Persona 3 Portable

Genre: Turn-Based Monster-Collecting JRPG

Players: 1

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in Persona 3 Portable & Persona 4 Golden Bundle, along with Persona 4 Golden. It is also included in Persona Collection, along with Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 Royal)

The Persona series of Turn-Based Monster-Collecting JRPGs has been around since it first spun off from the Shin Megami Tensei franchise in 1996, and while it is undoubtedly in Persona 5 that the series skyrocketed in popularity, Persona 3 is the game generally credited with providing the framework for what the series was to be known for from then onward. However, the game has received numerous releases, and there’s no real consensus about which is the best version of the game.

Surely coming in at last place would be the original release of Persona 3 on PlayStation 2 in 2006, not because it was a bad game, but because the game would see massive improvements in its updated 2008 release on PlayStation 2, Persona 3 FES. FES added numerous improvements that made the original game obsolete by comparison, including new content in the main game (“The Journey”), as well as a new post-game section (“The Answer”).

Yet another version of the game, Persona 3 Portable, was released on PlayStation Portable in 2009, which both added and removed content from the game. Due to the limitations of the hardware, 3D exploration in non-combat areas of the game was reduced to static areas you navigate with a cursor, a change which is less immersive, but arguably also more convenient. What’s more, all of the extra story content that the FES version of the game added was removed from this version. However, in place of that content, players have access to a new female character they can opt to play, who has a slightly different perspective on the events of the game’s story.

Between FES and Portable, there’s no clear agreement among series fans which version of the game is best, but for whatever reason, Atlus has opted to modernize the Portable version of the game rather than FES, and rather than creating a compilation or amalgamation of both versions. Of course, the recently-announced remake of the game, Persona 3 Reload, may prove to be an all-inclusive game that has all of the above content, but until then, this remastered port of Persona 3 Portable is the most up-to-date release of the game we’ve got.

However, just because this release is based on a game that’s nearly 20 years old doesn’t mean the presentation is terrible. This was, after all, the start of the slick anime style that Persona would come to be known for, with some great voice acting in both Japanese and English, along with an absolutely killer soundtrack, featuring great songs like Soul Phase, Want to be Close, Mass Destruction, and Time. And this release improves the resolution and textures in the game, as well as giving us higher-resolution character portraits and intro video.

Having said that, this game definitely shows its age – the 3D scenery and character models are fairly low-poly, and the 3D areas players explore in the game’s “tower” combat area is extremely visually-repetitive. The game doesn’t look bad, but you can certainly see how this is a game that was originally created multiple generations back.

As with other entries in the Persona series, Persona 3’s story centers around a group of high school students secretly fighting demonic enemies using their own collectible “persona” demons. In Persona 3, the game’s plot revolves around “The Dark Hour”, where every night at midnight, a select few people experience an additional hour stalked by the aforementioned demons, while most of the populace remains blissfully unaware, encased within coffin-like containers until The Dark Hour ends and they go on with their lives as if nothing had happened.

Players take the role of a new student inducted into the group SEES, who have taken it upon themselves to fight their way through the apparent source of the demons, a tower that appears in the local mall during The Dark Hour, and uncover the truth about what is going on. Throughout the game, players are confronted with one of the game’s main themes: death. And if the ominous comments about death and the coffins weren’t enough of a hint to that theme, the way players summon their persona and use its magical abilities by putting a gun-like device to their own head should certainly make this apparent.

The game’s story and characters are excellent. And the combat and the way you build up your party of demons, as in any Shin Megami Tensei game, is also mostly fantastic. It’s irritating that by default you can only directly control your own character in combat, but thankfully there’s an option to change this in the game’s “Tactics” menu, and being able to automate your team should help make grinding go more quickly. Persona 3 also has you strengthening your Persona’s abilities by building up your social ties to other students in school, making for a nice “dating sim” element to the game. All good stuff.

However, there are definitely other problems here as well. Not only are the combat areas highly repetitive, but progression is painfully slow, with the game taking an agonizingly long time to upgrade your characters and their personas, making for a lot of grinding. And while I normally find grinding in the Shin Megami Tensei franchise to be delightful, here things move so slowly that it can make the game a bit of a slog.

In the end, Persona 3 Portable on Nintendo Switch is still a quality JRPG, but it is a game that has parts that haven’t aged well, poor progression, and the unfortunate fact that this game is missing content from other versions of Persona 3. Fans of JRPGs and especially fans of Persona or Shin Megami Tensei will definitely still want to play this, but this is far from the best Persona game, and I can’t even conclusively say that this is the best version of this Persona game.

tl;dr – Persona 3 Portable on Nintendo Switch is a remaster of the PlayStation Portable remake of the original PlayStation 2 release of Persona 3, and this is a fine Turn-Based Monster-Collecting JRPG, but it has aged somewhat, features some tedious grinding, and lacks content from earlier versions of Persona 3. This is a decent port of a solid game, but it is neither the best game in this series nor is it definitively the best version of Persona 3.

Grade: B

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The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

Persona 3 Reload

Genre: Turn-Based Monster-Collecting JRPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Persona 3 is a beloved game, but it’s an old one, and up until Reload came along, the version of the game players were playing, even on modern platforms, was just an upscaled version of the 2010 PlayStation Portable game. Given the series’ popularity, it’s little surprise that we saw a remake of the game release in 2024 on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, with this remake coming to Nintendo Switch 2 in 2025.

I’ll say now, I’ve noticed others complaining about performance issues on Nintendo Switch 2, and I honestly don’t see this myself. To be fair, the game’s framerate was dropped from the 60FPS to 30FPS here, and that much is definitely noticeable and disappointing, but beyond that I can’t say that I ran into many issues in my time playing the game. Plus, Atlus claims a patch will be released soon to address these issues. Perhaps it has already been released and I didn’t see anything about that, I don’t know. In any case, any complaints I have about graphics aren’t due to any performance issues.

Rather, my complaints are that Persona 3 Reload simply doesn’t seem ambitious enough to justify a full-priced remake, and one with no upgrade path from the Nintendo Switch release of Persona 3 Portable. Now, to be clear, there have absolutely been some major changes here – the in-game 3D characters and environments have all been redesigned to have much more detail, and there are more people bustling around in those environments. When you put this side-by-side Persona 3 Portable on Nintendo Switch, with its somewhat low-poly character models and often barren environments, the difference is striking.

The thing is, when you consider what the Nintendo Switch 2 is capable of, and what other modern platforms that received are capable of, the extent of the remake that Persona 3 Reload offers strikes me as somewhat underwhelming. Honestly, I’m not sure why the Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game even needed a framerate cut compared to other versions. In fact, comparing this release to Persona 3 Portable, you have the unusual situation where a Nintendo Switch 2 version of a game actually has worse loading times than the version on the original Nintendo Switch. Again, to be fair, the loading times here aren’t terrible, and the added graphical improvements help to justify the increase, but it’s still disappointing to see this sort of compromise when the tradeoff isn’t exactly mind-blowing.

There are other presentation changes as well. The menu design has gotten a slick update, and the soundtrack has been updated as well, with some new songs, and re-recorded versions of old ones. The voice acting cast has also changed with entirely new recordings, something that may get a mixed response for those who preferred the old voices.

The mixed bag continues with the features list. On the one hand, you have some nice quality-of-life updates like improved notifications in game menus. However, on the other hand, this release lacks the added story content of Persona 3 FES, and it lacks the second playable protagonist of Persona 3 Portable, so this cannot even be considered a definitive version of the game.

I suppose I can technically say that Persona 3 Reload is the best version of a truly outstanding JRPG. But it comes with so many compromises, and the improvements here are so underwhelming, that I can’t recommend players to buy the upgrade if they already have Persona 3 Portable on Nintendo Switch, especially since Atlus has refused to give players any sort of upgrade path, and particularly because this game is selling at a full $60 on Nintendo Switch. If you’ve never played Persona 3 before, I do think it’s worth that price, but if you have played it already, that money is better-spent on something else.

tl;dr – Persona 3 Reload on Nintendo Switch 2 is a remake of the classic Monster-Collecting JRPG, but there’s no upgrade path here, and for a full-priced release this is a disappointingly lackluster remake, even if it is probably the best version yet of a truly great game. If you have yet to play this game, I absolutely recommend it. But if you already own another version, I don’t think it’s going to be worth it for you to buy it again for this compromised remake.

Grade: B-

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