Persona 3 abandoned the awfully-looking sprite and polygon combo, and became fully 3D. Unlike most franchises which had a hard time during the transition, it was not an issue here. It took many years for next game to be created and the technology had improved tremendously. By being 3D, there was a lot more freedom of motion during dungeon exploration, and unlike Persona 1 it was very helpful in this case. Now you could see the enemies, as they could see you, instead of the random encounter system from before. Basically, there was a factor of stealth and tactics when it came to ambushing the enemies, or being attacked from behind, as opposed to appearing out of nowhere.

The gameplay removed the negotiation option from the battles, which was disappointing since it was the gimmick that was giving the franchise its distinctive flavor. But it’s not like it became worse without it, since it got replaced by the Social Links, a system which increased the interaction with the world even further. In Persona 2, the rumors were affecting gameplay, but there was no personal connection or much of a strategy in how you used them. It was just choosing what a bunch of minor NPCs would do out of screen.

In contrast, the Social Links were a much better game mode than the rumors and the negotiation system. It wasn’t about talking to mass produced monsters during battle. That was dumb in a way; why would the fighting stop just to listen to you? It was a smart thing to separate the chatting part from the battles and take it to moments of peace. Nighttime was your usual action-packed dungeon crawling, and daytime was all about strengthening your bonds with characters that now had a name, a personality, and a backdrop. If you were doing it enough times without messing up in the choices you were making, your statistics and powers during battle would increase. And since you didn’t have infinite time to accomplish something, you couldn’t unlock everything early in the game, nor you could grind your experience points indefinitely. There was limitation in what you could do, so you had to focus in specific activities instead of being a Jack of all Trades with no pressure from the passing of time.

The plot was still about chuunis affecting reality with stands and going on an isekai acid trips, but was lacking the occult atmosphere of Persona 2. The monsters were no longer called demons; they got renamed to shadows. It was thematically stronger, since now they were the dark aspects of peoples’ psyche instead figments of imagination from various mythologies. At the same time they didn’t feel as scary as when they were demons that came from hell to eat you alive. And although there was pressure from time running out, you were so absorbed in strengthening your bonds with others to the point the protection of the world was more of an afterthought. It wasn’t immersion breaking, but when it came to the core storyline there wasn’t as much tension as before.

This becomes apparent when you defeat all the evil shadows your boss was telling you about since the beginning of the game. Turns out you were being manipulated by an evil corporation for awakening a threat that can destroy the world. This should have been a mind-blowing moment, just like in Persona 2 where the heroes are the ones causing the problem with their chuuni powers. Also, the evil adults working in the shady corporation were pretending to be your allies instead of obvious one-dimensional megalomaniacs. And yet there was no punch to this twist because I had spent 90% of the time doing irrelevant slice of life activities to the point of not being invested.

In the previous games, Kandori and Joker had a very strong presence throughout the story. Here? This thing named Nyx appears in the last part of the game and all of a sudden it’s the final boss which you have to defeat for some reason. Who the hell are you and why am I supposed to care? In conclusion, gameplay, visuals, and character appeal have improved tremendously since Persona 2, but the overall narrative and atmosphere are nowhere near as good. It’s a better game, with a far worse script.