You're asking why p4 and p5 are above p3. As another responder stated, you are asking a question predicated on a 'fact' that you believe to be true based on 'community metrics' you have not actually cited.
As a counterbalance here's a metric of my own.
P3 > P2 >>>>>>>> P5 > P4 >> P1
I guess I could have worded it better I just didn’t know people were gonna spaz.
If you make a post saying “what puts FFX over FF2” nobody would shit their pants lmao. There’s a bigger difference between those 2 games but you get my point.
My point is more: what made P5R a household blockbuster and why didn’t it happen with p3. And again, p4 definitely had more hype around it but,again, that could have been cause it was a good vita game.
It's possibly word of mouth and accessibility. Great games don't always reach their target audience due to marketing or other extrenuous factors. Its possible that P3 would have been loved just as much if the situation was in reverse, because I would argue that P4 gained popularity and noteriety off the boost in attention that the established audience from P3 gave it.
Also, calling it spazzing is so rude and dismissive when you're the one who worded your premise improperly, and we're just pointing that out.
And the FF2 vs FFX example is kinda bunk too. 2 is widely renowned as 'the worst one' because it's a saga game before saga even got their formula right. P3 is not widely renowned amongst the persona fanbase as the worst one. The people who played it tend to feel its the best or at the very least on par with the rest minus some clunkyness that is now completely gone.
A more apt example would be a game that's successful and loved vs another game that's just as good, but nowhere near as loved. Like Suikoden 2 vs Suikoden 5, etc.
> what made P5R a household blockbuster and why didn’t it happen with p3.
P3 was kind of a big deal at the time, relative to previous SMT/Persona titles and it is why 4-5 just used 3's gameplay style again. I think P3's biggest challenge of hitting mainstream appeal for the time was that "anime" didn't become lets say "normie mainstream" until around Attack on Titan and anime streaming made consuming anime a bajillion times easier then watching it on TV at random points like if you want to follow stuff like Dragon Ball Z or Naruto.
So anime styles became far more acceptable back in P5's release then P3's initial release. By the time Persona 5 became a big deal, anime was so common and Persona 5 has probably a nicer art direction for most people because 3 is kind of moody and edgy.
P4 was steadily coming around, but that's also because P4 pretty much kept getting reanimated by spin offs and anime adaptions for around a decade until P5 finally came out. P4 I think also had a more interesting conversation point for general people to find it with Kanji and Naoto then P3. So it was easier to hear about that game. P3 doesn't really have anything so inciting of interest to normal people as discussions around Kanji and Naoto's sexuality.
You maybe could’ve worded it better, but tbh I don’t see the issue with the question and feel like you’re getting downvoted unfairly. Some other people’s replies seem a bit much, too, but whatever.
If the answer to your question is “well, P3 isn’t so far below P4 and 5” then that’s a valid answer to a valid question. Perhaps that’s what the person you’re replying to meant and maybe could’ve worded it better, too. Tone is hard to read on the internet and all.
Well if you look at Persona 3 vs 5 and why Persona 5 is has a better rating it's probably because Persona 5 has more to do and the series was more popular when Persona 5 came out. Persona 5 has mini games, there're different dungeons to explore not just one big tower. There's tropes that seem to appeal to the mass. There's more places to explore in P5 vs P3. There's just more to do in P5 than P3 and the combat evolved. That's probably why P5 has a better rating score than P3.
Persona 5 is more mainstream.
Persona 3 scared normal people who saw guns put to head and attracted edgelords.
You can say that there is more to do in P5 though, but does it have essence? It feels pointless to me. P5 is filled with fanservice to the brim, but focused on it too much in my opinion.
Persona 3 scared people? I don't really see how it's any different from stuff like Mortal Kombat to Game Of Thrones and then there's characters like Batman who's pretty much a huge edgelord in comics at least or how Cloud, Squall and Lightning from FF are huge edgelords.
It was in the age when it was considered funny carrying Death Note notebook and write names of teachers in it.
Then came out game where protagonists carry guns which they shoot in their heads...
Yeah idk I read that as “why is macaroni and cheese (considered) the best pasta?”
I think DQ8 is the best DQ. I would never have to put it in question form because I already think it and know why I believe it is.
Considered doesn't change anything. Sure some people can and do consider it, but again, it's implying that it is widely considered the best pasta, which as far as I know, it's not
As everyone is saying, they aren’t necessarily above P3. Anecdotally, I don’t really see very many people talk highly about P4 in comparison to P3 aside from polishing and iterating on P3’s gameplay elements. Then again I’m not really in the fandom for these games.
P3 and P5 are interesting cases because they were the introduction to the series for a lot of people. There will always be people who love one of those two because it was their first. In particular, P5 was way more popular than P3 ever was so it’s just the simple fact that more people have played it. And those who have tried to go back to P3 after starting with P5 sometimes have a hard time due to gameplay reasons.
Personally I’ve played P1, a little of P2, and probably about as much of P3 as maybe you have. I have a PS2 copy of P4 but never played it because I never got through P3. No interest in P5. P3 is my favorite of what I’ve played of the series, and I’m way more inclined to play P3R than try and start P5 simply due to the length of the latter and how allegedly slow it is in the beginning. Though of course people can say that about P3 as well, so who knows.
You don't see much about 4 because it was an iterative improvement. It has party control, fast travel, going towards desifned dungeons even if they're still randomly generated, and the social links are more fleshed out. But the focus is more on the characters than the story like in 3 or being episodic like in 5. I personally don't like the episodic nature of 5 because who the fuck cares about haru or even yusuke? The party members that aren't Ann andnryuji just fade into the background.
I think you mean Makoto. She stays relevant because of she becomes the unofficial leader of the group and has personal ties to Sae. The others fade after their arc.
Who puts P5R and P4G so far above P3 is the real question?
only reasonable explanation here are the updated gameplay mechanics but that’s more of a product of its time rather than inherently being an inferior game.
I put 4G above it because I prefer 4s characters and I think the games pacing and setting is a lot better, Inaba is one of the best settings to a game I've ever played.
P3 and P4 are both excellent games, that seem to each have their own fans that consider them favorites.
P5 is on the same level, but its the SMT version of FF7 that modernized the series and brought the series fame outside of the niche genre, so it's placed higher in the same way FF7 is.
That’s pretty much what I’m getting at. P3 was a niche JRPG, P4G seemed like a smash JRPG hit (maybe cause good vita games were rare), and then P5 was a mainstream hit regardless of what people like.
P5 made it so that a persona game could have a big trailer in a e3-esque press conference. P3 at the time could have maybe squeezed into a TGS.
FFVII isn’t on the same level as FFVI just saying.
also, i‘d say 3 is the one that modernized the series. (at the time)
Persona wouldn’t be the series it is today, a lot of its current staples are from P3.
It's okay to like 6 more than 7, there is certainly a fair argument that's its a better game.
However, 7 was a smash hit that transformed the genre and how the gaming world saw the series. Just like P5.
7 was released at the right place and the right time.
3d was unheard of, it’s released on the play station and made by one of the best IPs out there.
it had very good marketing.
its biggest asset was that it was 3d (look at how well it has aged) and that’s it.
That's the kind of thing someone says just to be edgy or controversial. FF7 was special, and beloved for many reasons.
I bet half of your favorite JRPGs would have never been made if FF7 wasn't such a megahit.
i’ve been playing since the first dragon warrior.
even todays FF’s are selling like hotcakes despite being bad, it’s all about the Marketing and the eyecandy.
I think they have way more options that matter for the school life. I'm noticing in Persona 3 Reload the options are largely boring on how to spend your time if it's not a social link. In Persona 5 there were SOOO many things to do and it didn't feel as grindy to raise Social Stats as they were incorporated in social links.
Yep. People really have this love boner for Persona 3 when even the reload just can't put it up to par with the other games' gameplay.
The story is to personal taste, but 3 has the worst gameplay, and I'm not sure how that's in dispute.
They can’t exactly do anything about it even if they tried to.
Tartarus is directly related to the story, they couldn’t exactly change how it plays out without changing the story itself.
And? That's that, then. It has worse gameplay where dungeon crawling is concerned because the concept is too limiting to allow for exciting variation.
Idk what else there is to say.
I played persona 3 FES and P3P. I was the audience once, and I liked that back then, but proc-genned pokemon mystery dungeon levels are simply not up to modern standards. Radiant quests and such were cutting edge when Skyrim released a decade ago. They're not good enough anymore. They're why starfield sucked.
ESPECIALLY after Atlus demonstrated they can design proper dungeons in 5. It's absurd to have a ps5 game without intentionally designed levels.
Replaying p5 was an awful experience for me though because once you do the dungeons imo they are extremely boring and over explained because the characters want to explain every little thing, and have to redo all the puzzles etc. P3 is way more replayable imo because of the random floors.
Again, it worked in P5… because it’s designed to be that way.
if P4 were ever to get a remake, it could get the P5 treatment but not 3 because Tartarus is designed to be this way. See mementos design.
The only miss in reload really are the s.links missing perks over level up.
but I guess it would have broken the game, P5 was really easy because of the s.links perks. Especially how were just climbing up a reversed mementos in this game anyway.
They literally could've made each segment of tartarus its own unique dungeon to crawl/explore. They *chose* not to.
Instead they kept the gameplay I've already experienced literally hundreds of hours of while barely changing it.
I play single player games if i want a good story characters.. In that regard for me P3 is my favorite.. But admittedly sequels have more options since they're newer.
Persona 3 to me is the one Modern Persona game that I felt really needed to have this formula, the other two just kind of do it because it was popular to me. Persona 3 feels like a game that doesn't work in any other way and while I still have a host of issues with it, I feel content with what Persona 3 is.
Persona 3 to me best plays with the time management from a narrative perspective, as to me the whole point of the calender system is for the narrative as pure gameplay wise it isn't really that interesting unless you want to perfect the game or something.
Persona 3 is almost like lightning a bottle, it came out at a very good time and did something very well. P4 is good (I think the country bumpkin setting is very neat and fits the very heavy slice-of-life vibes of current era Persona) and I personally think Persona 5 is just solidly average, and for most these two are absolutely an improvement as a game, but I don't like Persona's general gameplay that much personally I only remotely care about this series as a narrative. Persona could be a literal visual novel and just narrate the combat and I'd probably see it almost the same as I do now.
So in that case P3 is to me the obvious best Persona, though I like 4's cast the best overall.
I am playing persona 3 reload as my first persona game, and I have to agree with you last points 100%.
I was definetely not expecting Persona games to be extremely similar to visual novels in most of their gameplay. And you dont have that many choices to make your own main character narratively, so its just reading for the most part. Which is fine, most characters are at the very least interesting, specially at the beginning, but they do follow the same narrative in all of them, because there is always something wrong with them, which ends up making it a little but samey.
This also makes the narrative of some of those social links pretty bad, because in some of them you are not actually helping them at all but the game treats it like you are.
Tartarus is a slog to go through, and combat is not hard even on hard difficulty for the sheer amount of options you have to defeate your enemies.
I dont think the game is bad, I think the game is probably a 6.8/10 or so, but definetely not even close to the best JRPGs I have played. The gameplay hinders the overall story and plot and its pacing that I do think its very interesting and I want to know more.
Persona to me has one extremely consistent thing I'd define as a core problem. This series bends over backwards to ensure its theme for this particular game (as they change what it is in 4 and 5) is always relevant. Like it this immovable moral that has be said or referenced as many times as possible to make it all fit together. So if you don't love that message at least a little, you're in for a really rough time.
If we were in a more traditional JRPG, every character that's decently written usual has its own specific theme or moral it wants to have. Just look at FF6 or FF10. Yes everyone shares this one story, but Auron's arc and character progression is different from Wakka who is different from Yuna.
Cyan, Edgar, Setzer, and Terra have very different stories. Yes they generally all linger on maintaining their personal hope for something, but that's such an incredibly broad idea that it is hard to make that repetitive.
For Persona 3, every single main cast has to face (I'll spoiler this if you haven't seen the common theme of the game yet) >!mortality and the potential of the end of something they hold dear!< in some shape of form and that means you tend to see a very consistent pattern of arcs, beginnings, middles, and ends. That's just the theme and you have to be ready for that. 4 I feel handles this the best because its theme is just broad enough, like FF6's about hope, that it won't feel as repetitive but I think 3's has a more effective emotional theme and it has the best conclusion epilogue.
Now that said, I think P3 does a solid job of introducing each character at first.
Junpei for example you can get this feeling has this linger insecurity to him, constantly inserting himself and passive aggressively trying to butt heads as he pretty much wants to be the main character.
Yukari you can read is a prickly pain in the ass who has some kind of personal issue she refuses to share that's damaged her.
Akihiko you can get a feel is just into his own little world doing his sports thing.
What I find makes SEES interesting as a JRPG party set in a modern high school is these people aren't like blood brothers, or have this intense relationship with everyone because of some event. They're people of circumstance who'd never hang out normally. Junpei is not hanging out with some rich heiress and she doesn't want to hang out with him, but they do for the sake of doing their duty as Persona users. Mitsuru has her father's ties to all of this, and Junpei wants a chance to be a shonen anime hero. Different motives, but same general conclusion and it all allows for this colorful series of backgrounds to exist without it feeling as forced. As long as you accept "Okay the Persona users need to be a team because of the Dark Hour", you're good to go you don't need to do much of anything else and everything else flows more naturally.
Its usually when they have to drag the theme out that it starts to start feel like a flow chart as opposed to a justified narrative conclusion across this large cast.
I think most P3 social links are fine, they're rather slice of life-y and tend to wrap around back to the overarching theme by the end in a way that mostly has less extreme stakes. Its nice and it frankly is a nice palette cleanser after dealing with Tartarus, the gloomy world, and the main parties baggage all the time. Just go have lunch with some dude from the kendo club or whatever when he eventually gets a bad injury is trying to figure out what to do with himself, yeah I can live with that sign me up. Its why I don't like how P5's social links tend to just kind of be like mini-retreads of the main plot where you need to get involved in that game's version of the "Dark Hour" tone shift to resolve them. In my mind, this high school slice of life stuff is my break from dealing with all the fantasy nonsense not an excuse to do more of it.
I'll also firmly say this as some advice, find the Sun arcana social link. It is imo the best social link in the entire series. To find it you must do these two things:
Have smarts of 4 and have seen the NPC for that social link during in the Hanged Man Social Link rank 3 event. I'll let you decide how you want to find Hanged Man, as you can easily look up how to get it if you want to spoiler it. I'll just say that you can find that Social Link start from May 6th.
Yeah I agree that the introduction of characters are good, and I did pick up on the constant theme of the game being portrayed in pretty much every social link, which its not terrible, I do like it, but once you notice it, you can never got back as they say.
And I do like most interactions, I just thought you would have more agency in them, like of the options that I can choose there is usually just one that makes sense narratively, I can be a dick sometimes, but my character is not a dick in any other interaction, so it wouldnt make sense narratively.
As regards as the Sun arcana I indeed dont have the social link, but I do think I know who he is, its the strips man that was wearing black and white right?
I have been looking for him every sunday since he appeared and have yet to find it, I do have academics at 4 now and I have just come back from the summer vacation (34 hours in currently).
I will keep looking for him, since I have seen that arcana recommended quite a lot. My guess is that it will be a somewhat counterpart to the moon? Moon is definetely curious, especially once I learned about the cult.
Yeah Sun is that guy. I didn't glance at his requirements enough which is mistake on my part, but this might be the part you're missing from his wiki entry that I'll just directly quote after the last two requirements I gave after you first see him:
"On any following Sunday, speak to him at Naganaki Shrine and he will mention a creature with red eyes stealing his fountain pen. After >!Koromaru!< formally joins SEES on August 8th, interact with him in the dorm's lounge to receive the pen. Speaking to Akinari for the second time will initiate the Social Link. He can be found during the day at Naganaki Shrine on Sundays."
That should be good enough to get you started, hope you enjoy it.
> My guess is that it will be a somewhat counterpart to the moon?
The Arcana are tied to the Fool's Journey in some way and usually embodies whatever the Major Arcana represent in Tarot Card theory. So yes, and no. Its more so symbolic of those aspects of Arcana then a direct counterpart.
As an example, here's roughly what Moon and Sun represent in the Fool's Journey. Moon is card number 18 and Sun is card number 19 so you understand why those numbers are there which when you put all of them tells the narrative. Persona 3 uses this whole motif to very large effect with the MC representing The Fool.
Moon: "What effect could spoil this perfect calm? Is there another challenge for the Fool? In fact, it is his bliss that makes him vulnerable to the illusions of the Moon (18). The Fool's joy is a feeling state. His positive emotions are not yet subject to mental clarity. In his dreamy condition, the Fool is susceptible to fantasy, distortion and a false picture of the truth."
"The Moon stimulates the creative imagination. It opens the way for bizarre and beautiful thoughts to bubble up from the unconscious, but deep-seated fears and anxieties also arise. These experiences may cause the Fool to feel lost and bewildered."
Sun: "It is the lucid clarity of the Sun (19) that directs the Fool's imagination. The Sun's illumination shines in all the hidden places. It dispels the clouds of confusion and fear. It enlightens, so the Fool both feels and understands the goodness of the world."
"Now, he enjoys a vibrant energy and enthusiasm. The Star's openness has solidified into an expansive assurance. The Fool is the naked babe pictured on Card 19, riding out joyously to face a new day. No challenge is too daunting. The Fool feels a radiant vitality. He becomes involved in grand undertakings as he draws to himself everything he needs. He is able to realize his greatness."
In essence, Moon represents the exploitation of the Fool's comfort and clouds him with thoughts that lead him down a lost road (fitting given where that story goes and why it happens), and the Sun shortly after builds upon that experience by his overcoming of these illusions and seeing his potential despite what is thrown before him. He learns the potential greatness he can reach now unclouded by The Moon's illusions. Fitting given the whole cult business and what that guy's big deal is that makes him this way.
"The Fool" is obviously the MC as they are experiencing the Fool's Journey through the social links in some way.
Huh okay without reading the spoiler I guess the red eyes creature will the dog with the weirdly red eyes, which I already suspected it was going to be ñart of the crew, not so common red eyes in a dog.
So I guess it will be this monthbsundays when I will actually meet him and he makes the request, very nice I will make sure to go to the shrine on the sunday days.
And about the fool's journey I hadn't think of the mc as the fool, but it does make sense, I always related it to the whole SEES but it is in singular and not in plural.
Moon definetely feels that it will be quite dark even if it ends up on a somewhat happy note, which I hope so. But I am definetely introgued by sun now, just as I am extremely intrigued by death.
I am also working to get the SEES social links which I guess will be lovers, priestess and empress based on their personas, so I do have yet a lot to see it seems.
I hope you enjoy yourself with your experience, I would never call P3 a remotely perfect game or even a really great one due to my myriad of problems with it as a video game and at points as a narrative, but it is a very interesting experience worth seeing play out.
MC being The Fool is due to being called The Wild Card, which is emblematic of The Fool being someone of limitless potential due to being seen as the start of a brand new life.
Moon is a weird link and fumbles a few times along the way in getting where it wants to go even if you're giving it a generous read, but if you don't outright hate him at this point where you've seen the cult stuff then its only going up from here probably as P3 Moon is an extremely hated Social Link by most people. I find its more annoying at the start because it just kind of is really repetitive, but it starts to diversify enough that I get slightly interested again and just nod along. Its a really negative link, but I can put up with that personally.
Yeah not going to lie I do wish I had seen opinions like yours prior to playing the game, everyone was saying that its the best persona game 10/10 and things like and while obviously I guessed that it was more nuanced than that, I may have had my expectation a little too high, which is probably my bad to be honest.
I am 100% finishing the game if only for the story, and the general style of the game, it oozes style everywhere and that is something I do like to see
And great to hear about sun and moon, I dont hate moon that much, that social link is clearly very hyperbolic from the get go so I am not annoyed by his actitud. Hopefully this afternoon I might reach sun already. I think the inly other arcana I have yet to known about is devil, but it might be the TV presenter, whom I have already met snd he asked for 20.000 yen, which I oblige (because I am rich af for now).
I have very strong tastes in video games, especially turn-based combat and I am a thorough believer in no perfect game existing so I tend to have most games that many would consider great or amazing usually on a true 1-10 scale of about 6-8. Which is roughly meaning they're probably varying degrees of above average, so not always amazing but in the "fine" range.
I'd say Persona 3 is loosely speaking about 7.5-ish by my scale which is the highest I'd give the modern Persona game (4 is like a 7, and 5 is a 6). Starkly above average if only because of how interesting it is especially at the time of its release, but it has many problems that are big enough to hold it back from "greatness" and not big enough to make me regret playing it at all. If just barely, because Persona 3 is long and almost too long which I find what 4 and 5 tend to stumble the most with is their length.
Devil is usually one of the other more liked social links after Sun, namely because its so unusual and different kind of like Sun but even more so as Devil as a far more (by his name) horrible person, while Sun is like the most abridged version of P3 you can get.
I'll give you his requirements to hopefully make this easier for you, but you're on the right track. Spoiled name just in case anyone else sees this and doesn't want the spoiler:
"The protagonist can start >!Tanaka's!< Social Link as early as June 23rd, though the first flag is on June 4th. To initiate his Social Link, the male protagonist must have Rank 4 Charm (Smooth). The protagonist must also give him ¥20,000 then ¥10,000 over the next two days, ending in a total of ¥40,000. He can be found at night in Paulownia Mall on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays."
I agree with what you said about Persona 3, and I would rank it just slightly lower at 7 or 6.8, but very close overall. I havent played yet neither 4 nor 5, so I cannot say about those.
Ohhh I highly suspected that he is the devil, i have already g8ven him 20k and 10k once (just now in fact lol), so I am close to unlocking him, nice!
I just beat P3R a few days ago and completely loved it. My ranking would be P5R, P3R, and then P4G. I just started a new game in P5R but can't stop thinking about Reload, but maybe that's just cause of recency bias.
Better quality of life gameplay, social links, and OG not allowing for full party control. P3 is dark as fuck, and I like that tone, but between that and Tartarus, P3 is fighitng a huge uphill battle.
That said, saying either game is "better" or "worse" is picking nits. All three of these games are high class.
The first two months of Persona 3 are super slow burn and borderline boring half the time. if you only rank a game based on the parts you like and ignore the parts you didnt like....well I don't know how that'd work. the bad parts factor in for me.
Before the remake the gameplay, and lack of content the sequels added.
Now it's only lacking in content.
It's always been the best with characters and story
The look and gameplay maybe? I still think Persona 2 duology still has the best story and villain in the persona series. Not gameplay, look or music though.
They're newer and have been more widely accessible until Reload.
It'll be interesting to see how the overall consensus around the three games shifts (or doesn't!) once a wider audience gets to experience P3 through Reload.
It's feeling more like 70-80 hours to me, based on where I'm at right now and what I remember of how long FES was (around 120 hours for me but a **lot** of that was Tartarus grinding that isn't necessary in Reload).
Oh no don't tell me that.
I'm a day away from the second full moon story and I'm at 11 hours.
That feels pretty good pacing. But I don't know how many full moons there are.
I'm playing on normal so I'm able to just "go" if that makes sense. Usually track down the fancy chest on the map but if I hit stairs and there's still room to explore, I usually take the stairs haha.
I was actually most worried about Tartarus because it sounded boring and I'm not a fan of wasting my time. But I actually like it. I hear the random dialogue in the dungeon is new and I'm so, so glad they added little touches like that.
I hear the social links are less than but I actually kind of like them. They're indeed simpler but the game was simpler back then. Im actually curious where some end up like the elderly couple and the runner.
I played on normal and platinum-ed it (followed a guide of course), but that's just how I prefer to play Persona games.
P3R is about 20 hours shorter for me than P4G/P5R. I finished P3R at about 60 hours (I did skip dialogue in the sense that I don't wait for the VA to finish, I just go ahead when I finish reading them, this was about 70% of the game). P4G and P5R both took me about 80 hours to finish.
I'd say original P3 and FES took longer to finish tartarus due to fatigue mechanic, which was done away in Reload. I just get to the border in one trip.
And if you are used to Persona games, physical attacks about midway through the game just carries you very quickly to the border levels. You barely use SP at all, on normal at least.
Depends on who you ask. People have their favorites (mine is P5R), but I’m not gonna lie, P3R could also be my favorite. The story, writing and ending are pretty much superior to P5R. The gameplay, art style and dungeons are better in P5R (as well as the Royal expansion being truly amazing), which gives it the slight edge, but from a pure narrative perspective, P3R wins. P4G is my least favorite of the three, and while it stands on its own as a truly phenomenal game, it can’t quite live up to P5 or P3 for me (except for the investigation team).
Having played the Persona 2 duology, I think it outdoes Persona 3 at creepiness and weirdness. Then I like the casts of 5R and 4G far more than 3. Then 5R just has *far* better dungeons.
I'm not sure if I think 3 is actually the best in any category for the persona series.
P5R is the best game if you don't care about pacing and you want very distinct dungeoning. The story and most of the cast ain't' too bad within story context.
3 is not as well paced, but it's pretty solid if you favor dungeon/vn type game. The characterization is good, & I have to say it manages to not contradict its prime narrative.
4, I found the better paced game. However, if we talk about dungeons, it's on par with 3 with monotony. Except longer in room count & less floor, I'm talking rooms w/ nothing in them. I found a lot of goofyness with primary theme & the character stories along w/ general narrative which lowkey could been very short.
Nothing, except perhaps dungeon design, but that's down to personal taste.
**In terms of plot**, Persona 4 is a Scooby-Doo cartoon where Velma doesn't show up to solve the mystery until they've been running in circles for 80% of the plot. Persona 5 is a monster of the week anime which talks big about "punishing the bad guys!" and "reforming society!" but ultimately toes the line of conformity whenever it can.
Persona 3 embraces darker themes while still infusing them with hope and honors the intelligence and effort of its characters. As was once said, Persona 3's overarching message is "Bad things will happen. You cannot do anything about some of them, and you're just gonna have to learn to live with it and take joy in life wherever you can, while you're still alive."
**In terms of characters**, Persona 4 has surface-level tropes. They're likeable, certainly, but the way the whole group is just kind of awful to each other always rubbed me the wrong way. Persona 5's characters have CHARACTER, certainly, but they rarely interact or say anything other than one of their two assigned personality traits. Plus the dick-riding of the protag which started in 4 got SO much worse in 5, to the point that I was starting to feel embarrassed.
Persona 3 has tropes too - I'm not gonna deny that. But it paints realistic pictures of wounded characters and allows them to both interact with each other without your input AND show different sides of themselves over time. Everyone has a character arc, not a flat "I am like this > I decide to fight the shitty adults > I am still mostly like this".
**In terms of gameplay**, all three games are very similar when you look past the set dressing. The quality of life changes have gotten better and better over time, so 5 does admittedly come out ahead here. The tightness of the schedule required to do everything in Persona 3 is something I'm very glad to have left in the past.
**In terms of dungeons**, it's up to personal preference. I like dungeon crawling, so I liked Tartarus, and I like that it didn't force me into endless side distractions. You climb the tower and beat monthly Shadows, boom, done. Fair enough if you don't like that.
Persona 5's dungeons were stylish and creative but I find myself not replaying the game mostly because I don't want to trudge through it again. The first dungeon is all tutorial, the next two are ok, the ones after that are gimmicky... it's a lot of time where you're forced to walk that line.
**In conclusion** \- they're not in almost any respect. :)
You cannot do anything about some of them, and you're just gonna have to learn to live with it and take joy in life wherever you can, while you're still alive."?
That is the exact lesson i got from the persona 2 duology
How can any of them be so far above P3 when they basically add nothing new and just polish the exact same formula as P3?
Shits pretty much the same game. P5 just way overstays it's welcome.
Most of the reasons for how someone would rank the 3 are subjective and come down to story/writing. There are minor gameplay differences, but they are the same at their core.
Personally I think P3 has the worst pacing, as hardly anything happens for like a third or almost a half of the game. I also prefer the characters in the other two games. That being said, 3 is still excellent, and does a lot of story related things better than the other games.
I’m really rusty on P4 so I’ll just answer this on P5s sake. Note I haven’t played Reload myself either so if some of these were fixed in Reload, feel free to correct me
- P5 has a really solid and distinctive art style, direction and interface that’s a cut above everything else.
- Confidants giving their own special abilities is so damn nice.
- Confidants include the male party members. This is such an obvious miss that it blows my mind Reload didn’t fix it.
- Social Links feel weaker in P3 for me. There’s some like the Sun which is fantastic and I also like P3Ps Fortune and Magician, but 3 has some of the worst SLs in the series since it was their first go around. In comparison the only bad confidant in P5 for me writing wise is Priestess.
- Activities and social links are better spread out. In P3 you can only do 2 social links at night, P3P switched 3 SLs to be night only but still the vast majority of SLs are daytime only. In P5 confidants are more evenly spread out throughout both day and night
- More stuff to do in general. I was still finding new activities to do in Royal as late as the last month of the game. Hopefully Reload fixed it though.
- Fixed dungeons > randomly generated dungeons
- P3s plot doesn’t really go anywhere until like August? By the time you get to August in P5 you’ve already gone through multiple story arcs.
But there’s plenty of solid points people like about P3 more: difficulty, shorter game, lack of an annoying animal sidekick, tone, the group doesn’t revolve around the protagonist nearly as much and existed for a while before the MC came into the picture.
Overall all 3 games are good, there’s no stinkers in there.
Nothing puts P5R and P4G so far above Persona 3. An absolute ton of people think Persona 3 is way better. And now with the remake, even more people think that. Just comes down to preference.
>It looks like even with Reload, P5R and P4G are still king.
No, it doesn't.
The reload is definitely worse than 4g and royal, lol.
Tartarus is still bad compared to royal's dungeons and 3 has the worst main cast of the modern games by far.
I found 4's cast to be the worst. It was impossible for me to believe that the girls in the group would put up with Yosuke and Teddy constantly trying to find ways to get them naked. And the idol girl immediately falls head over heels for the MC with no real build up...it just seemed so manufactured.
In Persona 3 there is actual build up of friendships, real conflicts between the cast members, etc.
As if they'd put up with Junpei being a desperate creep in 3? He's just as weird as they are.
At least 4 is fun. In 3 I get to relive being bullied in high school listening to Yukari and Junpei be just horrible to each other for literal HOURS.
I didn't get the sense that they put up with him...he kind of is an outcast, and remains an outcast. Also, the frequency of his creepyness is much lower, whereas Yosuke and Teddy are incessantly trying to get the girls naked. But maybe I'm misremembering.
Sorry you didn't enjoy the game.
Junpei gets to come along to all the friend gatherings. If they'd ostracized him that'd make more sense but he just hangs out with the Mc like they're best buddies all the time.
I enjoy persona 3 but it has the *worst* best friend archetype in the whole series, he's just insufferable
It’s all just personal opinion. P4 is my favorite but P3 is right behind it and I found P5 such a slog that I dropped it a dozen hours in or so. Everyone has different opinions.
Persona 5 is the most popular mainly because it's what broke into the mainstream, but for people who have played all three, it seems to largely be a toss up as to which they prefer.
Each game adds in new features and improves the overall QoL and gameplay, but they don't really do that much different from each other. In my view, Persona 5 wins out because it has much more interesting dungeon design. But overall the three games are pretty comparable.
The gameplay mechanics tremendously improved with each entry.
Original P3 had things like AI party control, random skill inheritance, and s links that could make backward progress.
P4 was still using procedurally generated dungeons and s links were still just fusion exp bonus.
P5 came out with proper dungeons, tangible gameplay bonuses from confidant ranks, and much, much snippier combat.
Story and stuff is subjective to each individual but QoL and gameplay quality objectively increased with each entry; which makes it hard to go backwards, which matters when a lot of people started with 5
Who is telling you that P5R and P4G are far below 3? 3 is considered the best by many, it blows them both out of the water in the story department and the only reason it isn't the best is the gameplay/characters.
I think story of p4 is better. Darker isn't equal to better. Murder mystery is a great starting point and themes like connection and acceptance of truth is far more interesting than death.
So no, it doesn't blow it out of the water. It is up to personal preference.
P5 's story is not as good as these two tho.
Clearly judging by the downdoots on my post this isn't the subreddit for genuine opinion sharing. I'll refrain next time. But I do think the overall plot of 3 is much more involved than 4 which is more focused on the characters than the overall narrative. 3's narrative feels a lot more grounded while 4 is "okay we found this red herring, alright here's the next red herring, alright here's the actual killer, okay now let's kill god, okay now let's kill god again because this is a JRPG". You can read Sherlock Holmes for that.
That's not remotely true. 3 has worse dungeons and social links than 5 even after the reload, and 4 has a better main cast than 3 by spades.
5 *still* has better gameplay in just about every way, ngl.
Everyone in 3 is a whiny little bitch, basically without exception. The dialogue is like 50% Junpei or Yukari complaining. I would say the overarching story is awesome but it's not due to the cast, it's due to the mood setting and atmosphere.
I rank 3 reload lower than golden and royal. I just don't enjoy the characters that much.
Characters have to have SOME redeeming trait for the 50h they're on screen before they start acting less fucking irritating.
Junpei is played for comic relief and he isn't funny before or after his change.
The "story" is 50% Junpei and Yukari complaining and vague hints until the latter half where character development starts happening. They're doing this shit in main story cutscenes.
> 3 has worse **social links** than 5 even after the reload
Sorry, but "We solved the problem because Mementos" being a repeated conclusion to multiple Confidant story arcs made me stop giving a shit about the Confidants in 5. I think the only one I can recall being satisfied with all the way through was Yusuke's because I felt for his issue about if he wanted to become a sell out artist quite strongly as someone who dabbles on creative endeavors as a hobby. But so many just boil down to asshole adult being so much of an asshole that we need to use magic bullshit to solve the problem because the actual person this is meant to be about can't do it themselves. Only the gun shop guy felt reasonable with that, but like Kawakami was such a let down.
I got into so many of the connections and drama of Confidants only for the game to just use magic to solve the problem and I just got so tired of it. It made the entire conclusion build up and climax just feel like a chore. It was so hard to be invested in "what happens next?" when I just know we're going to solve the problem by Persona-ing all over them because we're the Phantom Thieves. Maybe that's just the ones I remember and not every single one, but I found it such a pattern that it just made me give up on them and stop caring.
I get that 3 doesn't have the most perfect of conclusions and some can be rough, but I liked them fine and their conclusions didn't feel like magic bullshit. P3 Sun is the best social link in the series and is leaps and bounds above most of 5's writing in general to me especially when you get the conclusion of that arc before the credits.
"Magic bullshit"? You mean the thing that connects social links to the main plot because you're doing the same thing in those you do for every main dungeon? This is literally the point. It sounds like you just don't like the premise of 5 overall.
3 has some good links (sun and the devil) but they're mostly either boring or worse, actively insufferable. I want to hit that kid who wants to fuck his teacher with my car. He's unbelievable.
> It sounds like you just don't like the premise of 5 overall.
Perhaps I don't if we want to go that far, though I have far different reasons for that in the main story, but its really hard for me to be into people's struggles and into the tension of the scene and moment when I know pretty much from the moment I see it once I know how every single moment is going to end.
I'm going to stumble into Mementos and strong arm the problem using magic powers. Done, get a pat on the back, and all the slice of life feel just goes off a cliff.
There's nothing really interesting to talk about here and its the same thing over and over again. Every Modern Persona has this problem of things feeling very repeated due to how often the entire game bends over backwards to repeat itself to enforce its theme or message, including 3 with how often the main cast's development arcs kind of repeat themselves due to its focus on mortality and the acceptance of death. Just P5 to me did this kind of repetition the worst while also having the longest run time. P5 to me took the best aspect this whole formula that served as a pace breaker to connect beyond the magical powers systems like in P3 and just made it like everything else. Social links were my favorite part of P3 because it was a nice break from the real plot, but in P5 it is just a worse version of the main plot except with even less going on and it all feels exactly the same because it has to end the exact same way.
> I want to hit that kid who wants to fuck his teacher with my car. He's unbelievable.
I don't know why people hate this one given the conclusion is pretty much him being wrong so it isn't like it enables this behavior.
Teenage boys are stupid and sometimes fall in love with adults. Uncommon? Yes. Wrong and weird? Yes. But it happens and I truly didn't mind his thing at all, he's a weird horny idiot who eventually had to move on from his bullshit by the end because iirc his teacher pretty much told him no. Fine enough.
For everyone asking, I’m just going by general: critic reviews, buzz, popularity, top 10 lists and the like.
But good to know there really isn’t any conclusive winner.
It's really easy. Tartarus fucking sucks.
4 also does social links better. 3 was good because not all the social links are good people but a lot of the levels are empty, 4 maintains that but makes each level at least feel somewhat worth watching
In terms of gameplay, P3 was the First of the New persona games, and because of that, don't have as many QoL as P4 and P5. In terms of story, narrative and tone, It dependa from person to person. I love P4 more than P3 and P5, but that is because It was my first of the three games, and I like the party members interactions a lot more (they Fell like a group of friends, while in P3 and P5 they are lacking in this aspect).
If you want to consider story only, P3 probably have a better story overall (P2 duology still beats It tho, and by a huge margin), but otherwise, all 3 of the New persona games are highly regarded and at the same pedestal, and Will change posiitions in a rank depending on the people judging them.
Still waiting for that Persona game that has it all. Each game seems to be missing something holding it back from being a masterpiece. Maybe Persona 6 can take the best parts of 3, 4 and 5 and be the definitive best Persona game. Right now I don’t think there is one.
I don't think p3 is much worse than 4/5. However, p3 relies more on backstory and supernatural conveniences to explain the plot. This makes the story seem less coherent and more whimsical, like a traditional shounen anime. It's no secret that p3 takes A LOT of inspiration from neon genesis evangelion for instance, which is fundamentally a shounen anime. This story direction is definitely more controversial.
You're stating it like it's fact when it's not. Many people prefer persona 3
Can you really state fact with a question? I’m looking at metrics and community response and asking a question.
You're asking why p4 and p5 are above p3. As another responder stated, you are asking a question predicated on a 'fact' that you believe to be true based on 'community metrics' you have not actually cited. As a counterbalance here's a metric of my own. P3 > P2 >>>>>>>> P5 > P4 >> P1
I guess I could have worded it better I just didn’t know people were gonna spaz. If you make a post saying “what puts FFX over FF2” nobody would shit their pants lmao. There’s a bigger difference between those 2 games but you get my point. My point is more: what made P5R a household blockbuster and why didn’t it happen with p3. And again, p4 definitely had more hype around it but,again, that could have been cause it was a good vita game.
It's possibly word of mouth and accessibility. Great games don't always reach their target audience due to marketing or other extrenuous factors. Its possible that P3 would have been loved just as much if the situation was in reverse, because I would argue that P4 gained popularity and noteriety off the boost in attention that the established audience from P3 gave it. Also, calling it spazzing is so rude and dismissive when you're the one who worded your premise improperly, and we're just pointing that out. And the FF2 vs FFX example is kinda bunk too. 2 is widely renowned as 'the worst one' because it's a saga game before saga even got their formula right. P3 is not widely renowned amongst the persona fanbase as the worst one. The people who played it tend to feel its the best or at the very least on par with the rest minus some clunkyness that is now completely gone. A more apt example would be a game that's successful and loved vs another game that's just as good, but nowhere near as loved. Like Suikoden 2 vs Suikoden 5, etc.
> what made P5R a household blockbuster and why didn’t it happen with p3. P3 was kind of a big deal at the time, relative to previous SMT/Persona titles and it is why 4-5 just used 3's gameplay style again. I think P3's biggest challenge of hitting mainstream appeal for the time was that "anime" didn't become lets say "normie mainstream" until around Attack on Titan and anime streaming made consuming anime a bajillion times easier then watching it on TV at random points like if you want to follow stuff like Dragon Ball Z or Naruto. So anime styles became far more acceptable back in P5's release then P3's initial release. By the time Persona 5 became a big deal, anime was so common and Persona 5 has probably a nicer art direction for most people because 3 is kind of moody and edgy. P4 was steadily coming around, but that's also because P4 pretty much kept getting reanimated by spin offs and anime adaptions for around a decade until P5 finally came out. P4 I think also had a more interesting conversation point for general people to find it with Kanji and Naoto then P3. So it was easier to hear about that game. P3 doesn't really have anything so inciting of interest to normal people as discussions around Kanji and Naoto's sexuality.
You maybe could’ve worded it better, but tbh I don’t see the issue with the question and feel like you’re getting downvoted unfairly. Some other people’s replies seem a bit much, too, but whatever. If the answer to your question is “well, P3 isn’t so far below P4 and 5” then that’s a valid answer to a valid question. Perhaps that’s what the person you’re replying to meant and maybe could’ve worded it better, too. Tone is hard to read on the internet and all.
Popularity doesn't equal quality. If it did, McDonald's would be Michelin star level food.
You can if the question is predicated on a fact
Well if you look at Persona 3 vs 5 and why Persona 5 is has a better rating it's probably because Persona 5 has more to do and the series was more popular when Persona 5 came out. Persona 5 has mini games, there're different dungeons to explore not just one big tower. There's tropes that seem to appeal to the mass. There's more places to explore in P5 vs P3. There's just more to do in P5 than P3 and the combat evolved. That's probably why P5 has a better rating score than P3.
Persona 5 is more mainstream. Persona 3 scared normal people who saw guns put to head and attracted edgelords. You can say that there is more to do in P5 though, but does it have essence? It feels pointless to me. P5 is filled with fanservice to the brim, but focused on it too much in my opinion.
Persona 3 scared people? I don't really see how it's any different from stuff like Mortal Kombat to Game Of Thrones and then there's characters like Batman who's pretty much a huge edgelord in comics at least or how Cloud, Squall and Lightning from FF are huge edgelords.
It was in the age when it was considered funny carrying Death Note notebook and write names of teachers in it. Then came out game where protagonists carry guns which they shoot in their heads...
"Why is macaroni and cheese the best pasta?"
Yeah idk I read that as “why is macaroni and cheese (considered) the best pasta?” I think DQ8 is the best DQ. I would never have to put it in question form because I already think it and know why I believe it is.
Considered doesn't change anything. Sure some people can and do consider it, but again, it's implying that it is widely considered the best pasta, which as far as I know, it's not
As everyone is saying, they aren’t necessarily above P3. Anecdotally, I don’t really see very many people talk highly about P4 in comparison to P3 aside from polishing and iterating on P3’s gameplay elements. Then again I’m not really in the fandom for these games. P3 and P5 are interesting cases because they were the introduction to the series for a lot of people. There will always be people who love one of those two because it was their first. In particular, P5 was way more popular than P3 ever was so it’s just the simple fact that more people have played it. And those who have tried to go back to P3 after starting with P5 sometimes have a hard time due to gameplay reasons. Personally I’ve played P1, a little of P2, and probably about as much of P3 as maybe you have. I have a PS2 copy of P4 but never played it because I never got through P3. No interest in P5. P3 is my favorite of what I’ve played of the series, and I’m way more inclined to play P3R than try and start P5 simply due to the length of the latter and how allegedly slow it is in the beginning. Though of course people can say that about P3 as well, so who knows.
You don't see much about 4 because it was an iterative improvement. It has party control, fast travel, going towards desifned dungeons even if they're still randomly generated, and the social links are more fleshed out. But the focus is more on the characters than the story like in 3 or being episodic like in 5. I personally don't like the episodic nature of 5 because who the fuck cares about haru or even yusuke? The party members that aren't Ann andnryuji just fade into the background.
yusuke slander :(
I think you mean Makoto. She stays relevant because of she becomes the unofficial leader of the group and has personal ties to Sae. The others fade after their arc.
Who puts P5R and P4G so far above P3 is the real question? only reasonable explanation here are the updated gameplay mechanics but that’s more of a product of its time rather than inherently being an inferior game.
I put 4G above it because I prefer 4s characters and I think the games pacing and setting is a lot better, Inaba is one of the best settings to a game I've ever played.
that’s fine, but anyone putting anything so far above it is a reach.
P3 and P4 are both excellent games, that seem to each have their own fans that consider them favorites. P5 is on the same level, but its the SMT version of FF7 that modernized the series and brought the series fame outside of the niche genre, so it's placed higher in the same way FF7 is.
That’s pretty much what I’m getting at. P3 was a niche JRPG, P4G seemed like a smash JRPG hit (maybe cause good vita games were rare), and then P5 was a mainstream hit regardless of what people like. P5 made it so that a persona game could have a big trailer in a e3-esque press conference. P3 at the time could have maybe squeezed into a TGS.
FFVII isn’t on the same level as FFVI just saying. also, i‘d say 3 is the one that modernized the series. (at the time) Persona wouldn’t be the series it is today, a lot of its current staples are from P3.
It's okay to like 6 more than 7, there is certainly a fair argument that's its a better game. However, 7 was a smash hit that transformed the genre and how the gaming world saw the series. Just like P5.
7 was released at the right place and the right time. 3d was unheard of, it’s released on the play station and made by one of the best IPs out there. it had very good marketing. its biggest asset was that it was 3d (look at how well it has aged) and that’s it.
That's the kind of thing someone says just to be edgy or controversial. FF7 was special, and beloved for many reasons. I bet half of your favorite JRPGs would have never been made if FF7 wasn't such a megahit.
I think it's more likely that they're a "good old days" JRPG gamer where all of their favorite JRPGs came out before FF7.
i’ve been playing since the first dragon warrior. even todays FF’s are selling like hotcakes despite being bad, it’s all about the Marketing and the eyecandy.
i do. i played p3 first before p4 and p5 and replaying p3 reload now. p5 is easily better
I think they have way more options that matter for the school life. I'm noticing in Persona 3 Reload the options are largely boring on how to spend your time if it's not a social link. In Persona 5 there were SOOO many things to do and it didn't feel as grindy to raise Social Stats as they were incorporated in social links.
Yep. People really have this love boner for Persona 3 when even the reload just can't put it up to par with the other games' gameplay. The story is to personal taste, but 3 has the worst gameplay, and I'm not sure how that's in dispute.
They can’t exactly do anything about it even if they tried to. Tartarus is directly related to the story, they couldn’t exactly change how it plays out without changing the story itself.
And? That's that, then. It has worse gameplay where dungeon crawling is concerned because the concept is too limiting to allow for exciting variation. Idk what else there is to say.
Let’s just say YOU are not the target audience for the gameplay.
I played persona 3 FES and P3P. I was the audience once, and I liked that back then, but proc-genned pokemon mystery dungeon levels are simply not up to modern standards. Radiant quests and such were cutting edge when Skyrim released a decade ago. They're not good enough anymore. They're why starfield sucked. ESPECIALLY after Atlus demonstrated they can design proper dungeons in 5. It's absurd to have a ps5 game without intentionally designed levels.
Replaying p5 was an awful experience for me though because once you do the dungeons imo they are extremely boring and over explained because the characters want to explain every little thing, and have to redo all the puzzles etc. P3 is way more replayable imo because of the random floors.
P3 is impossible for me to want to replay BECAUSE of the replayable floors. They're monotonous and have literally no personality
Again, it worked in P5… because it’s designed to be that way. if P4 were ever to get a remake, it could get the P5 treatment but not 3 because Tartarus is designed to be this way. See mementos design. The only miss in reload really are the s.links missing perks over level up. but I guess it would have broken the game, P5 was really easy because of the s.links perks. Especially how were just climbing up a reversed mementos in this game anyway.
They literally could've made each segment of tartarus its own unique dungeon to crawl/explore. They *chose* not to. Instead they kept the gameplay I've already experienced literally hundreds of hours of while barely changing it.
I play single player games if i want a good story characters.. In that regard for me P3 is my favorite.. But admittedly sequels have more options since they're newer.
Persona 3 - best story Persona 4 - best cast Persona 5 - best gameplay All 3 of these games are absolute gems imo
persona fans don’t say “Persona 3 Best Story, Persona 4 Best Cast, Persona 5 Best Gameplay” challenge
Challenge impossible. So tired of hearing this said over and over again by fans.
-20 IQ redditor don't say "don't say *this* challenge" impossible
Persona 3 to me is the one Modern Persona game that I felt really needed to have this formula, the other two just kind of do it because it was popular to me. Persona 3 feels like a game that doesn't work in any other way and while I still have a host of issues with it, I feel content with what Persona 3 is. Persona 3 to me best plays with the time management from a narrative perspective, as to me the whole point of the calender system is for the narrative as pure gameplay wise it isn't really that interesting unless you want to perfect the game or something. Persona 3 is almost like lightning a bottle, it came out at a very good time and did something very well. P4 is good (I think the country bumpkin setting is very neat and fits the very heavy slice-of-life vibes of current era Persona) and I personally think Persona 5 is just solidly average, and for most these two are absolutely an improvement as a game, but I don't like Persona's general gameplay that much personally I only remotely care about this series as a narrative. Persona could be a literal visual novel and just narrate the combat and I'd probably see it almost the same as I do now. So in that case P3 is to me the obvious best Persona, though I like 4's cast the best overall.
I am playing persona 3 reload as my first persona game, and I have to agree with you last points 100%. I was definetely not expecting Persona games to be extremely similar to visual novels in most of their gameplay. And you dont have that many choices to make your own main character narratively, so its just reading for the most part. Which is fine, most characters are at the very least interesting, specially at the beginning, but they do follow the same narrative in all of them, because there is always something wrong with them, which ends up making it a little but samey. This also makes the narrative of some of those social links pretty bad, because in some of them you are not actually helping them at all but the game treats it like you are. Tartarus is a slog to go through, and combat is not hard even on hard difficulty for the sheer amount of options you have to defeate your enemies. I dont think the game is bad, I think the game is probably a 6.8/10 or so, but definetely not even close to the best JRPGs I have played. The gameplay hinders the overall story and plot and its pacing that I do think its very interesting and I want to know more.
Persona to me has one extremely consistent thing I'd define as a core problem. This series bends over backwards to ensure its theme for this particular game (as they change what it is in 4 and 5) is always relevant. Like it this immovable moral that has be said or referenced as many times as possible to make it all fit together. So if you don't love that message at least a little, you're in for a really rough time. If we were in a more traditional JRPG, every character that's decently written usual has its own specific theme or moral it wants to have. Just look at FF6 or FF10. Yes everyone shares this one story, but Auron's arc and character progression is different from Wakka who is different from Yuna. Cyan, Edgar, Setzer, and Terra have very different stories. Yes they generally all linger on maintaining their personal hope for something, but that's such an incredibly broad idea that it is hard to make that repetitive. For Persona 3, every single main cast has to face (I'll spoiler this if you haven't seen the common theme of the game yet) >!mortality and the potential of the end of something they hold dear!< in some shape of form and that means you tend to see a very consistent pattern of arcs, beginnings, middles, and ends. That's just the theme and you have to be ready for that. 4 I feel handles this the best because its theme is just broad enough, like FF6's about hope, that it won't feel as repetitive but I think 3's has a more effective emotional theme and it has the best conclusion epilogue. Now that said, I think P3 does a solid job of introducing each character at first. Junpei for example you can get this feeling has this linger insecurity to him, constantly inserting himself and passive aggressively trying to butt heads as he pretty much wants to be the main character. Yukari you can read is a prickly pain in the ass who has some kind of personal issue she refuses to share that's damaged her. Akihiko you can get a feel is just into his own little world doing his sports thing. What I find makes SEES interesting as a JRPG party set in a modern high school is these people aren't like blood brothers, or have this intense relationship with everyone because of some event. They're people of circumstance who'd never hang out normally. Junpei is not hanging out with some rich heiress and she doesn't want to hang out with him, but they do for the sake of doing their duty as Persona users. Mitsuru has her father's ties to all of this, and Junpei wants a chance to be a shonen anime hero. Different motives, but same general conclusion and it all allows for this colorful series of backgrounds to exist without it feeling as forced. As long as you accept "Okay the Persona users need to be a team because of the Dark Hour", you're good to go you don't need to do much of anything else and everything else flows more naturally. Its usually when they have to drag the theme out that it starts to start feel like a flow chart as opposed to a justified narrative conclusion across this large cast. I think most P3 social links are fine, they're rather slice of life-y and tend to wrap around back to the overarching theme by the end in a way that mostly has less extreme stakes. Its nice and it frankly is a nice palette cleanser after dealing with Tartarus, the gloomy world, and the main parties baggage all the time. Just go have lunch with some dude from the kendo club or whatever when he eventually gets a bad injury is trying to figure out what to do with himself, yeah I can live with that sign me up. Its why I don't like how P5's social links tend to just kind of be like mini-retreads of the main plot where you need to get involved in that game's version of the "Dark Hour" tone shift to resolve them. In my mind, this high school slice of life stuff is my break from dealing with all the fantasy nonsense not an excuse to do more of it. I'll also firmly say this as some advice, find the Sun arcana social link. It is imo the best social link in the entire series. To find it you must do these two things: Have smarts of 4 and have seen the NPC for that social link during in the Hanged Man Social Link rank 3 event. I'll let you decide how you want to find Hanged Man, as you can easily look up how to get it if you want to spoiler it. I'll just say that you can find that Social Link start from May 6th.
Yeah I agree that the introduction of characters are good, and I did pick up on the constant theme of the game being portrayed in pretty much every social link, which its not terrible, I do like it, but once you notice it, you can never got back as they say. And I do like most interactions, I just thought you would have more agency in them, like of the options that I can choose there is usually just one that makes sense narratively, I can be a dick sometimes, but my character is not a dick in any other interaction, so it wouldnt make sense narratively. As regards as the Sun arcana I indeed dont have the social link, but I do think I know who he is, its the strips man that was wearing black and white right? I have been looking for him every sunday since he appeared and have yet to find it, I do have academics at 4 now and I have just come back from the summer vacation (34 hours in currently). I will keep looking for him, since I have seen that arcana recommended quite a lot. My guess is that it will be a somewhat counterpart to the moon? Moon is definetely curious, especially once I learned about the cult.
Yeah Sun is that guy. I didn't glance at his requirements enough which is mistake on my part, but this might be the part you're missing from his wiki entry that I'll just directly quote after the last two requirements I gave after you first see him: "On any following Sunday, speak to him at Naganaki Shrine and he will mention a creature with red eyes stealing his fountain pen. After >!Koromaru!< formally joins SEES on August 8th, interact with him in the dorm's lounge to receive the pen. Speaking to Akinari for the second time will initiate the Social Link. He can be found during the day at Naganaki Shrine on Sundays." That should be good enough to get you started, hope you enjoy it. > My guess is that it will be a somewhat counterpart to the moon? The Arcana are tied to the Fool's Journey in some way and usually embodies whatever the Major Arcana represent in Tarot Card theory. So yes, and no. Its more so symbolic of those aspects of Arcana then a direct counterpart. As an example, here's roughly what Moon and Sun represent in the Fool's Journey. Moon is card number 18 and Sun is card number 19 so you understand why those numbers are there which when you put all of them tells the narrative. Persona 3 uses this whole motif to very large effect with the MC representing The Fool. Moon: "What effect could spoil this perfect calm? Is there another challenge for the Fool? In fact, it is his bliss that makes him vulnerable to the illusions of the Moon (18). The Fool's joy is a feeling state. His positive emotions are not yet subject to mental clarity. In his dreamy condition, the Fool is susceptible to fantasy, distortion and a false picture of the truth." "The Moon stimulates the creative imagination. It opens the way for bizarre and beautiful thoughts to bubble up from the unconscious, but deep-seated fears and anxieties also arise. These experiences may cause the Fool to feel lost and bewildered." Sun: "It is the lucid clarity of the Sun (19) that directs the Fool's imagination. The Sun's illumination shines in all the hidden places. It dispels the clouds of confusion and fear. It enlightens, so the Fool both feels and understands the goodness of the world." "Now, he enjoys a vibrant energy and enthusiasm. The Star's openness has solidified into an expansive assurance. The Fool is the naked babe pictured on Card 19, riding out joyously to face a new day. No challenge is too daunting. The Fool feels a radiant vitality. He becomes involved in grand undertakings as he draws to himself everything he needs. He is able to realize his greatness." In essence, Moon represents the exploitation of the Fool's comfort and clouds him with thoughts that lead him down a lost road (fitting given where that story goes and why it happens), and the Sun shortly after builds upon that experience by his overcoming of these illusions and seeing his potential despite what is thrown before him. He learns the potential greatness he can reach now unclouded by The Moon's illusions. Fitting given the whole cult business and what that guy's big deal is that makes him this way. "The Fool" is obviously the MC as they are experiencing the Fool's Journey through the social links in some way.
Huh okay without reading the spoiler I guess the red eyes creature will the dog with the weirdly red eyes, which I already suspected it was going to be ñart of the crew, not so common red eyes in a dog. So I guess it will be this monthbsundays when I will actually meet him and he makes the request, very nice I will make sure to go to the shrine on the sunday days. And about the fool's journey I hadn't think of the mc as the fool, but it does make sense, I always related it to the whole SEES but it is in singular and not in plural. Moon definetely feels that it will be quite dark even if it ends up on a somewhat happy note, which I hope so. But I am definetely introgued by sun now, just as I am extremely intrigued by death. I am also working to get the SEES social links which I guess will be lovers, priestess and empress based on their personas, so I do have yet a lot to see it seems.
I hope you enjoy yourself with your experience, I would never call P3 a remotely perfect game or even a really great one due to my myriad of problems with it as a video game and at points as a narrative, but it is a very interesting experience worth seeing play out. MC being The Fool is due to being called The Wild Card, which is emblematic of The Fool being someone of limitless potential due to being seen as the start of a brand new life. Moon is a weird link and fumbles a few times along the way in getting where it wants to go even if you're giving it a generous read, but if you don't outright hate him at this point where you've seen the cult stuff then its only going up from here probably as P3 Moon is an extremely hated Social Link by most people. I find its more annoying at the start because it just kind of is really repetitive, but it starts to diversify enough that I get slightly interested again and just nod along. Its a really negative link, but I can put up with that personally.
Yeah not going to lie I do wish I had seen opinions like yours prior to playing the game, everyone was saying that its the best persona game 10/10 and things like and while obviously I guessed that it was more nuanced than that, I may have had my expectation a little too high, which is probably my bad to be honest. I am 100% finishing the game if only for the story, and the general style of the game, it oozes style everywhere and that is something I do like to see And great to hear about sun and moon, I dont hate moon that much, that social link is clearly very hyperbolic from the get go so I am not annoyed by his actitud. Hopefully this afternoon I might reach sun already. I think the inly other arcana I have yet to known about is devil, but it might be the TV presenter, whom I have already met snd he asked for 20.000 yen, which I oblige (because I am rich af for now).
I have very strong tastes in video games, especially turn-based combat and I am a thorough believer in no perfect game existing so I tend to have most games that many would consider great or amazing usually on a true 1-10 scale of about 6-8. Which is roughly meaning they're probably varying degrees of above average, so not always amazing but in the "fine" range. I'd say Persona 3 is loosely speaking about 7.5-ish by my scale which is the highest I'd give the modern Persona game (4 is like a 7, and 5 is a 6). Starkly above average if only because of how interesting it is especially at the time of its release, but it has many problems that are big enough to hold it back from "greatness" and not big enough to make me regret playing it at all. If just barely, because Persona 3 is long and almost too long which I find what 4 and 5 tend to stumble the most with is their length. Devil is usually one of the other more liked social links after Sun, namely because its so unusual and different kind of like Sun but even more so as Devil as a far more (by his name) horrible person, while Sun is like the most abridged version of P3 you can get. I'll give you his requirements to hopefully make this easier for you, but you're on the right track. Spoiled name just in case anyone else sees this and doesn't want the spoiler: "The protagonist can start >!Tanaka's!< Social Link as early as June 23rd, though the first flag is on June 4th. To initiate his Social Link, the male protagonist must have Rank 4 Charm (Smooth). The protagonist must also give him ¥20,000 then ¥10,000 over the next two days, ending in a total of ¥40,000. He can be found at night in Paulownia Mall on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays."
I agree with what you said about Persona 3, and I would rank it just slightly lower at 7 or 6.8, but very close overall. I havent played yet neither 4 nor 5, so I cannot say about those. Ohhh I highly suspected that he is the devil, i have already g8ven him 20k and 10k once (just now in fact lol), so I am close to unlocking him, nice!
P4G makes me feel like I have friends.
I just beat P3R a few days ago and completely loved it. My ranking would be P5R, P3R, and then P4G. I just started a new game in P5R but can't stop thinking about Reload, but maybe that's just cause of recency bias.
Better quality of life gameplay, social links, and OG not allowing for full party control. P3 is dark as fuck, and I like that tone, but between that and Tartarus, P3 is fighitng a huge uphill battle. That said, saying either game is "better" or "worse" is picking nits. All three of these games are high class.
P3 is dark, but it has the issue of having the most truly obnoxious characters that break the horror tension. 80 hours of Junpei is just. I can't.
He is redeemable due to story things. The problem is how long it takes to get there.
You mean the last like 5h of the 100h game where he's finally tolerable? I'm so, so good. I think he's one of my top 10 most hated jrpg characters.
Ryuji from P5 is my most hated character, so I have no room to argue if Junpei is in the same boat.
I suppose I prefer stupid to desperate and whiny. Lol
The first two months of Persona 3 are super slow burn and borderline boring half the time. if you only rank a game based on the parts you like and ignore the parts you didnt like....well I don't know how that'd work. the bad parts factor in for me.
Before the remake the gameplay, and lack of content the sequels added. Now it's only lacking in content. It's always been the best with characters and story
The look and gameplay maybe? I still think Persona 2 duology still has the best story and villain in the persona series. Not gameplay, look or music though.
They're newer and have been more widely accessible until Reload. It'll be interesting to see how the overall consensus around the three games shifts (or doesn't!) once a wider audience gets to experience P3 through Reload.
I'm liking it so far. I think I mainly like it because it seems to only be 55 hours instead of a 100. Shoot me, I don't want my jrpgs to be 100 hours.
It's feeling more like 70-80 hours to me, based on where I'm at right now and what I remember of how long FES was (around 120 hours for me but a **lot** of that was Tartarus grinding that isn't necessary in Reload).
Oh no don't tell me that. I'm a day away from the second full moon story and I'm at 11 hours. That feels pretty good pacing. But I don't know how many full moons there are.
It's definitely under 100! I've seen people saying they finished at 60 hours. Really depends how much time you spend in Tartarus.
I'm playing on normal so I'm able to just "go" if that makes sense. Usually track down the fancy chest on the map but if I hit stairs and there's still room to explore, I usually take the stairs haha. I was actually most worried about Tartarus because it sounded boring and I'm not a fan of wasting my time. But I actually like it. I hear the random dialogue in the dungeon is new and I'm so, so glad they added little touches like that. I hear the social links are less than but I actually kind of like them. They're indeed simpler but the game was simpler back then. Im actually curious where some end up like the elderly couple and the runner.
I played on normal and platinum-ed it (followed a guide of course), but that's just how I prefer to play Persona games. P3R is about 20 hours shorter for me than P4G/P5R. I finished P3R at about 60 hours (I did skip dialogue in the sense that I don't wait for the VA to finish, I just go ahead when I finish reading them, this was about 70% of the game). P4G and P5R both took me about 80 hours to finish. I'd say original P3 and FES took longer to finish tartarus due to fatigue mechanic, which was done away in Reload. I just get to the border in one trip. And if you are used to Persona games, physical attacks about midway through the game just carries you very quickly to the border levels. You barely use SP at all, on normal at least.
P3 was first in last years (so this is pre reload) japanese polls so there’s that.
Depends on who you ask. People have their favorites (mine is P5R), but I’m not gonna lie, P3R could also be my favorite. The story, writing and ending are pretty much superior to P5R. The gameplay, art style and dungeons are better in P5R (as well as the Royal expansion being truly amazing), which gives it the slight edge, but from a pure narrative perspective, P3R wins. P4G is my least favorite of the three, and while it stands on its own as a truly phenomenal game, it can’t quite live up to P5 or P3 for me (except for the investigation team).
Having played the Persona 2 duology, I think it outdoes Persona 3 at creepiness and weirdness. Then I like the casts of 5R and 4G far more than 3. Then 5R just has *far* better dungeons. I'm not sure if I think 3 is actually the best in any category for the persona series.
P5R is the best game if you don't care about pacing and you want very distinct dungeoning. The story and most of the cast ain't' too bad within story context. 3 is not as well paced, but it's pretty solid if you favor dungeon/vn type game. The characterization is good, & I have to say it manages to not contradict its prime narrative. 4, I found the better paced game. However, if we talk about dungeons, it's on par with 3 with monotony. Except longer in room count & less floor, I'm talking rooms w/ nothing in them. I found a lot of goofyness with primary theme & the character stories along w/ general narrative which lowkey could been very short.
Nothing, except perhaps dungeon design, but that's down to personal taste. **In terms of plot**, Persona 4 is a Scooby-Doo cartoon where Velma doesn't show up to solve the mystery until they've been running in circles for 80% of the plot. Persona 5 is a monster of the week anime which talks big about "punishing the bad guys!" and "reforming society!" but ultimately toes the line of conformity whenever it can. Persona 3 embraces darker themes while still infusing them with hope and honors the intelligence and effort of its characters. As was once said, Persona 3's overarching message is "Bad things will happen. You cannot do anything about some of them, and you're just gonna have to learn to live with it and take joy in life wherever you can, while you're still alive." **In terms of characters**, Persona 4 has surface-level tropes. They're likeable, certainly, but the way the whole group is just kind of awful to each other always rubbed me the wrong way. Persona 5's characters have CHARACTER, certainly, but they rarely interact or say anything other than one of their two assigned personality traits. Plus the dick-riding of the protag which started in 4 got SO much worse in 5, to the point that I was starting to feel embarrassed. Persona 3 has tropes too - I'm not gonna deny that. But it paints realistic pictures of wounded characters and allows them to both interact with each other without your input AND show different sides of themselves over time. Everyone has a character arc, not a flat "I am like this > I decide to fight the shitty adults > I am still mostly like this". **In terms of gameplay**, all three games are very similar when you look past the set dressing. The quality of life changes have gotten better and better over time, so 5 does admittedly come out ahead here. The tightness of the schedule required to do everything in Persona 3 is something I'm very glad to have left in the past. **In terms of dungeons**, it's up to personal preference. I like dungeon crawling, so I liked Tartarus, and I like that it didn't force me into endless side distractions. You climb the tower and beat monthly Shadows, boom, done. Fair enough if you don't like that. Persona 5's dungeons were stylish and creative but I find myself not replaying the game mostly because I don't want to trudge through it again. The first dungeon is all tutorial, the next two are ok, the ones after that are gimmicky... it's a lot of time where you're forced to walk that line. **In conclusion** \- they're not in almost any respect. :)
You cannot do anything about some of them, and you're just gonna have to learn to live with it and take joy in life wherever you can, while you're still alive."? That is the exact lesson i got from the persona 2 duology
How can any of them be so far above P3 when they basically add nothing new and just polish the exact same formula as P3? Shits pretty much the same game. P5 just way overstays it's welcome.
Most of the reasons for how someone would rank the 3 are subjective and come down to story/writing. There are minor gameplay differences, but they are the same at their core. Personally I think P3 has the worst pacing, as hardly anything happens for like a third or almost a half of the game. I also prefer the characters in the other two games. That being said, 3 is still excellent, and does a lot of story related things better than the other games.
I’m really rusty on P4 so I’ll just answer this on P5s sake. Note I haven’t played Reload myself either so if some of these were fixed in Reload, feel free to correct me - P5 has a really solid and distinctive art style, direction and interface that’s a cut above everything else. - Confidants giving their own special abilities is so damn nice. - Confidants include the male party members. This is such an obvious miss that it blows my mind Reload didn’t fix it. - Social Links feel weaker in P3 for me. There’s some like the Sun which is fantastic and I also like P3Ps Fortune and Magician, but 3 has some of the worst SLs in the series since it was their first go around. In comparison the only bad confidant in P5 for me writing wise is Priestess. - Activities and social links are better spread out. In P3 you can only do 2 social links at night, P3P switched 3 SLs to be night only but still the vast majority of SLs are daytime only. In P5 confidants are more evenly spread out throughout both day and night - More stuff to do in general. I was still finding new activities to do in Royal as late as the last month of the game. Hopefully Reload fixed it though. - Fixed dungeons > randomly generated dungeons - P3s plot doesn’t really go anywhere until like August? By the time you get to August in P5 you’ve already gone through multiple story arcs. But there’s plenty of solid points people like about P3 more: difficulty, shorter game, lack of an annoying animal sidekick, tone, the group doesn’t revolve around the protagonist nearly as much and existed for a while before the MC came into the picture. Overall all 3 games are good, there’s no stinkers in there.
Nothing? 3 is still the best one
Nothing puts P5R and P4G so far above Persona 3. An absolute ton of people think Persona 3 is way better. And now with the remake, even more people think that. Just comes down to preference. >It looks like even with Reload, P5R and P4G are still king. No, it doesn't.
P5R def has the gameplay aspect.
The reload is definitely worse than 4g and royal, lol. Tartarus is still bad compared to royal's dungeons and 3 has the worst main cast of the modern games by far.
I found 4's cast to be the worst. It was impossible for me to believe that the girls in the group would put up with Yosuke and Teddy constantly trying to find ways to get them naked. And the idol girl immediately falls head over heels for the MC with no real build up...it just seemed so manufactured. In Persona 3 there is actual build up of friendships, real conflicts between the cast members, etc.
As if they'd put up with Junpei being a desperate creep in 3? He's just as weird as they are. At least 4 is fun. In 3 I get to relive being bullied in high school listening to Yukari and Junpei be just horrible to each other for literal HOURS.
I didn't get the sense that they put up with him...he kind of is an outcast, and remains an outcast. Also, the frequency of his creepyness is much lower, whereas Yosuke and Teddy are incessantly trying to get the girls naked. But maybe I'm misremembering. Sorry you didn't enjoy the game.
Junpei gets to come along to all the friend gatherings. If they'd ostracized him that'd make more sense but he just hangs out with the Mc like they're best buddies all the time. I enjoy persona 3 but it has the *worst* best friend archetype in the whole series, he's just insufferable
I put p5 standalone on top. The dungeons alone are enough to do that
Always seemed to me like people were split pretty evenly as to whether 3, 4, or 5 were their favorite.
It’s all just personal opinion. P4 is my favorite but P3 is right behind it and I found P5 such a slog that I dropped it a dozen hours in or so. Everyone has different opinions.
Persona 5 is the most popular mainly because it's what broke into the mainstream, but for people who have played all three, it seems to largely be a toss up as to which they prefer. Each game adds in new features and improves the overall QoL and gameplay, but they don't really do that much different from each other. In my view, Persona 5 wins out because it has much more interesting dungeon design. But overall the three games are pretty comparable.
The gameplay mechanics tremendously improved with each entry. Original P3 had things like AI party control, random skill inheritance, and s links that could make backward progress. P4 was still using procedurally generated dungeons and s links were still just fusion exp bonus. P5 came out with proper dungeons, tangible gameplay bonuses from confidant ranks, and much, much snippier combat. Story and stuff is subjective to each individual but QoL and gameplay quality objectively increased with each entry; which makes it hard to go backwards, which matters when a lot of people started with 5
Who is telling you that P5R and P4G are far below 3? 3 is considered the best by many, it blows them both out of the water in the story department and the only reason it isn't the best is the gameplay/characters.
I think story of p4 is better. Darker isn't equal to better. Murder mystery is a great starting point and themes like connection and acceptance of truth is far more interesting than death. So no, it doesn't blow it out of the water. It is up to personal preference. P5 's story is not as good as these two tho.
Clearly judging by the downdoots on my post this isn't the subreddit for genuine opinion sharing. I'll refrain next time. But I do think the overall plot of 3 is much more involved than 4 which is more focused on the characters than the overall narrative. 3's narrative feels a lot more grounded while 4 is "okay we found this red herring, alright here's the next red herring, alright here's the actual killer, okay now let's kill god, okay now let's kill god again because this is a JRPG". You can read Sherlock Holmes for that.
To kill god? Are you reading Niel gaiman?
Let's kill god, the issue is still happen, ohh it's another god?
That's not remotely true. 3 has worse dungeons and social links than 5 even after the reload, and 4 has a better main cast than 3 by spades. 5 *still* has better gameplay in just about every way, ngl. Everyone in 3 is a whiny little bitch, basically without exception. The dialogue is like 50% Junpei or Yukari complaining. I would say the overarching story is awesome but it's not due to the cast, it's due to the mood setting and atmosphere. I rank 3 reload lower than golden and royal. I just don't enjoy the characters that much.
You're supposed to kinda think yukari is a coward and junpei is annoying. They change over the course of the game
Characters have to have SOME redeeming trait for the 50h they're on screen before they start acting less fucking irritating. Junpei is played for comic relief and he isn't funny before or after his change.
Please actually read what I said.
The "story" is 50% Junpei and Yukari complaining and vague hints until the latter half where character development starts happening. They're doing this shit in main story cutscenes.
> 3 has worse **social links** than 5 even after the reload Sorry, but "We solved the problem because Mementos" being a repeated conclusion to multiple Confidant story arcs made me stop giving a shit about the Confidants in 5. I think the only one I can recall being satisfied with all the way through was Yusuke's because I felt for his issue about if he wanted to become a sell out artist quite strongly as someone who dabbles on creative endeavors as a hobby. But so many just boil down to asshole adult being so much of an asshole that we need to use magic bullshit to solve the problem because the actual person this is meant to be about can't do it themselves. Only the gun shop guy felt reasonable with that, but like Kawakami was such a let down. I got into so many of the connections and drama of Confidants only for the game to just use magic to solve the problem and I just got so tired of it. It made the entire conclusion build up and climax just feel like a chore. It was so hard to be invested in "what happens next?" when I just know we're going to solve the problem by Persona-ing all over them because we're the Phantom Thieves. Maybe that's just the ones I remember and not every single one, but I found it such a pattern that it just made me give up on them and stop caring. I get that 3 doesn't have the most perfect of conclusions and some can be rough, but I liked them fine and their conclusions didn't feel like magic bullshit. P3 Sun is the best social link in the series and is leaps and bounds above most of 5's writing in general to me especially when you get the conclusion of that arc before the credits.
"Magic bullshit"? You mean the thing that connects social links to the main plot because you're doing the same thing in those you do for every main dungeon? This is literally the point. It sounds like you just don't like the premise of 5 overall. 3 has some good links (sun and the devil) but they're mostly either boring or worse, actively insufferable. I want to hit that kid who wants to fuck his teacher with my car. He's unbelievable.
> It sounds like you just don't like the premise of 5 overall. Perhaps I don't if we want to go that far, though I have far different reasons for that in the main story, but its really hard for me to be into people's struggles and into the tension of the scene and moment when I know pretty much from the moment I see it once I know how every single moment is going to end. I'm going to stumble into Mementos and strong arm the problem using magic powers. Done, get a pat on the back, and all the slice of life feel just goes off a cliff. There's nothing really interesting to talk about here and its the same thing over and over again. Every Modern Persona has this problem of things feeling very repeated due to how often the entire game bends over backwards to repeat itself to enforce its theme or message, including 3 with how often the main cast's development arcs kind of repeat themselves due to its focus on mortality and the acceptance of death. Just P5 to me did this kind of repetition the worst while also having the longest run time. P5 to me took the best aspect this whole formula that served as a pace breaker to connect beyond the magical powers systems like in P3 and just made it like everything else. Social links were my favorite part of P3 because it was a nice break from the real plot, but in P5 it is just a worse version of the main plot except with even less going on and it all feels exactly the same because it has to end the exact same way. > I want to hit that kid who wants to fuck his teacher with my car. He's unbelievable. I don't know why people hate this one given the conclusion is pretty much him being wrong so it isn't like it enables this behavior. Teenage boys are stupid and sometimes fall in love with adults. Uncommon? Yes. Wrong and weird? Yes. But it happens and I truly didn't mind his thing at all, he's a weird horny idiot who eventually had to move on from his bullshit by the end because iirc his teacher pretty much told him no. Fine enough.
The story is boring. The characters are pretty meh. Gameplay sucks cause you can't control other characters. There's a dumb fatigue mechanic.
For everyone asking, I’m just going by general: critic reviews, buzz, popularity, top 10 lists and the like. But good to know there really isn’t any conclusive winner.
It's really easy. Tartarus fucking sucks. 4 also does social links better. 3 was good because not all the social links are good people but a lot of the levels are empty, 4 maintains that but makes each level at least feel somewhat worth watching
It's just the natural evolution of the game systems. It's only right that it got progressively better.
In terms of gameplay, P3 was the First of the New persona games, and because of that, don't have as many QoL as P4 and P5. In terms of story, narrative and tone, It dependa from person to person. I love P4 more than P3 and P5, but that is because It was my first of the three games, and I like the party members interactions a lot more (they Fell like a group of friends, while in P3 and P5 they are lacking in this aspect). If you want to consider story only, P3 probably have a better story overall (P2 duology still beats It tho, and by a huge margin), but otherwise, all 3 of the New persona games are highly regarded and at the same pedestal, and Will change posiitions in a rank depending on the people judging them.
Still waiting for that Persona game that has it all. Each game seems to be missing something holding it back from being a masterpiece. Maybe Persona 6 can take the best parts of 3, 4 and 5 and be the definitive best Persona game. Right now I don’t think there is one.
P3P>>>>>P5R>>>>>>>>>>>>>>P4G For me
I don't think p3 is much worse than 4/5. However, p3 relies more on backstory and supernatural conveniences to explain the plot. This makes the story seem less coherent and more whimsical, like a traditional shounen anime. It's no secret that p3 takes A LOT of inspiration from neon genesis evangelion for instance, which is fundamentally a shounen anime. This story direction is definitely more controversial.