Persona 3:FES on the PSN.

[krissy]

i went with ff9! but will get p3 asap too...although when i'll actually play it i dunno.

do you guys think p4 will come out on psn too?

[Roto13]

Probably not for a long while. Gotta move the Vita version first.

[Del Murder]

Will I be lost in P3 without having played the other games?

[Wolf Kanno]

No, the games are loosely connected. There are shout outs and some Easter eggs to the older titles but mostly P3 is a stand alone title. Only P1 and P2 are directly connected and even then, it's not a requirement to play P1 to enjoy P2, since the P1 plot stuff is mostly minor. P4 also follows suit with a few shout outs to P3 but the game is also a standalone title that doesn't require playing the earlier games to enjoy. So it's easy to start with any entry actually. I got into the series with P2: Eternal Punishment, the Part II of the P2 Duology which is probably the only exception to this rule.

P3 was pretty much designed to reboot the franchise, its battle system is a streamlined and refined version of Shin Megami Tensei III's system, and most of the gameplay mechanics of the first two Persona games are absent. It's a much more forgiving title as well, though it's still more challenging than most JRPGs on the market now. It is the most newbie friendly entry in the franchise, though The Answer epilogue in FES is more like the older games in terms of being a difficult dungeon crawler, but it's also optional.