I've played through Persona 3 Portable three times, once with male protagonist and twice with female. I absolutely loved the direct control aspect since I was used to it from Persona 4. Now that this is up on PSN I was thinking of picking it up to fully experience Persona 3 the way it was originally with The Answer addition as well, even though I did prefer the female protagonist's social links compared to the male's. Will I be too frustrated without direct party control or is the computer smart enough to not cast bufu when fighting enemies that absorb ice?

not really but the Ai has its prefered spells than can lead to alot of frustration

I played P3 after watching and playing a good bit of Persona 4, and while it can be annoying, it isn't the worst thing ever. Don't get me wrong, I was happy to hear that the portable one had it, but the game functions fine with auto fighting. The only thing is that you wind up learning your character's tendencies rather than giving them your own commands. I got used to it to the point that I generally knew what Junpei would do before it was his turn. Once you get to that point (which shouldn't take too long), then the game is roughly the same. At first though, you might wind up screaming at Junpei because he is burning all of his SP on stupid junk or something.

Also, the P3P version was a bit broken in ways that make it easier to play. In FES the characters will actually get exhausted over time in the dungeons, so they will limit your time in there. In P3P I was able to farm exp out of the dungeons until I got sick of it. Broken, but I didn't complain.

You will probably still love FES though. You played more P3 than I have at this point. Knock yourself out.

not really the Ai has its prefered spells leading to alot of frustration

@SlightConfuse: Lol to be fair i find the game much better if u never use mitsuru

@msavo said:

Will I be too frustrated without direct party control or is the computer smart enough to not cast bufu when fighting enemies that absorb ice?

Its smart enough not to do that atleast.

They won't pull a Vinny, but there are some frustrations. You can assign tactics in battle, but some tactics like "Knock down" (the most useful, if you ask me), aren't unlocked until several hours in. So you'll have people knocking down one enemy and then hitting them again instead of keeping the chain going. And while I do think Mitsuru is a great party member, she does have a weird obsession with Marin Karin.

Honestly though, it doesn't bother me much. Except maybe when a certain boss casts Moonlight Gown and everyone starts offing themselves.

its really not a huge problem. at least it wasn't for me. i tend to do some boneheaded stuff in jrpgs because i try to rush through some battles; so, not having direct control helps me to some degree.

Meh, that was kind of the main reason I stayed away from Persona 3 FES after Nocturne and Persona 4.

I was super interested in the story from what people were saying, but something about AI controlled party members rubbed me the wrong way.

I'm like 8 hours in and honestly it's not even worth sweating about. You can use tactics so they can heal in a pinch or just flat out attack.

You get used to it, and it usually isn't a big deal so long as you assign the proper tactics (make sure Mitsuru can't cast Marin Karin). It also adds some personality to the combat, because it feels like some characters were deliberately given certain AI patterns. For instance, Junpei usually focuses on attacking one target at a time, while Akihiko always looks to knock down as many enemies a he can.

For the most part its pretty okey with you set the AI Tactics properly, although there had been a bunch of times where AI did stuff i didn't want them too, and i kinda wish they gave you all the AI Tactic options at the start, and i have had one or two situations where i didn't have the ideal party for a boss simply for not knowing anything about the boss beforehand and my AI partners continued to use actions that weren't what i would have done and i ended up having a really long drawn out boss battle, but that only happened to me once and could have been remedied with a different party set up, although i tend to want to stick with a certain party when my levels get too far apart, although level doesn't matter allot unless its like 20 levels apart.

But simple answer its not a big deal.

@SpunkyHePanda said:

Honestly though, it doesn't bother me much. Except maybe when a certain boss casts Moonlight Gown and everyone starts offing themselves.

haha yeah, I really only had trouble with Junpei at that part even though I set everyone to support/heal he still wanted to attack the boss. Luckily Yukari was next in the turn order so she would immediately use Samarecarm on him so it wasn't such a big deal. Its just those bone headed AI choices make the tough battles a little tougher than they need to be.

I'm doing a similar thing, I played through P3P and found a cheap copy of FES so I thought I'd give it a try.

I'm about 8hrs in and the AI thing is still kinda annoying, especially when you assume the AI will do one thing then they do something totally retarded . For the most part its ok but it can be really frustrating if your coming from P3P.