#arguably better than his boss battle music it's just sooo them on every level

[pianokantzart]

When the final boss's theme music kicks in and the lighthearted, jazzy brass and accordion is replaced by an ominous orchestral march with a motif played on a dinky toy piano.

[gigapoodle]

My Big Ass Long Necessary Rant Post Comparing Persona 3 and 4

Literally the most indulgent shit ever I just beat P4 and I gotta talk about it turn your eyes away unless you care for some reason

Things Persona 4 Did Better Than Persona 3

-The Social Links, oh MAN they were so much better in this game. Persona 3 had some pretty mediocre Links (Tanaka and that one fat cult kid immediately come to mind, also the student club kid who was obsessed with the cigarette). I don’t think any of the links were bad at all? Hell even the ones that I thought were gonna go sour (the Nurse one started off rough) ended up taking a really interesting turn. I also think that P3 relied too much on Social Links for random people I don’t care about, whereas so many of the SLs in P4 were already established, like Nanako and Dojima, all of the investigation friends (seriously P3, why couldn’t I SL Akihiko or Junpei?? What the hell???). It was just so much more rewarding in the end and I loved all of them. 

-To add on to the point above without making the paragraph too long; I like how all of your friends were INVOLVED in the plot before you even get to do their SL. The whole Shadow Self thing was so clever and made the characters so much more interesting. Like Kanji? SO interesting. Struggling with concepts of masculinity and his own self image, and you know all of this BEFORE you even start the SL, so when you do get around to it it is much more interesting and fleshed out. I’m so happy about all of this

-The whole Romance thing. P3 handled it terribly. Apparently in P3 I wanted to date everyone (no choice on just being friends!) and if I talked to too many girls it would screw up the whole system. In P4 everybody still wants to fuck you but at least it doesn’t screw up my other SL links thank God (but I would like it if I didn’t have to be romantically interested in every girl plz and thank you)

-THANK GOD I COULD CONTROL MY TEAM LIKE HOLY SHIT....thank GOD. Now they actually felt like super strong teammates with something on the line rather than robots who I hoped wouldn’t do something fucking stupid. (I’m pretty sure Junpei killed himself literally 10 times during the Nyx fight and I couldnt’ do anything but watch.) 

-P4 protag was still the most powerful member of the team but wasn’t blatantly OP like P3 protag

-Being able to look at what the fuck my skills actually did was a godsend (like I remember the difference between Masukukaja and Marakukaja, jesus) 

-Social events were generally funnier and better. I laughed like 10x more in this game than in P3. (God bless Kanji and Yosuke tbh)

-The individualized dungeons were much more fun to go through. Tartarus becomes a fucking drag around level 150, but jumping from a sauna to a strip club to an underground secret base? LOVE IT

-Music was generally catchier and I found myself humming along too it way too often 

-Way more save points, thank GOD (although they did screw me over at one point so this isn’t that much of a bonus)

-I like that when Rise couldn’t scan the enemy for weaknesses, I just had to figure them out on my own. Made the dungeons enjoyably harder. I also appreciate that healing spells cost less in this game, considering how much you need them. 

-Having the after-battle reward be basically ONLY personas was a smart move. The addiction of the Tarot Card Bonus/Drawback was a super neat feature as well that I absolutely loved. 

-Rise got on my nerves much less as an announcer lady than Fuuka. (Teddie was the worst though. Thank god we only had him for a little while.)

Things Persona 3 Did Better Than Persona 4:

-Even though P4 made a huge improvement with the battle system by allowing you to control your teammates, P3 had a vastly better battle system imo. The three different physical attacks (Slash/Strike/Pierce or whatever) made physical attacks actually feel lie they matter. P4′s system was way too watered down and as a consequence I never used Light/Dark ONCE and it felt a little too easy. 

-Better pacing. There were set dates for when I had to finish dungeons of Tartarus, and I could do whatever I wanted during those times. Afternoons were always free for SLs since exploration was at night. In P4, the fact that dungeon crawling took up an entire afternoon on top of the fact that I never really knew when the fog was gonna settle in made it hard for me to plan out everything. (I ended up having a lot of unfished SLs in P4 which pisses me off.) (P4 tries to make up for this by moving some SLs into the evening but it wasn’t enough.)

-Much better ending. Once you found out who the killer was for P4, everything just felt anticlimatic. His boss battle wasn’t even that bad. And then he turns out to be the opening battle for some weird God eye that I don’t give a shit about. It felt like nothing was really at stake and it was just weird. But P3? You knew your damn destiny. The world was gonna end and you literally had no hope but you fought anyways. The entire MONTH leading up to that felt so somber and powerful. Climbing up the stairs on that final day to battle the Strega members and then finally, Nyx (in a boss battle that took a HOUR AND A HALF on top of some cool symbolic shit where the protagonist literally dies) it as just...something, man. And then everyone meets on the roof as you die, like...it’s so neat. P4 felt like they were trying to live up to that while still keeping the wacky cartoony vibe and it didn’t work out. 

-The theme was much stronger in this game, and holy shit was it powerful. I get that P4′s whole thing was discovering the True Self, but it doesn’t really tie into the ending imo, nor the murder mystery shit. P3′s theme of Death is much more powerful and well written in the story. Everyone in this game has had at least ONE person die in their life, and seeing how everyone copes with it is sooo interesting. And dealing with the futile fact that everyone dies eventually with Nyx like....so fucking cool. And to top it all off, YOU die. The P4 protag doesn’t discover shit about himself (maybe in Golden? idk). Very very cool 

-Evokers are way way way cooler than some fog glasses. 

-Music was much better in this game. It was so damn unique. And it worked! It was weird and kinda glitchy at times but it worked so damn well! 

-More on the battle system - I’m really sad they took away group member healing in P4 because that was so helpful. I’m also sad they took away general healing of everything whenever you went back to the base of Tartarus. That made it so much easier to grind and just get through Tartarus. Forcing me to only heal SP by paying the fox a shitton of money (and man this is the first RPG I’ve played in a while where money was actually on shortage and a problem) made it suck. It took away precious time from SLs that I needed. 

Things They Both Need To Work On:

-Is Japan just super fucky about social issues? It was way worse in P3 but man do I feel played over by P4. Like the whole Kanji thing, CLEARLY his Shadow stuff was alluding to him possibly being gay, but they pull the rug under form you at the last second and throw that out the window. Same with Naoto - there was literally DIALOGUE about how she wanted to be a man but they threw that away too! Why??! They gotta stop skirting around these things. Also why are all of the dudes so pervy in these games? Junpei and Yosuke sucked about that, both games HAD to have a weird men-accidentally-walking-in-on-bathing-girls scene (P3 literally had a MINIGAME baed on it ffs). Also they are really mean about fat people in these games and always make them the butt of the joke. Stop it Persona 

-This Good Ending/Bad Ending shit. WAY worse in Persona 4 but P3 still had it. I think that’s part of the reason why P4′s ending was eh? because even though you face the final boss, of course there’s a TRUE ending where you face ACTUAL God instead of EYEBALL God. Ugh. Also they made it way way WAY too easy to get the Bad Ending in P4. Like you literally have to use a guide not to get the Bad Ending. At least P3 made it very obvious how not to get the Bad Ending and they didn’t do any of that true ending bullshit.... (I guess they kinda did with The Answer but THE POINT IS STOP WITH THESE MULTIPLE-HOUR ENDINGS GOD)

-Please give me female friendships where they don’t end in fucking. It complicates things so much and makes me feel weird. 

Overall Verdict:

I like them both equally and cannot place one over the other. Persona 3 felt more cohesive and satisfying but Persona 4 had a better cast and was arguably more enjoyable. I think that P3 will always have a special place in my heart since it was my first Persona game and it just fucking blew me away, on top of the fact that it took me about 4 months to complete whereas Persona 4 took me like 3 weeks (whoops). I think that Persona 4 tried to tackle too much (murder mystery while also keeping their whole ‘facing god and humanity’s fragility and flaws’ thing) whereas Persona 3 arguably did too little at times. But in the end this game is probably now my 2nd favorite series (behind Fire Emblem) and you can bet your sweet ass I’m getting P5 literally the moment it comes out. I’m almost salivating over it. I’ve already got PQ and P4A to tide me over while I wait so!