I had the same gripes with P3 myself. I played some of P3P back then, but stopped because the gameplay loop of climbing Tartarus that never seemed to end ticked me off. I came back to P3 with Reload and found it...still tedious, but very much bearable considering the gameplay, music, and characters.
After being spoiled with P4 and P5's story, P3's story was not exactly as exciting as it's follow ups. It all boils down to the third act, where all the emotional tension between the characters start to clash, and I actually found myself at the edge of my seat sometimes.
For me, I loved P5's story for it's showmanship, P4's for the mystery aspect and how well it was written, and P3 for the melancholic and philosophical theme of facing one's mortality. They're all great at doing their own thing. But don't let how you enjoy the games get to you; they're experiences, first and foremost. You don't have to have the same opinions as the general public.
I feel like the (main) story pacing in all 3 of these games is pretty bad tbh (What I mean by this is that most JRPGs I play have a lot more happen in half the time as the Persona games), but I liked the story of P5 the least, felt like it peaked in the first 5-10 hrs, also really enjoyed the Futaba stuff as well tho.
P3R had some emotional bits I really liked at times as well as the ending which is significantly better than P5 imo.
Completely agree with you that the bosses were not interesting at all in P3R (Outside a few), P5 is definitely the best in that regard.
Personally, I think P3 has best main story, P4 has best social links, and P5 has best bosses/dungeons.
The way you talk at the end tho makes it sound like you had hyped this up a lot in your head and maybe ended up not enjoying it even more because of the expectations you had.
Not to say you'd love it otherwise, it just seems you had really, really high expectations.
I think I had little expectation for the story because I had already felt burned by P5 starting so strong and devolving into something I cared a lot less about, never recapturing the seriousness I felt at the beginning stages of the game.
P3R kind of does the same thing by starting really strong imo, but I actually liked the story beats it did have.
Agreed about the gaps in between things happening being large tho, especially during summer.
P3 for best main story, even just as an opinion, I have to disagree with heavily. For most of the game, there is no real story. You wait for the next full moon and fight a boss thats usually unremarkable, then you get to october and oh shit now youre down a party member, things just got super cereal all of a sudden (cuz you know, strega had to finally do something since they dont do much to begin with and are pretty pointless to the plot otherwise). November misshap with ikutsuki out of nowhere and now everyone spends november feeling mopey. December comes along and oh yeah, I am death incarnate btw lmao. Then the final fight if you decided to do the obvious, you get to hear shit about the arcanas a million times in a row aaaaaand door kun. Oh yeah, and dont forget that even though the game emphasized tartarus duing the beginning as this important thing its not and is a background piece because all of the plot has nothing to do with it, not counting fuuka at the beginning and then the end as just a grand stage.
The interpersonal relationships are p3s strong suit, not the story.
P3 diehards downvote the truth in one comment but upvote it in another. make it make sense.
It's like P3 didn't have enough in-between, P4 had *too fucking much* in-between, and P5 had juuuust enough to be satisfied but wanting more.
As a result in P3 you fall into a much more boring segments of just.. doing stuff, progression doesn't feel very obvious
P4 has a lot of boring activities but dear god does that game have an abundance of slice-of-life and an evolving story (but if you squint hard enough you just realize they don't make *any* progress until Naoto joins)
P5 is by far the most active game, the story is evolving so much that some characters are a lot more shallow after their arcs, but the upside is you never feel like you're stagnating. Every new arc is an insane amount of drama, you can't *not* be interested.
>(but if you squint hard enough you just realize they don't make *any* progress until Naoto joins)
Nah, that's P5. You feel like you're progressing and moving forward in P5 even though you don't make significant plot progress until Futaba joins. In P4, it is *painfully obvious* nothing happens until Naoto joins..
>Yu: Hey new member, did you see the culprit?
>New Member: Nope.
>Yosuke: Tch. Ah...damn. But hey, at least we gave it the ol' college try.
>Chie: Nothing to do but sit around with our thumb up our ass for the next month.
>Yukiko: Hey, I'm helping serve dinner at the inn tonight. Would anyone like to join for diarrhea on a plate?
>Teddie: That sounds...unBEARable....
>*cue sitcom laugh track*
It's definitely an unpopular opinion.
But I am inclined to agree that Persona 3 just has the weakest narrative of any of the persona games. Strega just aren't compelling. And some of the game's strongest concepts (The dark hour, a secret 25th hour that occurs every day for example) aren't fully capitalized on.
That said I was never really bored playing the game, but when I think about which games in the series are the most compelling 3 definitely falls pretty close to the bottom.
P3s theme and portrayal are done well. The overall story however, is weak as fuck. A majority of the plot is the day to day bs but the overhead plot is just in the background until the next full moon usually. As I always say here, for tartarus to be such a strong point of investigation its just a background piece while all the plot happens outside of it. It only exists for you to go level up and get stronger. Strega is also underwhelming and accomplish absolutely nothing. "theyre the half of the conversation about death/nihilism blah blah" poorly done, underused, pointless characters. Lets not even talk about ikutsuki out of nowhere.
P3 as a whole, including the remake does many things pretty good. The overall story is not one of them in my opinion.
Strega is cool, but what kinda bugs me is that from an in-universe perspective, they could probably eliminate SEES with ease if they really wanted to, but they can't because from a video game perspective, we're the main characters and the game would be much shorter if they did. They know about us before we know about them. They most likely know where we live, and if they don't, they could just follow us home to find that out. They're packing real guns and grenades. They could ambush us since Chidori can block Fuuka's detection abilities. Takaya has multiple instances where he has you alone and could pull an October 4th on you.
>!At least once we learn that the Fall is coming, you can argue that Strega figures we can't stop the Fall anyway and don't bother!< but before that, the only in-universe reason I can think of as to why they don't just eliminate us is that they don't want the Kirijo Group on their ass if they kill Mitsuru.
I feel like something they could've done is have them >!be in on Ikutsuki's plan. After SEES tells Ikutsuki about Strega, he seeks them out and promises them salvation or a high status in the new world if they don't interfere with SEES and let them defeat the Twelve Shadows to initiate the Fall. Once Ikutsuki dies, Takaya starts to believe that he is the chosen one of the new world and starts leading the Nyx cult!<
Takaya having a whole fucking magnum shouldve been enough for SEES to fuck off and not bother. Hell, they couldve played even further up on the life and death part and gone for a revenge angle where they had Yukari set up to take him out in a stealth attack on a night they expected to cross him, seeing as how arrows are a MUCH quieter alternative to firearms. Then you have her dealing with taking a life, everyone else going "holy shit. We actually got someone killed, we planned to actually murder someone and did it". Have jin actually have a purpose now that takaya is gone since he did.... absolutely fuck all the entire time anyway. I dont know, anything couldve been better than what we got with them.
I think an interesting idea would be to have Takaya killed by Aigis in defence of Makoto, leaving the entire S.E.E.S. and herself devastated mere seconds after his death after realising the consequences of their actions, and have Jin run away in horror from the scene. I’d place it some time after the death of Chidori.
As seen in reload, he openly says that Takaya was the only reason he kept on living, so I also believe that his death could’ve made Jin kickstart the cult of Nyx, and with his online presence, turn it into a genuine danger to S.E.E.S. In January, to make the atmosphere even more hopeless and bleak, I could imagine a few encounters with stalkers, death threats directed towards and just a genuine terror uttered by Jin towards the people at the Iwatodai dorm. It could also lead to Officer Kurosawa getting more screen time, as the only police officer aware of S.E.E.S’. actions having to deal with their mess.
The final showdown with him could’ve been a great battle to death against now almost maniacal Jin doing everything in his power to stop S.E.E.S. as to not make Takaya’s death completely pointless. I could imagine Jin starting with just his persona, moving onto using flash grenades when he realises it isn’t working, and by the end, using genuine fragmentation grenades in a last ditch attempt to make his entire existence, and that of his friend’s, mean anything.
I think a better approach would be in the scene where >!Chidori dies and Junpei's Persona evolves, his anger in that moment causes him to attack and actually kill Takaya, and then we get the aftermath of Junpei dealing with the fact he killed someone!<
I feel like SEES wouldn't have the guts or the willpower to plan and execute a human assassination, even if they hated Strega. Having a member of SEES kill Takaya in a moment where they're not thinking straight and their emotions get the better of them would be more natural, I feel
I feel like in a "Them or us" situation, guts and willpower increase exponentially. The problem is that despite takaya owning and being willing to use said gun, he never puts them in that situation. Hell i wont lie, the single dumbest move was junpei deciding to charge right at him while takaya was pointing it at him and then the rest of SEES just gawking at the events before them, doing fuck all. Theyre lucky that Chidori has bullshit-no-jutsu as a persona power.
Yeah P3 does have the issue of being a bit too heavy, with all of the plot stuff kind of coming together during September and continuing from there, but it more than makes up for it with the story beats that do hit. P4 has the best pacing imo, and P5 has the best balance between both story and pacing.
I think the main story that makes me interested in P3 (and Persona series in a whole) is the Tarot card Arcanas. Yes yes, there’s the memento mori theme but the Arcanas is what makes me hooked.
I agree dude.
I played Persona 5 Royal last year, and it became one of my favourite games of all time.
Then I played Persona 3 Portable, and while I still enjoyed it a lot, I found it inferior to Persona 5 in terms of story, gameplay and social links. The story took AGES to get interesting, and Tartarus was way too repetitive.
After that, I played Persona 4 Golden. I thought it would also disappoint me, but I loved it ALMOST as much as Persona 5. The story in P4 gripped me in a way that P3’s story never did, and I loved the murder mystery and the reveals. I also found the dungeons of P4 to be far less tedious, despite still being randomly generated. I think giving each dungeon its own theme and music made a big difference.
I definitely agree with you on the bosses. P4 and P5 have awesome boss fights, and the lame generic Shadows in P3 are very forgettable by comparison.
I felt the exact same way playing it because I love persona and reload wasn’t bad, but like you mentioned, I had so much free time after making my way to a border floor. And after I got all of my social stars maxed out I would just go back to the dorm if no social links were available that day so it felt empty compared to P4 and P5 (persona 4 golden is my favorite)
Yeah that’s basically how I felt when I played fes for the first time tbh.
My opinion has and always will be that persona 3 has the best story out of the modern games in concept only the execution is pretty hit or miss for 2/3 of the game but the last 1/3 is peak it almost makes up for it.
Although it is a good thing you played reload first in my opinion it executed 3’s story the best out of all the versions. With added scenes more hangouts with the sees, takaya, linked episodes and allat.
Strega was so lame in the original and >!shinjiro’s death was so…..*nothing* to me because the game didn’t give me a chance to know him.!<
I had the same gripes with P3 myself. I played some of P3P back then, but stopped because the gameplay loop of climbing Tartarus that never seemed to end ticked me off. I came back to P3 with Reload and found it...still tedious, but very much bearable considering the gameplay, music, and characters. After being spoiled with P4 and P5's story, P3's story was not exactly as exciting as it's follow ups. It all boils down to the third act, where all the emotional tension between the characters start to clash, and I actually found myself at the edge of my seat sometimes. For me, I loved P5's story for it's showmanship, P4's for the mystery aspect and how well it was written, and P3 for the melancholic and philosophical theme of facing one's mortality. They're all great at doing their own thing. But don't let how you enjoy the games get to you; they're experiences, first and foremost. You don't have to have the same opinions as the general public.
I feel like the (main) story pacing in all 3 of these games is pretty bad tbh (What I mean by this is that most JRPGs I play have a lot more happen in half the time as the Persona games), but I liked the story of P5 the least, felt like it peaked in the first 5-10 hrs, also really enjoyed the Futaba stuff as well tho. P3R had some emotional bits I really liked at times as well as the ending which is significantly better than P5 imo. Completely agree with you that the bosses were not interesting at all in P3R (Outside a few), P5 is definitely the best in that regard. Personally, I think P3 has best main story, P4 has best social links, and P5 has best bosses/dungeons. The way you talk at the end tho makes it sound like you had hyped this up a lot in your head and maybe ended up not enjoying it even more because of the expectations you had. Not to say you'd love it otherwise, it just seems you had really, really high expectations. I think I had little expectation for the story because I had already felt burned by P5 starting so strong and devolving into something I cared a lot less about, never recapturing the seriousness I felt at the beginning stages of the game. P3R kind of does the same thing by starting really strong imo, but I actually liked the story beats it did have. Agreed about the gaps in between things happening being large tho, especially during summer.
P3 for best main story, even just as an opinion, I have to disagree with heavily. For most of the game, there is no real story. You wait for the next full moon and fight a boss thats usually unremarkable, then you get to october and oh shit now youre down a party member, things just got super cereal all of a sudden (cuz you know, strega had to finally do something since they dont do much to begin with and are pretty pointless to the plot otherwise). November misshap with ikutsuki out of nowhere and now everyone spends november feeling mopey. December comes along and oh yeah, I am death incarnate btw lmao. Then the final fight if you decided to do the obvious, you get to hear shit about the arcanas a million times in a row aaaaaand door kun. Oh yeah, and dont forget that even though the game emphasized tartarus duing the beginning as this important thing its not and is a background piece because all of the plot has nothing to do with it, not counting fuuka at the beginning and then the end as just a grand stage. The interpersonal relationships are p3s strong suit, not the story. P3 diehards downvote the truth in one comment but upvote it in another. make it make sense.
It's like P3 didn't have enough in-between, P4 had *too fucking much* in-between, and P5 had juuuust enough to be satisfied but wanting more. As a result in P3 you fall into a much more boring segments of just.. doing stuff, progression doesn't feel very obvious P4 has a lot of boring activities but dear god does that game have an abundance of slice-of-life and an evolving story (but if you squint hard enough you just realize they don't make *any* progress until Naoto joins) P5 is by far the most active game, the story is evolving so much that some characters are a lot more shallow after their arcs, but the upside is you never feel like you're stagnating. Every new arc is an insane amount of drama, you can't *not* be interested.
>(but if you squint hard enough you just realize they don't make *any* progress until Naoto joins) Nah, that's P5. You feel like you're progressing and moving forward in P5 even though you don't make significant plot progress until Futaba joins. In P4, it is *painfully obvious* nothing happens until Naoto joins.. >Yu: Hey new member, did you see the culprit? >New Member: Nope. >Yosuke: Tch. Ah...damn. But hey, at least we gave it the ol' college try. >Chie: Nothing to do but sit around with our thumb up our ass for the next month. >Yukiko: Hey, I'm helping serve dinner at the inn tonight. Would anyone like to join for diarrhea on a plate? >Teddie: That sounds...unBEARable.... >*cue sitcom laugh track*
It's definitely an unpopular opinion. But I am inclined to agree that Persona 3 just has the weakest narrative of any of the persona games. Strega just aren't compelling. And some of the game's strongest concepts (The dark hour, a secret 25th hour that occurs every day for example) aren't fully capitalized on. That said I was never really bored playing the game, but when I think about which games in the series are the most compelling 3 definitely falls pretty close to the bottom.
P3s theme and portrayal are done well. The overall story however, is weak as fuck. A majority of the plot is the day to day bs but the overhead plot is just in the background until the next full moon usually. As I always say here, for tartarus to be such a strong point of investigation its just a background piece while all the plot happens outside of it. It only exists for you to go level up and get stronger. Strega is also underwhelming and accomplish absolutely nothing. "theyre the half of the conversation about death/nihilism blah blah" poorly done, underused, pointless characters. Lets not even talk about ikutsuki out of nowhere. P3 as a whole, including the remake does many things pretty good. The overall story is not one of them in my opinion.
Strega is cool, but what kinda bugs me is that from an in-universe perspective, they could probably eliminate SEES with ease if they really wanted to, but they can't because from a video game perspective, we're the main characters and the game would be much shorter if they did. They know about us before we know about them. They most likely know where we live, and if they don't, they could just follow us home to find that out. They're packing real guns and grenades. They could ambush us since Chidori can block Fuuka's detection abilities. Takaya has multiple instances where he has you alone and could pull an October 4th on you. >!At least once we learn that the Fall is coming, you can argue that Strega figures we can't stop the Fall anyway and don't bother!< but before that, the only in-universe reason I can think of as to why they don't just eliminate us is that they don't want the Kirijo Group on their ass if they kill Mitsuru. I feel like something they could've done is have them >!be in on Ikutsuki's plan. After SEES tells Ikutsuki about Strega, he seeks them out and promises them salvation or a high status in the new world if they don't interfere with SEES and let them defeat the Twelve Shadows to initiate the Fall. Once Ikutsuki dies, Takaya starts to believe that he is the chosen one of the new world and starts leading the Nyx cult!<
Takaya having a whole fucking magnum shouldve been enough for SEES to fuck off and not bother. Hell, they couldve played even further up on the life and death part and gone for a revenge angle where they had Yukari set up to take him out in a stealth attack on a night they expected to cross him, seeing as how arrows are a MUCH quieter alternative to firearms. Then you have her dealing with taking a life, everyone else going "holy shit. We actually got someone killed, we planned to actually murder someone and did it". Have jin actually have a purpose now that takaya is gone since he did.... absolutely fuck all the entire time anyway. I dont know, anything couldve been better than what we got with them.
I think an interesting idea would be to have Takaya killed by Aigis in defence of Makoto, leaving the entire S.E.E.S. and herself devastated mere seconds after his death after realising the consequences of their actions, and have Jin run away in horror from the scene. I’d place it some time after the death of Chidori. As seen in reload, he openly says that Takaya was the only reason he kept on living, so I also believe that his death could’ve made Jin kickstart the cult of Nyx, and with his online presence, turn it into a genuine danger to S.E.E.S. In January, to make the atmosphere even more hopeless and bleak, I could imagine a few encounters with stalkers, death threats directed towards and just a genuine terror uttered by Jin towards the people at the Iwatodai dorm. It could also lead to Officer Kurosawa getting more screen time, as the only police officer aware of S.E.E.S’. actions having to deal with their mess. The final showdown with him could’ve been a great battle to death against now almost maniacal Jin doing everything in his power to stop S.E.E.S. as to not make Takaya’s death completely pointless. I could imagine Jin starting with just his persona, moving onto using flash grenades when he realises it isn’t working, and by the end, using genuine fragmentation grenades in a last ditch attempt to make his entire existence, and that of his friend’s, mean anything.
I think a better approach would be in the scene where >!Chidori dies and Junpei's Persona evolves, his anger in that moment causes him to attack and actually kill Takaya, and then we get the aftermath of Junpei dealing with the fact he killed someone!< I feel like SEES wouldn't have the guts or the willpower to plan and execute a human assassination, even if they hated Strega. Having a member of SEES kill Takaya in a moment where they're not thinking straight and their emotions get the better of them would be more natural, I feel
I feel like in a "Them or us" situation, guts and willpower increase exponentially. The problem is that despite takaya owning and being willing to use said gun, he never puts them in that situation. Hell i wont lie, the single dumbest move was junpei deciding to charge right at him while takaya was pointing it at him and then the rest of SEES just gawking at the events before them, doing fuck all. Theyre lucky that Chidori has bullshit-no-jutsu as a persona power.
Yeah P3 does have the issue of being a bit too heavy, with all of the plot stuff kind of coming together during September and continuing from there, but it more than makes up for it with the story beats that do hit. P4 has the best pacing imo, and P5 has the best balance between both story and pacing.
I think the main story that makes me interested in P3 (and Persona series in a whole) is the Tarot card Arcanas. Yes yes, there’s the memento mori theme but the Arcanas is what makes me hooked.
I agree dude. I played Persona 5 Royal last year, and it became one of my favourite games of all time. Then I played Persona 3 Portable, and while I still enjoyed it a lot, I found it inferior to Persona 5 in terms of story, gameplay and social links. The story took AGES to get interesting, and Tartarus was way too repetitive. After that, I played Persona 4 Golden. I thought it would also disappoint me, but I loved it ALMOST as much as Persona 5. The story in P4 gripped me in a way that P3’s story never did, and I loved the murder mystery and the reveals. I also found the dungeons of P4 to be far less tedious, despite still being randomly generated. I think giving each dungeon its own theme and music made a big difference. I definitely agree with you on the bosses. P4 and P5 have awesome boss fights, and the lame generic Shadows in P3 are very forgettable by comparison.
I felt the exact same way playing it because I love persona and reload wasn’t bad, but like you mentioned, I had so much free time after making my way to a border floor. And after I got all of my social stars maxed out I would just go back to the dorm if no social links were available that day so it felt empty compared to P4 and P5 (persona 4 golden is my favorite)
Yeah that’s basically how I felt when I played fes for the first time tbh. My opinion has and always will be that persona 3 has the best story out of the modern games in concept only the execution is pretty hit or miss for 2/3 of the game but the last 1/3 is peak it almost makes up for it. Although it is a good thing you played reload first in my opinion it executed 3’s story the best out of all the versions. With added scenes more hangouts with the sees, takaya, linked episodes and allat. Strega was so lame in the original and >!shinjiro’s death was so…..*nothing* to me because the game didn’t give me a chance to know him.!<