Persona 3 Portable

Great improvement of Persona 3
Shortly after playing SRW MX i decided to play this game since i was interested already in the first place when the game was released. Actually i had played P3 FES before and finished it. i have to say the game is great. P3P featured additional features that the previous game didn't have which makes the game more interesting.

In terms of storyline P3P doesn't have any differences with the original P3 which allow you to enjoy full experience  of the original story. The game only feature the "journey" part where player control Main Character who had a year to prevent the Great Disaster that will happen to humanity by using special power known as "Persona" with other similar people. What i like from this series is the story that it has really strong impact on the ending which is why i still play this game even after finishing FES. As for the music despite Persona 4 win overall, Persona 3 still has the best final battle and ending song.

The major feature of this game is enable player to play as Female protagonists which has a nickname of Hamuko by Japanese fans. Overall story doesn't change though the Social Links would be slightly different and FeMC use different weapon and starting persona compared to MC. Otherwise the gameplay is still the same

The representation of the game is different with the P3 FES where player use cursor to select object to interact with rather than walking to the object to interact with in 3D environment. The conversation style is made to be Visual Novel esque which some people seem to be not amused. Personally i would say P3P way of representation replaced the P3FES version very well and i prefer its interface.

Just like other Persona Games there is a Velvet room in this game which you will probably spend a lot of time. In this room you can fuse your personas or acquire one which were in your possesions. you also receive sidequests in this room from Elizabeth to get some nice rewards.

One of the important aspect in Persona series is balancing the daily life and dungeon exploration which comes in the form of Social Links. You will probably spend most of your time to work on this one since it will give bonus experience for persona that belong to arcana of social links. This is really important since gaining levels for persona is really hard and you won't get the ultimate persona of the arcana if you haven't cleared the S.Links. I thought i could finish all of the social links in this game since i played P3FES before but at least i finshed 17 out 21 S.Links where i only managed to finish 13 Slinks only back in P3FES.

As for the dungeon exploration in this game it is still the same with P3FES with some changes:

• when player return to the starting point of Tartarus which is the only dungeon in this game they won't be recovered immediately. Instead player need to recover by paying some money just like Persona 4 on the clock.
• Some of the battle mechanism from Persona 4 carry over to P3P which makes life really easier. whenever you scored a critical hit and down the enemy, you will get one more chance to act. This game also feature follow up attack which guarantee 100% critical hit and lastly now you can directly order your party through your command which makes life much easier since back in P3FES you cannot control you party directly which cause life much harder for several occassions
• Instead using specific persona to perform fusion spells you need to use the Gems to activate the spell which you gain from the antique shop by trading materials that are found in the dungeon. So in short word no more Armageddon spamming for anyone which kinda sucks.
• For certain days the exploration of Tartarus would be more dangerous since more accidents will happen during the exploration and increase your encounter rate with the reaper(definitely you don't want to fight this guy until you reach really high level)
• All personas will give you skill card after reaching certain levels which you can use to teach other persona the techniques that may be hard to be inherited.
• Sometimes there will be people who end up in Tartarus which you need to help and some of them belong to some social links. failing to save them will cause their death.

And the last new feature of the game is the Vision Quest which are unlocked a month before the final day. In this room you will find some challenges which are good since the game lack of challenge. You will fight the bosses that you fought in the full moon before and some extra challenges with prepared setups. Ultimately you will be able to fight Margaret, the Velvet room assistant in Persona 4.

 Here is my personal status which i use MC for P3P playthrough since i would like to find direct differences with P3FES. i managed to finish several things that i was not able to back in P3FES one of them is notably killing the reaper and getting the ultimate persona. Killing the reaper is quite hard at the first time since his megidolaon able to kill your party in a single turn which are usually triggered when you cast mararakarn. In the end i kill him by simply hit him till death since the Thunder Reign strategy didn't work at that time.

The final boss in this game is Nyx Avatar which is the bringer of the death, he is hard opponent if you haven't trained properly but this time this guy is a joke since my party are level 90s already which makes his battle is simply a breeze. I remember back than i had a hard time to defeat him since i haven't had uber tier persona when i fought him.

After playing this game i would like to play the first Persona which i plan to get it soon. I wonder if i want to play as the FeMC playthrough since the only interesting part would be the S.Links. In Japan Persona 2 has been ported to PSP which hopefully would get an english translation since i heard it is the best persona series.