Review: Persona 3 Portable (PSP)

The world as you know it may not be exactly as it seems. What if you were told that aside from the 24 hour days you are used to, there was in fact a Dark Hour; a 25th hour that most people on Earth are completely unaware of? Within this Dark Hour, certain people possess the ability to call upon a Persona to fight against the Shadows that feed upon the land. In order to bring forth these Personas, these people are forced to place a gun to their head and pull the trigger. Now what if you were told you were one of those people? Would you pull the trigger?

Game: Persona 3 Portable (PSP)
Publisher: Atlus
Developer: Atlus
Genre: RPG
Price: $39.99
Verdict: New perspective into the Persona 3 world that ends up falling flat
Pros: Abridged overworld navigation, Persona fusing, mysterious universe
Cons: Ultimately mundane and boring

This is the basic premise behind Atlus’ RPG, Persona 3 Portable for the PSP. While this game may seem familiar to you, it should because this is in fact the third time Atlus has released this title. Like Persona 3 and Persona 3 FES before it, Persona 3 Portable allows gamers who may have missed the first two releases to relive the original story in its entirety, interjects some of the best features from Persona 4 and FES and adds an entirely new playthrough from a female protagonist’s point of view. Also new to the portable version is an abridged story mode that even though it eliminates the lengthy cutscenes that are in the console brothers, it makes the story fit nicely in a portable environment. While this is indeed convenient, it ultimately makes the player feel detached from the story and the game feel cumbersome.

Taking control of the nameless hero or heroine puts you in the middle of daily life management while you juggle high school, social relationships with your friends and saving the world from the evils that lurk within the Dark Hour. While some of these tasks may seem mundane, they are absolutely necessary to the safe progression of the game. Paying attention to your studies in school lead to a better score in things like Charm and Academics which assist you in other facets of the game, while caring for your social links allows you to control bigger and better Personas to assist in your battles. As you gain better favor with your friends, you will also be able to fuse more powerful Persona. While all this may seem well and good, this is where the merits of Persona 3 Portable begin to fade.

As mentioned before, the story is abridged and shortened in the form of static anime images against static backdrops where your friends and teammates communicate with you. While most of the story is voice acted surprisingly well, it loses its charm quickly and the anime cutscenes that grace the console counterparts are quickly missed. When you’re not spending your time during the Dark Hour fighting Shadows within the Tartarus tower, you’re busy managing your time between school, work and social links. The game affords you only so much time during the day to accomplish all these tasks and each task you select will take an entire section of the day, be it early morning, after school or evening. This often leads to crucial decisions between which social links you intend to level up for further advancement of your character.

Graphically, I can’t help but think that the game is a mess. The PSP has been in production for 5 years and developers have shown that they can push fantastic looking graphics out of the device. Persona 3 Portable not only throws boring static images at you, but when you are able to finally control your character through the seemingly endless levels of Tartarus, you’re forced to watch your poorly modeled teammates run around identically drawn environments ad nauseum. Since you must remain in the same block of Tartarus until each full moon passes in the game, every time you enter a new block, you will see the same dull, randomly created dungeons one after another until you reach a barrier, thus signaling you to waste time until the full moon boss fight. One visual area of the game that does impress, however, is the presentation of menus. Whether it’s the screen showcasing your character or Persona leveling up or the item and skills screen, Atlus dressed the menus in a hip neo-jazzy flair that really is a pleasure to look at.

The soundtrack in the game is very satisfying, ranging from J-Pop type songs to full on heavy metal guitar riffs that help spur you on through the game. Also, as mentioned earlier, the voice acting in the game is top notch but given the fact that the game is staged in an alternate universe Japan and all of your interactions are with people bearing Japanese names, it would have been a major improvement if the Japanese voice actor track could have been included in the game. It is understood however that the 1.8Gb limit of the UMD most likely prevented this from being possible given the length of the main story.

Gameplay is typical Japanese RPG turn-based style. The encounters are not random and are clearly visible on the battlefield with a small element of strategy implemented in the ability to strike the enemy first on the overworld screen which translates to an ambush style attack in the actual battle screens. While searching the simplistic and repeated levels for Shadows to fight, you’ll see the same tiny black blobs which represent the creatures you’ll be fighting. While the enemies are varied and interesting, I would have liked to have seen more variety in the overworld creatures you seek out in the dungeons. This omission of diversity yet again adds to the overall boredom inducing aspects of the game. While in battle, however, things can get exciting. Enemies have certain attributes which, in typical RPG style can be exploited with their equal and opposite attribute. What makes things interesting is that once you exploit an enemy’s weakness, you are given the ability to take another turn within your same round. With this inclusion, it is entirely possible to ravage an entire party of enemies with a single player.

While I enjoyed Persona 3 Portable for the time that I played it, I can’t honestly say that I enjoyed it all that much. There were aspects of the game that were brilliant and felt right for a Japanese style turn-based RPG, but other aspects fell flat and left me wanting more or worse, feeling bored. If looking for a recommendation for this game, fans of Persona 3, FES or even Persona 4 should pick this game up just for the alternate storyline and additional social links that the female main character gives you, but new entries into the Persona world may want to start somewhere else.

Second Opinion: by Eric Wall

It is truly mind-blowing to me that P3P exists. When you really take a good look at what the game represents – the 2nd enhanced port of a PS2 title from 2007 (almost a year after the release of the Playstation 3) – it almost seems as if you are glancing in on a world where last generations hardware still reigns supreme. The decisions made at Atlus always seem so deliberate and purposeful (probably why they have survived and prospered where others have failed) but this release may be the first misstep, or more accurately, a missed opportunity.

It might be a tad passe to say that P3P takes one step forward and two steps back, but I can’t think of a better analogy for this entry in the series. Improvements that were made from Persona 3 to 4, such as a fully controllable party and a few other battle mechanic tweaks, are nice but I don’t quite think P3P went far enough to warrant the port, at least in the way in which the porting of the title was handled. The elimination of the explorable overworld is a fantastic improvement; navigation is far more streamlined and simply offers a far better portable experience. But there in-lies P3P’s biggest flaw, the 3D perspective used for navigation and battles within the games dungeon feel so incredibly disjointed from everything else that it may as well be a completely separate game.

This is where I think Atlus took a wrong turn in development by doing what oh so many developers have done before them by simply applying console game mechanics and controls to the PSP. Sure, as Dave mentioned, the dungeon design is mundane, but navigating through the dungeon while fighting with a poor camera is no fun, as more times then I care to remember found me losing an advantage in battle simply for the inability to see and avoid a pursuing enemy.

The real question that I’d love to pose to the designers at Atlus is what is coming next in the Persona series? We’ve seen an enhanced port of Persona 1 and 3 to the PSP, and have yet to here any real news about the next entry in the series – Persona 5 and some kind of 3DS game have been confirmed to be in development. If Atlus is serious about making money, which obviously as a business they have to be, we’ll probably end up seeing a lot of Persona in the future, which if handled with a tad more care then P3P, would be a great thing.

I guess I am being a little harsh on the game, especially when for newcomers there is a lot of great stuff in this release, but do yourself a favor, pick up the console versions (especially P4) and don’t look back, you’ll be all the happier for it.