WindlessNight

A more forgiving version of Persona 3 in terms of daily life but still keeps the difficult combat of the original that's been remixed in new ways. The difficulty can be more lacking on normal, mostly contributed by the direct control you have over party members, easier leveling and free damage through the new theurgy skills. But the new skills also speed-up some more tedious fights, and a new fight was added that almost requires the use of them as well as some bosses reworked around the mechanic, so if used in moderation it can make the game better. The game runs beautifully overall, some loading screens can take a bit, with objects appearing blurry sometimes for a few seconds after, but it looks great! If you're new, don't read guides or how to play, play your own way (unless you're stuck or having trouble) and just figure it out. Sometimes dialogue can feel disjointed, cutscenes that have been changed can feel less impactful, particularly the beginning one and the last one, the first with the lacking voice performances and voice direction and the last with the goal (I think) to be more "cinematic" which ruins the impact the original had. It's great to have fully voiced social links now, shift and to be able to easily ambush enemies. Main downside is the lack of a female protagonist and no FES on launch, but it's great to see a more streamlined version of the game be out, finally on par with 5 in visuals and a middle ground of 4 and 5 with convenience. The lack of exp share still baffles me, it's sort of fixed when you're given the occasional chance to level up two party members up to 13 levels up, but considering you have more than 5 party members, it means you will still likely have to permanently bench some people. Overall: Great remake, fantastic streamlining of the old game finally up to the modern day but lacks additional content other versions had, as well as the new cinematics and direction is simply not always as impactful as the original. But if I had to recommend a version to play, it'd have to be this one, and maybe some of the old cutscenes alongside it.

A really great game! Fun and so charming with animations. This was my first time playing the game, I never played the original, but this game was great! Wonderful music, charming story, finally gives some personality to the Mario cast it’s fantastic! My only problem is that I wish there was a mode for it to be less heavily reliant on the timed button presses, as you can either take 0 or half your health which is annoying. I understand there is a difficultly setting but that’s different. The other minor gripe I have is that I’m pretty sure they don’t tell you that the leveling system has a secret mechanic where the area that you will be gaining the most points each time rotates. Like at every level up you chose where you put your stats into, I’m pretty sure the one with the biggest increase moves to the next one to the right. This is annoying and I had to find out through Reddit, could’ve been better explained. Other than that, pretty good game! Graphics were great, characters were great, I ended the game around level 20 and felt a little challenged by the final boss but everything was good fun. Great for adults and kids alike!

This game takes a lot of cues from the Persona Q games: main hub area, new people come and sit down as you progress through the story, you can talk to your teammates like the “stroll” function, take on quests for them to earn new skills and everyone gets a persona this time which adds bonus health, sp and moves. But this time they added a universal level for the party, so they all level together, which is nice, but would’ve been better suited for when the games had 3 different games worth of characters to chose from. But this is still a welcome addition. Move learning has been changed to story focused, and you can unlearn them and relearn depending on the situation. You can now also entirely skip events, which is nice, but I accidentally hit the button thinking it was to fast forward at first. A few menus, particularly the Velvet room, have a weird delay where you have to wait a second between changing menus to being able to actually navigate it again. It ruins the feel of it and honestly is strange considering P5’s fantastic menus, makes me feel like I’ve been shot back to P3 on the PS2 where the menuing felt overall slower. Just generally the menus feel slower, having to wait a bit after the animation plays. Like P5Strikers, the audio for dialogue can be over the place, sometimes it’s really quiet and sometimes it normal audio, there’s really no solution and you just have to keep adjusting the audio. The dialogue itself is slightly below what the original had for the characters, as with other spinoffs, with characters saying things that don’t feel like them. The story itself has a similar feel to the original with just as dark themes in comparison to the cute chibi designs you are placed in, with the overarching idea of rebellion being continued from P5. Frame rate is pretty consistent on switch, when performing Triple Threats though with a lot of enemies, it can dip a noticeable amount. Occasionally during dialogue it can run slowly for some odd reason, not sure why, only happened a minuscule amount of times. Otherwise the game runs great with an equally adorable and stylish art style. Battle load times can feel a bit long. Difficultly is baby easy like the original, usually completing levels in half the turns required to get the reward on normal as an inexperienced tactics player. I hope this pattern of easy difficulty is not carried into the remake of P3 releasing in 3 months. Although some are designed more intentionally like a puzzle, the quests in the game feature puzzle-like stages which are quite fun and a nice change of pace that requires more thinking to succeed in 1 turn. The final boss fight weirdly was poorly explained, a mechanic I thought would insta-kill me simply moved my location, once I figured that out the game went back to being easy. Honestly the final boss just gives you a lot of turns where you don’t even get attacked which makes it easier. Overall: pretty good, the updating title screen as you progress is nice. The game runs well on Switch and the game is fun but easy. Great pickup for fans, although surprisingly short at only 40 hours in comparison to the Qs and Strikers, matching those in their story focused structure but lacking the length. I just wish it was longer without tacked on day 1 DLC.

Really great game (knocking it a point for lack of 3D comparative to the original which had it)! Portrays the characters with a little more depth than the original and with an even bigger cast. Story was not as emotional but did a good job at what it was trying to do. Gameplay is vastly improved, with the new Unison skills and All-Out-Attacks being changed back to how they have usually worked in the mainline games. Although it still lacks EXP share, and with a cast this big I feel like it should have because I doubt most would take the time to grind everyone up. It's really cool to see everyone interacting just as it was in the original, although the focus is more on the P5 cast than anyone else, most characters are still explored pretty well. The EXP gain DLC is really useful to just blast through the combat which I do not care for so I'd just run through the whole thing on safety. The story though was very fun, a little bit obvious at times comparative to the first game but not as emotional as simply the two stories as a whole could never really have reached that same emotional climax. There are a lot of really cool cutscenes in this one, I feel the 3D could've made it better at times but both the animated and 3D model cutscenes are nice to look at. The lack of an English cast still creates good moments but in certain times echo-y voices will be in the background without subtitles whatsoever, which could've been fixed for the English release. The music was really fantastic as per usual. Puzzles I feel were made easier in this one, before there were some I had to look up the solution for, but it's usually not much more difficult than "ON/OFF" puzzles. Overall: This was a really fun game! All the characters return, cute character interactions, decent and revamped combat, nice art style and a fantastic soundtrack. I'd recommend if you've played at least 1 of the games as there's not really any spoilers.

The game is fun but feels more flashy than actually fun. They took away hand and feet weapons and instead made all sets and Viola's combat feels confusing compared to Bayonetta's with the weird button placement differences. Gameplay is often littered with too much minigames that feel boring and sluggish and cutscenes often just show off exciting combat that feels like something that would've been really fun. Resolution often dips to a very noticeable amount and save points are no longer per verse and feel randomly placed around the levels. Some minigames are great, like the Jeanne sections or that singing rhythm game one, but they often feel annoying. The story's twists are either obvious or don't make any sense with the pre-established characters. Pretty good combat but has a story that doesn't feel like they cared enough and feels more like someone's fanfiction. Get it on sale if you're interested, or if you're new just get either 1 or 2.

The best of the series, combos are easy and the umbran climax finally gives use to building up magic during boss fights, rewarding players for being good at dodging and the combat even more. Continues being what it is although disappointingly has a shorter story mode than the original. Although still has multiple segments that take you out of the great combat and into other modes, it's still enjoyable.

Some lag on sections, but overall a fantastic game with style and sass. It's a game that knows what it is with it's seeming simple combat and combos, weapon variety and QTEs.

This game was fun, but not really for me. I loved all of the story which I felt was really well done but the combat was really just not for me so I ended up lowering the difficulty and using cheats to increase my stats and abilities and used guides to get through puzzles. I liked drawing on the map as that is very fun as everyone's map by the end will look slightly different as markers can be used for anything. I feel like they could've kept the map system but changed the combat back to what it usually is instead of making it be the same as Etrian Odyssey as this game has "Persona" in the name and will appeal to those fans the most, so why change the combat to something more confusing? The "Stroll" feature was really nice, as just getting to see the two groups communicating was cool and almost feels like a companion to Arena games that take place in the future. But sometimes it felt like characters were very much dumbed down and made more stupid and less likeable, which I guess makes sense with a big cast but Arena I felt managed everyone fairly well. Managing so many different people's personas was just too much and having 18 characters to control, buy armor for, and level up almost feels like the game is forcing you to pick a team and never change or grind for several hours. Overall, if you're a fan of Persona and are just intrigued by the well written story, try it out. And if you get fed up by the combat and endless grind, no shame in cheating if you're just here for the story and wish to just plow through all enemies to get to the end.

My first fighting game and is really fun due to the portability of local play and the joycons being perfect for it. Story is really long but great at the same time, especially getting to follow some side characters. Although the online is really really bad compared to PC and PS4 which feature rollback which makes it 10x more playable.

Great story and really great soundtrack too. So fun to see the characters again in HD in a story. The controls are very intuitive and line up with the controller buttons that actually takes advantage of the d-pad placement.

Honestly what really brings this game down is the soundtrack. The P3D was great 'cause the game already had a style that fit the rhythm game aspect but this was just awful. And we already have these characters in HD on PS4, it brings less new to the table to even get excited about.

Great to see these characters return in HD, with a great soundtrack. Really fun game for anyone who's a fan of the third entry.

One of ATLUS' shorter games for a single ending (took me 15 hours), but with its 13 endings it's sure to have a lot of replay value. I picked it up on a $15 sale because I had been eyeing it for a while and it's absolutely worth it. It tells a wonderful story of sexuality, love, and makes the person ask themselves questions. I'd recommend going for one of the original endings first, then going for the Rin ending (new content in Full Body), as Rin's endings are purposely different from the original so it leaves much more of an impact once you've played it once. The writing was overall fantastic, goofy moments cleverly intertwined with serious ones. Erica ended up being my favorite character at the end, she acts as a sort of big sister to Rin and stands as a symbol of positivity for gender and what it means to be a women. The block puzzles were quite enjoyable, I am not the best at puzzles so I had to look up a guide at some difficult sections, but I had a good time. I encountered some weird graphical issues, like random slightly green flashing on screen and frame rate issues in scenes with lots of characters during the talking to characters. But during where the frame rate matters, the block puzzles, it ran smoothly all the time. Co-op is a fun time to play with someone, whether that be competitive or cooperative. It'd be a 10 if it weren't for the frame rate issues and weird tonal whiplash during the Rin endings, it felt too goofy and childish at points that were supposed to be serious. While Rin's endings tell a sweet message, I think the game already told it well enough with it's side characters without being overly silly and childish.

A great game. The original was fantastic, but I feel the things it has added drag it down slightly for me. I liked the revamped baton pass and new area to give your team buffs, but this also lessens the difficulty of the game. The new added things after each confidant are nice. The DLC fights are really cool with the P4 and P3 main characters. Although they’re kind of pointless. The new story feels like a bait for a female protagonist in a way (Kasumi), with the new characters never really growing on me. The third semester’s ending felt like a downgrade compared to the original, with an overly gimmicky boss fight that feels like there’s only one strategy to win. With the rest of the phases being basically interactive cutscenes. They try to almost justify the actions of the new villain, which I didn’t understand. The added story of this upgraded edition simply feels like a cut below the rest of the games. Whereas P4G’s new content answered an unanswered question, and P3F does something similar but also shows the aftermath of the original. P5R tries to ask where the moral line is drawn for the new villain’s actions, while the fact there’s a dungeon by the game’s logic means it’s bad. It just feels like the new story is simply unnecessary and should’ve been shorter than it was. A good pickup if you liked the game originally or haven’t checked it out, but I definitely feel like they could’ve done more.

One of the best stories. At first things make sense, then they get wildly confusing depending on which order you play the stories in. Eventually the game gives you a guide to help explain the twist within the story guide which is nice. And then everything makes sense again. The real time tactics gameplay was okay, it never really sat right with me as the two gameplay styles felt very disjointed from one another. One being very low stakes story based, and the other being a very high one with drastically different art styles is a little weird to me. I always got the mech fights out of the way as soon as possible as they weren’t nearly as enjoyable as the story itself. The graphics during the story portion was absolutely lovely, like a nice painterly and anime mix. The story plays on the obvious anime troupes really well and it’s done very purposefully. If you love a good story and don’t mind real time tactics to get to the end, it’s worth your time.

Easily one of the greatest games I’ve played. The combat is frustrating with enemies that have annoying moves sets. But once you get those enemies on your team and you abuse the game mechanics, it becomes really fun (going for a physical build makes it easier). Spamming buffs back at enemies, draining their SP, it’s really fun to laugh back at the enemies. It can be very grindy at times (especially with the TDE) but never felt too unreasonable. Many puzzles were annoying and pick-a-paths so a guide for the entire game is very much recommended. The graphics looked nice in the context of a PS2 game, I never noticed frame drops. The story was interesting, with characters you don’t get to know well, but the game doesn’t want you to care about them anyways. Going for the True Demon Ending lead me to find Raidou, one of my favorite characters, whose role is acknowledged with a cute end credits message. A great game for fans of mainline SMT and those who don’t mind grinding too much.

A beautiful game for its time. The main story is great with fantastic animated cutscenes and one of the few things to ever have hit me emotionally. Combat is fun but sometimes can feel like you’re not only fighting the enemies, but your teammates too as you’re not able to control outside of a list of strategies. Gameplay is frustrating but so rewarding to win. The Answer tells an absolutely beautiful story that I can still remember scenes from. The work done with the 3D models and cinematography was lovely. I’d absolutely recommend the Answer if you have played the regular or Portable.

A steal for $20. Comparable to 5 in every aspect other than graphics. Difficulty is much more akin to the mainline games, the story is funny a lot of the time and interesting. The game’s true ending requires very specific options to be picked which is annoying. Absolutely fantastic game for getting into the franchise with the recent release everywhere.

While fun, the battle feels slow without the update for fast battle (I wouldn’t have finished it without the update), and the story is often quite bad and confusing in comparison to other titles. Meanwhile relationships feel fleshed out, yet the plot also feels the need to shoe-horn a message in about talking it out like a children’s show. Combat was fun, sabbaths are a neat addition to the formula. Okay pickup if you’ve played every other ATLUS game, but if not, just look elsewhere.

The first game I played on PS4. One of the most beautiful games stylistically, with fun gameplay to match. The difficulty is more slightly difficult than in Royal (due to no Jazz Club, darts, billiards and baton pass mechanics changed), making you think strategically both in fights and how you spend your time. While the story’s twists can be a bit predictable from the start, it’s still fun to follow the plot and see where it goes. It’s great for newcomers to the series but I would’ve loved to see a bit more difficulty comparable to mainline.