The Persona franchise has, in recent years, become known as one of the most grand and sweeping franchises in gaming. Separate stories with similar premises, the Persona games manage to create huge worlds filled with fascinating characters without ever having an entry feel like a particular miss.

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However, one thing the Persona games aren’t afraid to do is create difficult challenges for players. Across the various renditions of the main Persona games, all kinds of difficulty levels are at work, and some players haven’t been afraid in the past to call out versions of the games for reducing or increasing the level of difficulty.

Updated on March 29, 2024, by Chris Harkin: The future of the Persona franchise is looking bright, although a number of the most recent entries, including the remake of Persona 3, tend to ease the difficulty a little more than older games in the series. Though the nature of these games means it will likely be a while before the next major entry, Persona 6, arrives, fans are always excited to check out more of the history behind this fantastic franchise. The most challenging games in the Persona series will likely continue to change as time goes by, and this article will be updated accordingly.

8 Persona 4 Golden

GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 2.97/5

Persona 4 Golden was a version of one of the most popular games in the history of the franchise. The strange thing is that while adding content and improving on many aspects of the original Persona 4 game, Golden actually made a number of things about the title easier rather than adding any difficulty.

Golden adds a lot in terms of texture and platform updates, and there is hardly an aspect of the game that remains untouched from the original. Story additions like a bad ending and multiple new events that take place throughout the school year pad the length of the game, but the actual combat is much easier than it was in the original version.

7 Persona 3 Portable

GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 3/5

There are multiple versions of most Persona games, especially the third one, which received a remake in 2024. Persona 3 was the first time the franchise mixed the social life and dungeon-crawler elements that have become the staple blending of the Persona games.

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Portable was an easier take on Persona 3, partly because it was the game that introduced difficulty options into the franchise. This version had a number of shifts, some of them purely cosmetic, such as allowing the player to change the main character’s gender and more. The difficulty was mostly similar to other versions of Persona 3 but with minor shifts that made it decidedly easier.

6 Persona 5

GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 3.05/5

Though Persona 5 isn’t one of the harder games in the Persona franchise, it makes it on the list of difficult games for a couple of reasons. For one, it is easily more difficult than the ridiculously simplified Persona 5 Royal, and secondly, there are some aspects that make Persona 5’s base game harder to complete than some of the others.

One of the biggest factors is the runtime, which for Persona 5 averages around 97 hours. This means it isn’t exactly one of the quickest experiences for casual gamers to get through, but it is still a much more comfortable experience for players once they get to know the ins and outs of combat. Side characters like Futaba help a huge amount in combat, and most enemies and bosses are fairly manageable compared to those that appeared in earlier entries of the franchise.

5 Persona 5 Strikers

GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 3.12/5

Persona 5 Strikers brought an entirely new battle system to the series, morphing the game into much more of an action RPG that gave players an entirely different sort of challenge. A sequel to Persona 5, this game featured the Phantom Thieves reuniting a year later to solve a new case of changing hearts.

The real-time combat, coming in hack-and-slash format, was a major change from previous entries of the Persona series. The challenge was that players weren't used to the games working in this manner. The combat and gameplay, in general, became much more reactive, fast-paced, and even frantic at times, providing a new injection of difficulty for players to experience.

4 Persona 4

GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 3.26/5

The original version of Persona 4 is one of the biggest hits the franchise has ever had, but there was a level of difficulty in it that, though not drastic, was significantly higher than the remake version of this entry. This version of the game was originally released at the very end of the PlayStation 2 era.

Though Persona 4 didn’t change drastically, and most of what changed was via additional content in terms of characters and storylines, when the Golden remake came out, the difficulty was considered greater in the original because the controls weren’t as well sorted out as they would be in the later remake.

3 Persona 3

GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 3.35/5

Persona 3’s original version was one of the harder original games in the franchise. While it featured the format that players are currently used to in Persona games, revolving around a main character adventuring with a party through a variety of dungeons, the biggest issue was that the way the party would work hadn’t been figured out to the extent it later would be.

This led to players struggling in dungeons constantly due to their party leaving them as they tried to keep going. High encounter rates compared to later editions and difficulty with different aspects of the early game made Persona 3 a struggle for many players as they tried to get into the new format of the franchise.

2 Persona 2: Eternal Punishment

GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 3.55/5

Eternal Punishment, the follow-up game to Persona 2, is still well-remembered among the Persona community, mostly because of the intense difficulty present in the game.

The biggest issues were that the encounter rate of enemies in dungeons was ridiculously high compared to later games in the franchise, and negotiating was also much harder than it would end up being in other titles. While this was an early version of what would later become the combat and social aspects known to fans of Persona games, there is no doubt that Persona 2: Eternal Punishment was an extremely difficult and, at times, frustrating title to get through.

1 Revelations: Persona

GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 3.61/5

The first ever Persona game came out in the mid-90s and was, as such, much more challenging than most games released today. At the time, it was simply more common for RPGs to come with a lot of difficulty, and the first game in this spin-off series stayed true to these ideas by being quite a slog for gamers to work through.

Telling the story of a high school student whose city had become a haven for dark creatures and demons, players had to fight through over 300 types of monsters, trying to decide whether to battle or enlist their aid by talking to them and subsequently reaching one of many different endings. The first game in the Shin Megami Tensei style to come to the Western world, this major hit led the series to what it has become today, but at the time, it was a hugely frustrating experience to try and battle through.

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Every Mainline Persona Game, Ranked

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