I really enjoyed my time with persona 3 although I'm not sure I've played a game that's so highly regarded, yet has so many aspects people complain about.
To address the immediate elephant in the room, I think everyone's complaints about the AI party members are overblown. Before I started the game, this was the aspect of the game I was most worried about. By the way people talked about it, it seemed like you had no input over what your party members did at all, so I was happy to know that you could still give them some input through the tactics system. I'll admit I had a few rough AI party moments when I started playing, but as I progressed and unlocked more tactics commands this became more and more of a nonissue for me. Once I unlocked the knock down command, just doing the bare minimum of setting everyone to knock down pretty much solved any issue with the party system I had initially (e.g. Marin Karin spam, attacking enemies that were already knocked down, etc.). This also allowed me to finish most battles with an all out attack and pick up a lot of wand cards and extra personas in shuffle time which helped cut down on grinding.
I don't want to give the impression that the AI party members are better than being able to freely control them because obviously free control would be better, but I think the tactics system is better than most people give it credit for (especially as you start unlocking more commands as you progress further into the story) and proper use of it negates most of the AI's questionable choices about 95% of the time.
I know some people have issues with Tartarus as well, but I didn't mind it (although I haven't played any other dungeon crawlers to really compare it to anything). I found that it was a nice break between the everyday activities, and as I progressed further I found myself spending more and more time there as I had less and less to do in the social sim aspects of the game.
Instead, my biggest issue with P3FES is its over reliance on RNG. Going in to the game, I knew there would be some RNG. After all, the game's an RPG after all there's always some sort of RNG involved, but it's so much more prevalent in P3 than any other RPG I've played. There's RNG involved in when you recover from being tired, from finding rare chests required to complete certain requests, in finding extra personas, in fusion, and there's probably more that I'm forgetting to mention.
My biggest issues with the RNG were with finding certain rare items required for Elizabeth's requests. I went for 100% Elizabeth requests in my run, and finding some of those rare weapons in rare chests ended up taking way longer than it should have. Being able to find other items in rare chests after you've accepted the particular request in addition to the rare percentage of getting the rare chest to even spawn is just mean.
My biggest issue with the game is the RNG involved in persona fusion. I really grew to hate the fusion system in this game and it's all because of the random skill inheritance. For some reason this was the aspect of the RNG that just never wanted to work for me and I often spent multiple hours constantly rerolling movesets to get something usable in the persona I was trying to fuse. It gets even worse when trying to fuse ultimate personas (or just any of the personas that require more than 3 personas to fuse them). The more lower leveled/weaker personas that had terrible movesets involved in the fusion always seemed to have more of an influence on the final personas moveset than the actual strong personas whose moves I was actually trying to pass down. My most extreme example of this was when it took me more than 3 days of constant rerolling to get a Thanatos with an ok moveset and I ended up giving up and settling for a moveset that I still wasn't satisfied with (I don't need Mudo or mudoon when I'm trying to pass down Die for Me and Mudo boost!).
Moving on to the positives, I think the game still looks nice. The 3D areas are surprisingly detailed and of course the portraits and 2D cutscenes all looks nice.
The story was also really interesting. I think the game did a good job of introducing new aspects to the story that seemingly aren't connected only to reveal how it's connected to the overarching plot in a satisfying way. Additionally, the ending was really strong and got me.
I also really liked the main cast by the end of the game. I think P3 does a good job of showing how this group of people who are pretty much strangers or all have hidden beefs with each other grow and come together as a family.
The social links tend to be kind of hit or miss, but the good ones are really good and for the most part, the bad ones are just kind of boring or underwhelming. Most of them felt simple compared to future games in the series, but there's a fun charm to their simplicity and you really feel like you get to know the characters by the end of most of them. I do wish there were social links for more than just the female SEES members, but that goes to show how much I like the main cast. I know portable adds a bunch of new social links and I'm definitely planning to check it out some time in the future.
Plus it goes without saying, the soundtrack is amazing. I think the music chosen for each area fits perfectly and I like how the soundtrack is implemented into the overworld and seeing how everything changes the further you progress into the game.
Overall, I found P3 to be a really good time. If you're hesitant to try it because of the aspects everyone complains about, I would still recommend giving it a try (and if you really can't adjust to the AI party members, there are mods to change that). I really hope those complaints don't deter people from playing P3 since it's great aspects really outshine the aspects everyone complains about.
To address the immediate elephant in the room, I think everyone's complaints about the AI party members are overblown. Before I started the game, this was the aspect of the game I was most worried about. By the way people talked about it, it seemed like you had no input over what your party members did at all, so I was happy to know that you could still give them some input through the tactics system. I'll admit I had a few rough AI party moments when I started playing, but as I progressed and unlocked more tactics commands this became more and more of a nonissue for me. Once I unlocked the knock down command, just doing the bare minimum of setting everyone to knock down pretty much solved any issue with the party system I had initially (e.g. Marin Karin spam, attacking enemies that were already knocked down, etc.). This also allowed me to finish most battles with an all out attack and pick up a lot of wand cards and extra personas in shuffle time which helped cut down on grinding.
I don't want to give the impression that the AI party members are better than being able to freely control them because obviously free control would be better, but I think the tactics system is better than most people give it credit for (especially as you start unlocking more commands as you progress further into the story) and proper use of it negates most of the AI's questionable choices about 95% of the time.
I know some people have issues with Tartarus as well, but I didn't mind it (although I haven't played any other dungeon crawlers to really compare it to anything). I found that it was a nice break between the everyday activities, and as I progressed further I found myself spending more and more time there as I had less and less to do in the social sim aspects of the game.
Instead, my biggest issue with P3FES is its over reliance on RNG. Going in to the game, I knew there would be some RNG. After all, the game's an RPG after all there's always some sort of RNG involved, but it's so much more prevalent in P3 than any other RPG I've played. There's RNG involved in when you recover from being tired, from finding rare chests required to complete certain requests, in finding extra personas, in fusion, and there's probably more that I'm forgetting to mention.
My biggest issues with the RNG were with finding certain rare items required for Elizabeth's requests. I went for 100% Elizabeth requests in my run, and finding some of those rare weapons in rare chests ended up taking way longer than it should have. Being able to find other items in rare chests after you've accepted the particular request in addition to the rare percentage of getting the rare chest to even spawn is just mean.
My biggest issue with the game is the RNG involved in persona fusion. I really grew to hate the fusion system in this game and it's all because of the random skill inheritance. For some reason this was the aspect of the RNG that just never wanted to work for me and I often spent multiple hours constantly rerolling movesets to get something usable in the persona I was trying to fuse. It gets even worse when trying to fuse ultimate personas (or just any of the personas that require more than 3 personas to fuse them). The more lower leveled/weaker personas that had terrible movesets involved in the fusion always seemed to have more of an influence on the final personas moveset than the actual strong personas whose moves I was actually trying to pass down. My most extreme example of this was when it took me more than 3 days of constant rerolling to get a Thanatos with an ok moveset and I ended up giving up and settling for a moveset that I still wasn't satisfied with (I don't need Mudo or mudoon when I'm trying to pass down Die for Me and Mudo boost!).
Moving on to the positives, I think the game still looks nice. The 3D areas are surprisingly detailed and of course the portraits and 2D cutscenes all looks nice.
The story was also really interesting. I think the game did a good job of introducing new aspects to the story that seemingly aren't connected only to reveal how it's connected to the overarching plot in a satisfying way. Additionally, the ending was really strong and got me.
I also really liked the main cast by the end of the game. I think P3 does a good job of showing how this group of people who are pretty much strangers or all have hidden beefs with each other grow and come together as a family.
The social links tend to be kind of hit or miss, but the good ones are really good and for the most part, the bad ones are just kind of boring or underwhelming. Most of them felt simple compared to future games in the series, but there's a fun charm to their simplicity and you really feel like you get to know the characters by the end of most of them. I do wish there were social links for more than just the female SEES members, but that goes to show how much I like the main cast. I know portable adds a bunch of new social links and I'm definitely planning to check it out some time in the future.
Plus it goes without saying, the soundtrack is amazing. I think the music chosen for each area fits perfectly and I like how the soundtrack is implemented into the overworld and seeing how everything changes the further you progress into the game.
Overall, I found P3 to be a really good time. If you're hesitant to try it because of the aspects everyone complains about, I would still recommend giving it a try (and if you really can't adjust to the AI party members, there are mods to change that). I really hope those complaints don't deter people from playing P3 since it's great aspects really outshine the aspects everyone complains about.