Replaying Persona 3's INFAMOUS Expansion in 2024

one of the First videos I ever made was a really long analysis on Persona 3 Fest for the PlayStation 2 it was the first video of mine to really Garner some attention and I'm proud of it however over the past 4 years this video has begun to show its age a bit not just in the sense that I've improved as a writer and reviewer but also in how my relationship with this game has changed over the past few years I've replayed Persona 3 quite a few times and every time I complete it I find more and more to appreciate about the game it's still not enough for it to become my favorite but it's certainly better than I initially gave it credit for I've grown accustomed to all the game's weird quirks and I'm able to accept the game for what it is however the same cannot be said about the game's epilog in retrospect it's funny how little people have actually experienced Persona 3 the answer since it's something that's advertised to the player immediately upon starting the game up it's frequently featured in the Fest exclusive opening right on the title screen and as highlighted on the back of the box for such a heavily touted feature for this version of the game you'd be harded impressed to find many people that have actually played it though I wouldn't be surprised if this is due to the rather Infamous reputation the answer has garnered itself over the years longtime viewers might remember that I myself partook in a good old thrashing on this piece of content however unlike the journey the answer was something that I never Revisited after my original video it left such a bad taste in my mouth both gameplay and narrative wise that I wanted absolutely nothing to do with it after making that video I had no intentions of ever going back to it but the thing is a lot can change in 4 years as I found myself growing much fonder of the Journey part of me began to wonder if I would end up enjoying the answer more if I gave it another shot since reload is just around the corner and I found myself once again in that Persona 3 mood I figured now would be the perfect time to dive head first into the abyss of time and give this Infamous epilog a much more fresh and mature look so for today's video we're going to find out if I was wrong about Persona 3 the answer since Persona 3 the answer is an epilog chapter it uses the ending of the original game as a jumping off point so I'm going to make the Assumption here that we've all already played it though since we're talking about Persona fans here there's a high likelihood that they haven't experienced the game anyway so you know what I'll do you all a favor and set the stage real quick the Final Act of the original story has the members of seas take one last stand against the goddess of death Nicks while this fight was more so an attempt to take control back into their lives during their final moments before they could be finished off a miracle occurs thanks to the bonds that the protagonist was able to nurture throughout his journey he's able to awaken to an incredible power and seal away Nicks once again this should have been happily ever after but on me notes to the rest of seas this power came with the ultimate cost since upon fulfilling the promise to meet up on graduation day he passes away in the arms of aigus persona through the answer takes place a few weeks after the ending of the original game and you can immediately tell that something's off there's an awkward almost uncomfortable feeling of dread in the air since since Makoto's passing the members of seas have drifted apart as everyone tries to keep themselves distracted from their thoughts by the time when the dorm is being closed up and the evokers need to be collected only a handful of members make time to attend while Makoto's death impacted everyone in some way the one most affected by it was aigus during his last moments aigus made a promise to always be by his side to protect him however she was unable to prevent the inevitable aigus is racked with guilt that she was unable to fulfill her promise and as such she would go want to lock herself away in her room trying her hardest to avoid facing the death of her comrade even going as far as to skip out on his funeral this results in a reoccurring nightmare where she finds herself chasing after the shadow of her loved one only for him to always be just Out Of Reach and eventually she stops dreaming altogether this is when things really kick off since on the night before the dorm is closed down the former members of C's find themselves caught in a Time Loop not only that but a mysterious Android not too dissimilar to IUS bust out from a hatch that appeared in the storm the attacker proves themselves to be too much for the group to handle but before they can land the finishing blow on Ken Aus suddenly finds herself Awakening to the same power Makoto once wielded transforming her Persona into orus before blacking out when she comes to aigus finds herself decked out in a new battle gear and is given a rundown on the situation it turns out that our mysterious attacker is an anti-shadow weapon named mettis who claims to be ais's sister in a mysterious Dimension known as the abyss of time has sprouted underneath the dorm because of this the members of seas find them El trapped inside the dorm forced to repeat the same day over and over the only way to escape this Loop is by destroying the abyss of time at its source which mettis believes to be the members of seas themselves but since dying doesn't seem to be on the docket today the former Shadow Hunters sued up to take on what lies in the depths of the abyss of time something that I really like about the opening section of the answer is the overwhelming feeling of discomfort that it exudes let me take you back in time to a point where Persona 3 was just a game that existed on its own with no other expanded material sure we all know now that Makoto dies at the end of the story but in the original version of the game it's sort of left up in the air there's nothing in the game that explicitly States that's what happens aside from a blink and you miss a detail during the final battle for all we know he could just be tired because at the end of a long and painful Journey the protagonist is finally able to achieve some peace and the comfort of his comrades about a year after the release of the vanilla game Persona 3 Fest hit store shelves though if you only wanted to play the new epilog chapter you could optt to buy it on its own instead of getting the full re-release I can imagine the sheer shock returning players went through booting up the answer for the first time they buy this expansion eager to reunite with their favorite characters only for them to be greeted by the harsh reality of what happened the protagonist the main character You Were Meant to embody was gone and his absence has caused the members of seas to drift apart the characters feel like they have to explore the abyss of time out of an obligation and are clearly still not over the death of their previous leader this presents the answer as a bit of a monkey paw esque wish and recontextualizes the ending of the original game you pop in the answer desperate to return to the world that we've all grown attached to only for the realizations to set in be careful what you wish for I guess I think the Persona fan base has taken the reveal of the protagonist's death for granted I've noticed that this player base has been particularly bad with spoilers in recent years you have no idea how many people I know had Persona 4 spoiled to them because of a meme or whatever and the same can be said about Persona 3 as well the fact that Makoto Yuki dies at the end of the game is common knowledge now and is probably what Persona 3 has become the most welln for it's the game that features the protagonist that dies there are people that haven't played this game that know this now and I can't help but feel as though that having the ambiguity essentially erased by its own Community was a bad thing imagine how much more effective this section of the game would be if you went into it totally blind to the truth I can imagine some people being in denial that this is the Direction the Story is taking taking but the answer's cold and unflinching stance on this fact is commendable the original protagonist is gone and the group is at their lowest point but it's up to the player to decide to see it through to the end even if you know that Makoto died at the end of the game the answer's opening section is compelling enough on its own on top of the shock and discomfort it Targets this section also attempts to set up a lot of intrigue through the new character while also teasing the true purpose of the abyss of time now as for whether or not it provides satisfying conclusions to to those Mysteries is a different discussion entirely to give credit words due the actual opening sequence is pretty well done but if we want to earn the right to those answers then we need to suit up and get back to the swing of things structurally speaking the abyss of time is just an upside down tardus generally speaking they have the same flow and pacing you explore randomly generated Dungeons and take on a boss fight every few floors rinse and repeat a couple of times to complete the section and move on to the next one on the surface yeah it's the exact same thing but where the answer differs from the journey isn't in the literal dungeon crawling but rather it's in the combat and the design elements surrounding those mechanics right off the bat you start off with four different party members to include on your team with more unlocking as you finish sections of the abyss of time but more importantly every tactic from the journey is immediately unlocked so you're able to start experimenting with different strategies right out of the gate I think one of my biggest character arcs is probably how my appreciation for Persona 3's tactics system has grown over the years back in my original Persona 3 video I thought it was a very flawed system I remember struggling a lot with certain fights because I wasn't quite able to figure out how to properly control my party and was very vocal of the idea that Direct Control would be a far superior way to experience the game to an extent I still agree with that statement having Direct Control and jrpgs opens up a lot of freedom for players to make smart on the-fly choices assuming that the design allows for it however the mistake I made back then was how I held on to this narrow-minded view that this is the only way to design a combat System since Persona 3's General combat didn't follow those same principles I viewed it as flawed for what it wasn't rather than taking it for what it was trying to be Persona 3's gameplay is designed around planning for the long term rather than the short term and the game gives you all the tools to facilitate this the tactic system isn't supposed to be used to assign characters skills but to take up rules for that turn in the fight you're even given this handy turn chart to view the actions of the entire cycle rather than just seeing who will be acting next you can then assign everyone their roles accordingly and then use your own turn to perform an action that fits in with the strategy you have in mind this system isn't perfect mind you since there are some strange quirks with the AI mainly akihiko's debuff priority feeling somewhat random and party-wide healing magic being strict but to say that the system doesn't work is silly personas four and five have very different design philosophies in three and while it's fine to have a preference writing off three's tactics menu for not meshing in with those later games is pretty pretty narrow-minded while I could go into more detail about this the point I'm trying to make is that my opinion of the tactic system has shifted greatly over the years and because of this I find myself able to enjoy the combat of the answer more than I did previously but it's still undoubtedly flawed in a few areas Persona 3 the journey and the answer are fully designed with the tactic system in mind however where these two modes differ greatly is in the complexity of their Encounters in the vanilla game most formations feature multiple of one enemy and in the case where there's more than one type more often than not all of them will have a weakness on the surface the answer does the same thing however the catch here is that you'll usually come across an enemy that blocks or repels elements that the formation is weak to there are even occasions where some Shadows straight up don't have a weakness for you to rely on more thought needs to go into how you approach Encounters in the answer compared to the journey in the main game you can rely on the knockdown tactic for most Random Encounters in the game just be sure to swap out your party members to match the theme of the block of tardus and you should be good hell you can even use your own character to do that if you really want to the answer on the other hand asks you to get creative with your use of the tactic system aign Target and attack Fallen will end up seeing liberal use compared to the more situational applications they have in the journey while part of me appreciates the idea of having more complex Random Encounters it ends up having an impact on the pacing of the dungeon crawling there's a lot more time spent fiddling around with the tactics menu here than in the journey sure in the moment it only adds an extra few seconds but with the number of encounters you're expected to do in your excursions the time certainly adds up there was a point during my playthrough where I began to opt out of fighting certain enemy formations because the time invested wasn't worth the payout the last thing you want in your combat Centric RPG is to have players want to avoid Encounters this is the core difference between the design philosophy of the journey and the answer I never got this feeling of repetition while playing the former because the trash mobs were appropriately designed around the idea of being bite-sized challenges you knock down all the enemies go for the all at attack and you'll be on your way sure sometimes you'll come across formations that take a little bit of extra work to eliminate but they were few and far between and were mostly reserved for those glowy Shadow encounters the answer relies more on these multi-turn fights which would be fine but this results in a lot more work for lesser rewards you're still given the same amount of experience points and Shuffle time opportunities here as in the journey at least as far as I can tell who knows it could be slightly different but it feels about the same to me I don't want to give everyone the wrong idea aide here there are still plenty of Encounters in the answer that do follow the same design as the journey so if you really want to then you can just stick to just farming those ones I wouldn't be surprised if the reason encounters are designed this way is to prepare players for the revamped Boss Battles the boss fights are probably where the biggest differences between the journey and the answer lie in a design sense in the original game bosses consisted of three of the same enemy or one super strong enemy without any weaknesses this provided a few different kinds of challenges some fights were designed designed around exploiting weaknesses for an easy Victory While others would ask the player to keep enemies in check knocking them down and setting them up for future turns with smart tactics and Buffs late in the game weaknesses are phased out entirely in favor of encouraging players to build a party around countering what the boss throws at them while you would expect the answer to naturally build on this idea the game actually takes a different approach entirely I remember [ __ ] hating these the first couple of times I played the answer and I was certainly dreading going back to them now the bosses in the answer are easily the most notorious part of this game and you'd be hardpressed to find many people that didn't struggle on their first playthrough unlike the journey the anwers bosses are mostly groups of enemies featuring a wide variety of affinities but the catch is these Shadows work off of each other almost like you're fighting a specially curated party you'll have an enemy that's weak to fire being complimented by one that gulls fire while also having skill sets to take advantage of your weaknesses going for all that attacks is a lot more tricky than in the journey due to all the different factors that play this means that you're forced to flex your Tactical muscles to make the most out of your turns you'll find yourself relying on some of the more situational commands and skills as a result just because you're not always guaranteed to get an all that attack knocking down enemies still has a purpose you're given an extra action in battle and it takes an entire turn cycle for the downed enemy to get another action with careful planning you can take full advantage of skills like cruel attack and vile assault powerful attacks that deal even more damage to down enemies maybe it's a good idea to use a sign Target to have some party members Focus down one shadow in particular so the rest of the fight can become much more manageable there's more to knocking down enemies than just getting the all at attack and the answer encourages players to experiment with what they can get away with this is where some of the more diverse skill sets of the party members truly shine it might be a good idea to bring a character into a boss fight just because of their Elemental affinities I don't find June to be a great party member but the fact that he gets Early Access to marakukaja makes him a pretty good pick in some scenarios Ken makes for a great support character if yukari is busy taking advantage of an enemy's wind weakness or if you're up against Shadows that use electric skills one of the best parts about the aners boss design is how it encourages players to cycle through different party members my biggest mistake during my original playthrough was sticking to a specific set of characters instead of experimenting with all the tools I had at my disposal I'd bash my head against a brick wall until it crumbled rather than taking the more reasonable approach and trying out different characters in these scenarios though for as much as the answer encourages and in some cases require the use of different team compositions the fact that the game lacks any sort of party-wide experience share kind of throws a wrench in that idea the answer treats its boss fights as puzzles but this is still a stat-based game when all is said and done boss encounters are built with certain formations in mind and if you go against the grain then you're going to have a very rough time this would be fine if reserved party members gained experience but that isn't a thing in this game what this results in are points where you need to dedicate a good chunk of time grinding characters so they can stay up to speed with the rest of the team look I don't mind grinding in some cases I can find it therapeutic but the answer asks the player to switch around their compositions quite often and in the case where you need to sub in someone who's been out of the action for a bit they're going to need to play catchup if you want them to pull their weight the Persona games do have an experience scaling system where you gain levels quicker if you're lagging behind but it doesn't change the fact that at some point or another you're going to have to grind on the bright side IUS will gain some levels so you can make some new personas for the fight but it doesn't change the fact that there's a lot of busy work in the answer these new boss fights are a bit of a catch 22 I appreciate them for having a bit more complexity and taking full advantage of some of the less useful party members but at the same time I find myself preferring the more relaxed approach the journey had with its own boss fights in the main campaign it felt as though there were a lot of different ways you could tackle scenarios sure some characters were better than others and select fights but on the whole there was enough wiggle room to still approach bosses in the way that matched your preferred play style the answer doesn't quite have this luxury you're expected to use a certain set of characters in set scenarios and while it is rewarding to discover this it results in less approach options it's up to you whether you like one style of boss fight over another and while I've grown a bit fonder of the bosses in the answer there is just one decision that really grinds my gears something that the answer really likes to do is give enemies with weaknesses passive skills that increase their Dodge rate against that element this shows up as early as the first boss encounter and is something that's repeated for nearly every fight after that I didn't like this back then and I still don't like this now evade passives can be an interesting source of challenge it highlights the importance of agility Buffs and debuffs but when nearly every single main boss asks you to do this it gets old really fast even if you're able to manage your Buffs correctly there's still a higher chance that your attacks will miss than they usually would and I can't help but feel as though that it's a bit [ __ ] there's no skill or thought that goes into whether or not you're able to successfully land a hit on the enemy I get that nearly every turn-based game has these variants in place to keep things interesting and the answer does do this to prevent players from rying exclusively on all that attacks but there are much better ways to accomplish this maybe some boss fights should consist of enemies that have weaknesses but one tougher foe that doesn't that way you still have to take advantage of specialized skills and tactics without adding an unnecessary layer of frustration because you miss your attack four times in a row the game does tell you if an enemy has an evade passive but there's just something extra aggravating about knowing this information like even with full Buffs and debuffs seeing the message pop up that they're only dodging because of a skill just tilts me to no end as Petty as this sounds this is one of the key reasons why I prefer the bosses in the journey you know since I'm already talking about the gameplay stuff that I don't like I may as well just go all the way with it the abyss of time has some pretty varied set dressing I quite like the Aesthetics of this place but the issue is that the dungeon themes are often repeated instead of changing every block like in tardus the themes shift after a boss battle this makes makes the dungeon lack the cohesion that Tartarus has and makes it a pain in the ass to revisit earlier sections to grab a specific Persona you can't just rely on dungeon Aesthetics to guess anymore since they end up being shared across different doors it might seem like a small thing but it means a hell of a lot more here since the answer lacks a compendium I'm still baffled by this I don't think I need to go into detail as to why the Persona compendium is such a handy tool for long Fusion chains it's something that I've always heavily relied on in Persona 3 because there's no reason to spend your money outside of picking up the odd damage boosting accessory by removing the compendium not only does Fusion become a lot more tedious but it creates a reluctance to let go of specific personas on your first time through you never know when a certain Persona will come in handy in the future whether that be because of how it could be used in battle or because it makes for some good Fusion fodder as someone who's played through this game a couple of times and fully understands the fusion system I can make it by just fine by sticking to what I know best but potentially bricking your strategy because of a fusion accident ruins a lot of my desire to experiment I managed to get some of my favorite personas for this playthrough but at a certain point I stopped fusing new ones altogether I'd be more willing to experiment if I was able to quickly buy back any of my top dogs but that's unfortunately not the case it's stuff like this that adds to the idea that Persona 3D answer was designed more so for the veteran P3 player rather than the Casual fan it strips back on a few quality of life features for the sake of adding an extra layer of challenge but the results are pretty mixed for me a random example would be the alterations made to the checkpoint system in the regular game you could teleport to and from boss rooms as soon as you got to the right floor this lets you quickly save your game fuse new personas and maybe sub out some party members for the upcoming fight in the answer however checkpoints only activate after you kill the boss there is a safe point right before the fight but by the time you reach it you're probably already drained of SP so you need to leave the dungeon to heal then crawl all the way back down to the bottom so you can fight the boss what's the point of this because it doesn't make the game any more challenging it just adds an extra layer of tum that didn't exist before I'm still going to avoid fights anyways so you may as well just put a checkpoint before the boss to save me some time now that I've replayed the answer it's safe for me to say that I was a little too hard on it from a gameplay perspective in a lot of ways I find it to be a pretty fun time though I think most of that has to do with me fully understanding The Game's core mechanics more than anything a lot of unique quirks brought with the answer either feel unnecessary or just flat out annoying there are a few good changes sprinkled in here but also some stuff that just rubs me the wrong way is it bad not at all but it's not exactly great either something that the answer has going against it is the lack of the social aspect of persona 3's gameplay it makes sense due to the context of the story but like it or not Persona 3 was structured with all this stuff in mind part of the reason why the dungeon crawling in the journey doesn't get old is because you have a lot of other content to break up the combat you got to do Social Links work on your stats and play specialized gameplay segments in between the main combat Persona through the answer is basically just the tartous sections isolated and placed into its own game while this decision might seem harmless on its own because there isn't much to break it up it's easier for this content to become repetitive and since the answer has about a 25-hour run time without many changes or deviations it starts to become old really fast personally I think the length of this campaign could have been cut in half and it would have been better off for it it's not like you'd be losing out on much story content by doing so Persona 3 the answer attempts to tell a story about grief in the main game the characters learn to not let death Define their lives and instead use it as the ultimate motivator we only have so much time in this world so rather than just hiding away we should make the most out of our days while we still can it's a poetic message that sure to resonate with a lot of people however the answer demonstrates how our characters would deal with the cold reality of loss involving one of their closest comrades the answer tells a very interesting story on paper it's ambitious in its themes But ultimately it doesn't say nearly as much as I think it wants to the story story of the answer is extremely front and back loaded the opening section does a great job at setting up Intrigue while also establishing the story's main goal we're introduced to metis are told about the abyss of time and are teased at the struggle our characters are about to face however after that point the story falls into a cycle of repetition every time we reach the bottom of one of the blocks of the abyss of time we're shown a vision of the past and the party takes time to discuss what they just saw I like this in theory not only do we occasionally learn something new about the characters Recon seizing their roles in the main story but this also works to provide a ju toos of who the members of C's were versus who they've become now this allows the party to develop a deeper understanding of each other which helps rekindle the bond that they once had it feels good to see the characters slowly begin to act like their old selves being able to confront the past in a literal sense helps remind them how far they've come I don't mind this stuff but the issue that the answer runs into is that these scenes take up the majority of story content and once I realize that there was a pattern forming the repetitious nature of these conversations became a lot more noticeable when you truly break down the events that happens in these cut scenes a lot of them follow the same formula the characters see a vision of the past talk about it a little bit they find a way to include medicine in the conversation to make her feel more a part of the group then we move on to the next one where the process is repeated having your characters reflect on past actions to come to a new understanding is a good thing it's a strong storytelling decision and is the easiest way to demonstrate how much they've grown since the beginning however the answer doesn't have a whole lot to say about this other than some basic character interactions it works fine for the first one or two times but they feel they need to do this with every single character and it becomes boring after a while like I get it can we please move on to something else now what makes it worse is that the characters act like they're making significant progress in finding out the truth behind the abyss of time when in reality they aren't all that's happening is that they're seeing the past and mettis is the one who explains the meaning of it to them mettis is a weird character to me she's meant to represent ais's borderline obsession with Makoto she's the embodiment of all of her human emotions that she discarded after his death Med's existence serves an excellent thematic purpose but as a character she's pretty [ __ ] Bland loyal to a fault but most of medic's dialogue as her just expositing about the mechanics of the abyss of time and what certain Visions are supposed to mean there's a little bit more to her than that admittedly her abandonment issues and childlike Behavior come to mind but it isn't explored in any meaningful ways that's probably the best way I can describe cribe most of this middle portion of the answer there are a lot of compelling themes and ideas present but they just aren't explored to their fullest potential take the shadow Makoto for example this mysterious figure is built up throughout the entire game and when we're finally able to come face to face with it it's revealed that he's the embodiment of all the regret the members of seas have been feeling this is the reason why the abyss of time exists and why it appeared under the dorm by fighting the literal personification of their grief they'll be able to finally overcome the death of the protagonist you'd think that there'd be a lot more for the characters to say about all this but there isn't they beat the guy up and that's it like there is so much potential with this idea but it just doesn't get explored at the very least the boss fight is cool though I'll give him that unfortunately there isn't too much time to dwell on it since right after defeating Shadow Makoto the main conflict is introduced okay so when you boot up the answer the first cut scene that plays is one that teases a conflict within the group you're meant to get excited and question what exactly went so wrong that the group ended up fighting like this and once you reach the end game you're given that answer so when Shadow Makoto dies everyone gets a key right they could either use it to open the front door and escape the abyss of time or they can open the door to Makoto's room and go back in time before they faced Nicks and potentially change the future what this results in is a conflict between the characters to make a long discussion short while the majority of C's wants to return to the present day and move on with their lives yukari wants to use the opportunity to potentially save the main character at this point point in the story they don't know why he died so she wants to go back in time and try to save his life in my original video on the answer I was extremely harsh towards this borderline unfair at the time I didn't like yukari's character all too much I used to think that Atlas tried way too hard to make her unlikable at the start of the game then Bank on the idea that eventually people would warm up to her I personally never did and her attitude in the answer certainly didn't help with this one of my biggest mistakes in that original video is that I poorly conveyed what exactly I didn't like about this conflict and it came off more so that I was just mad at yukari for having emotions which yeah is a bit embarrassing on my end but hey part of growing up is to realize where you went wrong so let me tackle this in a different way a constant theme throughout the story of Persona 3 was dealing with loss every character loses something or someone close to them over the course of the narrative akihiko loses shinjiro mitsuru loses her father fuka best friend transfers to a new school and so on the only char character that didn't lose anything was yukari while her dad died when she was young yukari's main character goal in that story was discovering the truth behind those events her character mainly focuses on family Legacy and her Arc ends when she's able to forgive her father because she learns he was a good man however it's implied that she didn't have the best relationship with her family so it's no surprise that she uses C's as a replacement for that Makoto was most likely the first time yukari lost someone close to her she never dealt with these emotions before and while she tried her hardest to bury them they eventually resurfaced when given an opportunity to possibly change the past this emotional Outburst is realistic and is in line with how she acted under stress in the past it makes even more sense when you consider the fact that the main game not so subtly pushes her as the main love interest this all makes sense and works for the story but what I don't like is how quickly this conflict escalates the characters do attempt to have a civil discussion as to how they should use the keys but only after a little bit of push back does everything fall apart out of all the characters yukari is the only one to vocally disagree with the group which is fine but she suggests that they host a battle royale of Swords to decide who gets the keys every time I watch this scene I feel like I'm missing some dialogue or something because this doesn't feel like a natural conclusion based off of everything that's happened in the game this would only work if there was tension built up throughout the entire story and this argument was the breaking point I can imagine a world where the story of the answer was this Doom and Gloom Affair where the members of CES pretty much stopped being friends entirely and didn't reconnect at all and in this version of the story I can accept the idea that the group would eventually fall apart and would want to selfishly use the keys in their own way but that's not the story we got so it makes this entire conflict feel forced and pretty sloppy what's even more questionable is how they divide up these groups for the battle Ken and akihiko being against ukari makes sense Jun P being on his own with koraru can work I suppose IUS and mettis working together was a given though when you really think about it I gu's indecision lines with jun's initial hesitation so but yukari being teamed up with mitsuru is dumb and it's not because they don't work well as a Duo but it's because matsuru doesn't even agree with yukari's perspective she only teams up with her because they're friends which I think the [ __ ] not friend or otherwise you don't just agree with something like possibly endangering the entire world right I get that she was there for you when you needed it but there's a pretty substantial difference in consequences here the story knows this is stupid too because they try their absolute hardest to avoid questioning mitsuru's decision here like what would happen if they won the fight guess the world is doomed but hey BFFs I guess yeah I still don't like this conflict I find it to be a mess it doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you really think about it but getting that moment where yukari fully breaks down and lets her true emotions out is a touching scene it's one of the most human moments in the Persona series and I feel bad for not appreciating that in the past yukari is still not my favorite character in the game I find her to be mostly just fine but this is one of the better scenes with her yukari finally allowing herself to be embraced by her comrades as they all agree to move forward with their lives is a nice Cherry to end off her character Arc honestly I think the story of the answer should have ended here but there's still one last bit to talk about the final part of the game story are the characters discovering what exactly happened to Makoto at the end of The Journey though if you were to ask me this feels more like a retcon for the sake of giving the answer a final boss more than anything it turns out when Makoto used the power to seal away Nick he was actually creating a barrier to protect the entity from being reached by Mankind's desire for death his soul now exists as a barrier to protect the world and further lean into the whole Jesus metaphor part of me would have preferred it if the characters never truly learned how Makoto died and instead find solace in the fact that he gave his life for their cause with the way the story is framed now it implies that they're only able to move on because they know he died for a good reason like what if aigus wasn't Satisfied by the answer would she still go back in time you would assume no but with the way the story is written it comes off as the opposite I think it would have made for a better message if they never found out sometimes people will pass away and there's no Grand meaning behind it so rather than dwelling on the unknown we should instead find comfort in each other and move on to a better future Persona 3 the answer despite its weirdness and poor design choices ultimately has a solid message buried underneath it where it stumbles is how when that message is expressed through the story there's an overall lack of Direction with this piece of content which is a shame because on the drawing board this looks to be a worthwhile addition to the main story at the end of the day I think it's just fine though it's certainly a lot better than I gave it credit for but I wouldn't call it anything close to being great it's a neat epilog for those who really liked Persona 3 and were looking to sink their teeth into more of that gameplay Loop but for those looking for a satisfying narrative experience your mileage may vary in a few areas the answer sh mind I can think of some powerful moments in the story and the ending leaves me with a nice warm feeling I like the connection that the new credits music has memories of you is a song drenched in Melancholy it's a song that's meant to embody the emotions that come with the passing of a loved one taking all of the lessons you learned from them and the memories Associated into the future but at the same time demonstrates the difficulties of no longer having that person with you receiving constant reminders of who they were and how they'll never be forgotten brand new days is a song about accept in overcoming that grief the on gray skies that clouded us are replaced with a bright warm sun while they are gone and we will miss the ones we lost everything is going to be okay without them it's hard to deny the sincerity behind the answer and while it is a flawed experience the optimism it promotes even in the darkest times is one that I can commend and you know what that's all that really matters hey everyone thank you all so much for watching I'd like to give a special shout out to all of my channel supporters whose names are on screen now it's because of these legends that my channel is able to keep going at the pace it does currently however I would also like to extend a very special thanks to you watching this video right now because without your support then this channel would have been dead a very long time ago I think and if you would like to join the ranks of these legendary people up here then you can do so by either becoming a channel member or joining my patreon both are linked in the description it's funny um I referenced the fact that Persona 3 reload was a about to come out in this video because I completely slipped up when I was writing it it was before reload came out but by the time this is coming out reloads most likely going to be out as I'm recording this uh the game comes out in about like a week or so and I'm very much looking forward to it and to be honest I do have some reservations like not all of my fears have been completely cleaned up I remember I made a video on it a couple of months ago and I did mention some concerns that I had surrounding the project project I hope that they're cleared up by the time the actual game comes out I have no idea when I'll be able to make a video on it but I know as soon as the game comes out I'm going to make my priority to just blast through it and record footage take notes and all that junk I do have a few other videos that I might make beforehand it really just depends on how my schedule works out so I have no idea what the next video is going to be specifically however you do want to stay up date with that in my potential reload video please considering following my Twitter or joining my Discord server both of Linked In the description once again I'd like to thank you all so much for watching and I hope to see you all next time

Channel: Nam’s Compendium

Views: 113,411

Keywords: persona, persona 3, persona 3 the answer, persona 3 the answer review, persona 3 the answer analysis, persona 3 the answer critique, persona 3 review, persona 3 reload, persona 3 the answer in 2024, should you play persona 3 the answer, persona 3 reload the answer, persona 3 reload nams compendium, nams compendium persona, nams compendium persona 3

Id: FMlum_8SZwE

Length: 35min 33sec (2133 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 02 2024