With the announcement of Persona 5, I have spending a lot of time thinking about Persona and which game in the series I like best. The following is an in depth look at and comparison of the various elements of Persona 3 and Persona 4. This purely my opinion, but I'd be interested to hear which game other Persona fans feel is better and for what reasons.

GAMEPLAY:

Unsurprisingly, these two games share a lot in common from a gameplay perspective. Persona 4 is pretty much a refinement of the gameplay concepts introduced in Persona 3, so like you would expect, improvements were made. One of the biggest improvements was the addition of the ability to control your party directly. In Persona 3 you only had direct control over the main character and were limited to giving tactical commands to your party members such as “conserve SP” or “go for knock downs”. This created a situation where the challenge of combat was just as much about learning the AI tendencies of you party members and knowing how specific commands would cause them to behave as much as it was about dealing with enemies. In Persona 4 you could directly control you party members like you would in any turn based RPG, selecting their commands from a list. The system in Persona 3 was a neat idea that made the characters feel like individuals with their own tendencies rather than tools for you to use, but ultimately the gameplay considerations come first, and the system in Persona 4 is better in that regard.

Other than that, the gameplay of the two games is largely the same, so Persona 4 gets the edge.

DESIGN:

Like the gameplay, the design of these two games is incredibly similar, with Persona 4 once again being an iteration on the systems of Persona 3. However, in this instance the improvements made are somewhat offset by some steps backward. The most immediate improvement is the way the game handles dungeons. In Persona 3, there was only a single dungeon that consisted of around 250 floors. There is no getting around the fact that a large portion of Persona 3 consisted of grinding your way through a single dungeon that didn’t change much visually from floor to floor. Persona 4 is a huge improvement in this regard, with eight unique dungeons consisting of around 10 floors each. Even if you choose to clear each dungeon a second time to fight the optional boss, that is still only 160 floors compared to the the 250 or so from Persona 3. The result is a shorter game but also one with much better pacing and far less grinding (though not none).

However, while dungeon design is much better in Persona 4, there are some other elements of the design that took a step backward. The RPG elements of Persona 4 were simplified slightly compared to Persona 3 and some interesting mechanics were removed. In Persona 3, physical attacks were divided amongst three damage types: “slash”, “strike”, and “pierce”. This played into the weakness system making physical weapons and physical based characters specialists in certain types of damage, just like magic users. By rolling these damage varieties into the single category of “physical damage” in Persona 4, it meant that enemies were now never weak to physical damage and physical based characters couldn’t really contribute to exploiting enemy weaknesses. This in turn reduced the number of overall categories for weaknesses and resistances, making it easier to have all your bases covered with your party configuration while also marginalizing physical based characters. In addition, there were also some other minor elements removed such as weapon fusion and combo skills, which just contributes to the feeling that Persona 4 is a game with slightly less depth than its predecessor.

Because each game has an edge over the other in one area of design, this category is a draw.

STORY:

Like most role playing games, the story is the focal point of each of these games, and it is fantastic in both. Both feature long and in-depth stories that play out over the course of dozens of hours. Persona 3 revolves around a group of high school students that belong to the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad (or SEES). They spend their nights fighting shadows and investigating the mysterious tower dubbed “Tartarus” which materializes every night during the “Dark Hour”. Persona 3 has a very dark tone, especially in comparison to Persona 4, and has some genuinely surprising twists (and some not so surprising). The story evokes things like Buffy The Vampire Slayer, being about a group of high school students gathering after hours to fight monsters and being led by an adult member of the school faculty that knows what’s really going on. The story moves at a snail’s pace, but every development is compelling and the writing is extremely good.

Persona 4 also stars a group high school students that fight shadows, but rather than being recruited into an organization they simply stumble into this scenario. It all begins with two murders in their small hometown and a rumor about a mysterious TV phenomenon known as “The Midnight Channel”. The main characters soon find they can enter another dimension, the “TV World”, which is inhabited by shadows. Persona 4‘s story is actually primarily a murder mystery, with the end goal to uncover who has been kidnapping and murdering people using the TV World. This encourages you to play along with the characters in the game since you the player are trying to piece the clues together and figure out the identity of the murderer just as much as the characters are.

While I love the story in both of these games, I have to say I prefer Persona 3 just slightly. When it comes down to it, the story is the driving force of Persona 3, while often it takes a back seat in Persona 4 for hours at a time. Persona 3 also feels like the stakes are a lot higher, and the twists and turns the story takes in that game feel much better earned than they do in Persona 4. It also helps that Persona 3 has clear antagonists for the majority of the game with genuine payoff, while Persona 4 features no clear antagonist for 90% of the game and then pulls the same bait and switch three times in a row right at the end of the game, each time feeling less earned than the one before it.

The Persona 3 story gets the edge over Persona 4′s story.

CHARACTERS:

Each of these games feature outstanding characters with well written dialogue and fleshed out personalities. Most importantly, they have struggles that feel realistic and relatable, even though they’re taking place in a world of demons and magic. I have my favorite characters in each game, but the simple fact is that characters are the focal point of Persona 4 whereas the story is the focal point of Persona 3. So much of Persona 4 revolves around the characters, their insecurities, relationships, and struggles with maturity. Persona 4 is a game about characters set against the backdrop of a supernatural murder mystery. Persona 3 certainly does have some great character moments, but they aren’t as frequent or as in depth as they are in Persona 4.

There are several points in Persona 4 where the main narrative is all but forgotten in favor of purely character driven sequences that last a significant amount of time. While I love the characters in both of these games, Persona 4 dedicates so much more time to character development and interaction that it is the clear winner. It’s not so much that the characters themselves that are so much better in Persona 4, but that the implementation of characters is better. In addition to the story placing a lot more focus on the characters in Persona 4, every one of your party members has an available social link, which is unfortunately not the case in Persona 3.

The characters of Persona 4 get the edge.

MUSIC:

Like most aspects of these games, the music is simply outstanding. Both games were composed by Shoji Meguro, and he absolutely nails it in both instances. However, if I had to choose which game I thought had better music, it has to be Persona 3. Like the game itself, the soundtrack of Persona 3 is much darker than Persona 4. It features a lot more jazz and hard rock, with excellent/ridiculous Japanese written English rap verses performed by someone that clearly speaks limited English. The Persona 4 soundtrack is a lot more upbeat and features more pop type music. The soundtrack of both games fits perfectly with the tone of the game, but I just find myself personally liking the Persona 3 soundtrack a bit more.

The music of Persona 3 get the edge.

Although I fully intended to pick a clear winner before actually writing this, it turns out the games wound up tied. Across five categories, each game won two with the games tying in the “design” category. Despite them tying in the head to head matchup, the edge still goes to Persona 3. The tie breaking aspect for me is the tone of the games.

Both games deal with some heavy themes and more than a little death, but the lighthearted nature of the visuals, music and dialog in Persona 4 create somewhat of a disconnect with the events that play out in the story. The hamfisted way the story concluded in addition to the fact that a happy ending was never really in doubt make the whole game feel like it had less weight. Persona 3 has this feeling of impending disaster that pervades the back half of the game, and the darker tone serves the story much better. You never get the sense that everything will work out like you do in Persona 4, and indeed it doesn’t. The bottom line is Persona 3 felt a lot more dire than Persona 4. You could argue that these elements fall under the category of story, which Persona 3 won anyway, but I feel they are significant enough to make a difference. By the slightest of margins, Persona 3 is the winner.

This blog is a copy of an article I published at harcoregamer.com. After some admittedly poorly thought out missteps early in my history of Giant Bomb forum activity, I have since avoided posting anything I wrote for other websites on these forums, but with this topic I really wanted to get some input from the Persona faithful here at Giant Bomb.

You can see the original article here:

http://www.hardcoregamer.com/2013/11/23/sequel-showdown-persona-3-vs-persona-4/63486/

Just a quick question: have you played the Answer? As that's where the characters of P3 get their development.

I found parts of Persona 3 to just be boring (December.)

I prefer Persona 3. Persona 4 isn't enough of a step forward from it if you ask me.

What I find incredibly weird is that if you compared the story of the two games, 3 would seem like the sequel. 3's story feels like it has much more significance to the world and the Personaverse where as 4's feels far more contained.

Also, the party members feel like they took a step back in 4. Where they are all high schoolers (with varying twists to their tales) in 3 you get a child, a persona weilding robot and a god damn dog! They feel like the type of crazy characters you'd get from a follow up and furthers the feel that 4 is a step back somewhat.

That's not even looking at Persona 3 Portable, which takes all the combat redesigns from 4 and adds them back into 3 and lets you play as a girl, which is just as fully fleshed out as you'd expect.

Persona 3 wins, quite handily, in my eyes.

I prefer Persona 3. I actually like not directly controlling my party. It forced me to think about who was in my party and why, and how to best use them for each encounter. There was also the whole bit about learning how to anticipate what they would do and make my choices so they best took advantage of that. P4 I could basically just bring whoever and it would work out, there were many fights I did little to no weakness exploiting and I still didn't have any real trouble. P3 was just way more deep on the combat level and the payoff for winning legitimately hard fights was just that much more.

I also prefer the P3 characters. Suck it P4 you happy go lucky crew, P3 has actual party members buying the farm, a persona using dog, and Akihiko and Mitsuru are still my two favorite team members. That said Ken does need to be pushed in front of a bus.

The answer is, as always, Persona 2: IS. The batshit insanity of that game just has to be seen.

Yes, I have. I do like the Persona 3 characters a lot, but there's no denying that Persona 4 revolves around character development to a much greater extent than 3. All the dungeons are specifically about a character, with emotional payoff at the end, and there are far more social events (field trip, festival, watermelon party, etc.) in Persona 4 than there were in 3.

I've always found Persona 4's characters to be much weaker than 3's. The development of the characters in 4 is mostly relegated to optional social links. I feel like the main problem is that the P4 characters were pretty much the same at the start and the end of their social links since this stuff wouldn't be translated into the main story. After you defeat their shadow they don't do much outside explanation and comic relief. I guess the guys in 4 feel more like a real group of friends and kids, which makes them more relateable.

I liked the way the characters in 3 evolved throughout the story. Junpei gets over his jealousy of the MC, Aigis becomes more human, Fuuka comes out of her shell, Yukari and Mitsuru become friends, etc. The way they changed and how different they are at the start compared to the end, and then again in Arena made them more interesting to me.

I agree with pretty much all of your assessments, but I fall on the side of Persona 4. I'll just talk a bit about each category like you did I guess and go from there.

Gameplay - Not much to add here I guess. Being able to control your party members is huge. Though, if you want to count social links as gameplay, I found it to be much easier to raise social links in Persona 4. There was no taking Yuko to Wild Duck Burger 50 god damn times for her to go up. Everyone went up pretty easily.

Design - Again, I agree here, though losing the different types of physical wasn't a big deal to me. Especially since in both games it ended up turning into using MC(Main Character) to knock everyone down if possible. I did miss the fusion spells though. I never used them all that much, but I thought they were a cool addition.

Story - I'm gonna tie your tone discussion into this one. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Persona 3 WAS more dire. If you didn't save someone in persona 4, one persona dies. If you didn't beat the full moon shadow, it was gonna wreck shit up. Persona 4, yeah, the world was ending, but more slowly. My understanding of 3 was that when you fought Nyx, the world was ending. You lost, it was over right then. And then Nocturne happens. Though, I would have to disagree about the disconnect. Persona 4 to me is a much more personal experience. To stick with the Buffy analogy, Persona 3 is like season 7, where Persona 4 is more like season 6. If that makes sense. Persona 4 is a lot more light hearted, but when shit got real it didn't feel out of place to me, it felt really serious. When Nanako got kidnapped and was subsequently dying, that was dark and rough. I think they did such a good job with the characters that that was the point they kinda all realized that what they were doing wasn't a game. That realization for the characters made the tonal shift work for me. That scene shortly after that with Namatame, deciding if you want to kill him? That was intense. Persona 3 never felt so personal, except for Shinjiro. That's why I find the story in Persona 4 to be slightly preferable. Though I will grant you that the end of Persona 3 is much stronger. I'm talking the very end. MC4 leaving was a nice scene, but realizing what happened at the end of 3 as the credits rolled was heartbreaking.

Characters - This is a pretty easy one to give to Persona 4 for me. I think all of the main cast of Persona 4 are good in their own way, then you have the additions of Nanko, Dojima, and Adachi. In persona 3, I didn't really care for Aigis since I've always had trouble with the robot learning to love thing. I hated Ken. And Fuuka was bleh. That said, fuck the haters. Junpei is a dick but I still thought he was a great character and my bro(though not as much as Yosuke). And Yukari is up there for one of my favorites across both games. I understand the people who think she's a giant bitch, and hate her more after playing The Answer, but I actually liked her more after playing the answer. More than the other characters, Yukari felt real to me. She was conflicted and selfish, and yeah, kind of a bitch, but I thought she was a really well done character. Also, I'm sorry Giant Bomb, but I'm not the biggest Chie fan in the world. My appreciation for her has grown over time, and I do like her, but the way they lean so much on the fact that she loves food feels really gimmicky and kinda rubs me the wrong way. I don't think it's a worthwhile character trait most of the time. Then there's the social links. The party social links were obviously the best, but I found the side ones in Persona 4 to be stronger. Minus Dying Young Man, The Monk, and Maya. A lot of the others in Persona 3 I find myself looking back at them and thinking about how much that person sucks. Even Kenji who's supposed to be like your best bro.

And I just wanna look at the Main Characters real quick. I know they're more or less blank slates, but I feel like we got more personality from the MC of Persona 4, though it could be just that it's more fresh in my mind. Either way, I got the feeling that MC3 was more of an awkward, quiet, kinda creepy guy, where MC4 was actually a cool dude.

Music - This is a tough one for me. I like Reach out to the Truth more than I like Mass Destruction, and being the theme you hear the most, it gives Persona 4 a slight edge initially. But the overworld music in Persona 3 is much stronger for me. Iwatodai Dorm is funky as hell, and I love Changing Seasons. Though Heartbeat, Heartbreak is pretty good. The boss music is where it gets tricky for me though. I think I'll Face Myself is slightly better than both Master of Tartarus and Master of Shadow, but slightly worse than Unavoidable Battle. I'm not even gonna try and figure out where The Almighty and New World Fool fall. Persona 4 doesn't have a Burn My Dread(Last Battle), so Persona 3 wins that one for free, though it might have anyway. Which brings us to the final boss themes...Ok, Battle for Everyone Souls is one of the greatest boss themes of all time, make no mistake that I think it wins. That said, the Reach out to the Truth reprise at the end of Gensis is fucking incredible and deserves a mention. Oh, and to bring up FES again, I think Heartful Cry and Darkness are both fantastic. And for the sake of covering all my bases, I think Kimi No Kioku is better than Nevermore and the openings of Persona 3(FES included) are better than the openings of Persona 4. So yeah, the music in Persona 3 slightly edges out Persona 4.

I'm sure this reads like a huge Persona 4 bias, but I assure you it's very close to me. It took me a long time to figure out which one I liked more. Both games will always have a special place in my heart, but if I have to pick winner, it's Persona 4 and it's mostly the characters that do it.

This is a really good point, actually.

I agree with every point you made above, but you neglected one simple thing that tips me towards Persona 3 over 4. And it may be the case for you too- I played Persona 3 first. Not only is it harder to go backwards from 4 to 3 (the gameplay design is devolutionary), but the improvements in 4 are iterative, rather than being revelatory. Persona 3 blew me away like nothing I'd ever played before, so going on to Persona 4 was more of the same goodness, rather than being a whole new experience. I actually actively disliked the tone and characters of 4 the first time I tried it, because I was so attached to P3 (the soundtrack was part of that, since it was one of the things I loved from P3 the second I plugged it in).

Most of the people I know who like Persona 4 better played it first. And I think there's something to that.

So true.

I'm in a situation unique to Giant Bomb viewers in that my first exposure to the series was the Persona 4 ER. After enjoying the endurance run so much I then went and played Persona 3 and then Persona 4. Persona 4 was my first exposure to the series, but I played it for myself after having played 3 first.

I played Persona 4 before 3 so that probably biased me towards it, along with watching the Endurance Run which will always be linked to my enjoyment of 4.

For 3 though I played the PSP remake so I was glad for some of the changes made to the battle system etc but one thing I really did miss was all the character animations they took out for it. I felt a lot of the charm of the game was lost which is probably another reason I lean more towards 4.

As you can probably tell by my icon, I like Persona 3 more. It just felt like a more complete game to me. I enjoyed the world more, the characters more, the story more, and the ending was infinitely more satisfying than Persona 4's. The gameplay was better in 4 at points, but the flaws with 3's didn't really bother me at all. Oh yeah, and I personally found the social links in 4 to be completely terrible.

I think 4 is a fine game, I just didn't find it nearly as compelling as 3. Or Innocent Sin.

One thing that I thought Persona 3 did extremely well was create a pervasive mood. For me, at least, everything about that game instilled an uneasy sense of foreboding. The interface was dark blues and whites. Your school had mile-high stark white walls, lending an imposing and impersonal feeling. Your dorm is far bigger than it needs to be; floors and floors of empty rooms, largely unused by the handful of residents that live there. Most of the music tracks have either a haunting piano-based motif, or a "cool" hip-hop feel that feels largely dissonant with the rest of the game's atmosphere. All of your operations take place at night, when the city is completely devoid of souls aside from your party members. Towards the end of the game, too, things become pretty dark; not in a "wow, this is so dark and edgy, bro" way, but rather that the party feels a real sense of hopelessness, as though what they're up against is far greater than themselves. (The moment when the moon opens up and reveals Nyx inside is, I think, one of my favorite moments in a game in many years.)

The whole "coffin" thing is pretty lame as far as I'm concerned, though, as is shooting yourself in the head to summon your Persona. Both of those come across like they were conceived by some artist or in some board meeting that set out to create the most impactful first impression possible, completely abandoning subtletly in the process. Luckily, much of the rest of the game aside from those things isn't quite so heavy-handed.

I really like Persona 4 also, and I think that some of the things that it does differently (more "relateable" setting, more tightly-constrained focus, mystery-based plot) work very well. Sometimes I wish that it did more things differently than Persona 3, but at least the things that it borrowed from Persona 3 were largely good. The true ending's big reveal was a bit too similar to Persona 3's story for my tastes, but overall, it was a satisfying conclusion. It's also extremely good at maintaining a cohesive tone just like Persona 3, though its tone is a bit more "poppy" and bright which, while enjoyable, doesn't quite have the same impact that Persona 3's style did for me.

I love the places that P2IS's story goes (how many games have the balls to tell you "all of this shit you've been doing for the last 60+ hours was meaningless, these artifacts don't actually do anything, and now I'm going to blow up the world anyway"?), but the gameplay didn't do too much for me. Too many instances of "hey, you've arrived at this place for story reasons, but it's now a dungeon full of monsters that nobody else seems to notice...for...some reason." I was also sort of let down by P2EP, but that's probably just because I was so floored by how P2IS ends that my expectations were really high.

Persona 4 is amazing but persona 3 has mitsuru who is a trillion times hotter than any p4 girl. Persona 3 also has the dog teammate. Sadly persona 3 loses because they kill off the best character like half way through.

The thing that kills me with P3 is Tartarus. It's just so bland relative to what P4 offers with its dungeons. It made the game a chore to play at times.

The heavier gating with the social links also annoyed me a bit, because the ones I was actually interested in didn't open up till near the end of the game.

I can say without hesitation that I prefer Persona 4. While I really like the characters in Persona 3, they do have a bit too much of the melodrama touch about them for me (with the exception of Fuuka, incidentally my favourite P3 character). I liked that the Persona 4 characters had more relatable issues and also that they felt far more like a group of friends than the Persona 3 characters did. I know that's kind of the point, SEES is a very forced arrangement but I really like the camaraderie you get in 4.

I see a lot of people hold P3's story above P4, but I think it's important to note that for a good long while, you're just killing Shadows for the hell of it and even after you get some semblance of a goal you only do it cos Ikutsuki tells you to. It's only toward the last months that the story gets really good whereas I feel that Persona 4 remains more consistent. Persona 3's endgame and final boss are better than Persona 4's in my opinion but that doesn't discount the 70-odd hours preceeding it.

Music is just purely down to taste and both soundtracks are excellent as I'm sure most of you will agree. Again though, I find that Persona 4 has a more consistent selection of tracks I like whereas a lot of the tracks in Persona 3 I grew sick of like the dorm theme, the city theme and the Tartarus theme. Also, I'm not as big a fan of Mass Destruction as a lot of people seem to be. I vastly prefer Reach Out to the Truth. Having said that, Battle for Everyone's Souls in P3 is my favourite piece of video game music ever.

Gameplay-wise (excluding Portable here), it's absolutely no contest. Persona 4 streamlined a lot of tedious things about Persona 3 such as not having fast travel, not controlling party members, having to talk to them separately to equip them, having to talk to them to use their healing spells. And I will concede that these things gave Persona 3 a sense of identity from other RPGs but I don't think they needed busywork to be different from other RPGs, I think they accomplished that already. Of course if you include Portable under the umbrella 'Persona 3' then a lot of these complaints cease to exist (and so does some of the character stuff). There are some things I do miss about Persona 3 in this regard though such as getting up requiring a turn, multi-hit spells not giving a '1 More' if it misses one enemy or an enemy isn't weak to it and Fusion Spells. I feel missing these things out took quite a lot of strategy out of Persona 4 although it doesn't bother me too much. On a smaller scale, the menus in P4 are FAR more responsive than the menus in P3. Good god are the P3 menus slow as molasses. And then there's Tartarus. Fuck Tartarus is all I'll say about it.

So there, I've had my say. I will add though, that it's really easy to bag on Persona 3 when answering this question but I still love it. Persona 4 is my favourite game ever and Persona 3 is probably number 2, so really much of my criticisms of 3 come from a good place and are kind of nit-picky.

Persona 3's characters are better, and heres why- they're developed over the course of the story. Let me explain.

In Persona 4, things follow a pattern. Character gets introduced. Character goes through shadow realm, gets developed for a while, in a fun but kind of heavy-handed way.

Character never gets developed again. Seriously.

See, I think the addition of party member social links did more harm than good. Because the game doesn't know how social linked you are at any given point, it doesn't develop characters during the main plot, instead using the established characters for humor but never really character-driven drama outside of specifically their own dungeon. In the social links, however, since they can do them whenever, are completely divorced from the events of the plot and have to be fairly generic. Some are better than others, but Yosuke angsting about his dead crush in December like it happened yesterday was kinda....bad. Yukiko and Kanji get some development during there link, but Chie and Rise's nebulously written issues don't do great on that front.

Compare Persona 3, where the characters have arcs that develop naturally throughout the whole game. Junpei's, Akihiko's, Aigis's- All their development is much better, and much more natural, than the characters of P4, because it is both tied into the plot and because the game can afford to take it's time. It doesn't even suffer much from lack of social link- because you live with them, and a lot of the dialogue changed every day to every few days, you get a lot of little interactions with the characters which build over time, something P4 lacks.

Some people may like P4's characters better,and that's fine, but P3's are definitely better written.

@towersixteen: "In Persona 4, things follow a pattern. Character gets introduced. Character goes through shadow realm, gets developed for a while, in a fun but kind of heavy-handed way."

That's definitely something that started to wear on me by the fourth or so time that it happened. "Oh, a new character was introduced. I can't wait until they get kidnapped, we go into the TV to save them, they say "you're not me!" all dramatic-like, boss fight ensues, then reluctant acceptance. I can't wait to see who's going to get introduced and then mysteriously disappear next month so we can go through this all over again!"

I prefer the combat in P2 as its basically P3/P4, but with more stuff in it. But yeah, the dungeon crawling is pretty bad, I don't think I would finished the game if they kept up with the "the floor is poison lava!" stuff they do in the caves. Its really where the age shows the most.

Persona 4 is so full of anime cliche bullshit to the point of disgust.

P3 son.

I love them both! Persona 3 is a lot darker and moodier, though Persona 4 has so much personality and a fun spirit that's truly infectious. Both have awesome music. Both have great stories. Both get drawn out and cataclysmic at the end, which I didn't care for necessarily, though P3 seems to earn it more.

The high school stuff felt more well-realized in Persona 4, though the character development in Persona 3 may have been more nuanced. I think they both have unique strengths. I liked a lot of the scenarios in Persona 4 a lot better too. Also, I've only played through Persona 3 FES but I watched the Endurance Run and played about ten hours of P4 Golden on the Vita. The anime scenes in P3 look freaking terrible, but that really doesn't matter. Exploring Tartarus got really old, and the varied dungeons in Persona 4 helped keep it feeling somewhat fresh.

This thread has made me decide to pick up P3FES on PSN.

By getting at least one person to play Persona 3, I provided my service to mankind.

Indeed. FES is the version to play, too.

I had to pick up my copy of FES on the PSN using a US account. I really wish they would release it on the EU PSN.

Man... This is really hard. I understand both sides of the argument, and if you asked me for my answer, it would vary day after day. Persona 4 is a much more uplifting experience, while Persona 3 is a roller-coaster of emotions.

If we're talking about main story, I'd say that Persona 3 takes it. It expands the characters pretty well throughout the main tale, where Persona 4 has all that in social links. But that made social links better in Persona 4 in my opinion, so as the whole package of side stuff and main story, I prefer Persona 4.

Ah, fuck it! Can't we just say that both are must-play masterpieces?

Yes we can, and I often do. This is really just an exercise of declaring one game a 100 and the other a 99, but it's still fun to pick apart.

Love both games to death, but I prefer Persona 3 because I'm a bummer of a human being and that story really worked itself into me.

P3 for me. I loved the characters (Mitsuru!) and the dark story had a lot more forward momentum for me. I'd really love a Persona3 Golden or whatever for the Vita... I don't like the PSP version so I never finished it (I know, I'm weird, but I didn't like having exploration reduced... did love having a female MC option.) P4 was great too though. Teddie rocks, especially for a character who I thought was going to be really annoying. Found the resolution a little anti-climactic. I'm excited for P5 - I hope they are going in a slightly darker direction similar to Persona3!

P4 for me all the way wth one exception though. The social link stuff was more interesting in P3 than it was in PS4. For once you had actual choices and you could make people easily make upset and not like you anymore. You had to be careful with your answers or how you treat the girls. I never had that problem in Persona 4. I do not even know if you can make people angry at you through your choices. beside that I enjoyed Pesona 4 way more than I did 3 and that was mostly because of the story and its characters.

This thread makes me happy. So many great arguments and critical analyses of 2 of my favorite games ever. I don't think I have anything to add, in fact a few of you have clarified for me why I did or didn't like certain things in 3 or 4. I would say I am more attached to Persona 3, but I think that is largely because I played it first, and because I loved the atmosphere. I never felt any true sense of dread or peril in P4. But P3 was the first game where I actually felt that the world might end (and when you consider what a cliche that is, how masterful is it they made you feel that?), and I actually felt sad about the world ending and sad for the characters who had been working so hard to stop that from happening. I'd never been so emotionally invested in a game before. Going to play some Arena now, I am so happy we are getting so much Persona next year!

@l1ghtn1n: Wasn't it just January where the music changed?

Anyway, I like Persona 3 a little better. Persona 4 is a really good game but it constantly repeats itself to the player. If you want to make sure the player remembers everything, have a summary or a record of conversations or something in a pause menu. You do not restate things you've already stated several times in the past few minutes. Persona 3 did this occasionally but it wasn't anywhere near as pervasive as it was in Persona 4.

The rest of the story in Persona 3 was more interesting to me. Persona 4 really overstates the danger at hand there toward the end. Persona 3, though, sets up a pretty good end-of-the-world scenario and foreshadows it pretty well. The whole plot builds a lot better than Persona 4's and the payoff is way more interesting. I'll give it to Persona 4's characters, though, they definitely feel more diverse and interesting.

I found the mechanics in Persona 4 way better, though. I eventually got used to only setting vague combat roles for my team in Persona 3 but it's just not the same as pulling off a series of moves that really does some damage to whatever you're fighting. I also don't buy the "it gives them more personality" angle that some people take. You're still giving them orders and they've still elected you as the leader.

I do hope that Persona 5 takes advantage of the PS3's extra power to do something more than just better graphics. It would be cool if there were a bigger section of the city open, if there were a lot more voiced dialogue, and if cutscenes didn't consist almost completely of text boxes. Also, there needs to be more weather. This sounds like a really weird thing to say but better storms, better sunny days, some snow over the winter months, etc.

My introduction to Persona and JRPGs in general was the P4 Endurance Run. I watched that in its entirety and really enjoyed it. I bought Persona 3 FES on PSN in August of last year, and played a good portion of it and got burned out on it. I did not play it again until earlier this year and probably finished it in August. I really liked it, but it felt grindy in some parts. I also couldn't finish a lot of social links because I didn't have enough time. It seemed from the endurance run that's not a problem in P4.

Is The Answer for P3 worth playing for the story? I've read that there are no social links and it's just combat so I never bothered to play it. I also just started P4 Arena and am enjoying that as well. Are there any story bits from The Answer I should know for Arena?

Don't be dumb, Persona 4, no contest. Don't get me wrong Persona 3 is an awesome game but its got a super grindy portion in the middle and the story doesn't progress in any meaningful way for months of in game time. Seriously, I just stop playing for like a year before I finally finished it. And don't forget that stupid forced allie AI that screws you up frequently in combat.

You really can't one-up fighting nazi robots and Hitler himself.

I had a similar question about The Answer in regards to P4 Arena when I was contemplating whether or not to play it. I raised these question to the community and got some good answers. The thread is here:

http://www.giantbomb.com/shin-megami-tensei-persona-3-fes/3030-20683/forums/the-answer-572240/#26

I did enjoy The Answer, but if you really hated the grind in P3 you might not have as good a time with it.

Persona 3 felt more like an SMT main game than Persona 2 or 4 cus it was one giant dungeon, and that's not a compliment. Its just a cosmetic thing sure cus you're ultimately just running in a rat maze in all these games but it makes a difference. Knife weilding corgi is pretty ballin though and so is the KOSMOS ripoff, and it certainly pioneered a lot of things, basically the whole trajectory of the series for better or worse changed after P3. And 4 refined all that stuff so it should naturally be better. I imagine the only people who prefer 3 are those who played it before 4.

That's odd, as I feel that Tartarus is the exact opposite of what I feel SMT dungeon should be.

When I visualize an SMT dungeon in my mind I see a maze, teleporters, one way doors, pitfalls, dark corridors. Dungeon where just the act of traversing it is a challenge, a puzzle. On the other hand Tartarus takes handful of rooms, slaps them together by random, adds chests and stairs up and calls it a day.

I've been talking about Persona a lot lately, so I'm gonna try to keep it short.

As somebody that was introduced to Persona through the third installment, I'm one of the few that prefers 4. There aren't many of us out there, so I figured I'd share my views.

Gameplay: Persona 4. Controllable party members

Design: Persona 4. Each dungeon represents an individual's personality. In the ways of socialization, you're often working on more than one aspect: leveling diligence AND s.linking, making money AND leveling courage, socializing AND making that teammate stronger. A lot of P3 felt more fragmented in that you were often asked to choose to do one thing per day. 4 also streamlined combat (not necessarily a positive for everyone, but was for me, because I think the combat is one of my least favorite parts of Persona) Team members getting stronger with S.links provides a nice sense of progression; Yosuke pushing you out of harm's way, or Chie kicking a monster into space give more impact to your socialization efforts.

Story: Persona 3 builds up to saving the world. Persona 4 builds up to stopping a murderer (I'm gonna refer to the normal ending for this, because it's more true to the smaller scale of 4). I'm sure many would disagree with me when it comes to this, and I accept that. The question of "which story is better?" is a highly subjective one. I liked that Persona 4 felt a lot more personal. I liked that I was saving one or two, tangible people, and not just the general population. I still despise the Persona 4 antagonist for the shit they did. It might've been that I figured out who the murderer was early on, but stopping this person was a very strong driving force for me. Not much of P3's story really stuck out to me besides Shinjiro's death, besides that, it felt like a normal "Save the world" plot. But then again, I'm just kind of tired of plots that involve saving the world in such a dramatic way. The tone of 3 is fairly consistent; it is dark and depressing. Because of this, I found the tone to be one-dimensional, and just fell flat. P4 has a lot more ups and down-- it captures what adolescence is like: having no cares in the world, while you have the weight of the world on your shoulders. It feels a lot more aimless, which I find endearing, but most probably wouldn't. While, I prefer P4's story, I acknowledge it's a suuupeerr subjective thing

Characters: The common theme among P3 characters is the confrontation of mortality and loss. Most characters have lost a loved one, or may soon lose a loved one, or are facing their own personal mortality. The common theme among P4 character is the confrontation of social stigma. All characters has been brought up to view others and themselves in a way that conflicts with their emotions and personality. P4's theme is more encompassing than 3's. P4 has a character that struggle with the loss of a loved one, a character who is confused with their own existence, and a character that attempts suicide, but doesn't limit its character cast to just those with mortality issues. It also incorporates characters who struggle with apathy, and gender and sexuality issues. The more diverse cast allowed for greater dynamics between characters, and just made the world feel more believable. I found that P3 didn't really do relatable all that well (granted they may not have been trying to be relatable, but the fact that the dog and the robot were probably some of the more likable characters says something about the main cast of that game). I like that the characters from both don't figure out everything by the end of the game, like there was some tangible solution to the problems they faced. Prefer P4, but again, this is so subjective

Music: I like P4's music better. Still so subjective

Conclusion: I played P3 first, but like P4 better. Pretty much every edge 4 has over 3, however, is either entirely subjective, or not really that significant. I do believe that P4 is a more cohesive experience from a design perspective, and P3 is more cohesive from a narrative perspective. Because the franchise's main appeal is its character cast, and how the characters face their individual struggles, each of the games' appeals are so hugely subjective. I like P4's main cast better, and I like P3's secondary cast better. It just happens that I like P4's main cast more than P3's secondary cast.

I liked persona 4 a lot better than persona 3. To me, 3 focused too much on grinding, and it was harder to get personas in the game. The story was a little bit to dark for me with the theme reaking of death. Not to say it was a bad game, it played like a typical RPG, but i didn't have the same emotional attachment to the characters of 3 that I had with 4. I can replay 4 as many times and still love it, and I've replayed it A lot, I'm gonna do it again. 3 was just another RPG to me. I like being able to control the party, not being to takes away from the strategy which defeats the purpose of a turn based RPG. I did appreciate the depth the persona 3 has, it's A much longer game than 4, and 3 makes a good prequel to it if you think about it, the two games are somewhat connected. The fact being that if the events in 3 didn't happen, 4 would even be. I honestly think the whole Nyx scenario could be revisited, because the MC from P3 is the only one keeping the world from certain death.