Persona 3 Portable

Persona 3 Portable, also abbreviated as P3P, and localized in the West as Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable, is an enhanced remake of Persona 3, released for the PlayStation Portable as per the game’s name. Backwards compatibility had made the game playable on PlayStation Vita and PlayStation TV. The story of Persona 3 takes place in 2009 and is set in the Japanese city of Tatsumi Port Island, which the Kirijo Corporation built and funded. Experiments conducted ten years prior to the game’s events created the Dark Hour, a period of time that exists between days. During the Dark Hour, most people are transmogrifed into coffins and are unaware of it; however, there is a select group of people who aren’t.

In addition, reality is warped; Gekkoukan High School, where most characters attend school during the day, becomes a labyrinthine tower called Tartarus, where monsters called Shadows roam the area and prey on the minds of those still conscious, leaving them in near-catatonic states outside of the Dark Hour. The “Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad,” or SEES, was formed by a group of high schoolers to investigate and learn about the Dark Hour, Shadows, and Tartarus. They are capable of summoning beings called Personas to combat Shadows, which the instruction manual describes as being “a second soul that dwells deep within a person’s heart.

It is an entirely different personality that emerges when a person is confronted with something from outside this world.” Persona users usually summon their Persona by firing a gun-like object called an Evoker at their head. Makoto Yuki transfers to Gekkoukan High School and moves into a dorm in the city. On his third day in the city, during a mysterious 25th hour called the Dark Hour, he is attacked by monstrous beings called Shadows and awakens to his Persona. After defeating them, he is recruited by the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad (SEES), a group of Gekkoukan students dedicated to battling the Shadows and exploring Tartarus, a giant tower transformed from Gekkoukan during the Dark Hour.

On nights of the full moon, the city is attacked by a Shadow more powerful than those in Tartarus. After several of these incidents, senior SEES member Mitsuru Kirijo is forced to reveal to the team the origin of Tartarus and the Dark Hour. Ten years earlier, the Kirijo Group, a research company Mitsuru’s grandfather founded, began amassing and containing Shadows in an attempt to harness their power. However, the experiments went awry, allowing the Shadows to escape and assemble into twelve larger creatures. SEES’ leader, Shuji Ikutsuki, informs them that if they defeat the twelve greater Shadows, Tartarus and the Dark Hour will disappear forever.

The game allows the player to choose the gender of the protagonist, which possibly opens up new routes and scenarios in the story. The theme of the game revolves around the butterfly effect, reflecting the changes that happen should the player pursue the path of one protagonist over the other, and the Latin phrase memento mori which literally translates as “remember (that you will) die,” which has served a major role in the thematics since the original Persona 3. The setting takes place during the main portion of Persona 3 (known in FES as “The Journey”). The storyline of the female protagonist features many differences from that of the male protagonist, such as new social interactions as well as Social Links.

The Persona of the female protagonist is a more feminine Orpheus. In the female protagonist’s path, there is also the choice of selecting Elizabeth or a male-equivalent named Theodore to be Igor’s assistant in the Velvet Room. The Desert of Doors from the Abyss of Time seen in The Answer will still appear, however, in an extra feature known as the Vision Quest. In this mode, the party can fight stronger incarnations of the Full Moon shadow bosses — save for Arcana Magician — and partake in special battles that test the party’s abilities. When all of the battles have been successfully met, a second optional boss can be fought: Margaret, Igor’s assistant in Persona 4 and guardian of the Desert of Doors in P3P.

Margaret’s challenges become available as soon as the Adamah Block is accessible, and are accessed from a separate door in the Tartarus lobby. Another new addition is the ability to pick who the protagonist spends the last moments of the game with. This feature is only accessible on a New Cycle, and the protagonist can only select members of SEES with whom they have maxed social links and are romantically involved with. Both male and female protagonists have 4 choices to choose from: 1 is the default Aigis ending and 3 from the others. The male endings include Yukari, Fuuka and Mitsuru, and the female endings include Akihiko, Shinjiro, and Ken.