Persona 3 Portable

Somehow I missed the original thread on this topic. Oh well.

The game has been out for a few months now, but I still can't get over how awesome this game is. It makes so many improvements over the already-awesome Persona 3. I love that you no longer have to explore Tartarus alone after your first trip through of the night. I love the ability to control your teammate's actions directly, and the Defend option. I love the addition of Skill Cards to take a ton of the randomness out of the levelling system, letting you build any Persona up almost any way you want. I love the amazingly brilliant changes to the character interactions that they brought in with the female character.

And I am gobsmacked at the sheer quality of the gaming experience. So much of the original voice acting is intact, and they added so much more for the changes with the female character. They lost the cutscenes, which is a shame, but the stylization of those sequences through images and music is still beautifully executed, and I didn't even really realize that the cutscenes were gone until it was pointed out to me. Tartarus, the Shadows, and the battle scenes are still as glorious as ever before. I am amazed at how much they managed to fit in to this game. It is simply incredible.

My only real disappointment with this game is that it lacks P3 FES's extra content. The Answer was a great addition to the original game, and I really wish they had left it in the portable version.

The Desert of Doors is still there, but it's not The Answer. It's full of extra hard challenges you can do for prizes! And I loved loved loved P3P. My only complaint is that I wish they'd let us have access to the alternate endings the first time around rather than after loading new data. I'm pretty sure you can only get them if you're female, and the female was already made to give P3 veterans a new experience. The Aigis ending just felt a little...empty. I barely bonded with Aigis due to time constraints, but my other party members were all maxed out!

Also, the male appearance changing armor is so weak while the female appearance changing armor is some of the strongest in the game. I wanted a full butler/maid party, but it was just too impractical.

Is the female playthrough better than the male? Cas I picked male just cas it said it's recommended for noobies.

It's not really better, just different. What changes is the visuals and the character interactions. But the character interactions change a lot, so playing through, while you go through the same story, the way your Social Links progress, who you meet, what you say, will be very different.

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Originally Posted by Skyblade

I love that you no longer have to explore Tartarus alone after your first trip through of the night. I love the ability to control your teammate's actions directly, and the Defend option. I love the addition of Skill Cards to take a ton of the randomness out of the levelling system, letting you build any Persona up almost any way you want. I love the amazingly brilliant changes to the character interactions that they brought in with the female character.

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The lack of ability to control party members was one of the things that I heavily disliked about the original Persona 3. I will probably play this version of the game if I ever replay Persona 3.

I am surprised that this version of the game was released here as ports and enhanced ports are rarely released here if the previous version of the game was released recently.

Atlus has been pretty good about that. No one expected FES to come out of Japan let alone that Atlus would release it at the discounted price it was given in Japan. So yeah Atlus, for actually not screwing the fanbase unlike Squenix and it's International Version/Final Mix shenanigans. I'm hoping to learn that Atlus will bring over the P2 ports as well. :D

I just started the game. The new adventure game format is taking a bit to get use to, and I certainly miss the cutscenes, but those are the sacrifices one has to make for a game like this to be portable.

I'm hoping they fixed my main issues with combat from P4, mainly making money easy to acquire cause, I hated grinding for yen in P4, and I never felt like I spent as much time in the Velvet Room because of that.

I also hope they fixed Elemental weakness system. I prefer P3's version where hitting an enemy once is enough to make them lose a turn instead of in P4 where you had to hit them twice. Most of the time its not an issue, but it would have made some boss fights (who mostly have no weaknesses) much easier by landing critical attacks, and using the rest of the round to heal and buff while the boss has to waste his turn getting up. Not to mention those moments you have your main character with an elemental weakness and instead get to watch the enemy pummel your party to the ground cause they are sacrificing themselves to avoid a game over, only to leave you with a badly weakened party in the aftermath. I feel it was better in P3, and I see no reason why it was changed that way to begin with.

I also hope they returned Physical abilites back to the P3 system cause having them all reduced to being one element, and then removing it as a weakness for 99% of the enemies made a good third of the Personas in P4 useless and I often stopped using characters like Chie cause she offered no strategic advantage in combat til very late in the game. It also removed some of the parties diversity cause in P3 I felt more obligated to switch out my party members to take advantage of their weapon types as well.

I was never bothered by the A.I. in P3, I actually feel the A.I. was the best I've seen in a game beyond nothing short of XII's Gambit system. Controlling my party isn't so bad either, but I never saw the big deal of P3's A.I. I was killed more often by y own mistakes than I ever was by the A.I. doing anything stupid.

Things of note:
Money is even easier to come by than it was in the original P3!
No more immediate healing at the base of Tartarus. You have to pay at the clock, which is usually affordable, unlike Mysterious Fox.
You and your party members will only get tired after you leave Tartarus. Characters will only get tired in Tartarus if they die and you neglect to revive them.
Like P4, social links won't get mad if you ignore them. At least for the female. I've heard that the male path has the exact same script as before, and that it'll still tell you that girls get mad if you see other girls, but this isn't actually true. I haven't tried it out for myself though.
Maxing out Charm gives an extra bonus for social links!

Anyone know how to bond with Yukari better? Can't seem to get my Fool persona level any higher! btw im playing male playthrough. Not many options to interact with her. Any of the story moments I usually take her side for most things, but my SL isn't going higher!

Unless they changed a few things, The Fool arcana grows as the story progresses so there is no need to be careful about your dialogue options with them.

As for Yukari's Social Link The Lovers, you need to get to the end of July I think it is, could be August, before it becomes available. All the girls on your team require you to max out one of your social stats (Charm, Intelligence, and Courage) so for Yukari it's Charm. Her social link is interesting but you have to be careful cause she has some interesting mood swings and sometimes the best action to take in her SL is not the one that seems the most obvious.

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

Atlus has been pretty good about that. No one expected FES to come out of Japan let alone that Atlus would release it at the discounted price it was given in Japan. So yeah Atlus, for actually not screwing the fanbase unlike Squenix and it's International Version/Final Mix shenanigans. I'm hoping to learn that Atlus will bring over the P2 ports as well. :D

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While I agree, currently I am more interested in the recently announced P5, and I hope that it continues in the same world, as P4 continued from P3.

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I just started the game. The new adventure game format is taking a bit to get use to, and I certainly miss the cutscenes, but those are the sacrifices one has to make for a game like this to be portable.

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Some of the cutscenes are definitely missed. Although I have to admit, I find a couple of the scenes to be better without the cutscenes. Thanatos's awakening out of Orpheus when you unlock your potential just looks so awesome in this version.

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I'm hoping they fixed my main issues with combat from P4, mainly making money easy to acquire cause, I hated grinding for yen in P4, and I never felt like I spent as much time in the Velvet Room because of that.

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Money is easy to acquire. From treasure floors to lesser arcana cards, money is easy to come by.

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I also hope they fixed Elemental weakness system. I prefer P3's version where hitting an enemy once is enough to make them lose a turn instead of in P4 where you had to hit them twice. Most of the time its not an issue, but it would have made some boss fights (who mostly have no weaknesses) much easier by landing critical attacks, and using the rest of the round to heal and buff while the boss has to waste his turn getting up. Not to mention those moments you have your main character with an elemental weakness and instead get to watch the enemy pummel your party to the ground cause they are sacrificing themselves to avoid a game over, only to leave you with a badly weakened party in the aftermath. I feel it was better in P3, and I see no reason why it was changed that way to begin with.

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Hitting them once knocks them on their butt, hitting them again makes them dizzy so they lose a turn. While knocked over they take more damage and can't dodge, but they will still recover at the end of their turn if you don't hit their weakness again. But I thought it was like that in the original P3 too. It certainly was in FES.

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I also hope they returned Physical abilites back to the P3 system cause having them all reduced to being one element, and then removing it as a weakness for 99% of the enemies made a good third of the Personas in P4 useless and I often stopped using characters like Chie cause she offered no strategic advantage in combat til very late in the game. It also removed some of the parties diversity cause in P3 I felt more obligated to switch out my party members to take advantage of their weapon types as well.

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There are 3 different physical attacks, Pierce, Strike, and Slash.

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I was never bothered by the A.I. in P3, I actually feel the A.I. was the best I've seen in a game beyond nothing short of XII's Gambit system. Controlling my party isn't so bad either, but I never saw the big deal of P3's A.I. I was killed more often by y own mistakes than I ever was by the A.I. doing anything stupid.

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Having direct control is a godsend, especially in some of the tougher boss fights. Curing Charm, or simply telling characters to not attack while Nyx avatar has his reflect shield up will make things much, much easier in the long run.

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Originally Posted by Skyblade

While I agree, currently I am more interested in the recently announced P5, and I hope that it continues in the same world, as P4 continued from P3.

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P2:IS was not only never released here, but is also getting close to its release date in Japan, making the port more finished. I'm also looking forward to P5 but since it's still in "We're working on it" status whereas P2 games seem to have actual release dates, I still infer to the former. P2 is infinitely better than the original P1 so I hope you check it out if it gets released. ;)

P5 has already been confirmed to have Aegis in the game and technically, all the Persona titles are loosely connected, though P3/P4 obviously takes place in the parallel world created in P2:EP...

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Money is easy to acquire. From treasure floors to lesser arcana cards, money is easy to come by.

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That's good cause P4's loot system sucked.

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Hitting them once knocks them on their butt, hitting them again makes them dizzy so they lose a turn. While knocked over they take more damage and can't dodge, but they will still recover at the end of their turn if you don't hit their weakness again. But I thought it was like that in the original P3 too. It certainly was in FES.

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In P3, knocking an enemy down forces them to waste their turn to get back up, whereas in P4, getting knocked down only opens you up for an attack but as long as the enmy or player hasn't gone yet, during their turn they get to get back up and still take their turn. You have to hit them twice with their weakness to make them lose their turn.

This is especially aggravating against some of the mini-bosses/optional bosses, who can be knocked down from a rare critical attack but actually have no real weakness to exploit and since physical attacks don't work like they do in Nocturne (Not only are they broken down by type, but they had different stats, some have high base damage while others, and arguably the most important have high critical hit rates) I can't tell you how annoying it was fighting the Knight Mini-boss in the Castle dungeon. While the character support moves help off set the balance much later in the game, I feel P3's style was just more user friendly and far more tactical cause you could exploit it better.

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There are 3 different physical attacks, Pierce, Strike, and Slash.

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Thank god

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Having direct control is a godsend, especially in some of the tougher boss fights. Curing Charm, or simply telling characters to not attack while Nyx avatar has his reflect shield up will make things much, much easier in the long run.

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Except you can do all that in P3 with the group commands, there is one that can make all party members stand by in their turn, and other that focus on healing. Considering Nyx tended to be faster than most of your party and also gave an in battle warning before using that move, if memory serves me correct, it wasn't that big of a deal, especially if you brought a pretty balanced party.

Guess I'll finally be able to get it! :D Play Asia wouldn't let me import it to Europe :(

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

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Originally Posted by Skyblade

While I agree, currently I am more interested in the recently announced P5, and I hope that it continues in the same world, as P4 continued from P3.

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P2:IS was not only never released here, but is also getting close to its release date in Japan, making the port more finished. I'm also looking forward to P5 but since it's still in "We're working on it" status whereas P2 games seem to have actual release dates, I still infer to the former. P2 is infinitely better than the original P1 so I hope you check it out if it gets released. ;)

P5 has already been confirmed to have Aegis in the game and technically, all the Persona titles are loosely connected, though P3/P4 obviously takes place in the parallel world created in P2:EP...

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Yay! Aigis was awesome.

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Hitting them once knocks them on their butt, hitting them again makes them dizzy so they lose a turn. While knocked over they take more damage and can't dodge, but they will still recover at the end of their turn if you don't hit their weakness again. But I thought it was like that in the original P3 too. It certainly was in FES.

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In P3, knocking an enemy down forces them to waste their turn to get back up, whereas in P4, getting knocked down only opens you up for an attack but as long as the enmy or player hasn't gone yet, during their turn they get to get back up and still take their turn. You have to hit them twice with their weakness to make them lose their turn.

This is especially aggravating against some of the mini-bosses/optional bosses, who can be knocked down from a rare critical attack but actually have no real weakness to exploit and since physical attacks don't work like they do in Nocturne (Not only are they broken down by type, but they had different stats, some have high base damage while others, and arguably the most important have high critical hit rates) I can't tell you how annoying it was fighting the Knight Mini-boss in the Castle dungeon. While the character support moves help off set the balance much later in the game, I feel P3's style was just more user friendly and far more tactical cause you could exploit it better.

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Ah, forgot about that. Getting back up no longer costs a turn. Personally, I find this an improvement, because your party is also not crippled by a single hit. It does make skills like Me Patra rather odd though. No need to help someone get up if they do it on their own...

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Having direct control is a godsend, especially in some of the tougher boss fights. Curing Charm, or simply telling characters to not attack while Nyx avatar has his reflect shield up will make things much, much easier in the long run.

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Except you can do all that in P3 with the group commands, there is one that can make all party members stand by in their turn, and other that focus on healing. Considering Nyx tended to be faster than most of your party and also gave an in battle warning before using that move, if memory serves me correct, it wasn't that big of a deal, especially if you brought a pretty balanced party.

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Even on Heal/Support, your characters will attack sometimes. And if you don't have the party leader move immediately afterward, you can't change tactics before the others mess up. And on the new Maniac difficulty, it gets even more useful.

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Originally Posted by Skyblade

Yay! Aigis was awesome.

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Okay... um, I was checking my sources to give you the link and it seems the news site I got the info from made a mistake cause the director was actually talking about the then unreleased P3P. Sorry about that. So we know absolutely nothing about P5 now.

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Ah, forgot about that. Getting back up no longer costs a turn. Personally, I find this an improvement, because your party is also not crippled by a single hit. It does make skills like Me Patra rather odd though. No need to help someone get up if they do it on their own...

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I don't, I like P3's better cause it created more strategy and risk in the game. P4 empowers the player too much and made the games a bit easier. I actually liked having to change my strategy in mid-battle to protect vulnerable party members and I liked having the option to choose between going for an All Out Attack on a boss and get some extra damage or instead use the knockdown turn as a round to get some needed healing or more often then not, some much needed SP.

P4 removes that and allows me to get extra damage off making battle much easier if they had weaknesses. Then the system proves useless in battles where the enemy has no weakness cause you are basically forced into the only real option which is to do the All Out Attack cause the enemy will just get back up and nail your party anyway. Its too dumbed down for my taste.

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Even on Heal/Support, your characters will attack sometimes. And if you don't have the party leader move immediately afterward, you can't change tactics before the others mess up. And on the new Maniac difficulty, it gets even more useful.

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Except most of your party will just attack Nyx with their elemental attacks and the reflected attacks are just Void cause of their Persona's natural immunity. The only characters who have issues are ones that don't use their elements normally (Ken, Aigis [who should be healing/support anyway] and Junpei) really, just a bit of tuning will fix this, and as I said, Nyx usually gets the first round in combat and your main usually gets turn two. Nyx is not even the cheapest boss in the game imo, she's actually pretty easy if you have a good party set-up.

My point is that I don't feel the A.I. in P3 was so awful that we needed to control everyone. Considering how limited your other party members are compared to the main character, your options for controlling them are not as robust as some old school RPGs.

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

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Originally Posted by Skyblade

Yay! Aigis was awesome.

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Okay... um, I was checking my sources to give you the link and it seems the news site I got the info from made a mistake cause the director was actually talking about the then unreleased P3P. Sorry about that. So we know absolutely nothing about P5 now.

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:nonono:

I was gonna leave you a usernote asking where you read that because I was like "wow I didn't know any details were released besides 'it'll probably be on the PS3 maybe'" and I got my hopes all up for new information.