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Persona 3 Portable (Switch) Review

At this point I consider myself a fairly avid Persona fan. Back in 2014 my friend told me about this great game Persona 3 FES and said I should buy and play it. After downloading it on my PS3 and giving it a shot, I had my gripes with it when I started out. By the time I was finished with it, I was completely hooked. I had previously dabbled in the SMT series in the PS2 era with such cult classics as SMT 3 Nocturne and Digital Devil Saga but up to that point I had somehow completely dodged the Persona subseries entirely. After playing and finishing Persona 3 I jumped right into trying to acquire a copy of Persona 4 Golden. The rest from there is history. Now after 3 full runs of each game under my belt, Atlus comes out with ports of Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden to modern consoles (finally)

Persona 3 Portable is the version of Persona 3 that I was least familiar with before this release. I did purchase P3P on the PS Vita store via the PSTV but I never got around to playing it. Having it available on the switch definitely opens up a whole new world. The decision to port Portable rather than the FES version of the game is a bit of a perplexing decision that has been discussed a lot since the announcement of the port. 

Portable is the more recent port of the game and its QOL features over FES are noticeable and very helpful. Part of the features of the FES version of the game was just having control over your playable character during battles. In portable just like Golden, you have the option to take direct control over your party members. You have the option to still let the AI control them, but it allows more precision and less overall frustration by assuming direct control. You also can return to the top floor you have explored rather than just relying on checkpoints which is one of P3P’s best features over FES. P3P does not include the additional scenario “The Answer” which was included in the FES port, but is generally considered to be a weak additional campaign, which is all dungeon crawling with some essential features such as the persona compendium ripped out to make it artificially more difficult. 

The graphics are slightly up-rezzed from the PSP version of the game, but saying the models look a little rough is an understatement. This is my biggest issue with them choosing this version over the FES version of the game. At least P4 Golden, having been a Vita game, has fairly decent graphics and doesn’t look too terribly rough even in its native resolution. Portable having come from the PSP does not have that luxury. The models look like late PS1 era models that have been upscaled to have HD textures. While it looks fine, it would have looked better to just remake the models. Almost calling this port a remaster feels insulting with how little effort that appears to have been taken with the graphics. 

As usual with most Atlus games, the gameplay is as stellar as usual with no big changes from the PSP version of the game. The game acts more like a visual novel rather then an open world when you are outside of Tartrus. This worked well on the psp due to limitations of the console, but just feels cheap on current hardware. 

Figleaf

Originally posted on the Fig Tree Website on 2/24/2023 https://figleafgamingnetwork.wordpress.com/2023/02/24/persona-3-portable-switch-review/