Persona 3 Portable is a port of arguably the best game in the Persona series, but I just cannot recommend this game to anyone wanting to play Persona 3. This port of the game only gets love from the fan base for Kotone and that is all this game really has to offer. It is just a straight downgrade to FES and I don't know why you would buy this game if you are only wanting to play as the male protag, due to it offering absolutely nothing. I think reload coming out made this game way easier to actually obtain the game and play it, but if you want the old feel to Persona 3, just emulate FES. FES has The Answer DLC which is a good bonus.

The graphics:
Now I know this game came out a while ago but my biggest issue is that the whole game besides Tartarus (The dungeon) is that its just a big old PNG insert. I mean seriously why would we take away all of the walking around like in FES? It annoys me that we have to move some slow slow cursor to go from area to area in our daily lives in Persona 3. Now I get they didnt want to make models for the new characters and didn't have the time or money, but then why make new characters and Kotone in the first place if you will just downgrade the base game? And why couldn't we keep the physical models for Makoto? This game feels lazy and I truly don't think any effort went into porting this onto PC, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and the Playstation.

The new characters:
Kotone Shiomi from what I played seems to be a totally different character from Makoto with new social links. The new social links are fine but I just feel the writing for them was a little odd at times but I digress. Honestly I think that it brought social links that SHOULD HAVE BEEN in the first place. Like Junpei not being a homie for Makoto was such a miss. But honestly whatever.

Tartarus:
I know tartarus is seen as diabolical trash in all old versions of Persona 3, but I truly feel this is the worst. I felt that huge huge difficulty spike after the first boss unlike any other Persona game. I have beaten the Persona 4 on very hard (hard but with less XP) and Hard on p5 (merciless gives 3x damage making it easier than normal and hard) and I have truly never seen a worse balance. I find it absolutely astounding how crazy the jump in difficulty was. And I found that getting Pixie and like 10 xp after every fight was also a little crazy even in the 2nd part of Tartarus.

Overall? Buy literally any other persona game on steam that isn't this piece of garbage. Also emulate FES! :)

I don’t play JRPGS often but when I do it alters my brain chemistry for the next few years