Experimental and Streamlined Shadows: Persona 3 vs Persona 4

There are two arguments that are kind of accepted as a common wisdom when talking about P3 and P4.

1. The gameplay of these games is not relevant, and can be even considered as low points of the games, they are just “dumbed down” version of a “real” battle system, game is actually just “visual novel dating simulator”.
2. Persona 4 has better gameplay, mainly because you can “control your characters”.

Both points are quite wrong. And here we will look at why:

First one is a weird one. Persona games can easily take more than 60 hour of your life and most of it is spent on not “visual novel” part, but dungeons and battling. It is also so strange to think that same developers that made Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne were somehow uncaring about the gameplay of games that was directly built on top of it, especially when large amount of Personae was used as a marketing point.

If you took out battling from both two games ,plot would be tiresome and wouldn’t be as impactful. This is generally missed from “visual novel” argument, Persona games need time between events sink in, battling is too central to events — both thematically and narratively , and much of the emotional impact comes from spending enough time with the characters. That’s why anime adaptations had to be written very differently to be effective. The time you spend in dungeons is very important, and how two games handle that ends up creating very different experiences. Spoilers ahead.

Tower vs Hub Network

Tartarus, the singular dungeon of Persona 3 is a massive, vertical dungeon that you need to climb to the top at the end of the game. You are totally free to explore at your leasure before the end.. You are encouraged to visit there by design, such as bosses in Tartarus preparing you for the Full Moon bosses, and side-quests that demand to be completed at certain dates.

Inside Tartarus, the design is basic, but works just well enough for Persona 3. With the help of music and the low-key creepy aesthetics from stains of blood in walls to lifeless patterns in floors, it’s somewhat uncomfortable place to be in. This is also supported by narrative and gameplay too, as the place is uncomfortable for characters too and they actually start to get tired if you stay too much there.

While there is a startling atmosphere, Tartarus can be surprisingly forgiving. Ambushing or dodging shadows is pretty easy, there are literal high places where shadows can’t reach. While game-over state breaks the gameplay pace a little too much, it’s not hard to heal. Just returning to first floor heals you completely and with fairly frequent portal areas, it’s not hard to pick up where you left off.

it’s not hard to climb fast if you want so either, and in fact you are encouraged to do this as well, as if you stay in one floor too much, the Reaper — a shadow which is manifested from fears of death — starts to chase you. This furthermore adds to the uneasiness to be in Tartarus. What’s better is you can beat the Reaper if you are strong enough. In this way, an enemy is both used as a gameplay mechanic and an optional boss at the same time, which player has personal reasons the fight. It is brilliant.

And the reward of beating it is an optimal dungeon, which is a hard end-game dungeon you can really grind and optimize your Personae, and you can actually reach the maximum level without much pain. This also gives you something to do in your last nights as well. This is an important function of the dungeon, because grinding makes you more than prepared for the last boss, but for me, the real reward is being able to visit Tartarus once again before the game ends. Even dungeon’s look parallels the first couple of level’s look, and the music that plays in the first floors plays there, it feels somewhat nostalgic after almost 100 hours.

Overall, Tartarus feels eerily, exciting, sometimes tough, sometimes like a breeze. But you are never bored or feel forced to get through. It feels fully integrated to everything else in the game — while I am not a big fan of this phrase too much — it really feels iconic.

Midnight Channel, couldn’t be more different. Dungeons are all separated and have all very distinct themes, aesthetics and music, which is entirely related to the boss itself. At the surface, this is promising: It works well, dungeons individually are more memorable than Tartarus blocks or its individual floors themselves. However, the moment-to-moment action in dungeons, and the Midnight Channel itself as a whole is much less memorable.

This is because the game can’t just set up a good rhythm. Dungeons are way too large for their own good for one, which doesn’t seem like a big deal in itself, but parts of dungeons are closed to you by doors, which makes you explore the entirety of dungeons in the search of keys, and checkpoints are much less forgiving as well, you have to walk entirety of the dungeon until you reach the checkpoint near the story boss.

Shadows themselves are much more annoying as well, they made ambushing dependent on correct timing instead of positioning, but hit detection is not robust enough to pull this off well. They are more aggressive, chase you for longer, and dungeons are designed so that escaping them gets much more difficult. The game is much more interested in punishing player in general; in its Arcana Card mini game and in its punishing boxes. Also your SP reserves are much more limited too and you can’t heal yourself freely as you do in Persona 3. It doesn’t compliment the atmosphere, it doesn’t make the game more challenging, just more annoying.

It is also so strange that Midnight Channel is much more central to Persona 4 than Tartarus to Persona 3, while feeling much more disconnected to everything else at the same time. The narrative makes it clear that you have to hurry to save the next victim, especially with some of the victims, tension is really high, but it is has no gameplay feedback whatsoever. You can save the victim on the first day, or anytime until the last day, the rescued will rest until the predetermined date regardless of your choice, and you can just romance with people or casually fish near a calm lake while who knows what happens to victim. This was a corner game pushed itself to for no reason. For example, they could make you go to dungeons on only certain days, depending on weather or other events on story. Or parts of dungeons could be restricted from access fin certain days. There must had been a more elegant way to handle this than the game did.

The last dungeon is the worst. The tension is absolutely zero, it looks dull, the enemies are unnecessarily difficult, you can’t even have fun grinding to your heart’s content and even BGM doesn’t do anything to make things a little more exciting. I don’t need to feel relaxed, I want to get worked up a little, I just get tired instead.

Thinks vs Tanks

Shin Megami Tensei series really got into shape with Press-Turn battle system, and it’s variation comes back in Persona 3. You can exploit the enemy’s elemental weaknesses and chain your attack and even just destroy them in one swoop. With the excellent battle theme, the animations, and verbal communication between characters makes the battles really satisfying and fluid.

Boss design is pretty amazing as well. At least In Hard difficultly, Tartarus bosses really makes you think about which Personae to bring, your commands and whether use fusion spells or not. Full moon bosses are usually playful and creative, has good thematic weight behind them and their difficulty is adjusted to fact that sometimes you can’t bring just anyone you want. Strega bosses are more important for narrative than anything, as such they are appropriately easy. All of them are accompanied by appropriate battle themes of course. The end-game boss is probably one of the best bosses in history: With Its aesthetics, the amazing musical theme, how wraps up everything in the narrative and all the game’s themes: its memorable monologue; It is pure excellence.

Persona 4 has the same energetic combat at its core, you can even say it is improved. However, it is really bogged down by both dungeons and the boss design. While, normal enemy design is alright, bosses really stink. Midway dungeon bosses are simply unremarkable, the optional dungeon revisit bosses feel extra, even poor Reaper is a mere easter-egg that can be only reached in 2nd playthrough now.

I cannot ever understand that how Atlus made the bosses so dull while having just a few of them. The only boss that is any fun is Shadow Yukiko. You need to actually be clever and use the mechanics you have well. The beginning ones are alright, but they too show a problem that plagues this game.

The bosses are just hit sponges. Post-Yukiko bosses have sophisticated attack patterns, their animations are usually too long, their designs are interesting but you just end up saying “Die already!” after a while. They simply survive for too long after they have exhausted their gimmick. The last boss is the worst, even its BGM doesn’t seem to care(It’s not bad music, just lacks the punch), I had a mood of “Why even we are having such a long fight” It’s last moments are good, but doesn’t make up for all the slogging through you had.

Command vs Control

Persona 3 is an experimental game is in many aspects, alongside with its Battle Command mechanic. You don’t directly control characters but select a couple of commands to influence how AI will behave. Selecting correct command even figuring out your party members’ behavior patterns is a puzzle in and itself. WHICH MEANS YES MARIN KARIN MEME IS COMPLETELY PLAYER’S FAULT, YOU CAN EITHER USE ‘FULL ATTACK’ OR ‘CONSERVE SP’ TO AVOID THAT EASILY, I USED MITSURU ALL GAME HOW DO YOU EVEN ~

Ahem… You may not control characters, but command them. Except for rare instances, commands do work well, and characters behave fairly straightforward, they even talk about how they behave in battles. And this makes Persona 3 battles truly unique.

• Battle rhythm benefits from it. The other characters besides player doesn’t really have a huge movepool, it really is simply “Healing”, “Physical”, “Magic” or “Do nothing” in 99% of the time. Automating this actually makes the game faster.
• The bosses are designed with that in mind too, the difficulty player might face is intended, you are still supposed to give them the correct commands. It seems quite unfair to me that people complain about not being able to control and expect AI do their job for them.
• Indirect control allows for more characterization. Characters put forward their personalities a little more. The very first Tartarus post is a great example. If, Yukari acted 100% correct way strategically, that boss would be nothing. The real struggle of battle is Yukari overcoming her anxiety. A surprising amount of characterization is achieved just by the gameplay itself.
• Most importantly, it gives the protagonist and the group as a whole a lot of weight. At the beginning of the game you are given leadership, simply because you are the only one eligible. Yukari is too anxious and Junpei is too brash. However, as the group successfully climbes Tartarus and defeats Full Moon Shadows, you prove your leadership, they trust you more and you get more complicated commands. SEES members trust each other more too, you can see their camaraderie hardened by battles they go through, because other than that, they exactly don’t spend time with each other that much. It’s a simple but very effective harmony of mechanics and narrative.

Is it a perfect system? Obviously not. An improvement from top of my head would be separating healing and other support moves. It is a bit too difficult to make AI use its buff moves, which makes the protag. a little busier than they should be. They also could make the behavior patterns a little more clearer, there was a couple of times AI acted differently than I expected. But by no means it’s a broken system, it functions well most of the time and when it does so it adds the game a lot. You don’t have to like it of course, but there is a difference between critiquing something on how well it succeeded at its premise and having a personal problem with the premise itself, a difference that unfortunately gets ignored too often in the discourse of turn-based gameplay.

Persona 4 would have benefitted even more for having auto-commands, considering how slow dungeon crawling and battling can feel. It has some, but they are not well-thought out like Persona 3 commands. And this partially explains why I don’t really connect to the protagonist that much. Despite being actually quite passive in main story, the game sets him up as this cool and outgoing guy, and a natural leader. He just solves anything, even though we don’t actually see that ability grow in a naturalistic way. P3 protagonist was good at a lot of things too, but that felt sort of relatable instead of being absurd.

And what does “being able to control” the characters really bring? Persona 4 overall has less strategic depth than Persona 3. There is really not much to gain from increased micro-management. It’s combat is already bare-bones, but it can’t even be a relaxed experience because the game is too interested in punishing you. Why then, a lot of people asked developers to take away a unique flavor?

Because from Persona 3 onward, the series gained a lot of fans who don’t have a categorical attraction to dungeon-crawling turn-based combat, so when anything seems complicated, they react badly and just search for easiest path possible. And the fans of usual difficulty of Shin Megami Tensei series are not already satisfied with the challenge the game offers. This is sad because Persona 3 has combat mechanics and a difficulty which creates perfect for the rhythm of the game. Its dungeon design also wonderful and achieves what it wants to do. Combat is in near perfect harmony for the narrative. It’s not a “visual novel”, but it’s not a classic punishing JRPG either. It has found a unique delicate balance, which sadly Persona 4 could not.

Seemingly so similar on the surface, the gameplay of Persona 3 and Persona 4 results in massively different experiences. I can personally feel the difference ; I finished P3:FES three times, in one campaign I played on hard and try to complete almost everything had to offer. I finished P4 once, on Normal, but didn’t want to pick it up ever again. Not because of the story mind you, I am even mildly curious about Social Links I didn’t complete, but the thought of going through Midnight Channel again brings similar feels to doing homework. Even I can just play on Easy and the make the game truly trivial, the time I spend on there isn’t trivial, a game feels truly awkward when I just want to get over near half of it. Yes, I am a weird person that actually cares about the gameplay of Persona 4 so much. I am that person, over-nerding all the other nerds….