April 2023 is turning out to be a rather exciting month for Atlus fans, not least because it saw quite a pile-up of evidence pointing in the direction of aPersona 3remake. Whether the seminal 2006 JRPG is actually being made anew remains to be seen, but what’s certain is thataPersona 3remakewould be no easy feat for Atlus.
Generally speaking, many of the challenges in remaking this iconic RPG stem from the fact that the game lacks a definitive, full-featured edition. Atlus releasedthree distinct versions ofPersona 3over the last 17 years, each of which introduced its own issues without offering a complete experience.
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Persona 3 was Really Rough Around the Edges
Once nostalgia’s rose-colored glasses are taken out of the equation, the fact that remains is that the originalPersona 3was extremely rough around the edges. Nothing exemplifies this issue as much as Tartarus, the game’s sole dungeon. In terms of gameplay, Tartarus is nowadays best described as a less-polished version ofPersona 5’s Mementos: an acutely annoying and highly repetitive grind. But instead of being optional like inPersona 5, this segment constituted about half of the entirePersona 3experience.
Furthermore, the 2006 RPG saw Atlus experiment with the idea of AI-controlled party members. Regardless of this idea’s validity, the execution left much to be desired and made some segments frustratingly difficult - not least because the game featured such poor party member AI that seeing healers waste turns on single-target heals and supports ignoring enemy weaknesses throughmany ofPersona 3Tartarus floorswas a rule, not an exception.
Persona 3was also the first series installment to include the Social Link gameplay mechanic, which unsurprisingly resulted in quite a few half-baked S-links. The quests featuring the likes of Chihiro, Nozomi, and nearly every other supporting cast character were hence unimpressive at best and boring at worst. The fact that the game forced the players to romance every maxed S-link of the opposite gender made the issue even more apparent, frustrating completionists. Atlus itself has obviously long been aware of this criticism, given howPersona 3 Portableallowed friend-zoning FeMC’s maxed S-links, much like the subsequent series installments.
Persona 3 FES and Portable Fixed Some Problems, While Introducing Other Issues
Before the developer started tackling some of those issues, it put outPersona 3 FESin 2007. This re-release included a story epilogue called The Answer, which introduced more problems; gameplay-wise, The Answer wasgrindy even by early 2000s RPG standards, taking dozens of hours to complete. Whereas the reward for beating it was polarizing at best and something that cheapened the original story at worst. Without venturing into actual spoilers, anyone who powered through thePersona 3 FESlate game can testify to this state of affairs by pointing to the continued prevalence of “Door-kun” memes among the fandom.
Persona 3 Portablefinally attempted addressing some of the original game’s issues in 2009, albeit with mixed results. This is most obviously underlined by the fact thatP3Pfeatured controllable party members, thus “fixing"Persona 3’sdifficulty problems by offering the opposite extreme; seeing how its boss battles weren’t designed with player-controlled allies in mind,P3Pended up being the easiest 3DPersonagame by far. It also omitted The Answer epilogue, which continues to polarize the fandom to this date.
And while the genre switch to a visual novel RPG worked well enough,P3P’sdesign stemmed from the PSP’s technical limitations and a desire to make the game more suitable for portable play. AproperPersona 3remakewould meanwhile have to recreate the 3D environments of the original, in addition to rebalancing boss battles, revisiting S-links, adding some variety to its dungeon-crawling gameplay loop, and figuring out what to do with The Answer. That’s quite a substantial list of challenges, so Atlus has its work cut out for it if aPersona 3remake is truly on the cards.
Persona 3andPersona 3 FESreleased exclusively for the PS2, whilePersona 3 Portableis nowadays available on PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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