Persona 3 is probably my favorite Persona game of all time, and I say probably because I´m not really sure about that, anyways, it´s been a long time since I don´t play Persona 3, I mean it, it´s been years, so I was interested to see what this remastered version of Persona 3 had to offer, I´m not expecting too much either because, to be honest, I already feel satisfied with the fact that I can play it on the go through the Switch, I´ve been playing like 8 hours and these are my impressions for now.
For those who don´t know what I´m even talking about, Persona 3 Portable was a port of Persona 3 to the PSP, Persona 3 was already on the PS2 but this version was released as well, obviously, the PSP isn´t as powerful as the PS2, so there are some cuts respecting the original game, like there is no cutscenes at all and the game tells its narrative through visual novel mechanics, there is the fact that you can play as a female character as well, it´s cool since it can give you another perspective of the story if you want.
Speaking of the port itself, let me tell you that I was surprised because of the fact that is actually running at 60 fps on the Switch and I´m not even joking, not because the Switch can´t handle the PSP games or something like that, I mean, it obviously can but Atlus doesn´t have the best image at the hour of making good remasters or ports to other systems, but yeah, it´s running at 60 fps, what a miracle lol. I´ve been playing this game on handheld mode because I feel like it´s meant to be played this way, I don´t feel that comfortable when playing it on docked mode because of the format of the game, I mean, visual novel, the only difference between playing handheld vs docked mode is the resolution: 1080p vs 720p I think.
If there is something that I didn´t like was the fact that cutscenes were not implemented on this remaster, I understad that the PSP version doesn´t have stuff like that, but this is a remaster and I think there shouldn´t be any problem with implementing cutscenes, I do emphasis in that because, when the game tries to imitate the cutscenes through the game engine, well, it looks ugly, trust me, it doesn´t look good, again, I understand that on the PSP, but this is supossed to be a remaster, this is available for PC, Xbox and PS5 as well, it surely looks even worse on said systems.
Getting back to the fps stuff, I thought the game would lower them on dungeons, because you have to move the characters through maze-like sections but they still are petty solid like a rock so I´m happy regarding that, sometimes you can even see shadows from the characters and I was a little surprised because I couldn´t notice details like that in the original PS2 game. When battling with other enemies it´s the same, both the resolutions and frame-rate remain solid, even when there are many enemies on the screen, you could say I´m okay with the visuals but I can´t imagine showing this to someone who have only played Persona 5, probably there would be blood coming out of their eyes.
I have played many visual novels in my life so I wasn´t annoyed by the fact that the whole game is actually kind of a visual novel and as I say, the visual novel thing is well implemented, but I wish there was a way to play the original game in a remastered way, or they gave you the option to switch between Persona 3 Portable or the original Persona 3 game remastered, but obviously they didn´t do that because remastering Persona 3 Portable is way easier and cheaper. The comat system is not as complicated as someone would think, it´s just about find the enemy weakness and exploit that, until you can do an All-Out Attack.
I´ve seen a lot of criticism regarding this remastered version but I´ve gotta say that from my perspective it´s been a possitive experience, playing this game felt like a rush of nostalgia, I really had a good time, the only real issue I have is the cutscenes thing which I find annoying but if you didn´t play the original game I think you can be okay, I think that if you play the game on a bigger screen with 4K resolution or things like that, maybe you´ll start to see some problems. When I finish the huge backlog of games I have to play, maybe I´ll give a chance to Persona 4 Golden, but I´ll be honest, I already played that game on PC and I hate Marie and I really hate her dungeon, I preffer the original Persona 4 from the PS2 to be honest, but it is what it is, maybe I´ll give it a chance later.
All of the screenshots were taken by me