Persona 3 Portable

As some of you may have noticed i am and avid Persona fan, and i thank PSGaffer for getting me hooked. So naturally i wanted to do a review on Atlus' latest release: Persona 3 Portable, or P3P. But sadly I haven't had the honor yet of playing the game, and so instead ill do the next best thing and update you guys.


 The game just came out this week in Japan and so details on it are murky, im basically running on rumors and hopes.

Persona 3 Portable is an enhanced port of the extremely popular game Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3. The game is based on the butterfly effect, which is based on the idea that events change based on someone's choices The story takes place during "The Journey" part of Persona 3, but unlike "The Journey" you can now chose between a male and female protagonist. This obviously means that there are tons of changes, most importantly the S Links. For those of you that don't know S Links are relationships that raise the power of certain Personas, or "fighters" (which i guess would be the best word when trying to describe a persona...)
The relationships are different depending on the person with whom you are having the relationship with, for example your male S Links become your best friends, your broskes, while you try to woo your female S Links.

That is until now
With the addition of a female protagonist the system changes. Instead of befriending males you woo them, and vice versa. Though it would be interesting to see Junpei on a date, and i though Kenji only liked older women...Anyways this seems to be the biggest change, even Igor's assistant changes from Elizabeth to Theodore.

 

Also the battling system changed now. P3P uses the (in my opinion) better P4 battling system. Instead of "Wait" you have the "Guard" option, plus you can control your teammates' actions and they use your inventory, preventing things like this from happening, a common sight in P3.

However there are some changes that aren't so great. For example you can no longer have free roam, instead you choose from a menu where you want to go and who you want to talk to. While it is unfortunate you no longer free roam, its not something that would stop me from buying the game, it still looks pretty good.

 

 

And finally are some of my hopes. I hope that the game has kept all of the things that made P3 such a great game. It had such a great storyline, although a little morbid, and a great selection of characters. Though the P4 characters had more depth, and were more believable, P3 had some pretty memorable people, with character designs and backgrounds more sophisticated than some of the other games out right now. I mean who could forget such badasses like Shinji, and telling Ken that you drink your coffee with Hot Sauce? And of course the music. The music in P3, along with any game in the Persona series, is just great, absolutely fantastic. Though im not sure, i think that Shoji Meguro is also composing the music for P3P. If he is then that makes the game that much better

In the end i just hope that P3P comes out in the US so i, and other members who are hopefully interested now, can play it. But while we wait what better way to pass the time than by playing P3 and P4 again!?!?!?

-Odrakyr