases two characters can be present in the same role and one of the other roles can be skipped. In the third game, the best friend role is in Junpei, the support role is in Mitsuru, changing who is support role is in Fuuka, the strange character role (which is a role that has a twist, generally revealed later in the story) is skipped without giving any spoilers, and our caretaker role is shared between Mitsuru and Ikutsuki as the so-called dormitory manager instead of being assigned to a single character. In the open world, the doctor role is in Mr. Edogawa. Did you know that Xander Mobus, who voiced this character in the Reload version, also voices Joker in Persona 5. Enough information. Anyway, I won't say what everyone's role is. I will talk about whether the characters generally develop as the story progresses, whether it is fun to talk to them, if something happens to them would I be sad or happy, would I care about them, how they differentiate themselves from the characters in your average game.
How do the characters differentiate themselves from the average game? Let's start with this question. The answer is very simple. Because the game is made by Atlus. Even though these guys screw up in gameplay, plot, graphics, and atmosphere, there are a few things they regularly give a shit about in their games. The first is the music, and the second is the characters. We'll talk about the music as the review progresses, and the characters are great as always. In fact, this is the second reason why I don't agree with the cliche persona fan saying. Actually, I exaggerated a bit, this is the second reason why I don't TOTALLY agree with the cliche persona fan saying. Because I can understand people who consider the fourth game to be the best in the series in terms of characters. They look at it in terms of social links. When I say characters, I mean our teammates without social links and those who help us in our cause. If we're talking about social links, of course the fourth game is better than the third. But I'll touch on that topic when we talk about social links. Anyway, in my opinion, our teammates in the third game are much, much better than the fourth game. There's only one reason for this, and that's Junpei. Junpei is such a good bro character in my opinion that he is even better than Ryuji in the fifth game, which I think is the best game of the series. So how did a character like Junpei, who can be summarized in five words as "a cheerful perverted class clown" became my favorite bro character in the series? The answer to that is also very simple, his dubs are very good and his character development throughout the story is of a kind we have not seen even in current persona games. But I will give no spoilers. Let me put it this way. In a certain part of the story, an incident happens to Junpei, to tell the truth, an incident happens to Junpei and a character who is special to him, and you can't help but shed tears. Of course, would ATLUS care? By talking to Junpei throughout the story, you can throw the reason why that scene is important for Junpei out the window and screw it up. But if you don't choose the certain dialogue options, the scene still maintains its importance, so I don't want to criticize it too much since it is optional. Anyway, I like that scene. "Oh man, how the hell did a Persona character do this" I said while watching. That's why I appreciate and love Junpei's development throughout the story. But it would be a lie if I said I don't miss his old antics. Anyway, when Junpei was happy, I was happy, when he was sad, I was sad. There's something I have to say in this part. At the beginning of the characters section, I said Junpei's dubs were good, the voice actor in the old game was a pedophile, I did some research and found out about it. Don't get me wrong, although I don't admire the man like some idiots on the internet, I find the work he did in this game successful. Other than that, he can die and rest in piss. Anyways... Junpei alone carries Persona 3 in terms of characters for me. Because my level of caring about other characters can't even come close to Junpei. Especially characters like Akihiko, Shinjiro, Fuuka seem to be trying to pull the game's score down. There's nothing that makes these characters interesting. The first reason for this is that their dubs are bad. Fuuka's voice is in a very different tone and changes every three scenes, I keep forgetting how she normally speaks. Shinjiro is a bully who hangs out alone and walks around with his hands in his pockets. He also feels low quality because his screen time is very, very short. Also Akihiko's screen time is spent entirely on asking Shinjiro to joing the team.
-Hey bro, our team is very good yes why don't you join
-I won't
-Man, we used to be such good friends, why won't you
-Please go away
-You dumb mf

5 hours later

-Shinjiro, come to the team, we even got a dog, you're the only one who refuses
-Akihiko, leave me alone, how many times do I have to tell you, I'm not coming
-You s.o.b, you rude bastard. I know how to get you into the team
-Akihiko, if I see you in this neighborhood again, I'm going to kill you

5 hours later

-Shh Shinjiro, there's a very young kid in our team. We said, "Let's make him join the team, let's put two bowls of food in front of him so he doesn't end up on the streets." If you don't come, don't come, die in the street, you asshole
-What the hell, a young kid? I'll come right away, Akihiko, prepare my room
-...

Yes, I wrote the dialogues like this to make them ridiculous and funny. But since Akihiko tries to add Shinjiro to the team in like 60 percent of the game, I had to show you this somehow. However, Akihiko's behavior on October 5th raised him from being a bad character to average for me. I had to say it. Those behaviors of him raise Akihiko to average, but Shinjiro is still a crappy character in my opinion. I don't find Shinjiro's joining sequence to the team well-written, but I don't think it's that bad to meet the other characters. In fact, it's better than Persona 5 in my opinion. In Persona 5, our encounters with the new characters were based entirely on coincidences and luck, which is a common thing in the romanticism literature. In Persona 3, the encounters and newly added characters don't feel so random. For example, if it hadn't rained in the fifth game, how would we have met Ann and Ryuji? Or if Futaba hadn't put a listening device in the coffee like a pervert, we might not have seen her join the story. Or if Morgana hadn't sold out the team and run away because it got criticised once from her friends, we wouldn't have had the chance to meet Haru. In other words, Persona 5 fails to find natural events in terms of introducing characters and puts us in unrealistic situations in my opinion. Forget about that, I have to give spoilers about Shinjiro. There are also spoilers for RDR2. Play that too and come back. SPOILERS ARE COMING SPOILERS ARE COMING. Take the warning seriously, didn't put the warning just for the heck of it.

I think if Shinjiro had more screen time and had a real impact on the story with his own hands, his death would have been more emotional. In his current scene, it feels like an Uncle Ben death scene, he is used as a tool for other characters to grow and become strong throughout the story. Other than contributing to Ken and Akihiko's character development, Shinjiro has minimal impact on the story. Another thing that hurts me is that since I didn't know that party members could die, I was grinding all the new high-level guys, like Ken, Koromaru, Aigis. Of course, I was grinding Shinjiro too. I spent a lot of time in Tartarus and leveled this guy up. What a shame. ATLUS! The game already has a grinding problem, you bring a high-level character to the story, we say "Oh good god what a relief" then you go and kill him 10 days later. WTF? Shame on you. I wish the other party members had died too. I don't mean Ikutsuki or Mitsuru's father, they don't support us in combat. By the way, I think Ikutsuki's potential is wasted. While he was the manager of the dormitory throughout the game, the fact that his main goal at the end was not to destroy Dark Hour but to bring Nyx to the world is a nice twist, but the guy dies very quickly. We learn about his betrayal, and 30 seconds later the guy says "Welp see you guys, Aigis refused my order" and commits suckaside. If they didn't kill Ikutsuki immediately and made us fight him in a later part of the story, they could have reduced the lack of antagonistic forces and humanoid boss fights in the game. Anyway, I was saying something about the death of party members. It will seem like a bit of a cruel request, but I think the story of the game would be more valuable to me if we gradually lost party members like RDR2. That game had a flawed main character because it used realistic story writing, it was not certain that we could easily get out of everything that happened to us, the game did not include an absolute good vs. absolute evil's war. So it's a story that I can totally love. And I did. I absolutely love the story of RDR2. I actually love everything about that game, not just the story. But it's ridiculous to talk about RDR2 in a video about Persona 3. Because they are both very different types of games. Just know that RDR2 is the first of the two games I've given 5 out of 5 so far. And it will not change. Anyways I'll start telling you something else that came to mind.

Apart from the final scene of the game, I didn't really like the story. But I think the finale could have been made even more impressive than it is now. If not only Makoto died but all our teammates had to die for the fate of humanity, I would not criticize the story too much and just say 'twas nice, and move on and not bother too much about this section. Makoto dies nicely with Aigis talking, but since he is a character who has no voice nor personality, emotional value of him dying is low. Let's say you are not cruel enough to kill the whole team. In that case, at least Aigis, who was standing next to Makoto, should have passed away.
SPOILERS ARE OVER.

Anyway, apart from Akihiko Shinjiro etc., the team is full of very interesting characters. For example, a dog. As you know, our guys take a dog from the street and turn it into a persona user. You might say, there was a cat in the fifth game and it was using a persona too. But the dog is on a whole different level. Morgana in the fifth game was constantly walking around saying "I'm not a cat, don't call me a cat, STFUUUUUU", and as players, we were expecting a Teddie version 2 case. So it didn't seem strange to see a persona user that didn't look human. In this game, this is a dog we adopted from the street. Basically interesting. Another non-human character in the team is Aigis. Aigis is a battle android created to fight shadows. She's the last of her kind. Since all the extra stuff I'm going to talk about Aigis have the potential to carry spoilers, I will move on and just say that I'm happy to see non-human persona users in our team. Diversity is good. Anyway, let's look at the other questions. Do I care about the characters? Well, it seems like I do, but I'm not really sure. If something happens to Aigis, Mitsuru, Koromaru and Junpei, I would care. If something happens to Yukari, Fuuka, Ken and Shinjiro, I wouldn't care. These guys I mentioned have minimal impact on the story with their own hands. Other people always need to do something for their development. Let's move on to the next question. Would I be sad or happy if something happened to them? This is a repetition of the previous question in a different language, so there's no need to answer. What's the other question? Is it fun to talk to them? I can say it's highly enjoyable. I was trying to talk to characters like Fuuka and Shinjiro, who I said were boring. But since the game is stingy in giving story pieces, you can't fully enjoy talking. I'll have to say the same thing again: I wish freedom was taken away from us so we could see more cutscenes.
The cutscenes we see generally do not affect the calendar and take place during the transition between evening and day. In other words, if we did activities that took up the whole day or evening, it would be great. By the way, every Persona game has at least one reactionary and stupid scene that creates sexual tension. Of course, there is one in Persona 3 as well. In that scene, we try not to get caught by girls while in the hot spring. Although the scene itself is not of high quality, it is more enjoyable than hanging around in the game or getting into combat at 264 floors in Tartarus, so if there were more scenes like this, I would enjoy the game more. We were talking about the characters, where did the hot spring come from? Let's skip that. There is one point where the characters surprised me in Persona 3. Not everyone gets along with everyone else. Not like Ann who scolds Ryuji, or Chie who messes with Yosuke. In this game, there may be a character who gets annoyed by you being the leader, or characters may argue and fight with each other. If you say, “These are already in the new Personas, what’s special about them?” I would say, “The conflicts between the characters in the new Personas are not related to the story, and they are forgotten after three scenes. But the ones in the third game serve as the backbone of both the story and character development.” For example, in Persona 4, Chie bought clothes for a certain person and throw the debt on Yosuke. Yosuke then took revenge on the girls. Then the girls took revenge on the boys. As I said, three scenes worth of material. After these things have happened, we continue the game as if they never have. These are just a bunch of scenes that have nothing to do with the story. There’s a murderer in the village, he’s killing people; and we’re just attending shows like we don’t give a damn about it and have nothing better to do. In Persona 3, the fights and revenges are meaningful and connected to the story. Naturally, it doesn't feel as pointless and embarrassing to watch as in the fourth game. I liked watching these kinds of fights. It's nice that in Persona 3, unlike the current games in the series, the fights are not stupidly constructed and violence is not used as a comedy element. By the way, fight doesn't just mean punching someone in the face. Opposing the team's common ideas in discussions, not agreeing with someone's words at all, doing things on your own despite the rules being clear are also fighting. I just wanted to say it. I guess there's nothing more I can say about the characters. For now, let's move on to the gameplay.

GAMEPLAY

Persona 3 is a JRPG game with turn-based combat, just like the current persona games. I don't generally like turn-based combat and attributed it to them not testing reflexes. While writing this review I concluded that it was not entirely true. I made observations while playing the recently released Remake of Paper Mario. The game requires reflexes, but I still can't feel the action. Well, I thought about it and found the reason. The reason I can't feel the action is that traditional turn-based combat games are slow and put 2D models on PNG backgrounds, that lack animations and expect us to believe that we are fighting to death with a real person or whatever. For this reason, I can't play any Pokemon-like games for example. Except for Earthbound and Lisa, but they weren't because I liked the combat either. If you still want to create a game by putting 2D models on a PNG background, the only solution is to turn the reflex testing part into something like bullet hell instead of making it like pressing buttons on time. For example, Undertale. I looked at a few turn-based games that I didn't huff and puff when I entered combat, and I looked at the ones that bored me. They match up well with what I said. Thus, I proved my assumptions. The result is this: When you stay primitive and don't add animations to the game, or add dynamism and visuals, I get bored. Persona 3 is also primitive compared to current persona games, but it is a much more advanced production compared to some games that I said I huffed and puffed during combat a moment ago. That's why I wasn't as bored as I was in those games. Anyway, let's continue with the combat in Persona 3.

I've been shouting loudly since the beginning of the review about the objective of killing the shadows, so you must have understood that we were fighting shadows and big shadow bosses. The only dungeon in the game is Tartarus. Apart from that, the places we fight can be places like hotels, clubs, subways that we have to go to due to the story. But I don't want to jump into dungeon section yet, let's talk about the mechanics first.

Persona 3 offers us a combat based on gaining extra moves by using weaknesses. Since the basis of the combat of the current games in the series was laid in this game, I thought it would be much worse than the fourth and fifth games before playing it. My thoughts were wrong. Although it's not as good as the fifth game, I think the third game has a better combat than the fourth game. First of all, the only thing the fourth game does well in terms of combat is the freedom to control party members. Maybe the fact that it also offers a variety of dungeons. Otherwise, Persona 4 has made the already simple combat even more restrictive by removing some things from the third game. If you have played all the Personas, you will not be able to not notice. If you have not, it is okay because I will explain, don't worry. Let's start with the advantage and disadvantage thing. In the third game, you are walking around the Tartarus before the combat. A shadow appears in front of you. You wait two or three seconds and wait for the moment when it turns its back. Then, you stab the shadow from behind with whatever you have, be it a sword or arrow. There are advantages to entering combat in this way. For example, each member of your party starts by making a move before the opponent. In other words, if you come across an opponent with 1000 health that can wipe out the party with a single hit, you can defeat him with the joint effort of the four people in your party. As long as each person hits at least 250. Which is not that high a number. Okay, we said getting extra moves, what is the other advantage? The other advantage is that if you use the escape option, the opponents cannot stop you. The escape choice provides a hundred percent success in battles that start with an advantage. Those who played the game know how important escaping is. Escaping is 10 times more important in this game than in other games. Why is escaping so important? Because our brothers in ATLUS who made the game brought a fatigue system to the game to artificially extend the game's duration. I'll come back to this later, let's put it aside for now. If you allow the shadow to hit you in advance, you also get a disadvantage. The chance of escaping drops dramatically and the enemies get a free move. If you are visible to the shadow but manage to hit it, you get neither an advantage nor a disadvantage. I don't know what the difference is since I rarely experience this. It probably assigns the battle order randomly or based on Persona stats. Let's skip the advantages, disadvantages and get to the weaknesses.

How different is the weakness-based combat in Persona 3 from the fifth game? It's both quite different and not that different. What I said is confusing, right? Those watching the game from the outside can't see any difference. Just like you can't tell the difference between a person playing DND 3.5 and the first version of DND. If you're going to tell the difference, you'll know it from the style differences in the MENUs. Those who have played the game will immediately see the differences. Persona 3 doesn't include some of the quality of life improvements and mechanics that make the game easier that we got used to from the fifth game. For example, there's no such thing as a baton pass in the game. When you get 1 more, you either have to use it yourself or throw it out the window. The chances of hitting attacks that hit the weaknesses of each enemy are much lower than those that hit a single enemy. In other words, you have to choose between taking a risk and finishing it in one move or hitting each enemy separately and using extra SP. There's also no guarding in the game. If you don't want to attack but don't want to use items, you have to wait. In other words, you're giving the opponent a free move. Also, there are no animated attacks like the showtime attacks in the fifth game. There is no follow up, so when you use a skill with a ninety-nine percent hit rate and miss, your SP goes to waste. Also, if attacks like Magaru and Maragi that hit all opponents fail to weaken and knock everyone down, you don't get an extra move. So hitting a weakness doesn't do anything. You can't see what each attack does on the persona change screen, you have to memorize stupid terms. For example, it's not hard to know that Agi is a fire skill and Bufula is an ice skill, but do you know what stupid things like Tetrakarn, sukukaja, rakukaja, dekunda do? I don't know. Let's say they didn't put it on the persona selection screen because there was no such display technology back then. But that’s not the case! In fusion screen, they show which skill does what. Why don't you do something you can do when we need it the most, Atlus? I'm going crazy. Another thing that drives me crazy is that you can't control your party members. I mean, in such a difficult, RNG-important, sweaty game, not being able to control your party members is torture. You're only allowed to give certain commands. These are commands like "Try to knock the enemy down, don’t spend SP, provide support, dive headfirst at the enemy". You can limit what the AI will do within certain limits and make it do what you want, but it doesn't always work out that way and they don’t pick the sensical move. Another thing that makes this situation even worse is that you can only change tactics during your own move. In other words, if your opponent makes a critical hit on you or hits your weakness, you are not given the opportunity to change tactics because those who get weak and fall down have to spend their move to get back up. Then you and your team are left like idiots. I was going to quit the game just because of not being able to control my party members, did you know? There was a boss with a monstrous difficulty that I couldn't pass that required me to grind. The damage I dealt was ridiculously low. And the AI was deliberately trying attacks that the boss reflected or blocked. Also, the game had forced a character weak to electricity to my team for a boss that dealt electric damage, just to be annoying. Oh, it's as if the boss itself was soooo easyyyy already. It was a really hopeless time. I searched a lot on the internet for save editors and stuff like that to increase my level by ten or fifteen or turn back in time and grind. It didn't work. I tried to install a mod like controllable party members. It didn't work either. When all hope was lost at the last moment, I went back to my save from a few hours ago and wandered around Tartarus relentlessly. The fatigue system also tried to raw dog me to turn this sequence into a Chinese torture. It was really bad. Just grinding wasn't enough to pass the boss of course. I kept trying again and again. After doing a lot of research on the internet about this boss, I read something about party commands. If someone in the support role is constantly using support skills, the boss uses a skill that prevents those buffs, so even if you lose the buffs, you don't take damage because you made the boss spend its move. Of course, I tried it as I read. It didn't work on my first try. Junpei's skill usage frequency wasn't enough for the boss to use its debuff skills. I decided to be the extra support myself. And like this, two people in the team were constantly using skills that increase defense, attack, and hit chance, while the others were poking the boss from end to end. It was a moment when I could have lost my sanity if I hadn't put the emulator in acceleration mode. Finally, I passed and started asking myself these questions: (Yeah I’m a maniac) Was it really worth all this grinding, all this research, and brain cell death? Wouldn’t it be better if I played the portable version, where the ability to control party members already exists in the vanilla game? Maybe I would lose 10-15 hours of progress, but I would have secured my future. Then I answered myself: Even if they hire thirty guys to beat me up for a week straight, I still wouldn't play the Portable version. Controlling party members etc. are nice features, but losing cutscenes, a world where you can actually walk, 3D models and 10-15 hours of my effort would leave a scar on me. Fortunately, I later managed to install the party member control mode by breaking it. The mod's creator says "It won't work if you just transfer the cheat files to the game, you have to use Aemulus", but these are straight up BS. It worked flawlessly as soon as I put the cheat file on the cheats folder. I can't bother with Aemulus, Data files, btl.msg, etc. I also recommend that if you want to play this game at this time, party control mode is a must have. But if you wanna prove how a godly G.A.M.E.R™ you are by playing the most difficult Persona game under the most difficult conditions, go ahead and prove it. I don't want to waste my time and mental health for two bursts of pride. Also, I don't need to prove my gamer status quo to anyone. Let’s skip this part and look at some more problems. Actually, I'm not going to talk about the “problems” exactly, but some “differences.” As you know, there are all kinds of status effects in Persona 5. Such as hunger, fear, surprise, sleep, forget,brainwashed etc. etc. Persona 3 doesn’t include many of these, but the game has its own unique effects as well. Such as distress, charm, poison.Poison is one such problematic effect, which stays on yo uforever if you got it once in a battle.
Anyways let’s talk about what else is different. Mmhmmm. İf your party members die, they die. They don’t come back at life at 1 hp. You have to use revival items.
Persona 3 has some positive changes as well. Like there are more phsical attack types than the fourth game.This makes it so that Personas and shadows that have Repel or Absorb Physics do no break the game’s difficulty so easily.
Slash, strike and pierce are the three types of physical attacks. Slash is from swords, strike is from axes and punches, pierce is from bows, guns and spears. Wait, doesn’t it make sense to eliminate these types of attacks and just put one type of physcial attack, just to make sure confusions are non existent? No. Just like I said, if you somehow manage to fuse a Persona with Repel or Absord physics, you do not take damage throught the game. And if the shadows have that ability, you are damned. So to make the game’s difficulty balanced and both parties defence not so strong, there has to be many many physical attack types. Persona 3 gets a plus one in this subject and Persona 4 gets a minus one.
So where did Persona 5 choose to be when it comes to physical damage? Is there a lot of physical damage types or just one? Persona 5 chose the middle ground and put two types of damage. Gun damage and regular physical damage. The low number of physical damage types in the fourth and fifth games is also related to the weapons you can buy here and there. In the third game, the main character can carry all kinds of weapons. There are one-handed swords, two-handed swords, bows, spears, etc. etc. This changes not only the appearances but also the way you play the game. For example, the bow can hit shadows from a tiny bit farther away. The two-handed sword takes longer to hit but its damage is higher. The one-handed sword can hit instantly but its damage is lower, etc. Such changes are not in the fourth or fifth games. I don't remember if there were such different weapon types in the fourth game, but the lack of different physical damage reminds me that there weren't. If I'm remembering wrong, it's my stupidity. Anyways, while their non existence in the fourth game is bad, there's no need for them to be in the fifth game. Because in the fifth game, instead of sticky black things crawling on the ground, shadows are standing and walking black things. You tear off their masks to attack them. So whether you hit them fast with a one-handed sword or from a distance with a bow, it wouldn't make any difference or sense. There's no difference in starting combat, but what about in combat? Well, I've talked a little too much about these differences in physical damage. Let's focus on the other changes.

Another thing that makes the third game different from Persona 5 is that there is no such thing as technical damage. In other words, there is no such thing as using Garu on a burning enemy. The only thing representing that in the game is being able to shock and freeze the enemy and when you deal physical damage to the enemy with those effects present, your chance of blowing a critical hit increases. What other changes are there? I think I have listed all the changes. Or maybe there are more,but I can't think of them. Since explaining every possible change in detail won't be of much use to anyone, I will skip the changes for now and come to some issues that drive me crazy in the game. For example, the grinding problem of the game and Tartarus.
As in every Persona game, while normal shadows can be passed with brute force while the bosses make you cry. Because there is no such thing as a balanced difficulty in the game. When hang around at Tartarus to prepare for the bosses, some time you start to instantly kill everyone and you start to think "Let’s cut out the grind so bosses have meaningful difficulty" But that's not the case. While the bosses are extremely difficult, normal enemies are extremely easy. Such as the boss that almost made me quit the game. Bosses are not complicated or unpredictable in terms of moves. They have three or five abilities, and when you die once, you understand which tactic you need to use. But the effectiveness of that tactic depends on your level. Depends a little too much, in fact. The XP you earn by progressing the story does not help you enough to get to the top of Tartarus. Getting to the top of Tartarus is important because if the XP earning place in Persona 5 was mementos, Tartarus is the same in this game. Slight spoiler, skip ahead sixteen words: Reaching the top of Tartarus is mandatory for the story progress like in the fifth game.
Tartarus is a skyscraper with more than 200 floors that creates its floor layouts with the procedural generation technique. It changes the colors of floors with each new block and adds instruments to the music. It is also a different version of the Gekkoukan high school that Makoto goes to, in Dark Hour. In short, Tartarus is a primitive Those who read my Persona 5 review alreay know that I find Mementos boring and unnecessary. What happens if you make the only dungeon in a dungeon crawler JRPG game this shallow, this endlessly filthy Tartarus? I faint. I can't bring motivate myself to grind. And when I come to bosses without grinding, I look for different ways to pass them and my hatred for the game increases. In other words, my reluctance to grind is a crime, and the fact that the game turns grinding into torture is also a crime. If there is only one thing worth mentioning about Tartarus and it’s its bosses. Actually, there is no need to mention them too, but it will be a short matter anyway.
Tartarus stops creating random layouts on certain floors and presents you with fixed floors containing bosses. You can use teleportation tools on these floors and go between other boss floors or return to the entrance. Since returning to the entrance restores HP and SP, it is important to activate this tool on every boss floor. Also, if you look at the boss from a distance and guess its Arcana correctly, you can learn a little bit about what he is weak against and come back with the appropriate party members and Personas. This is how it is in theory. In practice, I have observed that this rarely works. I think ATLUS found the difficulty of the game a little easy. Let me tell you my own story: I entered a fight with one of these bosses. I saw that the boss was an enlarged version of one of the 746th normal shadows I killed in Tartarus' current block. Since I had memorized the weakness of that shadow by now, I was going to make the specific attack and finish the fight... then the boss suddenly blocked the attack. With these kind of design choicecs, Atlus causes the information you learned before to be wasted and you go back to trial and error. If the boss is not going to have the same weaknesses, why did you design it the same as a regular shadow, ATLUS? Explain this sh#t goddamn it. The game is full of crazy stuff like this. For example, the game is not fair in terms of difficulty. You probably already knew this, but what I mean is: Until you figure out the weakness of a boss by trial and error, the boss can wipe out your party. It's as if they coded the AI in a way that it can exploit our weaknesses without having to try and find them. It's not fair at all. For regular shadow battles, at least you can see what they are weak against with the analyze button. This is not the case with bosses. Also I forgot 90 percent of them after finishing the game, they are not remember-able at all and leave no impact on the player. Apart from the obvious brain cell death of course. I always say boss boss boss, at least let me list my favorite bosses. The first one is the boss with wheel of fortune. You don't have a hard time like the other bosses because if you manage to get a positive effect from the wheel, the game makes it easier for you to kill the boss. If you don't get it then the boss kills you more easily, but since it's extremely easy to get a positive effect I didn't have any trouble with this boss. In short, the wheel was a fortune. I won't mention the second boss because of SPoiLERS. That's all the bosses that are fun to fight in the game.


The only dungeon in the game is Tartarus, but I once said that there are different places we go to due to the story. Are they good? I can't say so. The most interesting one is the metro in my opinion. Other than that, the hotel part is not that bad either. I'm not saying this in terms of design or combat.. I only said that it was not bad because of some scenes added for fan service purposes. I don't remember any other places. Oh, and we go to some underground or something. I forgot about it because there was a terrible boss there. Let's skip the bosses and places, that's enough.

I have a few more things to say about the grinding, let’s get them out of the way. I told you about the importance of escaping, that's because you have to grind constantly in the game. In order to speed up the grind, you need to fight pink shadows and large shadows in the absence of them instead of wasting time with small shadows. These give 5-10 times more XP than small shadows. This is really important, ma friends. Don't try to go and kill every shadow that comes your way. Get behind them and start the battle with advantage but use the escape button. If you don't escape and win, your fatigue level increases. I said I would come to the fatigue system. Now we are. The fatigue system is like this: You have a fatigue meter, it works secretly behind and is not shown to you. It subtracts the number of battles you have finished in Tartarus that day from your fatigue number. Of course, the higher your level, the higher this number is. When the calculations give the value of zero, you get tired. Both you and your party members have different numbers because not everyone's level is the same. If you grind them to the same level, the number will be the same too. Anyway, when they get tired, the party members' chance of missing attacks increases, they take more damage, it takes longer to get back up when they fall to the ground, and if you go to the beginning of Tartarus and try to regenerate HP, they sell you out and immediately return to the dorm. So it is obvious that this fatigue system was created just to artificially extend the duration of the game. If you plan to play the game but hate time wasting dumb systems like I do, I can give you an advice or two.

First advice: Install a cheat that removes fatigue system. It’s very easy to install cheats in PCSX2, but if you can't even do that, there are fifty billion guides on the internet.
Second advice: If you want to be able to constantly roam around Tartarus with your party, use the square button and order your party to attack the shadows. Then, while they are all fighting separately from you, go to the stairs and use the interaction button. Fuuka will warn you that one of the party members is fighting and you will abandon them, don't listen to her and go up. Fuuka will then teleport your party members to the ground floor. After that, find and use a teleportation device to return to the first floor. When you return to the entrance, despite your party members being tired, they will not sell you out and run away to the dormitory, and you will be able to return to the grind once again with your HP and SP restored. I learned this tactic, or rather this BUG, from a post from 11 years ago while researching on the internet, and it still works. There is actually no reason why it shouldn't work tho, the game is not officially sold on PC, if a patch is coming, it will either come to Portable or Reload.
Whoosh

ATLUS has fixed or somehow changed many of the mistakes and bad design choices of Persona 3 FES in the Portable version. For example fatigue is not based on the number of battles you win in the Portable version, but on the number of steps you take. In other words, not entering a battle and wandering around idly also tires your party members. Also, if you wander around Tartarus tiredly in the Portable version, your courage social stat increases. In other words, while they discouraged traveling around Tartarus for long periods in FES, they accidentally encouraged it with this courage thing they added in Portable. I don't actually care about any of this, because the version I played is FES, not Portable.

Another issue I need to mention is related to the end of the battle. As you know, we don't collect personas by talking in this game. In the current games of the series, we collect personas by talking in the fifth game only. This and Persona 4 have a shuffle system. I don't know if specific to this game but the shuffle system is disgusting. It gets even more disgusting as the game progresses. ATLUS really screwed up while trying to make it a deep element of the game. As you progress through Tartarus, card movements start to get more complicated, they get hidden more and more, this time it becomes impossible to follow them with your eyes, and the shuffle system becomes something where you can only rely on luck. Choosing the Persona you have means that the shuffle is wasted. If you accidentally choose the death cards that have skulls on them, the Reaper comes after you. Do I need to say that these things are incredibly annoying and that they stop the grinding progress? I've been talking about the RNG, grinding and leveling problems in the game for a long long time. The stupid shuffle system that harms friends and benefits enemies has come to our rescue. /s

Wooohhh. When something is flawed, you have more material to talk about. But when it's too flawed, you don't need to go into much detail. For example, Way of the Dogg, or Big Rigs OTRR, or any Banana-like game: They are a low-quality, eye-sore, time trap, right? There is no need for further explanation or a detailed review. In fact, let me give a direct score to them now: 0.5 stars. If there is also a subject that deserves 0.5 stars in Persona 3, it is Tartarus. Because the shuffle system at least has benefits such as giving HP and weapons, I say, and I move on to the student simulation section, which is an important part of the game.

As you can imagine, the most primitive student simulation in the neo-Persona games is in Persona 3. But if we leave aside the current games Eternal Punishment actually has the most primitive student simulation. Because in that game, you do not play as a student main character. The game tells the story of an adult journalist or something IDK. Since seventy to eighty percent of Persona fans have not played the first three games, including me, I will act as if Persona 1, 2 and 2.5 do not exist. ... So the weakest student simulation is in the third game. By the way, when I used the phrase “first three games”, it about the release order. Not with the game names. Persona 3 is actually the fourth game in the series, so I thought I'd give some information in case some people get confused. Anyway, let's continue with Persona 3.

First of all, there are no part-time jobs in the game. ATLUS only added them to the Portable and Reload version. Therefore, the only place you can earn money is Tartarus. Again, I have to deal with that damned wicked place. The open world activities in the game are expensive. It is expensive compared to the early game, though. As you spend time in the game, your money can increase to half a million to 750 thousand etc. yen. However, since I was constantly buying weapons, I spent that money very quickly. Then I was trying to get by with about ten to twenty to thirty thousand yen. If we compare Persona 3 to 5, it is easier to earn money in dungeons because there are money cards in the shuffle system. If you go to Tartarus every day and pick only them, you can easily become a millionaire. But as I said, I could not find the motivation to grind in this game. Also, if you do not focus on earning money at all and keep choosing other cards, Persona 5 becomes an easier game in terms of money. Because in Persona 5, you could sell about a billion useless crap you got after each palace to a weapon shop and make money. Also, in Persona 5, there was Mementos instead of just the main dungeons. People who prioritized money could still make money as they wanted. By the way, while I was talking about weapon shop, it came to my mind that I wish the main character could use a weapon attack like Aigis. Yes, using a bow serves the same purpose, but they could have done it by making weapon attacks a different kind of physical. Hey hey hey what do these have to do with the student simulation? These guys study in Japan, not in America. So let's talk about some things that students in Japan, not America, do. For example, hanging thems- cough cough no, hanging out. They love hanging out.
As you know, the social links in the game do not change your combat style, they do not add different mechanics. The foundation of social links in the Persona series was laid with this game. In fact, this is the game that made Persona what it is. Social links are primitive in Persona 3, as in everything else. It doesn't feel like it should take a day to talk to them and hang out, there are no dubs at all, I mean ATLUS didn't even put lil dubz at the beginning or end of the s. links, you're playing the game without knowing most of the characters' voices, anyway, there are other problems as well. For example, it's very hard to collect the points needed to rank up, there's no margin of error unless you plan. Namely, unless you research the max social link guide, you're likely to finish the game without completing all of the social links. Maxing all of the social links only gives you 7 days of freedom in the story. 7 days, really?! I even did some research and learned that there's absolutely no margin of error in the original 2006 Persona 3, which isn't the FES version. You have to follow the guides on the internet word for word, and even minor mistakes like forgetting to have a persona with the appropriate arcana with you means you'll have to throw away your entire save. Realy cruel of you ATLUS... Anyway, the important thing isn't the margin of error or planning... some of the social links are sooooooooo boring.Let me rate all of them for you. Also, I won't rate the social links that come with the exclusive female main character option in the Portable version, I said this in case there are some half-wits who still don't understand that I didn't play the Portable version. Also, the funny thing is that only Makoto is the main character in the reload version, so I guess even the producers don't accept Kotone Shiomi, who they made themselves, as canon. It's a shame. I think Kotone is one of the most attractive girls in Persona series. Anyway, without further ado, let's start rating:


Kenji - 1 out of 5

Fuuka - 4.5 out of 5

Mitsuru - 3.5 out of 5

Hidetoshi - 2 out of 5

Old Couple - 1.5 out of 5

Yukari - 3 out of 5 (If her story was repurposed for a male character and we couldn’t romance him, I would give it 0 stars, just so you know)

Kazushi - 5 out of 5

Chihiro - 2.5 out of 5

Maya - 3.5 out of 5

Keisuke - 1 out of 5

Yuko - 4 out of 5

Maiko - 3.5 out of 5

Bebe - Couldn’t max him, but he is french and you can pick hasta la vista dialogue option, (I NEED MORE BOOLETS) so 5 out of 5

Tanaka - 0.5 out of 5

Mutatsu - 3 out of 5

Mamoru - 1.5 out of 5

Nozomi - 4 out of 5

Akinari - 5 out of 5

Aigis - 5 out of 5

Now that the ratings for the optional social links are done, let’s talk about the automatic ones for a while. There is also a social link for a character like Pharos who comes to your room at Dark Hour to say three or four stupid things and go away. There is also a social link representing our team, etc. These are obviously put there so that it provides xp when fusing the persona from said arcana.
I also have to mention the systemic problems in social links. For example, when you bring the characters you can be lovers with to the tenth rank, you have to be lovers whether you want it or not. The game does not allow you to remain as friends. In other words, we have to cheat on people in order to finish the game with max social links. Another problem is the extremely high social stat requirements to hang out with a lot of characters. There are a total of 18 rank social stats in this game, 6 knowledge, 6 charm and 6 courage that you need to max. It was not that difficult to max 25 ranks of 5 different stats in a game like Persona 5 that lasts 100 hours, but in this game, not looking at a guide and discovering things on your own can cause you to miss many many things. Now I said you need to max social stats, because the stats in Persona games are not the kind of things that change gameplay or are used to build characters. Stats in Personas have nothing to do with the dexterity, intelligence, charisma in traditional RPGs, where different characters have different specializations. You have to increase your social stats throughout the game in order to consume the content. In traditional RPGs, stats change how you solve events, add dialogue options, etc. There is no such thing in Persona. Everyone who plays the game tries to be at max stat in the same way, and they should be. Speaking of social stats, let's move on to the places where you increase them. For example, let's look at our home. In Persona 4, you could make origami, and in Persona 5, you could make tools and such inside your home. There are no such things in this game. You have to earn every stat except Knowledge from the open world.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
The city where the third game takes place is better from a distance than the fourth game, because let's not kid ourselves, Inaba is just a village, there is nothing interesting there. There is Okina City nearby, but I didn't stay there too long, I made the social link for AI or something and never went there again. But when you look at the games closely, you understand that the fourth game is better, because there are more activities to do, higher quality social links to hang out. Also, without having to go beyond the series, even when compared to Persona 5, the world of Persona 3 is a disgrace. But before I get to why it is a disgrace, let me first mention the Persona fusions, we will come back to this subject.

Whoosh
To fuse a Persona, you need to go to Paulownia Mall, go through the floor under the karaoke bar and enter the velvet room. This transportation problem deterred me from doing fusion. There are no shortcuts to quickly go to different places in the game. You have to walk. You can talk to the Mitsuru fan in the classroom and go there, but when you leave the classroom, there is no one to talk to. Anyway, reaching the Velvet room is difficult,but what’s inside? You can do about a hundred Elizabeth quests in it and get rewards. There are no fights etc. (Not talking about the Elizabeth boss) like in the fifth game. It has a better design than the fourth game. They are on the same level as the fifth game. It feels like there is a delay in the transition between the menus in the third game's velvet room. You can't make as sharp movements as in the fifth game. Other than that, Velvet Room is basically Velvet Room. I can say that it is more user-friendly since you sit on a chair don’t have to walk here and there. If you want to exit, just press the circle button. I didn't get confused about whether to talk to the twins or Igor like in the fifth game. Because there's nothing to get confused about.
The fusion part is more primitive, less user-friendly and naturally not that fun compared to current games. You may have to do forty somersaults to get a skill you want. Also, I didn't do anyhting crazy like pentagram fusions. In order to do them, you have to get so many Personas with the same arcana and I'll either have to waste my time in Tartarus relentlessly or spend all the money in my already empty pocket here. If both options are worse than each other, don't try to calculate the lesser evil, there's always a different way out. Otherwise, create your own path. If you're given 99 percent rotten carcass and 100 percent rotten carcass, you don't need to eat carcass just because one is fresher than the other. Go break the plates. Wow nice reference to the “Biden vs Trump” kind of US elections me, it was great. Well now it’s Kamala vs Trump but doesn’t matter that much. I hope one day it will be something like “Sanders vs Ocasio Cortez.”or even better. Anyway, I touched on the fusion part, let's go back to the so-called "open world".

There are six different places you can visit in Persona 3's open world. Gekkoukan High School, Paulownia Mall, Port Island Station, Iwatodai Station, Naganaki Shrine, and finally our dorm. If Persona 3's open world was a stew, I would say ATLUS made this stew with cheap meat. Because it's pretty bland. First of all, one of the things that makes spending time in the game torture is the extremely limited evening activities. In the evening, you can only go to Paulownia Mall for social stats, walk Koromaru, or do one of two social links. Forget about evening activities, there's no good in morning activities either. The open world is full of stuffy stat-boosting locations that don't meaningfully explain why they steal so much time from you. When there aren't many locations, and when what's in the game doesn't feel unique enough and ends in two seconds, we end up with a game that could be a candidate for one of the worst open worlds of the last 20 years. I say this in terms of detail and size. The fact that everywhere is filled with posters near the end of the story, the disturbing conversations, the tense music and the gloomy cult atmosphere may be the only thing I liked about the open world throughout the game. Other than that, I keep mixing up the names of the stations, I have no idea which one is which. I can’t remember them. Let's say that there weren't any jaw-dropping open world game in 2008, the year that Persona 3 FES came out, but there were definitely a lot of open world games that were not terrible either, and had a variety of themes without making every street feel the same. Also they don't really need to have a variety of themes. Even if they offered a variety like a normal street, a complicated street, a wide street, I'd be okay with that.

GRAPHICS

Persona 3's main color is blue; you can tell by looking at the character's hair, interfaces and most menus. Did the main color being blue make much of a difference? For example, what would we lose if we chose green instead of blue? Literally nothing. Because can not really be understood that the open world, Tartarus and other combat locations were prepared with the main color in mind. They are more suitable for the green color. The game starts you with a green color festivity once, but only when you press the button and move on to the next scene, you see the blue color. I never thought I would play a Persona game that did not stick to and respect the main color choice fairly. Blue seems like a secondary color next to green. I am not deducting points for these main color issues, rest assured, this is to provide information and express my thoughts. Otherwise, these aren’t stuff that affect the quality of the game. But would it be better if the game showed us its main color choice more clearly and accurately? Yeah it would.

Persona 3’s graphics were below market quality in 2008. Menus, stances in battle, animations etc. seemed to me to be of very poor quality. It is understandable that a 16 year old game has poor animations, but at least they shouldn’t have left the texture quality and models as if they were left over from 64 bit era. When you look at the visuals of other games from the year 2008, when this game was released, you become surprised. Let me remind you that 2008 was not that dry in terms of graphics. Actually, that generation felt literally dry, but I mean metaphorically - whatever never mind. For example, Mirror's Edge... Just look at that game and this game. Or Burnout Paradise. I'm not sure if it's fair to compare these games in terms of graphics, but the guys that work in that games did it. They worked hard, paid many licenses and did it. I especially recommend you to do some research on how Mirror's Edge achieved those graphics. Because there was a lot of work behind it. Anyway. There is no one who expects magnificent graphics from Persona games, but the fifth game managed not to be annoying with its style, coolness, neon colors, etc. How does this game manage not to be annoying? Actually, it may be annoying to most of you, but to me, the game does not have such annoying graphics. Yes, I am aware that I am saying something that contradicts what I have been saying for a few minutes, but there is nothing to do, there is a difference between a game's graphics being bad and them annoying my eyes. For example, old games that try to achieve realistic images with a 90 percent probability look worse than games that use toy-like models and colors without paying attention to realism. Well, I can't say that they tried to create realistic visuals in this game, so when you know that something is not realistic, the level of annoyance to the eye decreases. For example, games that look more realistic than PS2 games but add weird filters to themselves for no reason bother my eyes much more than PS2 games. Fallout 3, Resident Evil 5, MGS4, for example. Man, wtf were these guys thinking when they tried to make the game realistic and slapped a meaningless post processing effect at the last moment. Weren’t they ashamed? The days of XBOX 360 and PS3 were a sandy, dusty, pissy, dark era. Fortunately, there were companies like ATLUS that didn’t try to make relistic graphics but didn’t prepare the game in a way that is eye-scratching either. Well, if they made the graphics annoying to the eye and improved the open world, would I think it would be a good sacrifice? Of course. If 80 percent of a 50-hour game is spent hanging out in the open world, then having only six different locations to hang out is literally a crime. These six different locations are not comprehensive things like a district or a city either. It is as if you just cross the street. The activities to do in it are also limited. For example, you enter the location to do the activity, and either you watch the same animation loop forever or they skip time with text on a black screen without going directly into the animation. What I learned from this was that the Persona games have improved a lot over time. By the way, there is something I should mention, if we look at the date ATLUS released the original games in Japan instead of updated versions like FES or Golden, P3 was released in 2006 and P4 was released in 2008. It is really admirable to be able to release such high quality game like Persona 4 in two years. They were probably able to release it in 2 years because they relentlessly copy-pasted the same assets, animations, etc. but in 2008, the Persona fans must have been so happy. Cuz they could play their favorite games one after the other without waiting. Anyway. As I said a few minutes ago when I was talking about the main color, I will not deduct points for a game developed for PS2 because its graphics are bad compared to the current ones, I am not that cruel. Since we criticized the negative stuff like graphics and open world, let's talk about the positive stuff like music in the Persona series, whose quality is unwavering, does not leak, does not smell, and is consistently good for people in every game.

MUSIC

There is no one who does not understand that the music quality is high after what I said a few lines ago. Yes, the musics are high quality, both the original version and the intro music of FES version are very very good, the battle music never gets boring, emotional musics are... hmm... emotional. So it’s difficult to make a negative comment about the music, but don't worry, I can catch lightning in a bottle. For example, the fact that the number of musics is quite low compared to the current Persona games is the first negative comment I can make. Actually, the number of musics is not that low when compared to the fourth game, not the fifth game, but you only remember three or four certain songs. Because you hear them everywhere throughout the game. And you only get the chance to experience some really high quality music very, very rarely. For example, something that burns me is that ATLUS uses music like "Shadow" and "A deep mentality" only once in the story and then never looks at them again as if they never existed. It's a shame. Anyway, although not as much as in the current Persona games, the fact that you can't understand the lyrics because of the weird way the Japanese vocalists say English words is the second negative comment I can make. Exapmles are:

Burn My Dread - “Taking fuck?”
Want to be close - “Banging right, left, frozen over nationals, wearing bedside hope for embassy”

Anyways what are my favorite songs in the game? Let's take a quick look at them, then we can compare music according to specific situations. By the way, let me tell you right now that I will also put Burn my dread, whose lyrics I just said were incomprehensible, among my favorite songs, don't be surprised. Just because I can find faults in the music doesn't mean it has to stop being my favorite. Anyway, here are my favorites:

Burn My Dread
Unavoidable Battle
Deep Breath Deep Breath
Changing Seasons

Also, as I said before, “Shadow” is too good of a music to be ignored after being used just once. I really like that too. Memories of you is also very good. Now let's come to the comparisons I will make, if I use the equal mark, the musics are of the same quality, but I prefer to listen to the ones I put on the left. So I'm screwing the equal mark and ignoring its meaning, but what should i do? For many musics I can't see enough of a quality difference to put a greater than sign


Original Intro: P5 Wake Up Blabla > P3 > P4
New Intro: P3 P3Fes
(yesTheNameOfTheGameAndTheMusicIsTheSameNotMyProblem) = P5 > P4
Battle With Advantage: P3 Mass Destruction = P5 > P4
School Theme: P1 School Days > P4 > P3
Dorm/Home Theme: P3 Iwatodai Dorm > P4 > P5
Dungeon Themes: P5 Price > P4 > P3
Boss Themes + Everything Else: P5 Our beginning = P4 > P3
Ending Theme: P4 Never more = P3 > P5

I think we can make these rankings for the music of the current games in the series.

By the way, I enjoyed playing Persona 3 despite its flaws. Although reviews are human made and a matter of subjectivity, it is also important to be able to see and criticize the bad things the game does without taking sides with or against it. Of course, I enjoyed playing the game, but Persona 3 can’t be one of my favorite games unfortunately. However, strangely, the review I wrote for this game is the longest of the ones I have written so far. Well, in one part of this review, I said, “If you review things with flaws, you will have more material to talk about.” So, is this really surprising? Not much. Anyways... Let's summarize the review briefly, give our score, and end another milestone now.

CONCLUSION

This is the game where our loved social link system in current personas, a somewhat real student simulation and the foundations of turn-based combat with 3D models were laid. Of course, since it laid the foundations, it has some sharp edges in these areas, but there were also times when Persona 3 surprised me and exhibited quality above my expectations. However, the things the game does badly are so bad that they reduce some of the good parts to above average status such as grinding and Tartarus butchering the combat experience. The worst things the game does other than the meaningless grind pressure it puts on you is the tempo problems in the story progression. Also, I didn’t like the story except for the final scene. I could not find what I expected because of that cliche "This game has the best story" saying that I kept hearing before and when I started the game. I played it with the expectation that it would have a much more emotional, much deeper and realistic story than other neo-persona games. Of course, it doesn’t make much sense to expect high depth and realism from a story from 2008. Apart from that, as in every Persona game, thanks to the characters that are well written and insanely above market quality, even the boring scenario was not that unpleasant to watch. In terms of gameplay, especially the difficulty in the bosses was maddening, while using weaknesses and melting the enemies entertained me as always. But Tartarus did everything in its hand to ruin the fun. So should Persona 3 FES be played at this time? If you don't have the money to buy the Reload version or don't want to buy Gamepass, you can play this. Using tools like emulators is a great blessing to those who can. Also, if you wanna know how shitty the Answer is without paying ATLUS 35 dollars, you can download this. But I say don't keep your expectations high. I have to say my last few thoughts about the game. There is nothing of quality in terms of roleplaying in this game, there are only two different endings, and one is objectively better than the other. But recently, the remake of Paper Mario Thousand Year Door, a game I sat down to enjoy, was so boring and mid that going back to Persona 3 was a relief. Anyway. The score I give to Persona 3 FES will be either 3.5 or 4. I will decide when after th review. I know that I gave Persona 4 a 4 (lulz very funni) and I also know that I enjoyed that game more. Well, it is a matter of debate whether it is appropriate to give the same score to a slightly smaller, more primitive, more painful version of it. While Persona 4 offers a more concentrated story with plenty of cutscenes, Persona 3 progresses slowly for 50 hours like it’s rolling out dough with a rolling pin. Yes, even in this state, I liked its story slightly more than Persona 4, but if RDR2 gave you thirty days to increase your honor in the open world and complete side quests, and we could only do the main quests in Full Moon, would the story be that impressive? Maybe it would, because I played the game that way, but the general audience that only completed the main quests like they’re in a marathon finished the game in 35 to 40 hours. Now, if you ask “What does an open world action game like RDR2 has to do with Persona?” I would tell you that “What I'm saying is related to the negativity brought by the calendar-based progression experienced in Persona games.”



Hooooooooohhh.

I finally finished this game. I don't have to avoid looking at posts with spoiler tags here and there anymore, and I didn’t finish any Persona games more or less than an average purse owner fan. If you haven't finished the dancing games, I don't consider you a real Persona fan by the way. JK.
I miss the times I played Persona 3, man, I wanna go back to shooting the breeze with social links. I gave the game a 4, just because of the bonds I formed with the characters, but Persona 3 win this 4 by a hair. If it bothered me even a little little bit more, or if I hadn't installed the party control mode after the first quarter of the game, I would have given it a 3.5 and move on. Or maybe 3. If ATLUS didn’t bother to fix the problems I mentioned when they made the Reload version, there really is no point in remaking the game. I hope they did, so that I can enjoy the masterpiece pleasure that the old fans got from the original game.

O RPG com talvez o melhor aspecto ludonarrativo já feito, o pacing é perfeitamente encaixado com a narrativa, além do crescente desenvolvimento dos personagens que começam como pessoas horríveis e desmotivadas e acabam muito bem desenvolvidos e completamente diferentes, embora não se possa controlar os personagens, isso em si é também um conceito da própria ideia de persona, o que não vejo como um lado negativo. Além do final ser extremamente criativo e inclusive subversivo com o que a narrativa estava tentando dizer. Simplesmente perfeito.

Eu gosto muito do roteiro deste jogo, os personagens, o enredo e etc. É um jogo profundo em sua mensagem, trazendo a nós uma reflexão sobre a vida e a morte que é transposta por meio das mecânicas de tempo e do social link no sentido mais lúdico da obra, mas assim, vtmnc do tartarus é um verdadeiro saco e difícil para um santo caralho, além de que os personagens do social link são uns npc paia da porra, acho as quest disso muito chatas poucas realmente são interessantes ou profundas.

No geral eu concordo sobre este ter a melhor historia da franquia é realmente algo lindo e que vale muito a pena jogar-lo mas a gameplay dele é muito truncada o que me tirou bastante da experiência, sim há aspectos muito interessantes na jogabilidade como por exemplo a mecânica do calendário, o sistema das personas como a fusão e a maneira como você upa elas que não só servem como mecânicas mas como também tem um propósito narrativo o que é maravilhoso nesse caso, é um jogo com ponto altíssimos e ao mesmo tempo pontos bem baixos, mas não deixa de valer a pena.