surgeworks

Final Thoughts: (Story & Characters) | Table of Contents
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The very, definitively, absolutely final word on Persona 3. You can skip to the end if you want some info on my upcoming projects, too.

Persona 3 Portable doesn’t have the most polished gameplay out there (which is what happens when you remake a game for PSP in 2012 when the PS3 and, later, the Vita, are right there). But generally, it plays well and everything works, and I had minimal problems but plenty of challenges while ascending Tartarus. Why then, did Persona 3 Portable rack up an atrocious score like this on a count this damaging?

Bad Game Design, Current Score: 117

However, now that I think about it, throwing Agi at shadows is probably the one part of game design we haven’t gone into excessively yet.

The game is also known for the great extremes of difficulty its bosses are found at; the “proper” boss fights with the Full Moon shadows can be piss easy, and get moreso the further you go, while the “miniboss” encounters lining the path up Tartarus are bafflingly difficult. Neither grouping is appropriately balanced; the Tartarus boss shadows in particular are scaled several levels above the highest-level shadows in the blocks they occupy, which forces the “grinding” aspect of the game to be very, very tedious, as by the time you can beat the stronger shadows, you’ll still get your ass whooped by the minibosses—and grinding high enough to beat the miniboss shadows is a drag because you’ll have to wring several levels’ worth of experience out of garden-variety enemies that quickly stop being a challenge or awarding useful EXP points.

Bad Game Design: 118

The original game and FES (which we have to count, as it contains the most “up to date” form of the Answer, the only one ever released) suffered from a variety of fake difficulty issues. The main deal is not being able to control your party members, but rather giving them general directives to follow each time your turn comes up. This is obviously the biggest change going forward into Persona 4 and beyond. Not being able to manually select skills on Personas, too, is an abundantly dumb thing that wastes no small amount of time.

That wasn’t all, either. Returning to the Answer also led to some glaring problems I can’t believe I forgot. For all that P3P wasn’t the epitome of good game design, going back to the original gameplay present in the Answer showed that things used to be a lot worse. Enemies will be restored to normal status if you hit them again after knocking them down, which is baffling and bad news for anyone that expected them to get the “Dizzy” status effect. Speaking of status effects, poison is applied for every action a character takes or any action taken on them—so they take progressively higher amounts of damage if an enemy targets them, or even if the reverse happens and they start chaining attacks—but that admittedly won’t happen much without the ability to directly control your party.

But even then, the Answer strips away a lot of gameplay features that were present in the relatively broken vanilla version. It’s a solely battle-oriented dungeon crawl from start to finish, with the dating sim elements thrown out in favor of cutscenes that do a lot of talking at you, doing serious damage to the pacing. Without the ability to record Personas, and with no changes made to how exhausting it is to grind them for any skills, on top of not having any social links to counteract that tedium, the actual dungeon crawling isn’t even fun.

Do you know what that all results in, compared with the very thin and sparse plot details? It results in a slog. It’s 90% fights with shadows and the rest is scene chatter. Do you know how mind-numbingly repetitive the tracks in this game get when you’re hearing them that many times, over and over, with no change? What a drag.

The original game wasn’t fantastic with balancing, but the Answer essentially tore out half of the reason that people liked the game (the dating sim elements) and with it, threw out the frankly genius method of interlinking that with the dungeon crawling side. It isn’t fun, it’s just exhausting and annoying. All of that, with nothing interesting to make up for it put back in.

Bad Game Design: 119

Also, I did promise to go more in-depth on the party members at the beginning, and they’re probably the biggest factor in how well your shadow-slaying goes, so behold: a list of party members, their ultimate skill line-ups, and how positively or negatively they affect battle and are affected by it.

Each one will earn points for any significant flaws that keep them from being more useful as party members. But if you’re not into that, you can run “final score” on Ctrl+F.

Yukari Takeba

Garudyne, Magarudyne, Me Patra, Charmdi, Wind Break, Diarahan, Mediarahan, Samarecarm
Stats show very high magic, poor strength, and the rest are moderate.

Yukari has her ups and downs. In the end, she’s a fairly reliable party member, having two distinct roles and filling them well. She has the high magic and the large SP pool needed to be able to keep them Magarudynes and Mediarahans comin’ when needed, but she lacks a lot of the luster of the other party members. For example, she never gets the Boost or Amp spells that the others get to passively dole out more damage. Worse still, she’ll easily be surpassed by Mitsuru, who has Ma-Dynes, high magic, Ice Amp, and Mind Charge (holy shit). Frankly, I’m of the opinion that Mind Charge should’ve been given to Yukari to keep her even with the rest of the cast, as she lacks her Amp. It would’ve made Yukari a mainstay in the party rather than ending up only being there for healing (and to avoid having to use Ken). I’ll say now that Wind Break costs entirely too much SP to only nullify one resistance at a time on one enemy at a time when you can just bring a different party member in the first place, and Me Patra and Charmdi need to get out of my house. Me Patra is far more useful than Charmdi, healing the entire group for three status ailments, but it’s still less than great. Charmdi is situational in the extreme; it’s true that Charm is probably the most devastating status ailment you can get, but this spell heals only a single target for a single status effect that’s fairly rare in the first place on top of being as inaccurate as all the others. These two should’ve been merged into Amrita, and Mind Charge or Wind Amp could’ve taken the free slot.

Her skill growth is not forgiving in how much it’s lacking as you go, either. There is an eleven-level skill gap, two in the original and FES, making her a drag. The first one is devastating, as Yukari doesn’t get anything of note during a particularly nasty early game strain.

For not getting Wind Amp or Mind Charge, a BGD is awarded (another one will be awarded when we get to Mitsuru). Another is awarded for the eleven-level skill gap. Another general one will be awarded for the game’s worthless Break spells being awarded to several party members.

Bad Game Design: 121

Junpei Iori

Agidyne, Marakukaja, High Counter, Fire Break, Gigantic Fist, Brave Blade, Vorpal Blade, Spring of Life
Stats have high strength and good defense, middling speed and pathetic magic.

And here is the party member on whom I probably have to spend the longest discussion. You can consider Junpei the prototype to Chie, and that should tell you something as Chie isn’t perfect to begin with.

Junpei’s problems shine through far worse than Yukari’s. The general problem is crippling specialization and focus; Junpei uses fire and physical attacks, but neither one of them grants any multi-target attacks until fucking level 50. You might think ‘but why is that a problem? After all, Kanji was focused on single-target attacks’, but that’s only half true. Kanji had multi-target Zio spells as well. For a character with a dual focus (like Yukari), at least one should have some multi-target spells in there to keep this character’s ammunition stocked. You’ll often run into groups of fire-weak enemies, but Junpei will have to waste huge amounts of SP to take them out one by one, and he doesn’t have much to begin with, or a high enough magic stat to bother.

I can sort of understand Agi being the single-target focus, but being as familiar with Kanji as I am, I probably would’ve made it the multi-target focus. Note that he doesn’t get Fire Boost or Fire Amp to help out his damage, just like Yukari…in contrast to Koromaru, who does. Yes, Junpei gets outdone by the dog. You would think that after fusing with Medea, he might get her Maragi line or a boost passive, but no…

The good parts of his skillset endgame include Brave Blade (baby, yes), Vorpal Blade, Spring of Life, Marakukaja, and High Counter. Brave Blade does insanely high damage for a relatively low HP cost compared to God’s Hand or Primal Force. Vorpal Blade is the highest-damage conventional multi-target physical (say that ten times fast) attack in the game (Agneyastra doesn’t exist in Persona 3). I was never fond of it in Persona 4, where it somehow always ends up disappointing, but it’s much better in Persona 3, allowing Junpei to dominate, especially with its Great condition damage bonus. Marakukaja is a very important part of his endgame, as he really needs it seeing as he doesn’t have great evasion and he’ll chow down on his own lifebar to fuel his physicals, leaving him less to survive assaults with. Spring of Life is also a great way to counteract this so that Junpei isn’t dying all the time. High Counter is probably the best prize here—unlike in Persona 4, High Counter lets you reflect physical attacks 50% of the time instead of just 20%—holy shit! What’s notable is that this applies to all physical attacks, rather than being designated to slash, pierce, or strike like all of the other physical-related spells in the game—so it covers three of the game’s nine main attack types! It’s especially good since physical attacks are the strongest ones in the game. It not only ensures he doesn’t catch that nasty Primal Force by surprise, but can also lead to some pleasant easy victories when enemies blast themselves in the face.

Unfortunately, there are still problems. Also in his skillset are Fire Break and Gigantic Fist, but that’s endgame. Throughout the largest chunk of the game, Junpei focuses a lot on having all three flavors of physical attack, which takes up so much of his skills that his heavy hitters don’t come along for a while. That’s a BGD on its own, but even then, it’d be forgivable if some of them were at least multi-target. There was no excuse not to, with Gale Slash and Swift Strike available, which makes it a second BGD. And a third, because for all that time spent making sure he can hit any physical he wants, he loses his ability to hit with Pierce. Gigantic Fist almost feels like an afterthought, since if you need to blast something with a single heavy-hitting attack, you’re going to use Brave Blade. Another BGD for that taking up a skill slot.

Along with the point for never getting Maragi’s line is another one for never getting a Boost or Amp for it—if he’s going to have a shit magic stat and only ever get single-target Agi spells, he can at least get passives to boost it, right? Nope. And after that, I have to give it another point for Vorpal Blade, one of his better skills—because its bonus that makes it so great is that it happens if you’re in Great condition, which you have no means whatsoever to control—party members get Great condition randomly, and not nearly often enough to justify this.

One last point. Why? Because guess what? Junpei sucks at Agi, Aigis and Shinjiro both outshine him at physicals and have strength and endurance stats as good as or better than his, Koromaru gets High Counter, and his only truly useful and unique skill ends up being Marakukaja. Nice damn job validating Junpei’s worries that he’s getting outshined by everyone else, Atlus. You blew it.

Here, I’ll even come up with a better set of skills for him.

Vorpal Blade, Brave Blade, Agidyne, Maragidyne, Spring of Life, High Counter, Power Charge, Marakukaja.

See? This way Junpei can be trusted with his physicals and magic attacks of choice, and maintains his survivability. Power Charge is there because after losing Shinjiro, the only party member who can have it is you. But what about another one?

Vorpal Blade, Arrow Rain, Akasha Arts, Agidyne, Maragidyne, Fire Amp, Fire Break, 2hSwordMaster.

This can be a build that makes the best of his need to hit any given physical subtype, and if they’re all useless, he can use his Agi spells. It must be clarified that somehow, the users who were best at magic got amps and boosts, but the ones who really needed it didn’t. And this way, he has two clearly defined roles to keep him a party mainstay. Yeah, you lose High Counter and Marakukaja, but he’s left with real versatility and high damage output to compensate. It was so easy to make proper skillsets for this guy not once, but twice, that I’m giving it its last point, which totals out to:

Bad Game Design: 130

As a final afterthought, you’d think that Junpei’s Persona being Hermes, the Greek god of speed and swiftness, would mean he’d have an outstanding hit/evasion stat, but he doesn’t. For some reason, defense is high instead.

Akihiko Sanada

Ziodyne, Maziodyne, Matarunda, Marakunda, Masukunda, Elec Amp, Fist Master, Diarahan
Stats are well rounded, with respectable strength, speed, magic, and defense.

Akihiko is my kind of party member. He can fill out multiple roles, but actually does well in them instead of being stretched thin to the point of middling or poor usage (Aigis, Ken).

He has Ziodyne and Maziodyne, and while a little bit more expensive than Agi or Garu, can inflict the Shocked status, which is one of the most useful in the game thanks to turning every hit into a critical hit, so it’s worth it. His other specialty is debuffing, at which he excels. Regarding buffs and debuffs on my own personas, and on party members in P4, I usually don’t bother to use them unless I can get two or more of them onto the Persona, and thus be more flexible with them. Akihiko here understands that. You nervous about a group of threatening opponents who may have just blasted your party too easily? You struggling to bring down a stupidly durable opponent that’s wearing you down? Are you trying to catch one of those damned Golden Hands before they run away? Akihiko has you covered in all of those situations. And all of them will pop up, meaning his flexibility with debuffs will make him a mainstay in your party.

Elec Amp nicely rounds off the Zio line, and Diarahan takes its own slot to allow Akihiko to fill even more roles if a tight spot should come by. The only part I really have any issue with is Fist Master; it’s useful, but I wouldn’t say it’s useful enough to carry its weight. It’s only going to do so if you 1) have a powerful enough weapon on Akihiko to make it matter and 2) actually intend to physically attack with Akihiko when he could be blasting, debuffing, or healing instead. I’d probably replace it with something like Gigantic Fist (god damn it, Junpei) or God’s Hand (god damn it, Aigis). Either one of those moves would also be funny seeing as Akihiko punches Shadows to death and his Persona is a boxer, too. Severely missed opportunity to match the theme, Atlus. That one weak spot is a tad glaring, since any enemy that is only vulnerable to physical attacks (especially common in the endgame) will ironically end up shrugging off Akihiko’s attacks.

Bad Game Design: 131

Mitsuru Kirijo

Bufudyne, Mabufudyne, Ice Amp, Mind Charge, Spirit Drain, Ice Break, Tentarafoo, Diarahan
Second in magic only to Yukari, respectable speed and defense, not much strength to speak of.

Along with Akihiko, Mitsuru will probably make up another integral part of your party. She’s not as variable as Akihiko, but she’s geared towards the singular aspect that she does better than anyone else in the game: blast it a new asshole with magic.

Mitsuru’s line is Bufu, which isn’t quite as useful as Zio—the “Frozen” status only keeps enemies from dodging, rather than keeping them from dodging and also ramping up critical hits—but Mitsuru has more than enough SP to keep up with the increased cost. Not only does she get Ice Amp to passively boost her ice spells by 50%, she also gets Mind Charge, which combined with Ice Amp spells doom for anything in your way—she’s basically what you have to really work to make Yukiko into in Persona 4: Golden. Not to mention, she’s SP-conservative. Mind Charge not only boosts her next attack by 250%, but only costs 15 SP to offset how expensive her Mabufudynes are. If you ever do catch her low on SP, you can ensure that she doesn’t run out and is back to blasting with Spirit Drain. Diarahan fills the same role as with Akihiko and Aigis, ensuring that she can fill that healer role if someone else can’t.

There are still problems. Tentarafoo is better to have around than the woefully-useless Marin Karin, but not much better. It hits all enemies with Panic, a useful ailment, but only has a 25% chance to do so, meaning you’ll wind up disappointed three times out of four, and it’s all but useless on bosses. She also never gets her “master” passive to boost her rapier attacks, but I won’t complain since she doesn’t have Akihiko’s strength stat that otherwise would have you attacking directly with her. Even so, she’s almost too useful considering the Ice Amp and Mind Charge combo—she’s only a few points behind Yukari in her magic stat, meaning she’ll always do more damage than her Garudynes, and lowering Yukari’s overall usefulness in the face of that.

I would still probably give Yukari her Mind Charge, seeing as she doesn’t really need it, but overall I’m very happy with Mitsuru. So, one BGD for Tentarafoo and one for her getting both her Amp and Mind Charge while Yukari gets neither.

Bad Game Design: 133

Fuuka Yamagishi

Full Analysis, Support Scan, Third Eye, Healing Wave, Oracle, Escape Route
Stats are irrelevant.

The support party member who takes over scanning and allows Mitsuru to become an active combatant. All things considered, there’s very little point in putting her here, as she doesn’t fill much of a role beyond enhanced scanning. Escape Route is always nice, but Oracle feels far too risky to be worth it. You can sort of tell that they wanted to give her more activity within battle, but hadn’t quite realized how to do it yet like they would later with Rise. Healing Wave is nice as it can help extend Tartarus trips and keep the party alive, but frankly, I don’t need it. It only heals HP, and I have myself, Yukari, Akihiko, Mitsuru, Aigis, and *sigh* Ken if I want to do that. If it healed SP, that’d be different, but it doesn’t, so it ain’t. Which is a shame, because SP-restoring passives exist, like Cool Breeze. It wasn’t like they hadn’t yet come up with the concept of Rise’s Relaxing Waves and Healing Waves, they were already there. She gets two BGD points, not only for being utterly insufferable as a navigator, but for her one active assistance (Oracle) not only being a random effect and liable to explode in your face, but only usable once a day!

Bad Game Design: 135

The player has almost no incentive whatsoever to scan things rather than do trial-and-error, since it just takes too long and you’ll end up doing nothing for a turn if you actually want the scan. Third Eye fixes this somewhat; it works even on the Full Moon Shadows and Tartarus guardians (wherein she can’t reveal their weaknesses or health), allowing you to bypass what was previously a problem.

I’m not forgetting that Oracle is glitched and doesn’t match text to effect, but I already gave it its point.

Koromaru

Agidyne, Maragidyne, Mudoon, Mamudoon, Mudo Boost, Masukukaja, Fire Amp, High Counter
Low health, and low defense and strength stats. Good magic and excellent hit/evasion.

If you had told me, before I played Persona 3, that I’d be taking a dog with my party through dungeons, I’d probably not think anything good about it. I’d assume that he’d he hellaciously useful throughout his debut dungeon, and then quickly forgotten about and discarded afterwards.

That’s not how Koromaru rolls at all. While Junpei and Ken learn single-target spell lines, Koromaru learns single- and multi-target lines for both his attack element (Agi) and his instant death element (Mudo). So yes, the dog is already more useful than both Junpei and Ken. Both of them are boosted too, so his damage doesn’t fall behind. In normal encounters, why bother fighting the enemy at all when you can just mow them down in one go with a boosted Mamudoon? In boss fights, where Mudo isn’t available, he can use his Agidynes, and his incredible hit rate will make sure he doesn’t miss with them. And that speed will be valuable when it comes to keeping him alive, because otherwise Koromaru’s rather fragile. Koromaru can also spread a speed increase to the rest of the party with Masukukaja, making him a bullet and the rest of you fast enough not to get surprised by nasty opponents.

Oh, and concerning keeping Koromaru alive: High Counter, fuck yeah. If he doesn’t dodge a God’s Hand, odds are he’ll reflect it. Beautiful. Love you, Koromaru. Who’s a good dog?! You are! You are!

Aigis

Matarukaja, Marakukaja, Masukukaja, Dekunda, Diarahan, Samarecarm, Akasha Arts, God’s Hand
Good strength and very good defense, not much speed or magic at all.

Aigis, like Yukari or Junpei, has her ups and downs. Like Junpei, she’s painfully slow to level due to the game being more concerned that she have certain types of physical attack than actually have useful physical attacks (in her case, she gets strikes only, but at least she’s not spread so damn thin as Junpei). By the end of the game, she comes into her own, though whether or not it’s enough to make up for the problems depends on whether or not you intend to take on Margaret.

The first thing to mention is that Aigis can be a suitable stand-in for Akihiko if need be. She has ma-buffs for attack, defense, and speed, and unlike Akihiko, has Dekunda, which will be useful for getting rid of any debuffs your enemies place on your party. However, what with Junpei having Marakukaja, Koromaru having Masukukaja, and Akihiko being a debuff specialist, you may not end up using her that much.

She has Diarahan like the others at the end, as well as Samarecarm, which the others don’t. This along with Dekunda is a great way to make her distinct from Akihiko or Mitsuru, who can’t revive or shrug off debuffs. She also has God’s Hand and Akasha Arts, two beautifully powerful physicals with decent critical rates and the latter of which can hit twice.

The odd thing about Aigis is that her Persona resists Pierce but her primary offense by the time of end-game is Strike. So if your bullets bounce back at her, she’s good. If her goddamn God’s Hand bounces back at her? She’s fucked. What’s more, she doesn’t have any other options. While Akihiko can use Zio if his opponent resists strike and Junpei can use Agi if his opponent resists slash, Aigis can’t do anything to opponents damage-wise if they resist Strike. Her best boons over other characters are Samarecarm and Dekunda, so you’ll have to think about how much those are worth.

Her odd choice of resistance is also notable. It’s Pierce, and by the endgame she can null it, meaning Primal Force (the game’s strongest attack) and Arrow Rain and Myriad Arrows (both of which can hit multiple times) won’t be a danger to her.

I wouldn’t change any of her skill slots, as a matter of fact, except maybe give her Primal Force and give Akihiko God’s Hand just for kicks (the pierce-user gets ultimate strike and strike-user gets nothing?). But I would give her a second physical resistance (strike, in particular). And even that is unoptimized—Shinjiro and Junpei also have her high endurance, but they both get regenerative skills and High Counter to offset the damage they’ll be eating, while she gets nothing. The overall problem isn’t any distinct bizarre choice, just that she lags behind and doesn’t have anything to soup her up. No Power Charge, no Regenerate, no High Counter, etc.

But we’re not done, because Aigis (and, in the Answer, Metis) also comes with *drumroll* Orgia Mode! Which is fucking useless, and I mean that sincerely.

Orgia Mode already wasn’t great in the original game. I imagine it was given to Aigis to help push her as an important and valuable party member since she otherwise doesn’t carry her weight very well. That failed, as even in the original game, Aigis’ overheating for more turns than she could reliably afford on the Orgia Mode’s damage output kept it from being a useful boon. It’s doubly useless in Persona 3, wherein Orgia Mode renders her uncontrollable, a factor no sane player would consider when just being able to direct Aigis’ attacks yourself saves you a lot of grief.

So, a point for Matarukaja being the only buff unique to her, and a point for her overall lackluster abilities.

Bad Game Design: 137

Shinjiro Aragaki

Akasha Arts, God’s Hand, High Counter, Regenerate 2, Deathbound, High Counter, Evil Smile
Huge strength, great endurance, kind of middling everywhere else. No weaknesses or resistances.

Shinjiro Aragaki, baby. Again, this is my kind of party member. Yeah, he can’t juggle anything the way Akihiko does. But the one thing he does, he utterly excels at. Every skill in his arsenal is geared towards physical attacks and doing things with those physical attacks. He can hit single or multiple targets, and unlike Junpei, who tries to juggle three physical types, and Aigis, who is limited to just one, Shinjiro hits the sweet spot with just two, strike and slash, so that he’s not helpless if an enemy happens to null one or the other. Evil Smile makes enemies fearful, limiting their retaliation options and, most importantly, ensuring that any hits that land (and they will land) critical, essentially turning Akasha Arts and Deathbound into a slaughterfest. Anything that survives the first hit won’t survive the second that comes along thanks to the critical and (+1 More) he will inevitably get. Power Charge will turn those moves, not to mention God’s Hand, into an instant death sentence for virtually anything in your path. High Counter will reflect back any physical attack aimed at him 50% of the time, raising his survivability. Regenerate 2 will raise it further by restoring a small chunk of his health every turn. Since he has no weaknesses, he can’t be knocked down or dizzied unless the unlikely critical hit comes his way.

Now, mind, his skillset is still…incomplete. Notice that I only listed seven skills up there instead of eight—one of his slots remains empty when he’s fully leveled. Not that I suppose it matters *angry hissing at Atlus*, but I do have a very good idea of what should be there, and possibly what actually was going to be there. Regenerate 2 obviously should upgrade into Regenerate 3, though it never does. Everybody knows that status effect spells, particularly multi-target ones, can’t be relied on too much, so Fear Boost would and should go in that last slot to increase its effectiveness and turn Shinji into the ultimate killing machine. A point each for the lack of those options:

Bad Game Design: 139

Even without taking his character into account, the fact that Shinji is only playable for a month and you probably won’t grind him enough to see God’s Hand unless you REALLY want to trash the Hermit with it makes me incredibly bitter. But, I already gave that its points. What a waste of a well-crafted character.

Ken Amada

Ziodyne, Hamaon, Primal Force, Diarahan, Mediarahan, Samarecarm, Spear Master, Vile Assault
All stats are middling, defense is somewhat poor.

*Looks squarely at Atlus, with steepled fingers and a stern stare.*

Now, Atlus, I know you have better things to do than listen to some whining gamer on Dreamwidth. We all know you never bother to listen to what your fanbase wants or complains about anyway. But I’d like to ask: why wasn’t this character fixed? You re-released Persona 3 not once, but twice. You had two opportunities to tweak this terribly built party member. And this character still sucks. In fact, he’s worse.

There were changes between the original and P3P—namely, Ken has Primal Force instead of Hama Boost. I’m not really going to go into whether one is better than the other, because Ken sucks regardless of which one you’re playing. And yes, I have to compare him to the party member we just went over, because that’s who we traded for this. We traded Shinjiro for Ken, except ‘trade’ implies I’d actually choose it if I had another choice.

Let’s start with problem number one: too much going on. Ken juggles light-based instant kills, electric spells, physical attacks, and heals. This leaves Ken spread too thin since he has no slots left for skills that support his main ones. He has Ziodyne, but no Maziodyne and no Electric Boost or Amp. He has Hamaon, but no Mahamaon or Hama Boost. And Zio and Hama are both expensive spell lines, leaving him with less SP with which to cast his heals. Like Yukari, he has Diarahan, Mediarahan, and Samarecarm, making him a viable healer, but doesn’t have as much SP and unlike her, is weak to darkness—and if he’s the designated healer of your group, the last thing you want is him getting wasted by an instant-kill. Every one of his roles is better filled by someone else: Akihiko can do Zio better than he can, Koromaru can do instant kills better than he can, and Yukari can do healing better than he can and actually can contribute to the battle when she isn’t. But…but…at least he has Primal Force, right? That’s the strongest physical in the game, even better than God’s Hand!

Wrong. Unlike In Persona 4, Primal Force and God’s Hand do equivalent damage in Persona 3—and have the same critical rate, too. So since they’re different versions of the same thing, you have to factor in the strength stat that determines the damage—and Ken’s is way behind Shinjiro’s, Junpei’s, or Aigis’, meaning it’s not worth it.

It’s not that Ken Amada is the shittiest party member to ever practice party member shittiness. It’s just that he’s subpar in the extreme and there is effectively no reason whatsoever to use him. Fans who loved Shinjiro already weren’t going to use him, but considering his Persona, they’re more than justified. A certain spiteful part of me wonders if the Atlus designers hated Ken as much as we did and landed him with this crap skillset for it.

I especially don’t understand replacing Hama Boost with Primal Force and leaving Vile Assault around. If you’re going to hit it with Vile Assault on a downed opponent, you might as well use Primal Force anyway since they’ll do about the same damage in that situation. So he has two physicals he doesn’t have enough strength to use, and his light spell is left less accurate than it was. He doesn’t even have any outstanding stats to save him from being mediocre the way Aigis does!

A point for the complete lack of multi-target options, even worse than Junpei’s, a point for the lack of Hama Boost, a point for Vile Assault and Primal Force being weakened by his piss-poor strength, a point for him neither having Maziodyne nor Electric Boost or Amp, and a point for yet another perfectly good spot being taken by Spear Master when he just doesn’t have the strength for it. A point on top of that for there simply being too damn much going on here!

Plus, another point, because see how easy this is to fix?

Diarahan, Mediarahan, Samarecarm, Myriad Arrows, Hamaon, Mahamaon, Hama Boost, Spell Master

The physical aspect would still be unoptimized, as with Akihiko, but at least what he wants to do, he’d be good at. Or,

Diarahan, Mediarahan, Samarecarm, Hamaon, Mahamaon, Hama Boost, Matarukaja, Rebellion

Which would trade out his physical aspect for reliable buffs other party members can’t replicate. See? Easy fix.

Bad Game Design: 146

And yet, he still didn’t have as many problems as Junpei…

Metis

Metis is only available for The Answer, but she’s a unique party member, so she gets a slot. Final skillset:

Dekaja, Power Charge, Poison Arrow, Garudyne, Bufudyne, Sexy Dance, Akasha Arts, Brave Blade.
Stats are relatively balanced, though her magic is weak.

Metis can sort of be considered a slightly less-offensive version of Ken. She doesn’t heal, but rather goes for spells, ailments, and physicals. None of them is optimized at all—no boost for the inaccurate charm attacks, no boosts or amps for the spells (which are only single-target), etc. You could say that her physical attacks are her best feature, much like Aigis—she can hit single or multiple enemies, learns two physical lines the same way Shinjiro does, and best of all, she gets Power Charge, which alone is worth leveling her. Garudyne and Bufudyne are more in there for variety than anything, ensuring that if she can’t use her physicals, she has some option for dealing damage and knocking things down. But those and the ailments being unoptimized hurts her—because while Charm is useful, it’s one of the few ailments that doesn’t actually benefit her physical attack bent with critical hits.

Bad Game Design: 148

What’s weird is that she’s more useful than Aigis due to being more able to consistently damage enemies during battle, but her endgame glow-up isn’t nearly as good as Aigis’, whose Diarahan/Samarecarm/Dekunda combo means she’ll at least be consistently helpful in some fashion. But hey, she has Power Charge, so fuck it.

God, man. This is pathetic. The dog is the one single party member who doesn’t have any sort of problem whatsoever! And there’s no excuse! This was not the first, but the second re-release of the same game! There were multiple opportunities to fix all of this and improve what was done well! Fuck!!!

*Calming down* Alright, alright. Well, if we have to round out the problems with party members in combat, it’s probably that due to the fact that many members have so many problems that there is essentially always a better choice. In a good party lineup, you want both options for any given approach to be equally valid. This isn’t the case in P3P—Yukari is better at healing than Ken, Mitsuru is better at blasting than Yukari, Akihiko is better at balance than Aigis is, Koromaru is better at blasting than Junpei, Shinjiro is better at physical blasting than Junpei or Aigis, and Ken just sucks at everything. Persona 4 had a bit of this problem, too—in the vanilla game, Kanji was better at physical damage than Chie, the other physical damage specialist, in every way, so there was no reason to use her until she got Power Charge, and her damage began to easily exceed Kanji’s—after which, there was no reason to use Kanji either. But the re-release fixed this. Kanji and Chie both get Power Charge, but instead of this still leaving Chie unable to keep up, she was re-optimized with heavy critical rate moves, providing a decent boon towards using her that didn’t tip the scales towards making one member less useful. Persona 3 Portable did not re-optimize anyone and what changes it did make changed almost nothing.

Well, as for other game mechanics, what can be said? Battle-wise, not much. We’re mostly up to speed with Persona 4, except for buff re-casts “missing” instead of extending.

There’s the “dating sim half” of the game, to contrast the “grinding half”. In some ways, P3P has outdone P4 in regards to the Social Links, or at least the female half has: the Hermit Link no longer takes an entire day and night to adjust, and there are five Social Links available to do at night—Mutatsu, Tanaka, Shinjiro, Ken, and Koromaru, two of whom rank up automatically each visit. On the flipside, attribute ranking isn’t quite so swell. There are plenty of ways to rank up an attribute, but there are only two you’ll ever use if you can help it since they clearly give higher boosts, and which attributes they can rank up change by day, lessening how helpful they are.

What else is there to do besides fight monsters, rank Social Links up, and increase attributes? Well, that’s pretty much the entirety of the game right there. You’d think Persona 3 would test my time management skills, more so than ever on an Orpheus Telos run, yet if you’ve been paying attention at all during this spork, you’ll notice I basically spent November onward doing fucking nothing at all.

Part of this is because October through December are full of serious story events, which tend to remove your Social Link partners for weeks at a time and force you to spend the night studying or just going to sleep early. And when they do come back, you’re on immense pressure to get them up in time. Mitsuru’s Link technically starts in November, but circumstances ensure you will always be forced to wait until at least January to max her. There wasn’t really any reason that hers in particular needed to wait until then, since you could still have her experience marriage drama with her dad alive. Same, but worse, with Aigis, but I already explained how her lack of a Social Link is proof she shouldn’t have a Persona. All in all, I spent entirely too much time doing nothing. The game somehow managed to create a gratuitous blend of frustrating time management and egregiously easy time management. We’re only on a tight schedule because we’re left with nothing to do at a point in the game where we can easily have everything else done. How, Persona 3?

And that’s a recurring problem. Remember Pharos? Remember the Fool Link?

What do you think, should we round it out to an even 150 points? Let’s see, we could be generous, and award only a single point for Mitsuru’s, Aigis’, and Ryoji’s Links being so squeezed for time, plus, a point for the Fool and Death Links rank-skipping because no one was keeping track…

Bad Game Design: 150

And we land firmly on a solid 150 points.

I’ve been stating it over, and over, and over again: why wasn’t this game on the PS3, or the Vita? It had to have been in production alongside Persona 4 Golden, so why wasn’t it released on a newer console with all of the updates that made that game so cool to play? Why is the second re-release such a downgrade? Why did nobody up at Atlus suggest simply carrying this over to a much more polished and powerful system than the PSP, readily available, so that they wouldn’t have to chunk 90% of the game’s environments out the window?

I’ve pointed out over and over, and over, and over again how this is the third time we’re getting Persona 3, and yet so much that could’ve been changed wasn’t, and what was changed was changed for the worse half the time. So this is our last word on the matter.

BAD GAME DESIGN, FINAL SCORE: 150

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With all that said and done, what about this game's style?

Truthfully, this segment was going to be called “Gameplay & Style”, and you technically could call the rest of these features ‘style’, but the bigger part of this game’s style is stuff I already savaged on the story segment. So we’re just going to be breaking down the remaining features, those being themes, music, and one final overview of how it all wraps up together.

Themes

Again, we went over one of the major themes of the game (death and inevitability) in the story segment, so we’ll skip it here. Rather, we’ll approach the other major theme of the game: the Arcana.

Why the Arcana is important is, quite literally, never explained. The Arcana are a human invention, and a relatively recent one as well. Not only that, but they’re not typically thought of as related to secular study, so why they’d pop up in contention with the game’s “government scientist conspiracy” angle is especially unclear. There’s essentially no reason for Shadows, or for gods from the collective unconscious, to bear Arcana motifs when that’s not exactly a primal concept.

Beyond that though, for the most part, the game does fairly well in its translations of the Tarot and applying it to characters and enemies. It’s about as subtle as a pie in the face, but it does get the meanings of the individual Arcana mostly correct. The bosses of the game do a fairly decent job of representing the meanings of the inverted Arcana as well, although sometimes I’ve seen people reach to attribute meaning to them (I still don’t get the deal with the Hierophant boss, sorry). With this in mind, it’s rather odd that the final boss, Nyx, would represent Death as destruction and finality, aka the reversed card, but still give you life advice based on the upright meanings of the other Arcana.

That aside, how well does the game as a whole represent the Arcana? In general, the meaning of the game revolves around the Death Arcana, meaning inevitable change. So, does it do this well?

You, a rather quiet orphan with a traumatic past, arrive at a city filled with secrets concerning a corrupt organization running government experiments. You join a secret monster-killing organization and, through your presence alone, reawaken huge beasts that threaten the town which must be stopped—while Death itself awakens in your very own body. While you do so, you experience mysterious, frustratingly vague guidance from a sinister man who visits you in your dreams inside an elevator. At the end of the game, after being forced through many tough trials, some betrayals, and much loss, you finally give up your life as the only way to stop the end of the world.

Does this represent the Death Arcana well? Well, I suppose. The coming of Death was inevitable from the start, since all that could be done was sealing it. But it’s also worth noting that while the final boss may reflect the Death Arcana, the actual events of the game’s end are more suited to the Hanged Man Arcana. After all, the meaning of that card is “self-sacrifice” and that’s what the event culminates in. However, while we’re on that subject of the whole, what is one of the bigger problems of the game that I outlined earlier?

That no matter what you do, you can’t win. But throughout the game, you do have a choice: defeat the Full Moon Shadows, or don’t. Both options lead to undesirable outcomes, i.e., the spread of Apathy Syndrome. Neither one of your choices leads to something you want, and thus you are effectively “caught between a rock and a hard place”. The Fall isn’t inevitable because it just is, it’s inevitable because the plot of this game is fucking stupid. But thus, the Arcana actually best representing the game as a whole, considering you spend 90% of it hunting the Full Moon Shadows, is the Reversed Hanged Man Arcana, not Death.

In fact, let me go a step further and explain why this game poorly represents Death as its theme. Yes, you can try to say that the self-sacrifice so that the world can continue living is a good way to tie the game’s story into the Death Arcana. However, as detailed by that insufferable NPC Edogawa halfway through the game, Death isn’t the end of the journey. There are still things that happen afterward. Death isn’t “the Arcana that was never meant to be” as local edgelord Ryoji describes it. It’s merely number 13 out of 22. And yet, the protagonist’s journey, your journey, ends there. The elevator can go no higher. It’s over. Elizabeth never has and never will find a way to unseal you while keeping the world un-Nyxed, because Atlus can’t write it and doesn’t want to (although I’m sure Hashino is poking his head out of the ground given the recent rumors of a remake). The Answer and Arena may exist, but I doubt anyone would call those good examples, because the former insists on yammering on about Death and finality again and the latter is a fighting game with an excuse plot. There is no real follow-up to Persona 3 happening. As a story, Persona 3 only gets its Arcana theme half-right, and as a game, it gets it wrong entirely.

For that, before we move on to music, we will award one last point:

Arcana Believe It, Final Count: 45

Music

As long as we’re discussing the main game, there’s at least entertainment and inspiration in the soundtrack, which is fairly emotive and fits the various events and gameplay well. The apex of it all is probably The Battle for Everyone’s Souls, which, while far from perfect, is at least pulling out all the stops.

In all seriousness, I do love the music in this game, and this song is definitely a massive point towards that. If there was any one thing that kept me playing Persona 3 even through the bad parts, it was the awesome music. And if there was any one thing Persona 3 desperately needed, it was awesome music.

Music can do wonders for a game, and its importance should never be underestimated. Like I said when it came to RWBY: a bad or lackluster soundtrack can drag down a good game and keep it from being truly great, and a good one can boost a good game into the heights of praise. When a game is bad, a poor soundtrack can utterly seal its doom, and a great soundtrack can salvage it to amazing extents. Persona 3 is one such example of that last one. Speaking of, the Portable remake really went to great lengths in order to build on Persona 3’s already good music.

You better believe I hate Persona 3’s guts, but would I blame someone who played it just to hear “Memories of the School” and “Mistic” and “Wiping All Out” in their native environments? Nah, probably not. Wiping All Out is a personal favorite of mine, sounding utterly bangin’ and not tiring out anywhere nearly as quickly as Mass Destruction does. It’s nice that the female main character gets her own theme song to match her own quest. Thanks again, Lotus Juice.

With that, let’s move on to the our general overview.

The Wrap-Up

If we consider judging the game on the summations of the previous “Final Thoughts” sections, what are we left with? Let’s take each and apply a letter grade and a number to it just for the sake of it.

Story: Appalling, F (50)
Characters: Often decent or even graceful but hit hard with severe problems: C (70).
Gameplay: Hardly stellar, but passable now that it’s been reworked. C (70).
Themes: Unsubtle and useless, F (50).
Music: Fuckin’ amazing, A+ (100).

If we take C’s as the American standard of “technically passing but you should do a lot better to be considered worthy”, and Bs as the American standard of “capable enough”, a general C is a score of 350 and a general B is a score of 400. This game received a 340 total averaging out to 68. That’s a failing score.

…Yeah, that’s about how I view this game. Looking past arbitrary numbers though, what else can I apply to judge this game’s overall worth on?

Did I enjoy playing it?
Would I play it again?
Did anything within it resonate with me?
Do I find its concepts interesting enough to explore further?

The first one is the hardest to answer. I would say overall that yes, I did have fun playing it—I wouldn’t generally put my effort into criticizing something I didn’t at least hope I was going to like when I got into it (which is why I read Twilight rants instead of writing them myself). I don’t think sporking this game counts as an immediate disqualification on me having fun with it—in fact, it should serve as extra confirmation that I did.

Would I play it again? That one isn’t nearly as hard to answer—hell no. Yeah, I had fun, but I was also tearing my hair out more often than not. This game did not make a replay worth it. The only reason I went to the trouble of a 100% run was for the sake of this spork; I’d never bothered to get Orpheus Telos before because it just seemed like too much effort for not enough reward (and damn, was I proven right). So much of what I could enjoy about the game was scrawled over with soggy bad parts that I simply wouldn’t take the option of playing it again now that I’ve sporked it. I once deleted it off my Vita to make space for Berserk: Musou and forgot about it for an entire year before re-downloading it.

The next two are the easiest to answer because I can compare them directly to Persona 4, this game’s successor and rightfully considered the standard for Persona games. Others could include Persona 5, but I didn’t play that, so I’m not going to.

Did anything within it resonate with me? Unfortunately, no. The central theme and the characters are what’s likeliest to stick to a person, and the former was too childish and unsubtle to appreciate and the latter, while sufficing, didn’t impress me all that much. Contrast that with Persona 4, whose message of “seek the truth, face it head-on, and don’t be swayed by the easy, complacent lie”, while grating at times, was honest and poignant. Contrast it again with Persona 4’s characters, who I dearly love with all my heart and who (Kanji in particular) would easily make it into a top 50 or top 100 characters of my entire life kind of list, all of them flawed but very enjoyable. This game doesn’t stick with me. Not only do its bad parts make me want it gone, its good parts don’t go far enough to make me want to keep it around. I don’t relate to this game, I don’t find interest in the story this game tries to sell me, and honestly I want to connect with it more than I did, but I can’t.

Do I find any of its concepts interesting enough to explore further?

Yes (as evidenced by my re-write at the end of the Story segment of Final Thoughts) but only insofar as improving it—this game did not present me with anything interesting enough to want more of. People don’t get Personas any significant way, they just get them and some other people don’t. The boss monsters are impersonal and the dark history behind the events, while it is used to explore the characters involved (Mitsuru’s and Yukari’s personal family-related redemption efforts, for one example), that only happens insofar as cleaning up someone else’s mess. The whole science lab experimenting on kids angle could be genuinely intriguing and dramatic, but it never is. There’s a lot of drama in this game, and so much of it is paper-thin—there’s no real juice to squeeze out of this shit. How many people do you see making OCs with Persona 3 backstories? How many OCs do you see related to the Nyx incident?

You don’t see any. All the Persona OCs you tend to see relate to Persona 4’s efforts to explore the Jungian concepts that Personas are based on and involving the concepts of a Shadow self, how it gets suppressed, and how it can damage a person to do so along with the translations that it uses to make characters literally stronger and more powerful by accepting them. All that wrapped up in a murder mystery being solved by hormonal teenagers who do what’s right because no one else can (with Persona 4’s conflict being confined to murders in one world committed by abusing another world via shadows, a world which obviously can only be interacted with by the main team; Persona 3 by contrast spends a lot of time pretending guns aren’t options against shadows when the entire narrative relies on the idea that normal people can subjugate shadows to experiment on them). Persona 3 asks tired questions like “can a robot gain humanity” while trying to show me her journey towards being a real person. Persona 4 shows us how we’re all struggling to interact with each other and that we all have a journey towards being a complete person, however mundane we may be.

To put it simply? Persona 3 ran with concepts that were tired, thin, and stale, and not much fuel for thought, while Persona 4 did something fresh and new with concepts that are classics because they are inherently interesting to think about.

I don’t want more Persona 3. I don’t even want more Persona 4, but I’d certainly enjoy it more than any more P3-related content. And that’s because one simply has a longer lifespan than the other.

And my final thoughts on the matter of Persona 3 Portable as a whole?

A large series of downgrades and missed opportunities bogged down by a game that wasn’t very good to begin with and very little to be done about it, with some stabs at improvements and new ideas put in but not enough to save it.

It’s unfortunate.

FINAL COUNTS:

Bad Game Design – 150
DEATH IS INEVITABLE – 100
Ill Logic – 107
WISTLH – 76
Romantic Plot Cancer – 75
Aigis I’m Stuck With You – 64
Calm Down There, Edgelord – 55
Arcana Believe It – 45
Villainous Cancer – 43

*claps hands together* Well, now all that’s left to discuss is the matter of future projects, right?

The next step in the plan is already laid out. Now that we’ve tackled a popular but certainly not revolutionary game, I think it’s time to move on to a series that will be familiar to anyone not living under a rock: The Legend of Zelda.

I will, in the coming weeks, be posting a recap of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on my home journal. I definitely want to nudge comm members into going to read it, since I want to use it to gauge interest in the real deal, which would be posted here: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Perhaps the most divisive Zelda game of them all—but not the story-focused entity that games like P3P are. You’re free to peruse the Twilight Princess recaps as I post them.

In the meantime, since we have this one spork down and some time to go before the new one hits the comm, I’m open to some suggestions. I’ve been thinking about analyzing another game series I like, Resident Evil—I have a Resident Evil 5 spork completed already and I could post it if people wanted. Or I could simply go for some terrible fanfiction for a change. Definitely let me know if that’s something you’d like to see here. I’ve checked the spork suggestion box, and unfortunately I think the only fandom I share with the majority of you is Harry Potter and Avatar: the Last Airbender. Since I know that canon like my own reflection, I can start there easily.

Closing off here, and wishing everyone well.

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Final Thoughts: (Story & Characters) | Table of Contents