I never liked JRPGs. Well, it's not as much that I didn't like than I just didn't care about them. The Persona 4 Endurance Run has changed this for me. I watched them play one hundred hours of that game and thought, "Yeah, Japan knows how to make JRPGs, I should try one." So, I tried out Tales of Symphonia. Eh. I like it, but I can never really play it for very long. I play it for about 45 minutes, and say to myself, "I've done enough today.".  

My experience with Persona 3 FES is completely different. I played 6 hours (almost straight) today and never got tired of it. I've been playing through Endurance Run style with a friend, which makes it much more enjoyable. Being able to argue about decisions just makes you think about them a lot more. I've been the one playing, while my friend watches and makes sexual innuendos. Involving 7-year old girls. It's good to be able to joke about stupid things while playing a game, and also if one of you forgets something, you are able to remind each other.

Anyways, the game is amazing. Seeing Persona 4 first makes it really weird to play, because sometimes I'll say, "Hey, they ripped this off from Persona 4" before realizing that this came first. There are a lot of things that they took out for Persona 4 which really confuse me, but there are also a lot of things that they streamlined in Persona 4 which I wish I had now. Being able to equip your whole party from one menu is one of those things. In Persona 3, you have to talk to everyone to equip their stuff, and you can't equip anything to them until you enter a dungeon. It's very annoying.

The battling is a lot different too. At first I was disappointed that I could only control one character, but I've gotten used to it. In Persona 3, your party members who aren't you are controlled by AI. It makes the game seem a lot more like real-time, because there are a lot of things happening in a row without a stoppage. You choose one thing for your character to do, and then everyone else on the battlefield just acts. You can give your teammates Tactics, like "Heal", or "Focus on this target", which is helpful for boss fights, but I'm about 9 hours in and I rarely end up using it.

One of the weirdest things is that I'm 9 HOURS IN, and all of the Social links I've got so far have been with outside people. People who are not in my dungeon-crawling party. This is absolutely crazy. They should be the first dudes I Social Link with! What the heck, game!?

There are a lot of things to talk about in this game, so maybe I'll save some of those for further updates, but so far, it's damn good! I think I'll be able to last 80 more hours of this.

PS: I just realized that in two sittings of this game I've played about an hour less than I have of Tales of Symphonia in around 12.    

 I never liked JRPGs. Well, it's not as much that I didn't like than I just didn't care about them. The Persona 4 Endurance Run has changed this for me. I watched them play one hundred hours of that game and thought, "Yeah, Japan knows how to make JRPGs, I should try one." So, I tried out Tales of Symphonia. Eh. I like it, but I can never really play it for very long. I play it for about 45 minutes, and say to myself, "I've done enough today.".  

My experience with Persona 3 FES is completely different. I played 6 hours (almost straight) today and never got tired of it. I've been playing through Endurance Run style with a friend, which makes it much more enjoyable. Being able to argue about decisions just makes you think about them a lot more. I've been the one playing, while my friend watches and makes sexual innuendos. Involving 7-year old girls. It's good to be able to joke about stupid things while playing a game, and also if one of you forgets something, you are able to remind each other.

Anyways, the game is amazing. Seeing Persona 4 first makes it really weird to play, because sometimes I'll say, "Hey, they ripped this off from Persona 4" before realizing that this came first. There are a lot of things that they took out for Persona 4 which really confuse me, but there are also a lot of things that they streamlined in Persona 4 which I wish I had now. Being able to equip your whole party from one menu is one of those things. In Persona 3, you have to talk to everyone to equip their stuff, and you can't equip anything to them until you enter a dungeon. It's very annoying.

The battling is a lot different too. At first I was disappointed that I could only control one character, but I've gotten used to it. In Persona 3, your party members who aren't you are controlled by AI. It makes the game seem a lot more like real-time, because there are a lot of things happening in a row without a stoppage. You choose one thing for your character to do, and then everyone else on the battlefield just acts. You can give your teammates Tactics, like "Heal", or "Focus on this target", which is helpful for boss fights, but I'm about 9 hours in and I rarely end up using it.

One of the weirdest things is that I'm 9 HOURS IN, and all of the Social links I've got so far have been with outside people. People who are not in my dungeon-crawling party. This is absolutely crazy. They should be the first dudes I Social Link with! What the heck, game!?

There are a lot of things to talk about in this game, so maybe I'll save some of those for further updates, but so far, it's damn good! I think I'll be able to last 80 more hours of this.

PS: I just realized that in two sittings of this game I've played about an hour less than I have of Tales of Symphonia in around 12.    

The pacing in this game is really good, so even 50 hours in it still feels fresh and exciting.
 
And the story is fun to follow as well.

If you really enjoyed P3 FES I suggest that you try out P3P for the female route (provided that you already have a PSP) since they improve the gameplay a lot thanks to P4 albeit some slight adjustments to a few things.