Persona 3 Portable is receiving a remaster on current-gen consoles, and that is a perfect opportunity to bring back mechanics that were left out of the original P3P. While Portable has plenty of improvements and quality-of-life changes, it would up leaving behind a few elements of older P3 versions. The remaster could bring those mechanics back to make the game truly complete.
Persona 3 Portable is the third version of Persona 3, following the original and FES. It featured many improvements over the original releases, such as improved mechanics for persona summoning and combat, as well as a new protagonist option with unique social links. With a not-insignificant amount of content and positive changes, Portable is the best P3 to remaster. However, it isn't a perfect version of the game. Despite all the good things about P3P, it's missing a few features that previous versions of the game had.
Some of Persona 3 Portable's changes can be understood by the PSP's limitations, while others are more of a mystery. However, the newer consoles such as the XBox One and Nintendo Switch do not have those same limitations. There is valid reason to restore the cut features from Persona 3 Portable, and hopefully the remasters will do so.
Persona 3's City Is Reduced To A Series Of Menus In Portable
Persona 3 takes place in the fictional Tatsumi Port Island, and when not fighting shadows or traversing Tartarus, the player is free to explore the city as they wish. In the original game and FES, the city was a series of three-dimensional environments that the player could walk around in. Even if Atlus doesn't know what to do with Persona in recent years, this was a However, in one action that proves Persona deserves better than a straight P3P remaster, Portable instead rendered the city as a variety of choices for the player to choose from.
The removal of the ability to walk freely around cities can almost definitely be chalked up to the PSP's limitations. Using a series of menus instead would be much less taxing on the system. However, by removing the ability to talk around the city, the player is less able to connect with Tatsumi Port and its inhabitants. In Persona 3 and FES, Tatsumi Port feels alive as the player goes to stores and talks to their various social links in the city. It helps the player get more immersed in the game on their walks through the city. Replacing all of that with a set of menus takes a lot of life out of the city, and a chunk of the game's immersion with it.
When it comes to things a Persona 3 remake needs to improve, returning to freely exploring the map is near the top of the list. The menus that replaced walking caused a bit of the game's charm to fall by the wayside. The consoles that P3P is being ported to are more than capable of handling a freely accessible Iwatodai, and hopefully the remaster will deliver.
Persona 3 Portable's Protagonist Can Only Use One Weapon Type
In Persona 3 and FES, the protagonist was capable of using any weapon in the game, no matter what type it was. Whether it be swords, bows, spears, or anything else, the protagonist was able to equip it. Gathering new weapons is common in Persona, such as unlocking Yukiko's Suzaku Feather in Persona 4 Golden, but P3's protagonist was in a class all his own when it came to weaponry. Unfortunately, P3 Portable's protagonist can only wield their starting weapon type, which is more troublesome than it sounds.
For one, this change takes away a customization option from the player, which is always disappointing. In addition, letting the protagonist use any weapon was that they could make use of any weapon the player found, no matter who it was originally designed for. However, a much more prominent example involves Shinjiro and his hammer weapons. Shinjiro is the only member of the party who can use hammer weapons, but he dies partway through the story. In P3 and FES, the player could continue making use of hammers after his death, but Portable makes them permanently useless due to the protagonist being unable to equip them. Shinjiro is one of the best characters in the Persona series, and losing his entire weapon class makes his death even sadder.
Rendering an entire weapon type obsolete is disappointing, but even beyond that, restricting the protagonist's weapon selection in Portable feels like a step backward. It was already a non-obstructive feature in previous installments, so its removal seems pointless. Whatever the case, letting the protagonist wield whatever they want would be a welcome addition to the P3P remaster.
Portable Had Worse Presentation Than Other Versions Of Persona 3
Sadly, it was inevitable that when Persona 3 was ported to the PSP, there would be sacrifices in of presentation. The areas of Tatsumi Port being turned into menus has already been mentioned, but that wasn't the only way the game's presentation was affected. The required downgrade for Portable to function on the PSP is clear in several ways. The situation was somewhat similar to debates on the viability of Persona Switch ports when Steam Deck exists.
The game's audio and visuals had to be compressed in order to work on the portable system, lowering their quality to a degree. Not only that, but in addition to every part of the city existing primarily as a menu, the game has no character models at all outside of battles and when exploring Tartarus. While the visual novel graphics still tell the story well enough, the charm of the characters playing out the script on screen is unfortunately lost. In addition, the anime cutscenes present in other versions of the game are absent from Portable. These scenes helped to bridge parts of the story together in addition to being quite impressively done, so losing them was a shame.
It's true that visuals are not the most important part of the game, and at heart, it's still the same Persona 3 Calliope Mori made trend on Twitter. However, with the strength of the consoles that P3P is about to be remastered on, it only makes sense to bring back the presentation of the previous versions of Persona 3. Visual presentation was one of P3P's few weaknesses, and this would solve that easily.
Choosing Persona 3 Portable as the version of Persona 3 to remaster was certainly the right call. However, this remaster is also an opportunity to make the game better, and restoring these lost elements would be exactly the way to do that. This remaster has the potential to be the definitive version of Persona 3, and with any hope, it will live up to that expectation.