• Hey everyone, staff have documented a list of banned content and subject matter that we feel are not consistent with site values, and don't make sense to host discussion of on Famiboards. This list (and the relevant reasoning per item) is viewable here.
  • Do you have audio editing experience and want to help out with the Famiboards Discussion Club Podcast? If so, we're looking for help and would love to have you on the team! Just let us know in the Podcast Thread if you are interested!

News Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 Royal coming to Nintendo Switch (P5R out now, P3P and P4G available January 19, 2023)

Status
Not open for further replies.
Reader mode
Looks pretty great performance wise on that off-screen footage, never played the game are there parts more taxing than others?
 
Anyone who hasn't played Persona 4 Golden yet; you are in for a treat. It is absolutely one of the very greatest games ever made. The town where the game takes place will feel like a home you wouldn't want to leave after you've finished it. That's how I felt. It's a masterpiece.
 
Rhythm Shift said:
Anyone who hasn't played Persona 4 Golden yet; you are in for a treat. It is absolutely one of the very greatest games ever made. The town where the game takes place will feel like a home you wouldn't want to leave after you've finished it. That's how I felt. It's a masterpiece.
Click to expand...
This.

Also totally not biased lol.
 
Rhythm Shift said:
Anyone who hasn't played Persona 4 Golden yet; you are in for a treat. It is absolutely one of the very greatest games ever made. The town where the game takes place will feel like a home you wouldn't want to leave after you've finished it. That's how I felt. It's a masterpiece.
Click to expand...
P4G was the one I wanted the most to come to Switch. I didn’t care if we didn’t get the others, I just want P4G on my Switch. Naturally, since we are getting the others, I’ll be playing those as well though.
 
MSnap said:
Personally I much prefer P3P simply because the female protagonist has more meaningful social links, at least imo. Also you can control your whole party in battle like every other game in the franchise.
Click to expand...
...wait, in the other versions of P3, you can't? WTF?
 
Sadist said:
Whats so bad about it though? I hear that argument fly by several times. I played FES (on PS3) and what I played of the extra content wasn't that spectacular really.
Click to expand...
shoptroll said:
I’m still holding out hope for a proper package or remakes that rolls P3P’s changes and second MC option into the presentation used by OG/Fes and drops the shackles that were introduced by putting it on PSP
Click to expand...
SuperFakerBros said:
Wait, how? If that's the case, I'll just go with P4G
Click to expand...
Because Persona 3 Portable gets rid of almost everything that Persona 3 was good at. The 3D world to explore is gone, and the game becomes a visual novel, you're just a cursor moving over static 2D backgrounds. Cutscenes are gone, and replaced by visual novel segments. The whole atmosphere and sense of place and dread that Persona 3 was so incredible at establishing, that's gone in P3P, because it's a fucking visual novel.

For instance, look at this starting scene in Persona 3:



Now compare to what they did with it in Portable:



And this happens through the game. The plot loses its teeth, because the storytelling is totally neutered.

Even some of P3P's much vaunted improvements are a step down. Persona 3 and FES don't have party control, the AI controls your party members based on directions you give them. This is what every encounter in the game is designed around. P3P actually gives you full party control, which might sound like an improvement except they failed to rebalance the game, so the whole thing becomes a walk in the park about 4 hours in. You could get by without fusing any major Personas because the encounter design is not taking into account that you have full and direct control over every single combat action now.

It's a HUGE step down, in every possible way. FeMC is great, yes, but as much as I like her, she is not worth the cuts made everywhere else.
 
SuperFakerBros said:
...wait, in the other versions of P3, you can't? WTF?
Click to expand...
Yea, P4 (which was released a little over a year before P3P) was the first in the modern trilogy to allow direct party member control. OG P3 and P3 Fes still required using the AI settings. Which, I will always were not horrible if you had a good grasp on what each of them did. You still ended up with some stupid deaths but it wasn't as bad or as often as people would have you think if you knew what you were doing.
 
shoptroll said:
Yea, P4 (which was released a little over a year before P3P) was the first in the modern trilogy to allow direct party member control. OG P3 and P3 Fes still required using the AI settings. Which, I will always were not horrible if you had a good grasp on what each of them did. You still ended up with some stupid deaths but it wasn't as bad or as often as people would have you think if you knew what you were doing.
Click to expand...
Even there, I think I'd rather have no stupid deaths than some of them. That just sounds infuriating to me

Phantom Thief said:
Because Persona 3 Portable gets rid of almost everything that Persona 3 was good at. The 3D world to explore is gone, and the game becomes a visual novel, you're just a cursor moving over static 2D backgrounds. Cutscenes are gone, and replaced by visual novel segments. The whole atmosphere and sense of place and dread that Persona 3 was so incredible at establishing, that's gone in P3P, because it's a fucking visual novel.

For instance, look at this starting scene in Persona 3:



Now compare to what they did with it in Portable:



And this happens through the game. The plot loses its teeth, because the storytelling is totally neutered.

Even some of P3P's much vaunted improvements are a step down. Persona 3 and FES don't have party control, the AI controls your party members based on directions you give them. This is what every encounter in the game is designed around. P3P actually gives you full party control, which might sound like an improvement except they failed to rebalance the game, so the whole thing becomes a walk in the park about 4 hours in. You could get by without fusing any major Personas because the encounter design is not taking into account that you have full and direct control over every single combat action now.

It's a HUGE step down, in every possible way. FeMC is great, yes, but as much as I like her, she is not worth the cuts made everywhere else.
Click to expand...

Some of the structure is making me think of SMT IV, minus not having explorable 3D environments, which I honestly didn't mind, but I can totally see the reduction in production values and lack of proper balancing being an issue. Surprised they didn't just go with what P3 had and just add in some of the features from P3P. Sounds like it'd have been the best of both worlds
 
Xaltmas said:
It's just gonna suck in the super likely event that Persona 6 is PlayStation 5 only lol.
Click to expand...
I think that Soul Hackers 2 sales and PS5 flopping in Japan while 4 dies out west, the P6 being multiplat is the most likely scenario, and Switch timed exclusive not that out of question.
 
Shrug I’m still up for using P3P as my entry into persona. Will just make P4G that much sweeter
 
0
SuperFakerBros said:
Even there, I think I'd rather have no stupid deaths than some of them. That just sounds infuriating to me


Some of the structure is making me think of SMT IV, minus not having explorable 3D environments, which I honestly didn't mind, but I can totally see the reduction in production values and lack of proper balancing being an issue. Surprised they didn't just go with what P3 had and just add in some of the features from P3P. Sounds like it'd have been the best of both worlds
Click to expand...
The structure simplification isn't the issue, the issue is Persona 3 is effective because of its story and storytelling. The game creates a very palpable sense of dread (you can see it in the video from FES, there are abstract shots, rapid cuts, music fades, and just the sense of being in a very horrific place where something has gone very wrong). Persona 3 as a game is pretty mediocre (the mechanics are not too well thought out, and would get improved multiple times over in 4, 4 Golden, 5, and then 5 Royal; the dungeon (yes, there is only one) is terrible; the battle system has been discussed; the social links are pretty bad, and not fleshed out), it's the story, storytelling, and soundtrack that elevates it into being something unforgettable, Persona 3 Portable nerfs every single one of those strengths.

They couldn't have taken P3 and P3FES, because they lost the source code to those games years ago. P3P is the only one they still maintain.
 
shoptroll said:
Better than the OG P4?
Click to expand...
Yeah. Personally I don't care for the new character they shoehorned in (Marie) but you can ignore her. But the good massively outweight the bad. An extended calender giving you more time to play, lots of new events and locations. Better Persona fusion. Costumes. Touched up graphics, new music. Big upgrade.
 
Chie said:
Yeah. Personally I don't care for the new character they shoehorned in (Marie) but you can ignore her. But the good massively outweight the bad. An extended calender giving you more time to play, lots of new events and locations. Better Persona fusion. Costumes. Touched up graphics, new music. Big upgrade.
Click to expand...
Even Marie isn't as bad in P4G, it's the spin offs and anime where she got insufferable lol
 
0
Phantom Thief said:
The structure simplification isn't the issue, the issue is Persona 3 is effective because of its story and storytelling. The game creates a very palpable sense of dread (you can see it in the video from FES, there are abstract shots, rapid cuts, music fades, and just the sense of being in a very horrific place where something has gone very wrong. Persona 3 as a game is pretty mediocre (the mechanics are not too well thought out, and would get improved multiple times over in 4, 4 Golden, 5, and then 5 Royal; the dungeon (yes, there is only one) is terrible; the battle system has been discussed; the social links are pretty bad, and not fleshed out), it's the story, storytelling, and soundtrack that elevates it into being something unforgettable, Persona 3 Portable nerfs every single one of those strengths.

They couldn't have taken P3 and P3FES, because they lost the source code to those games years ago. P3P is the only one they still maintain.
Click to expand...
That's honestly kinda curious to me because it seems like an enhanced re-release on PS2 or PS3 could've addressed those issues, minus the dungeon, to at least give it something along with the story and presentation to carry it. I guess the PSPs limitations got in the way of that?

...well then, shit, I guess P3 is off the cards for me. Oh well, I have too many JRPGs to go through anyways 😅
 
0
MSnap said:
Yes, it was 30fps on PS4 even with the Pro enhancements.
Click to expand...
Thanks! I actually think this will be another case like Alien Isolation port where the game looks better than the PS4 version on Switch due to the time that passed and effort porting to other platforms + not being held back by PS3.
 
0
The reverence people in here are talking about P4G with makes me wish it was the first game being released. Never played any of these games, and I was going to just get P5R and be done, good or bad, but now if it's good, I'll have to get P4G.
 
EvilChameleon said:
The reverence people in here are talking about P4G with makes me wish it was the first game being released. Never played any of these games, and I was going to just get P5R and be done, good or bad, but now if it's good, I'll have to get P4G.
Click to expand...
But then you'd have the opposite problem because then the reverence people talked about P5R with would have forced you to get the after instead
 
EvilChameleon said:
The reverence people in here are talking about P4G with makes me wish it was the first game being released. Never played any of these games, and I was going to just get P5R and be done, good or bad, but now if it's good, I'll have to get P4G.
Click to expand...
I definitely like P4G more than the original version of P5, but P5R got pretty close I think. It’ll probably depend on what you value more from each game though.
 
MSnap said:
I definitely like P4G more than the original version of P5, but P5R got pretty close I think. It’ll probably depend on what you value more from each game though.
Click to expand...
As someone who's played both P5 and P5R, I thought the two versions were basically identical, aside from the new characters and dungeon at the end
 
SuperFakerBros said:
Oh yeah, you could swap out your characters more easily, right?
Click to expand...
That and ammo refills after battle, duo attacks, and there a lot of overworld enhancements as well. More time to do side activities because someone finally gave Morgana coffee. Stuff like that. A lot of little things added up.
 
Phantom Thief said:
But then you'd have the opposite problem because then the reverence people talked about P5R with would have forced you to get the after instead
Click to expand...
This, plus also as much as I like P4G (and I do) I vibed a lot more with P5R. That's obviously subjective, but also it's a bit tough to go back to P4G after playing 5 with all the QoL stuff and improvements and mechanical changes 5 brought to the table. At least it was for me.
 
SuperFakerBros said:
As someone who's played both P5 and P5R, I thought the two versions were basically identical, aside from the new characters and dungeon at the end
Click to expand...
Nah, not at all. P5 feels like an internal beta build to P5R’s final release, there’s way too much different across both games. Other than the two new characters, three new social links, one new dungeon, one new semester representing 30 hours of new content (that does represent some of the best content the series has had), there’s also massive changes to combat mechanics (the new Baton Pass, the reloading of guns between battles, the Showtime attacks), most dungeons have been substantially redesigned (and all of them have been at least somewhat altered), every boss is redesigned, there’s entirely new locations in the world to hang out at, there are more exploration and characterization hooks like Will Seeds, Social Links mechanics have been altered (including mid rank events, free form gifting, post hangout conversations), there’s a BUNCH of new mini games and activities in the world (darts!), Mementos has seen a MASSIVE overhaul in look and music, plus mechanics like dark outs, plus the addition of Jose giving you more direct control over the layout of Mementos, the Persona compendium is larger, the story has been altered with more simple hangout scenes added to improve pacing, reduce repetition, and remove the single minded focus on the Phantom Thieves’ exploits the original game had, stealth and traversal have been overhauled (both leverage the hook shot liberally now, and stealth allows more sticky points to take cover), dialog has been rewritten to be less stiff than the original localization, the homophobic scenes have been rewritten, Negotiations have been made more transparent, I haven’t even gotten into latent abilities each Persona has and how much they change the meta game completely, every main Persona has a third evolution stage, there are more date events and spots, and of course, you get far more time to do things now; like just across the board and on every level, Royal is such a thorough, comprehensive, significant improvement on vanilla P5 across the board, it very legitimately almost makes vanilla P5 feel like an internal beta build that got a wide release, with Royal being the actual game they intended to make all along. They’re not even in the same category, vanilla P5 is good but very flawed. Royal is basically perfect.
 
Phantom Thief said:
Nah, not at all. P5 feels like an internal beta build to P5R’s final release, there’s way too much different across both games. Other than the two new characters, three new social links, one new dungeon, one new semester representing 30 hours of new content (that does represent some of the best content the series has had), there’s also massive changes to combat mechanics (the new Baton Pass, the reloading of guns between battles, the Showtime attacks), most dungeons have been substantially redesigned (and all of them have been at least somewhat altered), every boss is redesigned, there’s entirely new locations in the world to hang out at, there are more exploration and characterization hooks like Will Seeds, Social Links mechanics have been altered (including mid rank events, free form gifting, post hangout conversations), there’s a BUNCH of new mini games and activities in the world (darts!), Mementos has seen a MASSIVE overhaul in look and music, plus mechanics like dark outs, plus the addition of Jose giving you more direct control over the layout of Mementos, the Persona compendium is larger, the story has been altered with more simple hangout scenes added to improve pacing, reduce repetition, and remove the single minded focus on the Phantom Thieves’ exploits the original game had, stealth and traversal have been overhauled (both leverage the hook shot liberally now, and stealth allows more sticky points to take cover), dialog has been rewritten to be less stiff than the original localization, the homophobic scenes have been rewritten, Negotiations have been made more transparent, I haven’t even gotten into latent abilities each Persona has and how much they change the meta game completely, every main Persona has a third evolution stage, there are more date events and spots, and of course, you get far more time to do things now; like just across the board and on every level, Royal is such a thorough, comprehensive, significant improvement on vanilla P5 across the board, it very legitimately almost makes vanilla P5 feel like an internal beta build that got a wide release, with Royal being the actual game they intended to make all along. They’re not even in the same category, vanilla P5 is good but very flawed. Royal is basically perfect.
Click to expand...
Yes to all of this. 1000% Royal is the better game. It does make the game easier with all the new options, especially if you really know what you're doing, but playing on hard can help with that at least. It also doesn't quite top the original climax/ending for me personally, but it's close, and it's not like that original climax section is gone anyway, it's still there. So it's pretty much all upside.
 
MSnap said:
That and ammo refills after battle, duo attacks, and there a lot of overworld enhancements as well. More time to do side activities because someone finally gave Morgana coffee. Stuff like that. A lot of little things added up.
Click to expand...
Huh, I guess that's probably why it didn't stick out to me. They were generally smaller stuff rather than massive sweeping changes
 
0
Phantom Thief said:
Nah, not at all. P5 feels like an internal beta build to P5R’s final release, there’s way too much different across both games. Other than the two new characters, three new social links, one new dungeon, one new semester representing 30 hours of new content (that does represent some of the best content the series has had), there’s also massive changes to combat mechanics (the new Baton Pass, the reloading of guns between battles, the Showtime attacks), most dungeons have been substantially redesigned (and all of them have been at least somewhat altered), every boss is redesigned, there’s entirely new locations in the world to hang out at, there are more exploration and characterization hooks like Will Seeds, Social Links mechanics have been altered (including mid rank events, free form gifting, post hangout conversations), there’s a BUNCH of new mini games and activities in the world (darts!), Mementos has seen a MASSIVE overhaul in look and music, plus mechanics like dark outs, plus the addition of Jose giving you more direct control over the layout of Mementos, the Persona compendium is larger, the story has been altered with more simple hangout scenes added to improve pacing, reduce repetition, and remove the single minded focus on the Phantom Thieves’ exploits the original game had, stealth and traversal have been overhauled (both leverage the hook shot liberally now, and stealth allows more sticky points to take cover), dialog has been rewritten to be less stiff than the original localization, the homophobic scenes have been rewritten, Negotiations have been made more transparent, I haven’t even gotten into latent abilities each Persona has and how much they change the meta game completely, every main Persona has a third evolution stage, there are more date events and spots, and of course, you get far more time to do things now; like just across the board and on every level, Royal is such a thorough, comprehensive, significant improvement on vanilla P5 across the board, it very legitimately almost makes vanilla P5 feel like an internal beta build that got a wide release, with Royal being the actual game they intended to make all along. They’re not even in the same category, vanilla P5 is good but very flawed. Royal is basically perfect.
Click to expand...
Good Lord, about 30% to 40% of that practically passed me by. I guess for me none of them felt like huge additions individually so that's why it didn't stick out to me compared to, for example, the differences between WW and WW HD, which were super blatant and obvious. Also, gotta ask, did you have all of this written up beforehand or did you really think of it all on the spot? 😅
 
shoptroll said:
So Atlus overhauls are way more substantial than the ones Square-Enix used to do for the International Edition re-releases of their games in Japan?
Click to expand...
Generally, yes. There are some things exceptions but usually they add quite a lot to the back end of the game along with a ton of QoL improvements in their enhanced rereleases. P5R was a weird one because it was being rereleased on the same system in 2020, but it’s not something I think could’ve been added as DLC because it’s just too different from the original.
 
SuperFakerBros said:
Good Lord, about 30% to 40% of that practically passed me by. I guess for me none of them felt like huge additions individually so that's why it didn't stick out to me compared to, for example, the differences between WW and WW HD, which were super blatant and obvious. Also, gotta ask, did you have all of this written up beforehand or did you really think of it all on the spot? 😅
Click to expand...
Honestly I think that's what speaks to the quality of the changes and additions the most, that they are so well done and integrated into the game so well, it feels like they were always there, they don't stand out as very obviously grafted on, unlike, for example, the extra content in Tales of Vesperia's Definitive Edition.

And no lol, that's the best part, I was actually writing it up on the fly, originally I'd intended to write about the battle mechanics and new social link stuff, but then I kept remembering more and more and kept adding it in lol. And the best part is, I actually didn't get everything in my last post lol. I totally forgot about Treasure Demons and the Warning Light Velvet Room Fusion overhauls, for example, and didn't even mention the Thieves' Den lol. It's just, there is so much that is so thoroughly updated and overhauled it's hard to keep track of it all.

And I do get that unlike other HD remaster rereleases, P5 to P5R's changes aren't immediately visually apparent, particularly since the graphics themselves don't really see any change other than a simple 4K visual upscale. But yeah, it's a total redo of the game, even when it looks the same lol.

shoptroll said:
So Atlus overhauls are way more substantial than the ones Square-Enix used to do for the International Edition re-releases of their games in Japan?
Click to expand...
Oh yeah, for sure, and they've been getting progressively more ambitious. P3 FES was closer to a Square style update (though even that was more ambitious than most Square ones at the time); P4 Golden went one step further by basically integrating all its changes into the base game, and updating a lot of the base game in the process (unlike P3 FES, which just grafts on most of its new stuff into a clearly marked epilogue at the end). P5 Royal goes one step further to the point that it kind of feels like a whole new draft, like basically a semi-remake, in terms of completely redoing the bulk of the game around the core of the original, while also adding a ridiculous amount of new content and mechanics in the process. It is an extremely ambitious redo of the original. And yeah, as @MSnap said, while I do empathize with people who were unhappy at having to pay full price for Royal even when they owned the original, ultimately, what Royal is could not have been sold as DLC or an update or an expansion pack or whatever, any more than, for example, REmake could be made available as an update to the original RE1 (assuming both had been available on the same internet capable console I mean, I realize the time and platform differences make this an imperfect comparison, but I use it more to draw attention to the relationship between RE1 and REmake, which I think P5 to P5R is a more minor version of).
 
So the impression I'm getting is:
I liked original P3 enough while I played, but the shine's worn off for me afterwards -> I should stay away from P3P
I liked original P4 more than P3 and how I felt about it hasn't fallen off the same way -> I should pick up P4G on sale eventually to be able to relive it, and the improvements are enough to keep pace with nostalgia
 
0
Phantom Thief said:
The whole atmosphere and sense of place and dread that Persona 3 was so incredible at establishing, that's gone in P3P, because it's a fucking visual novel.
Click to expand...
Completely disagree, P3P was my first Persona and everything you mentioned came across well. The music, voice acting, portraits and still images do more than enough to communicate the vibe. Seems reductive to say that VNs can’t create the same level of immersion or atmosphere. Naturally if you have trouble imagining things based on text (some people do) it will be harder but if you don’t have that problem it’s totally fine.
 
Belinda Blumenthal said:
Completely disagree, P3P was my first Persona and everything you mentioned came across well. The music, voice acting, portraits and still images do more than enough to communicate the vibe. Seems reductive to say that VNs can’t create the same level of immersion or atmosphere. Naturally if you have trouble imagining things based on text (some people do) it will be harder but if you don’t have that problem it’s totally fine.
Click to expand...
100% agreed. I even played P3P after P4G (both on the Vita back then), and still found P3P to be an exceptionally atmospheric game with a very good sense of world building and immersing you in its setting.

Might be hard(er) to imagine for folks that played FES before giving P3P a shot, admittedly.
 
Reader mode
Status
Not open for further replies.


Back
Top Bottom