I've never played a persona game before, but I've always been interested in them. Between 4 and 5 which one do you think would ve a better place to start for a newbie?

I have a ps4, I don't own a vita, but pstv seems like an inexpensive way to play what I see most people say is the best version of persona 4.

So what do you think? I could use some help parsing some of this stuff since I don't know all that much about the series.

Thanks for your help! ^_^

They aren't connected directly, but I think it's a shame to miss 4. Persona 4 Golden had so much heart, with lovable characters, great dungeons and just all around great story.

I would just start here, there's nothing particularly about P4 that would be important to experience first.

Doesn't matter where you start as long as you eventually play 3, 4, and 5.

These games will make your life better. I guarantee that.

Persona 4 Golden and 5 are packed with tutorials in game so it shouldn't be too much of an issue, it just requires a lot of patience for the first... 10 hours or so. Either one would be fine since they are really sequels. Go with 5 since you already have the system for it.

P4G is an amazing experience, I ended up buying a vita just to play P4G. That being said I think 5 is a better video game where 4 is a better persona game. Im worried that if you play 5 first it will be hard to go back to 4 as the combat and dungeons are way more interactive in 5. So my recommendation would be to play P4G on Safety difficulty so you can power through the game relatively quickly without having to worry much about leveling up so you can focus on the story bits and social links. That will hopefully let you have more time with P5 and will let you experience some of the references to P4( they are mostly references to Persona in general not just to P4).

Also even by genre standard these are very long games, queuing more than one up sounds like madness.

We're talking about hundred hour games, here, and it's been nine years since the release of the last one in this style. There have been lots of Persona games and an updated re-release since then, but most people that are way into Persona games played 4 a long time ago. Playing these games back to back sounds like a great way to start hating them. With that in mind, I'd start with 5. You already have the system for it, the "zeitgeist" is still a thing, and there are some quality of life improvements that 5 has over 4, although I don't think those improvements are so drastic as to render Persona 4 any harder to get into than it was in 2008 (and Golden makes many quality of life improvements over the PS2 release anyway).

You can't go wrong with either one, though.

What I'd, personally, like is to see Persona 3 FES get the P4G treatment. The PSP re-release let you control your entire party, sure, but the overworld and social link aspect suffered too much. P3 deserves better.

Unpopular opinion in these parts but I think the characters and setting in P3 is better than P4

@humanity: P3 would be a decidedly rougher entry for a newcomer than either though.

You have a PS4 and no Vita, so I feel like this is a no-brainer. Just start with 5.

If you enjoy it you can you can always go back. Sure, you might miss some of the refinements, but those games still hold up.

I would start with 3 to be honest. Great game that's a bit tougher to go back to after the refinements of 4 and 5. But if not, I'd start with P4G.

Ha, that's how I first played them and it was RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME!

If you have watched the Endurance Run I would say P5.

If you haven't watched the Endurance Run watch that while playing P5 and experience them both together.

Yup. I played 3 FES after watching the ER and loved it. I guess that means you can go back but I highly recommend 3 and 4.

I don't share that opinion, especially on characters, but I respect it. 3 is a great game in its own right. I enjoy the extremely bleak (IMO) atmosphere.

@efesell: I know Golden alleviated a lot of the rough edges but I'm not sure if there was a full console release of it. Either way, what better way to appreciate the changes going forward.

I just never came around on the cast in P4 so even the better combat and stuff wasn't something that could help me out. Also in a juvenile way I always got a real kick out of the invokers being guns that blew the personas out of their heads and found the glasses in P4 super lame in comparison.

Persona 3 has the Kenji social link. That undoubtedly makes it one of the worst video games of all time.

Start with 5 since you already have a PS4. If you're into it the other games aren't going anywhere.

If you can easily play P4G go for it, otherwise just go right in to 5 my friend.

Persona 4's a great game, but it'd probably be hard to go back to after playing Persona 5. If you're talking about playing Persona 4 Golden specifically, I'd say play that first. It makes a decent amount of QoL improvements that are refined even further in Persona 5, and... it's just a good game! You'll also be able to see how much the games can differ in story/environment and still retain the general charm of the series.

It also has the Akinari social link which is amazing.

P5 is my first Persona game. I don't think there's anything particularly hard to pick up and it doesn't seem like there are necessary references to prior entries you need to know about for story purposes. So I think you're fine starting with this one.

That said, I sorta wish the game would just, get going? I'm about 6 hours in and I'm finding the game pedantic as fuck with its tutorials. I really don't need to have one dungeon sequence to teach me how to attack in combat, then another dungeon sequence to teach Persona use, then another one to show you Hold Ups, etc. It wouldn't be so bad except the game is clearly not going to let you do anything until it gets you through it. Days are flying off the calendar and I can't hang with anyone in my party, hold down a job, or do any side-activities. I pretty much am not being allowed to do any of the cool stuff fans of Persona talk about when they discuss loving the series.

The game's got a cool style and I'm liking/hating the characters enough to want to keep playing, but I'm not so in love I'm willing to sit through much more baby-step tutorializing. I might be done if it doesn't open up pretty quick.

Don't worry... you've got another 70 hours ahead of you. Plenty of time for all the other stuff. It has a slightly slower ramp than previous games, but just by a matter of degrees.

They seem very different tonally. 4 is something of a light-hearted romp, or as much of a romp as murder mysteries get; and 5 is a bit darker, teenage rebellion from what I've seen.

The game fully "begins" around the 6 hour mark as far as making your own schedule, working, hanging out, eating, etc. I can guarantee you this- your complaint here won't matter at some point. You'll forget about it.

For the record, P4 took about 2 hours for the game to fully open up.

I love Persona 4, it's amazing, but Persona 3 is the better game and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Now that's out of the way, just start with 5 and if you like it you can go back to prior titles.

Play 5, watch 4 on the endurance run maybe. Both are great games, so you can't go wrong. Biggest issue is burnout because these games are 90-100 hours long each usually. If you know you can successfully play both back to back then I guess do it in order. Having to choose only one is too hard of a choice for me to make for you unfortunately.

Just flip a coin and play the one that wins.

It's pretty tough to go backwards in the series because they always make major meaningful changes. The dungeons in 4 are procedurally generated and I found the combat to be incredibly boring. It sucked then and would suck far more if you experience Persona 5 first and hope for something similar. That being said it was still an improvement over 3 and the dumb tower.

The non combat parts in 3 and 4 will always be great, but it's too bad there's no way to skip all the combat.

Just play P3P and go with the superior female MC. Then you get to hang out with one of the best characters in the game instead of the worst. Unfortunately that lame-ass student council guy is still an S. Link.

Just start with 5 and see if you even like the series. Then play 3 and 4. 3 FES is my personal favorite, but 4 is good too.

For my money it's the best version of the game. All the new social links are really well written compared to the originals.

just play P5.

Start wherever is easiest. 4 and 5 are a must and 3 is really great too.

I would say it's systems come off as rougher whether it's the first you play or the last, but not enough to make someone bounce off who would stay with P4 or P5. At most I'd say they're an annoyance. However, I do think think it should be played first because it would be a pain for someone to play P4 or P5 and then go back to the conventions of P3 with full knowledge of the improvements that were made later which they now have to go without.

I see this a lot and it's.. hard to understand.

Like.. 'Make sure you play this older game first or else it will seem bad if you come back to it' is crazy advice.

I feel I should chime in again to say DO NOT JUST WATCH THE ENDURANCE RUN. I hate when people suggest that over actually experiencing P4 themselves. It's a game about building relationships with whoever you want and working your schedule around stuff. It's a damn role playing game, dude. You do not get the real experience by watching some guys play it and talk over it. P4 is a masterpiece and you'd be horribly missing out by just watching a playthrough of it. Seriously don't do that.

Also- I feel the true way to play P3 is the FES version. It's currently digitally on PS3. I do not recommend you first playthrough of P3 being the portable version. A lot of people will suggest P3P and to teach their own, but I'm against it for a first playthrough. With P3P, you sacrifice a LOT of presentation. gameplay segments outside of the dungeon are static images you navigate around with a pink circle. It's full on visual novel outside of combat. You also don't get the animated cutscenes. Yes gameplay and mechanics are improved in P3P (it was released after P4,) but I feel the 3D environments and animated cutscenes add a lot to what you'll feel while playing it. P3P is still a fantastic version of a great game, however. Don't get me wrong.

Oh, and the people saying just to play one of these games are lunatics. Absolute mad men I tell you.

@frostyryan: I wouldn't say only play one and one only but suggesting to most people that they need to tuck in for hundreds of hours of various Persona games sight unseen is a tad unreasonable.

@efesell: He's interested in starting the series and I'm letting him know 3, 4, and 5 are great games he should play. There's nothing unreasonable about that. It's pretty much what the thread is.

Persona 4 feels dated and slow after playing 5, so I definitely wouldn't so backwards. I would just play through 5 first before thinking about trying the others.

If you already have a PS4, you might as well play P5 and catch some of that zeitgeist while everyone else is playing it at the same time. While there are certainly improvements from 4 to 5, I don't think they're anything so major that it would be difficult to go back to Persona 3 or 4.

Boy, I had forgotten about the Kenji S. Link. There are definitely a couple of duds in Persona 3, but on the other hand you get to hang out with Tanaka and that's pretty fantastic.

Definitely start with 5, but go back to 3 and 4 at some point in the next few years. If you don't start with "the new one", you might be tempted to rush through the older games in the series which does them a disservice. Playing Persona games back to back is a surefire way to ruin them, as other people have said here. They all stand on their own and have aged better than a lot of other older RPGs, though P3 has the issue of choosing which version to play as they both have perks and drawbacks (I'd still recommend FES over Portable).

With it being so long between numbered game releases in this series, you'll be glad to have a backlog to go back to once you finish P5.

Start with 5, play 3 if you liked it. 4 is skippable unless you REALLY want some more.

P3 was the first one I jumped into, and I never really played a whole lot of JRPG's before. I managed fine, there is a bit of a learning curve for the nomenclature like AGI being fire or BUFU being ice, but apart from that the game does sort of ease you into it, until you hit that first boss and realize that no one is going to hold your hand through these encounters. Weirdly enough my experience with P3 was the same the same as Jeff and Vinny's adventure with P4. At time of release I saw a lot of talk about it, the visuals looked striking and the gameplay, despite not being a huge turned based fan, looked weirdly interesting to me. Dived in and it was a really refreshing experience coming from games like Modern Warfare or Gears that were my bread and butter at that time.

EDIT: Also I think the cast in P3 is just so fun and varied. You have a dog AND a robot lady!