#Persona 3 portable opening series#

If your allies are in good condition and not tired from past trips, you can head into this ever-changing dungeon to tackle Shadows, find items that could complete requests from Elizabeth/Theodore, collect more Personas, and make your way ever deeper into the dungeon. It does mean we lose some niceties, like cutscenes or an opportunity to wander around, but it still captures the spirit of the experience.ĭuring the evening, you could study in your room or head to Paulownia Mall to do some shopping or visit the cafe, club, or arcade, but it’s also the only time you can head to Tartarus. The presentation makes it easy to get through your schedule, then get back to dungeon-crawling and the major plot points. Especially as I like to min/max in Persona games to try and build up relationships and stats as swiftly as possible. I find it tended to make my day-to-day more efficient. Things work fairly well, and points of interest tend to be fairly obvious. However, it’s easy to navigate areas, see people you can talk to, and pick out important spots. Unfortunately, the Switch version of Persona 3 Portable doesn’t offer touchscreen support in handheld mode. You’ll attend classes on school days, get to interact with social link folks to build relationships that will help when fusing Personas, be able to shop or work part-time, and get to build up your stats. During the day, it plays like a visual novel with simulation elements. The general progression of Persona 3 Portable isn’t all that different from the original game. The protagonist is inducted into a group of fellow students with similar abilities known as SEES and tasked with dealing with the shadows, exploring the dungeon, and dealing with these unexplained mysteries while still maintaining a fairly ordinary school life. People capable of using Personas can experience it, encountering Shadows and being able to visit a mysterious labyrinth called Tartarus that shows up at what is normally their high school. After finding themselves encountering mysterious occurrences, they learn that there is actually a 25th hour of every day. Regardless of which protagonist you pick, Persona 3 Portable begins with a transfer student returning to their former home town of Tatsumi Port Island. At the same time, it’s essentially a distillation of what is really needed to make a Persona game, and this remastered version is still a delight to play.

#Persona 3 portable opening series#

Now, it’s basically a piece of gaming history that shows the sorts of concessions that needed to be made, while highlighting how an entry in the Persona series can work even while making certain cuts.

This meant cutting the FES additional elements from the PS2, but meant a whole other “side” of the story with a female protagonist that changed some elements. That meant stripping down the day-to-day exploration and school life portions, turning activities outside of dungeon-crawling into what is essentially a visual novel. Atlus needed to make accommodations to get it running on the PlayStation Portable. We’re accustomed to ports like Persona 4 Golden for the Vita and full-fledged versions of Persona 5 Royal running on the Switch now, but that isn’t how things used to be with Persona 3 Portable.