Overall 8.9 Graphics 5 Sound 9 Addictive 10 Story 10 Depth 9 Difficulty 9
9.2
A change in perspective EmiletheOverlord
Now I'm wasn't that big of an Atlus fan before Persona 3 Portable, I only owned Shin Megami Tensei IV for the 3ds, and never got around to finishing it. But this game grabbed me and pushed me into the role of the Protagonist. The difference between this version and any other version of Persona 3 you may have is two things. One, you may choose the gender of the protagonist, and two, there are few non-dungeon character models or anything for that matter. The most they do with it is that they take a 2.5 dimensional version of the area you are in, besides dungeons, and you are a blinking dot on that map. To interact with something, you have to maneuver your dot over the object or person in question, and then you can interact with it. By pressing the R button, a symbol will show up over any object you can interact with, serving as a somewhat helpful guide. The real draw of this version is the fact that you can change genders, and the amount of things that change is enormous. Anyone who knows Persona 3 or 4 knows what the Social Links are, and for those who don't, here's a quick rundown.
Social Links are a system where the bonds between your character and various other characters determines the strength of the main character's special ability, the ability of the Wild Card, which allows him/her to summon almost every persona in the game, besides those of your party members. Upon fusion to create a persona, the level of the social link will determine how much extra experience you get for that persona, and upon completing a social link, you get a unique persona to fuse from that arcana, which is extremely powerful 9 times out of 10. Now why did I mention this? Because when you change the main character's gender, a lot of the people who represent the arcana of the social links get swapped out, and those that don't usually have at the very least some dialogue changes. As well as changing who the social link is with, sometimes they even changed how you start the social link in the first place. But social links are just one change between genders, another would be the Protagonist's starting persona has a different design based on the protagonist's gender, and their weapon of choice will also change, with the male favoring one-handed swords over the girl, who favors Naginata. All the same, the weapons, aside from names, and being unable to use one genders weapons as the other gender, they are used exactly the same. Another difference is the fact that the dialogue, even in the first bit, where your actions determine nothing, is drastically different.
That aside, the main meat of this game lies in the story and the dungeons, which are phenomenal, but depending on how you go about it, the game will either be insanely easy, or insanely hard. The main thing is, this game is an Atlus game, and as far as I know, they are known for making hard games. But the thing with this one is, that they made it possible to easily gain a lot of levels very quickly. If you feel confident, you can leave your entire party behind when you explore the dungeon, and you will very quickly gain a lot of levels and money and such. If you do this however, unless you do it early in the game, and never do it again, you will be over leveled for most of the rest of the game. The story doesn't really change much overall between gender's but the interactions between you and the other characters change slightly, and you end up with the same end result, regardless of gender. The big difference between this version and Persona 3 FES is the non-inclusion of the second story mode of FES, known as the Answer, do to the lack of space in the game's memory. Regardless, it does have some good endgame content, as on New Year's Eve, or somewhere thereabouts, the Vision Quest opens up, and allows you to re-fight all the bosses so far, only with you keeping your currently level, and the bosses jumping up to roundabouts level 80. There's also the extra boss you can only encounter and fight by soloing the hardest dungeon, otherwise she will instant kill you, but if you manage to beat her, she will give you an item that nulls all damage except for piercing damage, and almighty damage, the games non-blockable, non-elemental damage type. Supposedly, if you finish all of the vision quest challenges, there's another extra boss, but I never made it there, as some of the challenges in the vision quest can take well over an hour to complete, and some just are too random for me to be able to finish them, but if you want a good challenge, that's a good place to go.
All in all, this game is a very addictive part of the series, and has lead me to getting many of their other games since. Atlus created another masterpiece, and I can't wait for their next big game.
Graphics 5 Sound 9 Addictive 10 Story 10 Depth 9 Difficulty 9
Review Rating: 4/5
Submitted: 08-09-14
Updated: 08-11-14
Review Replies: 0
9
test review Swf
This is a test review that will have it's words revoked.
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Review Rating: 3/5
Submitted: 07-14-19
Review Replies: 0
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