This was one of my favorite concepts to cover, but I was really unhappy with the audio from all those months ago...so I've redone all the audio and added a few more interesting points. *~Follow Me~* 🐤Twitter: @VirgiliaLady twitter.com/VirgiliaLady 🎮Twitch: www.twitch.tv/ladyvirgilia 🌟Patreon: www.patreon.com/LadyVirgilia
I never found Tartarus boring lol yet again, I like simple dungeon design and the battles were exciting. Grinding can become addicting when you are constantly going back and forth between the Velvet Room, tartarus and normal life always provided some feeling of progress. I played both FES and P3P. I prefer P3P for the portability and I like the FeMC. But FES' party mechanics were fine and the animated cutscenes add a lot to the experience. At this point I would recommend people to play both games :D Your videos really make me appreciate these games more. Looking forward to the next one.
Honestly, I also had no problem with Tartarus' design personally. I'm pretty easy to please when it comes to RPGs and their gameplay in general though haha. As long as the story and themes are good, I'll enjoy it even if dungeon design/action is lackluster. P3P is an excellent game that's basically 2 in 1 since the FeMC's route changes quite a bit of dialogue and social links. I haven't finished the entire FeMC route myself, but I definitely will at some point and hope to do a video exploring the differences between the male and female routes. I agree- no matter what version or platform a person gets the game for, Persona 3 is an unforgettable experience. Thanks so much! I hope the next one doesn't disappoint :)
What if I did a ballsy move and defended this game's design from a non-narrative standpoint and said the gameplay is fine even without the context of its story elements?
My biggest gripe with Persona 3 is being unable to choose which skills a Persona can inherit, and the only way to change it is to redo the fusion selection over and over until you get what you want. But thinking about it this could tie into the protagonists apathy of him not caring what skills his new Persona will be using
I remember doing this years ago when I first played it, but honestly I found it fun. I personally enjoyed going back and forth until you got the right skills for the persona you wanted. It was almost like a mystery game and you didn’t know what you were gonna get haha
You forgot to add how "getting a game over when the MC goes down, regardless if other party members' potential to rez him" reflects how, as the vessel for Death, Minato's falling in battle could result in his Persona going berserk again like when he first summoned Orpheus.
To add on to what you said about the lack of user input for party members, you also gain more Tactics over the course of the game giving the player more control over the battle. This shows the group's bond and teamwork are growing over the course of the story. There's more room to steer the battle in your favor while still staying true to the narrative. You honestly are in no position to complain about Marin Karin when you can just set Mitsuru to Full Assault, Knock Down, or Assign Target. If people actually took advantage of these Tactics, they could appreciate the AI more. Though the stinginess on the healing is still a problem but that only makes me hate Yukari as opposed to the AI as a whole.
They don't work half the time though, which is the whole problem. For knock down, the companion AI interprets knockdown as "hit a critical!" with a physical move instead of actually targeting their weakness. Support doesn't even help much either, because there, the AI just randomly uses medical powder despite having plenty of SP. It's incredibly frustrating.
Something else I want to add: Each person mourns differently. Although in P4 and P5, it’s themes and goals heavily rely on teamwork. How can you face your shadow if you’re alone and no one can truly understand you? And how can you rebel against an oppressive power without those who share the same sentiment and stand by you? Each person has a different journey when it comes to mourning, like a family losing a parental figure. The spouse would be devastated and (depending on how much the parent was around before they deceased) the child could be confused, or even scared and don’t know what’s going on. In the end: they all come to terms on their own way, at different times. The child could find motivation to keep going, while the spouse is still lost in despair.
I also think it makes sense how most of the characters can fall when they miss a melee attack or how Yukari or MC using a bow can miss quite often. After all, these are mere high school students. I'm not sure that even Akihiko or Mitsuru, with all their experience and skill, are even close to being fully self-controlled professionals at fighting. Yukari still is not even close to actually being a skilled archer despite being in the archery club, and MC is just now picking up whatever weapon you choose for him to use; even though, of course, he can only use normal one-handed swords in Portable. And though I do wish you could gain things from the clubs you join such as, say, having a higher hit rate and possibly critical rate on the kendo team, it kind of makes sense that you don't, given the whole thing with depression and apathy. You're not really taking anything to heart. Though the protagonist is shown to be great already in the sports, I'm not sure it's so much because he *is* great as much as simply not taking note of weak feelings. He's not actually caring about the activities themselves, and it's the same with Akihiko. He doesn't truly care about boxing. He just wants to get stronger, and thinks that boxing would be a good way there. As for the whole debate in The Answer, the reason why Yukari was so immature was because, well, when you've just lost someone who's near and dear to you, you, too, would naturally do anything to get them back at any cost; because you're not thinking straight when you're so distraught; especially when you're a teenager, which is a time in your life in which you naturally are more prone to more emotionally-driven and impulsive decisions than logical decisions. And it doesn't matter that The Answer takes place a couple months after The Journey; one can't very well pull the "She should have moved on by now," excuse. I know people who even years after losing someone that they were highly attached to, still most likely, if given the chance, would go back and ensure that that person still lives; no matter the consequences.
Yukari's action made sense because of her Persona's (Isis) mythos, and how their actions parallel with each other. Yukari wants to see Minato alive again as much as Isis wants to see Osiris alive again. It's also a nice detail that Osiris is a god associated with death in Egyptian mythology lol.
I realize this comment is on an older video but it came into my recommendations after watching your trails in the sky/zero/azure summaries and I'm extremely glad it did. I first played persona 3 after 2 full runs of 5, and while I absolutely love persona 5, the atmosphere, themes and even conquering and exploring of mostly a single location from this game made it very enjoyable, and I'm extremely glad to see it get this kind of defense, especially from someone who appreciates details.
While I do agree P3 cast is more independent. I also like to believe Akechi is as well. One of the reasons why I like him. He doesn’t need the protagonist approval to do anything in my opinion. He does what he wants and lives how he chooses. Especially in P5 Royal how he was one of the few who basically didn’t get *Spoiler*.. I hope you know what I mean.
Whoa what a super interesting surprise! I'm working on a game similar to Persona and was reading what people think of its game design. Stumbled upon your video and considering I've only played P3P, I had no idea about its differences and I think I agree with your analysis. It really resonated with me and you really pushed it to the forefront why. The apathetic repetition, the lack of control, and the Death reading point to a lot more going on with the systems than just "bad design. " Thanks for this video! It really helped me look at what I like about this game c:
I'm glad to hear you enjoyed this and that it helped P3 resonate with you even more. Hmm.. a game with similar design to P3 sounds interesting! May I ask what game you're playing?
Ok, I'm super glad you found that interview. I'm surprised I've never seen it until now, so you must of had to do some big time sleuthing. LOL Though that explains a lot for me, as I always felt it was odd that ONLY P3 had uncontrollable party members. P1 & P2 you could, and P4 onward you could. So P3/FES always seemed kind odd, especially if it was going to get reverted with the next entry in the franchise. But knowing that it was indeed intentional makes me happy, as it was something I always wondered, but never had any proof of. (Though that just makes me slightly more annoyed they changed it in P3P now. LOLOLOL) Good job! Sounds a lot clearer too~
I did have to do some digging to find it again, since I vaguely remembered reading it long ago. You can read the full glory of Hashino and Soejima's thoughts to your heart's content now haha.
Completely agree with this! It is something I have thought about before as well. The AI-controlled party members never bothered me that much in P3 and I think it adds a lot to the immersion. I don't like silent protagonists or avatar characters very often but Persona games mostly do a good job of placing the player in that position and using it to enhance the story and themes. The removal of the AI-controlled characters in the later games takes away from this somewhat by segregating battle sequences from the narrative elements of the game. Instead of reducing this in later games, they could have fine-tuned the AI and the tactics option in order to remove some of the frustration. I agree with all of your other points as well, especially Tartarus and how much it adds to the atmosphere and meaning of the game!
This is a really good video. I respect that these inferior game design quirks have benefitted the overall theming of the story and characters, though I can’t help but dislike them personally. Hell maybe the og version and FES aren’t for me. I’ve always got P3P, 4, 4 Golden and 5 to fall back on, not much lost ^^
While a definitely well put together video I feel like it doesn’t really tackle these criticisms completely head on. While it’s good to keep thematics in mind it doesn’t really have any more footing besides just that. The only real somewhat solid argument for the design choices is the fact that the AI can be suede in a direction that is more favorable hence they aren’t totally useless but even then this only goes so far when comparing to just keeping a more solid strategy by controlling them. For me as a a player I could honestly care less if a battle that has been artificially spiked in difficulty has a thematic meaning. If it doesn’t work well with me then it just doesn’t work well with me. At the end of the day it’s a battle between thematics and practicality and we all kinda know what most people prefer 😅
If I could control my party directly, I would have never had funny moments like Aigis staggering buffs and Yukari being a selfish healer during literally the final battle (Aigis would cast Matarukaja, for instance, right after it wore out for 3 party members, then hers would run out next turn and she'd use it again just for herself, lol. Same thing happened with Yukari's healing, she'd cast Diarahan over Mediarahan because she's selfish)! Honestly all a P3 mod/remake has to do for me to recommend it to everyone is bump up the EXP rates- it's absolutely abysmal in P3FES. Borderline impossible to level up party members and personas, even off of S. Links!
This is pretty much why I like P3 so much. The entire game is just so focused on its themes, and it does everything so fucking well. It straddles the line between serious and edgy perfectly - unlike the later entries, unfortunately :/
Persona 3 is the only game that's made me cry. But I do think that stretch around winter break is really troublesome because along with December locking you out of some social links and Tartarus, winter break locks you out of your school social links meaning you can very easily be left with nothing to do but waste days (assuming that you are at max in your social stats) waiting for Tartarus to open up. Persona 4 really improved your ability to do the school social links during the breaks by making party members have their social links outside of school and all the school ones be club related
Something that I will never forget about this game is that I just picked it up randomly at game stop just because of the pretty artwork. I have never been a fan of turn based rpgs but always liked anime, and at that time there weren't many games with that aesthetic that I new of. So the thing is, at first the dates in real life in which I played it, completely matched the dates in the game, to the point I thought the game was just taking the date from my ps2. To my surprised when I did ended not playing it for a bit before finishing the answer, I did realize it was just some weird coincidence. 2009 was the year I moved to an apt. after graduating collage, so that made it even more memorable. To this day the persona franchise as a whole is very important to me.
Lovely video :) Gotta say the music in december still just gets me, persona always has some amazing ost's but Persona 3 has imo the most emotionally impactful songs. Just walking around town in december in the game was an awesome experience :) I personally tend to play games for characters and story, gameplay is rarely if ever even one of my deciding factors in whether I enjoyed the game or not, unless its very important. I dont dislike Tartarus or even how the combat is handled, I generally tend to do Tartarus as quickly as I can to get back to the story :)
6:25 raises hand Haven’t, played it 4 times, all party members equal level, never seen Mitsuru’s Maria Karin Just keep them on “knock down” and they always do exactly what you want
I mean the gameplay can work, the only problem is that even in the end, the party doesn't fully trust you, like Junpei and Yukari at the start I can understand, but why would Mitsuru and Akihiko not agree to your commands? Maybe if the full control got introduced at the half point.
Great video. Since I have only played the PSP version of Persona 3 because of the FeMC, I had never had problems with the AI, (expect with Junpei that never uses Agi) The overall theme of Persona 3 is sadness and death. The color is blue in P3, where P4 is yellow and P5 is red. As we know, blue is a color that represents sadness and coldness. And every member of SEES has some encounter with death, many of the members lost family members or loved ones, and Shinji killed someone and died. (The only exception is Fuuka and Aigis, until the MC dies.) It's so interesting how the Persona Games use the color psychology to represent it's themes.
I can't understand why people think this game system is inferior. I remember playing p3p 9 years ago and my first play was without controlling my party members, I only get to control the party by direct commands on my final battle with Nyx and it was still amazing. Hear the video and the amazing interview only makes me love even more this game and made me realice how much effort the developers reach at a conceptual level, concept that keep amazed me everytime I revived this game in my life. Thanks for the amazing video 👏💕✨
even i prefer more taking control of all characters i must admit that combact system is p3 is good and if you enter into the gameplay mechanics you can still do a lot of strategies with all characters thanks to tactics option
A little late, but I loved watching this video! It's been a few years since I played Persona 3, but you did such a fantastic job explaining the ludonarrative synthesis between climbing through Tartarus and the overarching narrative that SEES has to work its way through that it brought all the memories back haha. It especially connected the dots in my head when you talked about how each floor of Tartarus is boring but ultimately represents the team's confrontation of death, I had that moment of realization which is always fun to have. Overall though, you changed my opinion of Persona 3 being a game you love to watch and hate to play to P3 being a game that is almost intentionally difficult to play to really get the message across. For that intuition alone I'm glad I stumbled onto this analysis haha :)
OG Persona 3 is where it all started for me. My first playthrough was woefully amateur work, and I never came close to scratching the potential of building the best personas, but I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. P3 was one of the earliest JRPGs I've played, and it awakened me to the world of great JRPGs like Ar Tonelico and the Trails series. I dove headfirst into FES and P3P and enjoyed the gameplay everytime. I never minded the difficulty and the party AI as much because as long as I kept to the proper tactics and the appropriate personas, nothing was insurmountable.
i don't agree on the idea that the flaws of the game would actually enhance it, but your understanding of not being able to control the team members coming from their individuality sounds cool. it gives meaning to something that probably didn't have any before. i love p3p, its my favorite game (played it seven times so far), but p3 and p3fes are unplayable for me. the worse flaw is not that you can't control the other characters, but the lack of a defense option. i wouldn't have a problem giving them an order to defend for the turn and then letting them free after that, but letting them take a hit on their weakness just feels too stupid and lame for me. persona 2 was my first persona game, and that game had a lot of strategy and options during battles. playing persona 3 on ps2 when it was released was a big dissapointment at first for me, until p3p came out.
I defend much inferior design except passing down skills via fusion. Tens of mashing O and X with my D-pad is a chore for even 2 of 4 skills I really want.
You know, the more I think about your recommendation, the more I like it. I originally wanted to avoid using words like worse, inferior, etc. because I personally don't think they make the game "worse," just different. But thinking about it, the lack of gameplay options are objectively worse for a video*game.* So thanks for this helpful pointer! I think I'll take you up on it. :)
You know, I have heard so many say that P3Fes was soooo hard (stilll chose difficulty Normal), so when I decided to play it this being (besides skylanders) my first game. I had a tendency to over grind, so much so that when I started a new block all shadows was scared of me. I looked forward to sleeping table and and blahblah of greif just to get a challenge. Didn’t ever fuse ether, just used the shuffle personas with low cost skills. I think my final personas was Sati, Sarasvati, Kushi Mitama and Odin (to beat the reaper) 3 of them has the lowest element tier skills. Then when Nyx’s avatar came I just nuked him with Messiah’s Morning Star and used one soma. THE GAME WAS TOO EASY!
compared to megami ibunroku persona,persona 3 seems easy. first game is very frustrating and if you do snow queen route the enemies are very strong and they kill you easily.Persona 3 is hard compared to most recent rpg games but if you have played rpg 80'/90' stile the game seem very easy.
Some people may not agree, but for me, Persona 3 is a masterpiece. And it’s the only game I’d call a masterpiece. At the very least, a near masterpiece. I’m personally not as into gaming as I used to be, but P3 is just a great game. It’s more than just a game. I’m even wearing a P3 FES shirt right now, and it’s one of the only gaming related shirts I own haha
I actually found the early part of the game the most boring 'cause so little was going on and I don't really connect with any of the characters. Apathy as a theme is definitely great to explore, but there should absolutely be a way to do that without making the player feel apathetic themselves. It is the one emotion that a story should never invoke in the audience, because it disengages them. If you don't care, then you won't feel rewarded when you do push through; at best you'll just feel relieved it's finally over and you can do _anything_ else. I do think this kind of design was more forgivable back then, since it was still kind of in the era of most gamers only having a fairly small number of games. Today, especially adult gamers who often have backlogs that can number in the hundreds, it's even more important than ever that they are not led to feel apathy themselves. The main reasons I keep returning to P3 myself is because of its passionate fandom, and because I do find its themes fascinating to think about and explore, even if I personally find nearly everything up until Aigis and Straga show up to be extremely dull. Also the P3, more than 4 and 5, is very much a classic-style dungeon crawler, in the vein of games like Wizardry, and I'm kind of a sucker for it even though it's not the most inherently engaging design anymore. XD
This was one of my favorite concepts to cover, but I was really unhappy with the audio from all those months ago...so I've redone all the audio and added a few more interesting points.
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@D. Loner I find it funny how I became Yukatan haha :p
Thanks much for an amazing compliment!
I never found Tartarus boring lol yet again, I like simple dungeon design and the battles were exciting. Grinding can become addicting when you are constantly going back and forth between the Velvet Room, tartarus and normal life always provided some feeling of progress. I played both FES and P3P. I prefer P3P for the portability and I like the FeMC. But FES' party mechanics were fine and the animated cutscenes add a lot to the experience. At this point I would recommend people to play both games :D
Your videos really make me appreciate these games more. Looking forward to the next one.
Honestly, I also had no problem with Tartarus' design personally. I'm pretty easy to please when it comes to RPGs and their gameplay in general though haha. As long as the story and themes are good, I'll enjoy it even if dungeon design/action is lackluster.
P3P is an excellent game that's basically 2 in 1 since the FeMC's route changes quite a bit of dialogue and social links. I haven't finished the entire FeMC route myself, but I definitely will at some point and hope to do a video exploring the differences between the male and female routes.
I agree- no matter what version or platform a person gets the game for, Persona 3 is an unforgettable experience.
Thanks so much! I hope the next one doesn't disappoint :)
What if I did a ballsy move and defended this game's design from a non-narrative standpoint and said the gameplay is fine even without the context of its story elements?
DO IT!
(Show everyone that marin karin is just a meme and nothing more lol)
My biggest gripe with Persona 3 is being unable to choose which skills a Persona can inherit, and the only way to change it is to redo the fusion selection over and over until you get what you want.
But thinking about it this could tie into the protagonists apathy of him not caring what skills his new Persona will be using
I remember doing this years ago when I first played it, but honestly I found it fun. I personally enjoyed going back and forth until you got the right skills for the persona you wanted. It was almost like a mystery game and you didn’t know what you were gonna get haha
You forgot to add how "getting a game over when the MC goes down, regardless if other party members' potential to rez him" reflects how, as the vessel for Death, Minato's falling in battle could result in his Persona going berserk again like when he first summoned Orpheus.
Happy to see older Persona games content being made. Good video!
To add on to what you said about the lack of user input for party members, you also gain more Tactics over the course of the game giving the player more control over the battle. This shows the group's bond and teamwork are growing over the course of the story. There's more room to steer the battle in your favor while still staying true to the narrative. You honestly are in no position to complain about Marin Karin when you can just set Mitsuru to Full Assault, Knock Down, or Assign Target. If people actually took advantage of these Tactics, they could appreciate the AI more. Though the stinginess on the healing is still a problem but that only makes me hate Yukari as opposed to the AI as a whole.
@Davis Nova scam
@Davis Nova Get out.
They don't work half the time though, which is the whole problem. For knock down, the companion AI interprets knockdown as "hit a critical!" with a physical move instead of actually targeting their weakness.
Support doesn't even help much either, because there, the AI just randomly uses medical powder despite having plenty of SP. It's incredibly frustrating.
Something else I want to add: Each person mourns differently. Although in P4 and P5, it’s themes and goals heavily rely on teamwork. How can you face your shadow if you’re alone and no one can truly understand you? And how can you rebel against an oppressive power without those who share the same sentiment and stand by you?
Each person has a different journey when it comes to mourning, like a family losing a parental figure. The spouse would be devastated and (depending on how much the parent was around before they deceased) the child could be confused, or even scared and don’t know what’s going on. In the end: they all come to terms on their own way, at different times. The child could find motivation to keep going, while the spouse is still lost in despair.
I also think it makes sense how most of the characters can fall when they miss a melee attack or how Yukari or MC using a bow can miss quite often. After all, these are mere high school students. I'm not sure that even Akihiko or Mitsuru, with all their experience and skill, are even close to being fully self-controlled professionals at fighting. Yukari still is not even close to actually being a skilled archer despite being in the archery club, and MC is just now picking up whatever weapon you choose for him to use; even though, of course, he can only use normal one-handed swords in Portable.
And though I do wish you could gain things from the clubs you join such as, say, having a higher hit rate and possibly critical rate on the kendo team, it kind of makes sense that you don't, given the whole thing with depression and apathy. You're not really taking anything to heart. Though the protagonist is shown to be great already in the sports, I'm not sure it's so much because he *is* great as much as simply not taking note of weak feelings. He's not actually caring about the activities themselves, and it's the same with Akihiko. He doesn't truly care about boxing. He just wants to get stronger, and thinks that boxing would be a good way there.
As for the whole debate in The Answer, the reason why Yukari was so immature was because, well, when you've just lost someone who's near and dear to you, you, too, would naturally do anything to get them back at any cost; because you're not thinking straight when you're so distraught; especially when you're a teenager, which is a time in your life in which you naturally are more prone to more emotionally-driven and impulsive decisions than logical decisions. And it doesn't matter that The Answer takes place a couple months after The Journey; one can't very well pull the "She should have moved on by now," excuse. I know people who even years after losing someone that they were highly attached to, still most likely, if given the chance, would go back and ensure that that person still lives; no matter the consequences.
Yukari's action made sense because of her Persona's (Isis) mythos, and how their actions parallel with each other. Yukari wants to see Minato alive again as much as Isis wants to see Osiris alive again.
It's also a nice detail that Osiris is a god associated with death in Egyptian mythology lol.
I realize this comment is on an older video but it came into my recommendations after watching your trails in the sky/zero/azure summaries and I'm extremely glad it did.
I first played persona 3 after 2 full runs of 5, and while I absolutely love persona 5, the atmosphere, themes and even conquering and exploring of mostly a single location from this game made it very enjoyable, and I'm extremely glad to see it get this kind of defense, especially from someone who appreciates details.
While I do agree P3 cast is more independent. I also like to believe Akechi is as well. One of the reasons why I like him. He doesn’t need the protagonist approval to do anything in my opinion. He does what he wants and lives how he chooses. Especially in P5 Royal how he was one of the few who basically didn’t get *Spoiler*..
I hope you know what I mean.
Whoa what a super interesting surprise! I'm working on a game similar to Persona and was reading what people think of its game design. Stumbled upon your video and considering I've only played P3P, I had no idea about its differences and I think I agree with your analysis. It really resonated with me and you really pushed it to the forefront why. The apathetic repetition, the lack of control, and the Death reading point to a lot more going on with the systems than just "bad design. " Thanks for this video! It really helped me look at what I like about this game c:
I'm glad to hear you enjoyed this and that it helped P3 resonate with you even more. Hmm.. a game with similar design to P3 sounds interesting! May I ask what game you're playing?
Ok, I'm super glad you found that interview.
I'm surprised I've never seen it until now, so you must of had to do some big time sleuthing. LOL
Though that explains a lot for me, as I always felt it was odd that ONLY P3 had uncontrollable party members. P1 & P2 you could, and P4 onward you could. So P3/FES always seemed kind odd, especially if it was going to get reverted with the next entry in the franchise.
But knowing that it was indeed intentional makes me happy, as it was something I always wondered, but never had any proof of. (Though that just makes me slightly more annoyed they changed it in P3P now. LOLOLOL)
Good job! Sounds a lot clearer too~
I did have to do some digging to find it again, since I vaguely remembered reading it long ago.
You can read the full glory of Hashino and Soejima's thoughts to your heart's content now haha.
I think they only changed it in P3P because of how many people hated it.
@@gingerhoney1038 or maybe the IA was too much for the PSP(?) PD: 2 years of this vídeo and more for the game and looks like fans still here :v
Literally all I was looking for in a channel. God bless.
Completely agree with this! It is something I have thought about before as well.
The AI-controlled party members never bothered me that much in P3 and I think it adds a lot to the immersion. I don't like silent protagonists or avatar characters very often but Persona games mostly do a good job of placing the player in that position and using it to enhance the story and themes. The removal of the AI-controlled characters in the later games takes away from this somewhat by segregating battle sequences from the narrative elements of the game. Instead of reducing this in later games, they could have fine-tuned the AI and the tactics option in order to remove some of the frustration.
I agree with all of your other points as well, especially Tartarus and how much it adds to the atmosphere and meaning of the game!
Glad to see some better audio great job as usual
Thanks for your support as always!
This is a really good video. I respect that these inferior game design quirks have benefitted the overall theming of the story and characters, though I can’t help but dislike them personally. Hell maybe the og version and FES aren’t for me. I’ve always got P3P, 4, 4 Golden and 5 to fall back on, not much lost ^^
While a definitely well put together video I feel like it doesn’t really tackle these criticisms completely head on. While it’s good to keep thematics in mind it doesn’t really have any more footing besides just that. The only real somewhat solid argument for the design choices is the fact that the AI can be suede in a direction that is more favorable hence they aren’t totally useless but even then this only goes so far when comparing to just keeping a more solid strategy by controlling them. For me as a a player I could honestly care less if a battle that has been artificially spiked in difficulty has a thematic meaning. If it doesn’t work well with me then it just doesn’t work well with me. At the end of the day it’s a battle between thematics and practicality and we all kinda know what most people prefer 😅
If I could control my party directly, I would have never had funny moments like Aigis staggering buffs and Yukari being a selfish healer during literally the final battle (Aigis would cast Matarukaja, for instance, right after it wore out for 3 party members, then hers would run out next turn and she'd use it again just for herself, lol. Same thing happened with Yukari's healing, she'd cast Diarahan over Mediarahan because she's selfish)!
Honestly all a P3 mod/remake has to do for me to recommend it to everyone is bump up the EXP rates- it's absolutely abysmal in P3FES. Borderline impossible to level up party members and personas, even off of S. Links!
this is a really interesting take!
This is pretty much why I like P3 so much. The entire game is just so focused on its themes, and it does everything so fucking well. It straddles the line between serious and edgy perfectly - unlike the later entries, unfortunately :/
Persona 3 is the only game that's made me cry. But I do think that stretch around winter break is really troublesome because along with December locking you out of some social links and Tartarus, winter break locks you out of your school social links meaning you can very easily be left with nothing to do but waste days (assuming that you are at max in your social stats) waiting for Tartarus to open up. Persona 4 really improved your ability to do the school social links during the breaks by making party members have their social links outside of school and all the school ones be club related
Something that I will never forget about this game is that I just picked it up randomly at game stop just because of the pretty artwork. I have never been a fan of turn based rpgs but always liked anime, and at that time there weren't many games with that aesthetic that I new of. So the thing is, at first the dates in real life in which I played it, completely matched the dates in the game, to the point I thought the game was just taking the date from my ps2. To my surprised when I did ended not playing it for a bit before finishing the answer, I did realize it was just some weird coincidence. 2009 was the year I moved to an apt. after graduating collage, so that made it even more memorable. To this day the persona franchise as a whole is very important to me.
I've never heard anyone complain about December besides the Hiimdaisy comic. I think it along with the rest of P3's third act is fantastic.
Lovely video :)
Gotta say the music in december still just gets me, persona always has some amazing ost's but Persona 3 has imo the most emotionally impactful songs. Just walking around town in december in the game was an awesome experience :)
I personally tend to play games for characters and story, gameplay is rarely if ever even one of my deciding factors in whether I enjoyed the game or not, unless its very important. I dont dislike Tartarus or even how the combat is handled, I generally tend to do Tartarus as quickly as I can to get back to the story :)
6:25 raises hand
Haven’t, played it 4 times, all party members equal level, never seen Mitsuru’s Maria Karin
Just keep them on “knock down” and they always do exactly what you want
I know right just put every party member on knock down and it is just direct commands with pressing less buttons
I mean the gameplay can work, the only problem is that even in the end, the party doesn't fully trust you, like Junpei and Yukari at the start I can understand, but why would Mitsuru and Akihiko not agree to your commands? Maybe if the full control got introduced at the half point.
This was a great video and made appreciate Persona 3 even more than I already do excellent work.
Great video. Since I have only played the PSP version of Persona 3 because of the FeMC, I had never had problems with the AI, (expect with Junpei that never uses Agi) The overall theme of Persona 3 is sadness and death. The color is blue in P3, where P4 is yellow and P5 is red. As we know, blue is a color that represents sadness and coldness. And every member of SEES has some encounter with death, many of the members lost family members or loved ones, and Shinji killed someone and died. (The only exception is Fuuka and Aigis, until the MC dies.)
It's so interesting how the Persona Games use the color psychology to represent it's themes.
I can't understand why people think this game system is inferior. I remember playing p3p 9 years ago and my first play was without controlling my party members, I only get to control the party by direct commands on my final battle with Nyx and it was still amazing. Hear the video and the amazing interview only makes me love even more this game and made me realice how much effort the developers reach at a conceptual level, concept that keep amazed me everytime I revived this game in my life. Thanks for the amazing video 👏💕✨
even i prefer more taking control of all characters i must admit that combact system is p3 is good and if you enter into the gameplay mechanics you can still do a lot of strategies with all characters thanks to tactics option
A little late, but I loved watching this video! It's been a few years since I played Persona 3, but you did such a fantastic job explaining the ludonarrative synthesis between climbing through Tartarus and the overarching narrative that SEES has to work its way through that it brought all the memories back haha. It especially connected the dots in my head when you talked about how each floor of Tartarus is boring but ultimately represents the team's confrontation of death, I had that moment of realization which is always fun to have. Overall though, you changed my opinion of Persona 3 being a game you love to watch and hate to play to P3 being a game that is almost intentionally difficult to play to really get the message across. For that intuition alone I'm glad I stumbled onto this analysis haha :)
OG Persona 3 is where it all started for me. My first playthrough was woefully amateur work, and I never came close to scratching the potential of building the best personas, but I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. P3 was one of the earliest JRPGs I've played, and it awakened me to the world of great JRPGs like Ar Tonelico and the Trails series. I dove headfirst into FES and P3P and enjoyed the gameplay everytime. I never minded the difficulty and the party AI as much because as long as I kept to the proper tactics and the appropriate personas, nothing was insurmountable.
Thanks for this video!
i don't agree on the idea that the flaws of the game would actually enhance it, but your understanding of not being able to control the team members coming from their individuality sounds cool. it gives meaning to something that probably didn't have any before.
i love p3p, its my favorite game (played it seven times so far), but p3 and p3fes are unplayable for me. the worse flaw is not that you can't control the other characters, but the lack of a defense option. i wouldn't have a problem giving them an order to defend for the turn and then letting them free after that, but letting them take a hit on their weakness just feels too stupid and lame for me.
persona 2 was my first persona game, and that game had a lot of strategy and options during battles. playing persona 3 on ps2 when it was released was a big dissapointment at first for me, until p3p came out.
I defend much inferior design except passing down skills via fusion. Tens of mashing O and X with my D-pad is a chore for even 2 of 4 skills I really want.
This video should be called how persona 3 inferior game design enhances the story
You know, the more I think about your recommendation, the more I like it. I originally wanted to avoid using words like worse, inferior, etc. because I personally don't think they make the game "worse," just different. But thinking about it, the lack of gameplay options are objectively worse for a video*game.*
So thanks for this helpful pointer! I think I'll take you up on it. :)
@@LadyVirgilia what was the original title?
I'm so sorry I missed your comment! It was the same title except instead of "inferior," I put "infuriating."
Finally someone who understands the theme and can defend it
I can understand and appreciate the choice of the lack of party member control, I think it’s extremely flawed.
great video
You know, I have heard so many say that P3Fes was soooo hard (stilll chose difficulty Normal), so when I decided to play it this being (besides skylanders) my first game.
I had a tendency to over grind, so much so that when I started a new block all shadows was scared of me. I looked forward to sleeping table and and blahblah of greif just to get a challenge. Didn’t ever fuse ether, just used the shuffle personas with low cost skills.
I think my final personas was Sati, Sarasvati, Kushi Mitama and Odin (to beat the reaper) 3 of them has the lowest element tier skills.
Then when Nyx’s avatar came I just nuked him with Messiah’s Morning Star and used one soma.
THE GAME WAS TOO EASY!
compared to megami ibunroku persona,persona 3 seems easy. first game is very frustrating and if you do snow queen route the enemies are very strong and they kill you easily.Persona 3 is hard compared to most recent rpg games but if you have played rpg 80'/90' stile the game seem very easy.
I loved this game
Some people may not agree, but for me, Persona 3 is a masterpiece. And it’s the only game I’d call a masterpiece. At the very least, a near masterpiece. I’m personally not as into gaming as I used to be, but P3 is just a great game. It’s more than just a game. I’m even wearing a P3 FES shirt right now, and it’s one of the only gaming related shirts I own haha
I actually found the early part of the game the most boring 'cause so little was going on and I don't really connect with any of the characters.
Apathy as a theme is definitely great to explore, but there should absolutely be a way to do that without making the player feel apathetic themselves. It is the one emotion that a story should never invoke in the audience, because it disengages them. If you don't care, then you won't feel rewarded when you do push through; at best you'll just feel relieved it's finally over and you can do _anything_ else.
I do think this kind of design was more forgivable back then, since it was still kind of in the era of most gamers only having a fairly small number of games. Today, especially adult gamers who often have backlogs that can number in the hundreds, it's even more important than ever that they are not led to feel apathy themselves. The main reasons I keep returning to P3 myself is because of its passionate fandom, and because I do find its themes fascinating to think about and explore, even if I personally find nearly everything up until Aigis and Straga show up to be extremely dull.
Also the P3, more than 4 and 5, is very much a classic-style dungeon crawler, in the vein of games like Wizardry, and I'm kind of a sucker for it even though it's not the most inherently engaging design anymore. XD
I honestly thought the gameplay was the most fun in the series
ngl even if you can somehow connect the bad gameplay to the themes, it isn’t a defense for how easy and boring the game is