So I've been playing P3FES and just cleared the third full moon and got Fuuka. Thing is...

So I've been playing P3FES and just cleared the third full moon and got Fuuka. Thing is, as much of a good time as I'm having playing, this game is seriously fucking dark and is making me pretty depressed. I'm tempted to just watch the movies and call it a day. Should I stop being a pussy and keep playing, or are the movies adequate?

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Movies aren't nearly as good. Keep playing.

That bad, eh? I'm pretty torn then. Game is good as hell, but I'm actually having a hard time playing it. Might try to power through it, but I still have like 60 hours left, and that's excluding The Answer. F

The movies are what Atlus wants you to remember from Persona 3. Same with Persona 4 and Persona 4 Golden.

Any spinoff of Persona 5 featuring the characters will use those versions of them.

Burn your dread user.

> this game is seriously fucking dark and is making me pretty depressed.
this is an issue that will only get worse

> Should I stop being a pussy and keep playing
yes, the ending is genuinely one of the best in any rpg

you mean nu-atlus, right?

Are all the social links this slow to show up or am I just not doing something right?

I'm a few days away from the first full moon and none of the party social links have unlocked except the fool. Will that happen naturally or am I missing something? Got Fool, Magician, Chariot and HIerophant so far.

Also, I agree with OP. Holy shit why is this game so gloomy? Going through Tartarus is fucking awful not because of how repetitive it is but how opressive and hopeless the stupid tower is. And the music too.

It's great ambience wise, but jesus fuck someone throw a bucket of color in this game.

It gets worst the 3rd or 4th moon in when the dungeon doesn't change design.

The game just doesn't lend itself very well to the format and they chose to adapt and leave out feels clumsy. Living day by day and experiencing all of the changes in the story adds depth and gives the story moments more impact. It's all about hanging out with friends, waifus, and people you fucking hate because they're retarded assholes but that you'll remember anyway. The best thing about the game is that slow-burn atmosphere. You can't capture that in a movie. Or four movies.

So just play the game. If you're going through the whole series, 4's cartoonishly happy by comparison. So there's a palette cleanser afterwards.

Is P3 darker than the first two games?

I heard P2 and the sequel get pretty depressing near the end

you should have access to most slinks by the fourth full moon or so, a lot of them require you to actually go into the world and find them instead of just having someone tell you about it though

Get to know Fuuka, she's a cheerful person

If you have a persona of the arcana of whoever you want to hang out with you'll go up a rank faster

The whole theme of the game is accepting that fate is a cruel mistress, and you'll see that when you get deeper into the game and the s.links. The party links with Fuuka, Yukari and Mitsuru open up when you have max Courage, Charm and Knowledge respectively.

You're almost at operation babe hunt just keep at it.

I don't mind Tartarus. Tell your party members to split up and you clear it in a snap. Plus Tartarus only being at night makes the scheduling of the game more reasonable, which I think is the real meat of the Persona series.

You need max stats to open up social links with the girls. Guys don't have social links. It's one of the little caveats, everyone becoming buddies happens over the course of the story, instead of being friends at the start and their character arcs being side things.

Also you may be missing a lot of social links, later games hinted at them a lot more.

>Thinking the first three months of P3 are dark

What the fuck? It's high school shenanigans at that point.

Fuck, that makes me a lot more hype and a lot more weary at the same time. I'm trying to get happy irl and get my shit together, so that's especially shitty to hear. Last thing I need to is to slip back into depression, but it's so rare to play an RPG with a gripping story and cast these days.

That's a really good point. I already played P4G a few years back and tried FES immediately afterwards, but couldn't then. The lack of quality of life changes aren't hurting me like t hey did back then, so I'm having a lot more fun, but that depression though. Planning on watching the P4 anime when I'm done with FES so I can play P5 without feeling burned out

Again, more hype and more weary of playing. That sounds amazing and bleak as hell at the same time. Also, leveling courage immediately. Fuuka > the other girls

youtube.com/watch?v=ZzRqtW1C0Zo

Persona 3 had some amazing music.

>Guys don't get social links
>Can't hang out with da man himself aside dungeons

God damn it.

Thanks for the warning on the stats though. That sounds like a lot of hoops to go through because of how slow the stats are to grind but the game plays like it plays.

Play a kirby game in between sessions to lighten your mood

You know user maybe you shouldn't dive headfirst into Death Themes: The dating sim if you're trying to avoid falling into depression.

Leave this for when you actually get your shit together and go play something more upbeat.

No, this is exactly the kind of game that helps you get over depression.

Movies are a fun watch as a supplement to the game, but aren't really a good replacement. I enjoyed them, but would say finish the game before checking them out.

You could always play P3P, which I think is worse, but back-ported a lot of the convenience features from 4 like controllable teammates.

Personally I preferred FES, even with Marin Fucking Karin. Like a lot of things in 3, it wasn't as good, but it was memorable. You felt like you were carrying the team, and you had Fusion Spells to compensate.

Once you beat the game (or at least get to like, November), maybe check out the drama CDs. I hadn't looked into it before, but it has all of the party hanging out stuff that the proper game lacked by comparison.

This. This and Majora's Mask, which have the exact same themes.

Never understood the marin karin meme, it actually saved me many times, charm is overpowered in this game.

>Fusion Spell

This is such an amazing fucking mechanic. I didn't know about it until I got cadenza a while back and imediately got rock hard.

Why didn't this come back in later games? It's so much fun, and would have fit 4 like a glove

That's a really good point. I remembered it being dark, but didn't remember just how dark. Might revisit it down the line

Any way you can elaborate without spoiling much?

Majora's Mask is one of my favorite games of all time, and my favorite ever from a thematic point of view. Complete masterpiece. As good as those heartfelt moments are, the rest of the game is still ridiculously depressing, and I think it outweighs the good stuff because of it's overwhelmingly dark themes that are present in almost every other part of the game.

If you set your tactics properly, Marin Karin shouldn't even be an issue. Why the fuck would anyone leave Mitsuru on Act Freely for important fights?

people set mitsuru to "act freely" instead of "heal" or "knock down" and then got mad that miitsuru acted freely to charm enemies instead of healing or knocking down

>Any way you can elaborate without spoiling much?
It's a dark, sad game with inspirational, realistic themes. Much more effective than Sunshine and Rainbows Persona 4.

Skull kid killed the butler's son

>played 4 first
>A bit of 5 but no way to play it for long
>Start 3
>Nocturne is down the line

Well, there is no pallate cleanser for me, the misery train is at full speed ahead.

P3P was the only version of P3 that I played and I fucking loved it but man it was fucking DREARY, I am glad I played persona 4 golden instantly afterwards.

Felt like a goddamn shot of heroin after the insane downer that was P3.

Both of those games are incredible.

The movies don't quite capture the same feeling as the game does but their production values are fairly high, they look really good.

Also for some reason I didn't feel particularly compelled to do all slinks in P3 like I did in P4 and P5.

I don't know. They even removed it from P3P basically. It's such a good mechanic.

Don't forget to play Digital Devil Saga if that's what you're after.

And 5 is just silly too, not as bad as 4 though but I wish the series got back to being depressing.

I just wanted to get into more megaten stuff, really. I'll get stage 2 persona games out of the way and then dig deeper.

I'm as far away from a downer seeker as you'll ever get but I'm willing to suck it up if the ride is good enough. Overall I'm quite sure I'll remember 4 more fondly though because not only do I not mind happy, I fucking thrive on it.

Maybe I'll take bigger breaks between games to avoid slitting my wrists

>Any way you can elaborate without spoiling much?

Have you had a game over in P3 yet? That speech (sans the part about you dying early) is pretty much the central theme of the game.

This is autism speaking, but I just wish the evoker effect was cooler in the movies. I like how everyone recoils a little bit when they shoot themselves in the head in the game.

If you want a taste of my megaten type stuff then check out the psp version of persona 1, it's easily one of my favorites of the franchise.

No social links or stuff like that to manage, just good old capturing demons, making stronger demons, dungeon crawling, recruiting party members and uncovering the mystery.

If the encounter rate wasn't so insanely high I'd say it's probably the shortest game in the franchise too and beatable in ~35 hours.

Oh yeah I remember the evokers kinda feeling a bit less brutal to use in the movie

The dorm and over-world music transition roughly from November>January is god like.

Yes.

The whole high school day to day thing became a major part of the series after 3, but at night they're fighting shadows. It turns out their team was being used to resurrect an ancient god to bring about the end, people die, then eventually they have to decide if they want to fight for the world or forget everything and live their last days in relative peace. Also it turns out the MC had a part of death sealed inside him by a robot when he was a kid and his first time using an evoker let it out, setting things in motion.

It was actually pretty inconsistent in the movie. Sometimes they would animate it where their face shadows, eyes glow, and head recoils, but other times there would be absolutely no effect at all.

It's all about that catharsis. Both Majora's Mask and Persona 3 are dark, but it's all in service of a melancholy but very uplifting theme. That's why it's the kind of game that's great for depression, it takes you on a journey through it.

Which music transition? The depressing one or this one?

youtube.com/watch?v=DBqJZzESV04

I like Morgana, but they need to give the mascot character a rest already.

Never thought of it that way before. That's actually a big reason why I love FFXV as much as I do. It goes from being super happy road trip with your bros to devastatingly dark, and then has that one moment of light and happiness before the post credits scene. I think I'll power through P3 now. Thanks user

>this game is seriously fucking dark

Nothing truly grotesque, ethically disturbing, or anything requiring an iota of reflective thought happens in these games.

Memories of the city, Memories of the school, and the final dorm song. Neither games since have been able to match basically that entire month of the game. Found it odd that the music in P5 never changed even once per area.

Thats like the first positive opinion Ive heard of FF15 in this site.
Ive never played it.

Changing Seasons is probably one of my favorite tracks of any of the games. Fuck I loved p3

Go away /lit/ nobody likes you.

So the Almighty skills just trivialize the game entirely right?
>Get to floor 146 in Tartarsauce
>The three hell riders kick my shit in
>Too lazy to grind so go check what I can fuse
>Notice I can get Samael and it will get Megido because of the Death Social link exp
>Fuse him and proceed to rape the riders
>mfw

Not to keep bitching about P5 because I'm sure everyone's sick of the backlash, but man, it really makes me want to replay P3. I miss these characters.

I liked it a lot too and I know that other people did as well, even on this site. It's just kind of hard to discuss without autism on either side of opinion flaring up, so people who like it have learned to just avoid saying so.

Magic was king in P3.

Still my favorite Persona game after all these years. 4 had better waifus and 5 comes in the better package overall but 3 is just too memorable for me. 2 Is a close second, it was the first i played back in the day.

Dont be a bitch and finish the damn game OP.

>4 had better waifus
I guess this kind of chill thread was never going to last forever. Now we're going to fight, motherfucker.

I honestly dig most everything about 3, even over 2 to some extent as far as story goes. The whole tartarus tower and the development of the characters really struck a cord with me.

Also, and I'm probably the only one who thinks this, the visual style of the menu and everything in p5 is way too bombastic for me. It's like someone told them HEY WE NEED STYLE! So everything just looks all funky for the sake of it and in some ways less consistent.

The game just gets more depressing.
Then again, I went through it without socializing because I'm that much of a loner.

The fuck did you do the whole game?

4's waifus were all shit though.

Not OP but I've just maxed out my charm, should I go with Yukari now or save it for Mitsuru and Fuuka?

What do you mean by save it?

You can go for anyone at any time as long as you have maxed out the stats requiered for each girl.

I haven't played 4, but tell me please if Rise is the best waifu as I think she is?

I worked on my personas. Literally focusing on the stuff people don't consider important. The 3vs1 fights were interesting I guess.

Not him but she seems too slutty for me

So now that I've decided to stick with the game, what's a good way to make myself OP? I'm mostly playing for the story honestly, and to an extent, the sooner I'm done with this game, the better. Each new set of floors past the barricades smacks me back down to earth from being strong. I know that's intended, but still.

Been a few years since I played, but she was the most outright sweet. Chie was more lowkey sweet and crushing, and Naoto was more of a chill and loyal type than anything. Larry is the only objectively shit waifu in that game

Loved this game.

I know people are going to shit on me but I think it has the best soundtrack out of 3,4 and 5. I also liked the story and enjoy how the main cast actually goes through character development unlike 4 and 5.

Man, this guy is in for a ride once he gets to the last few months if he's already depressed like a month in

Why. Why the fuck would you ever level a Persona up from 13 to 85?

What the fuck was your playtime at by the end

Without the social links I couldn't make any really good ones. Besides look at all those resistances.
You probably didn't notice I didn't use party members either.

>Tam Lin
>Samael
>Seth
Me on the left, you on the right.

you get better personas by doing s-links and then fusing them with the s-link power user

The fucking Sun social link... God damn, the feels man.

63 hours.

Your loner run looks fun as fuck. I will have to try it.

Just getting over depression when I decided to give this game another shot wasn't my brightest move.

Is the Sun the widower in the book shop? I did that one a bit years back when I first tried to get into P3 and it was sad as hell

That was the moment I knew this series was good. The feels hit me like a truck.

P3 is too dark for You?
Not to be an asshole but that just boggles my mind. P3 is very light hearted compared to lots of other games.

Sorry I'm not a native speaker. What I meant was which girl is the best romance option

...

Maiko is the best romance option in P3.

I would go for fuuka bazooka. She's really nice and probably my favorite persona character.

Sun is the dying young man at the shrine.

>Kenji left at 1
You already did yourself a huge favor.

Most of the themes and a lot of other small things in the game are dark as hell. You've got the obvious themes, but you also have all the blood in Tartarus, shooting yourself in the head, creepy music, always wondering if Pharos is gonna show up, seeing the mindless husks that were once people as the full moon approaches. Lots of subtle symbolism and music that just make you feel down. Not as bad as Majora's Mask yet, but still very dark

Was this your first time playing it?

Yes. I wasn't sure if it was possible to make it through to the end.

You might want to play P4 first, then. Its more light hearted compared to P3.

Now this is role playing

Yeah I get that's why you think it's dark but those are things that I see as just normal to have in narrative. Also
>creepy music
Could you give me an example because I can only remember the ending music and "Baby baby baby baby"

You have to romance all of them. There's no "just friends' route in P3.

Also other girls get pissed at you if you cheat on them, so you have to juggle that shit.

Everyone always rags on Fuuka for being "Boring", but I always liked her.

Normal, yes, but usually not done in such a big way. They're ever present in P3, whereas they aren't in most games. You're constantly reminded of what you have to do and what failure would mean.

The soundtrack is pretty balanced between upbeat and creepy, so this is pretty 50/50. youtube.com/watch?v=dzAlJHU2Fsg is the main creepy track I can think of off the top of my head

Mitsuru is best, m8. You need to max academics for her, though.

I didn't like her until I played the undub.