Recently, Atlus has found amazing success in western audiences with Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal. The JRPG's immense popularity has significantly expanded the Persona fanbase far beyond what it once was, especially in North America. Now, Persona 4 Golden has released on PC and is already seeing great success for an eight-year-old game that's an enhanced handheld version of a 12-year-old game. Many have assumed that a Persona 3 Portable port would come next, but Persona 3 would benefit greatly from a remake over an original port.
For the whole series, Persona 3 is one of the most important games because of what it started. Persona 3 laid the foundation for what would become staples in the Persona franchise overall. The passing of time with the calendar system, the social simulator aspects and social links, and the critical distance that Persona 3 extended from its parent franchise Shin Megami Tensei. There's all things that made Persona what it is today, but there's also a lot of growing pains that make Persona 3 a tough play for newer Persona fans. Among other factors, there's a solid argument for why Persona 3 needs a revamp, overhaul, or remake instead of just a straight port.
Laying the Foundation for Persona
Persona 3 was really when the series started to leave its Shin Megami Tensei DNA behind to pursue its own identity. Everything that makes Persona different from other JRPGs started with the foundational changes in Persona 3. Social Links and the character relationships that stemmed from them helped distinguish Persona's unique character development. The high school setting helped contextualize this, with the school and surrounding areas serving as a social hub for players to discover new friends and colleagues naturally. Social links and confidants would go on to characterize Persona in a way not many other JRPGs were capable of.
Persona 3 also leveraged that freedom with the introduction of the calendar progression system in Persona, forcing players to weigh their options and decide who they wanted to hang out with the most. Time is a complicated beast in Persona games, as it's inevitably bringing players closer to the climax of the game regardless if they're ready or not. It leads players into thinking methodically about what they want to accomplish each week, setting goals for social links, ranking up social stats, or grinding in the dungeon. While time is purposefully problematic in Persona 3, time enforces how important each action and interaction players make with the world around them. This is why Persona is special, and without Persona 3's efforts, those systems may have never existed.
The Demon is in the Details
The truth is that fans will almost certainly support a Persona 3 port on PC, even if it's completely unchanged from its original releases. But, there's merit in wanting a remake over a port for a number of reasons. There's a lot about Persona 3's mechanics that made things unreasonably difficult and were eventually streamlined or improved in future releases. Also for those who have played Persona 4 Golden on PC, regardless of how good raising the resolution and anti-aliasing makes the game look, the game was still designed during the PS2 era. Modernizing the graphics to something on par with Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight's textures and characters would be an added bonus.
Square Enix has seen great success with its Final Fantasy 7 Remake, which was similarly responsible for several core elements of most numbered Final Fantasy games after that. Final Fantasy 7 Remake very quickly became the definitive edition of a beloved JRPG by overhauling and modernizing every aspect of the game. The graphical fidelity, combat mechanics, and environmental design were all largely faithful to the original game, but were also remade for modern sensibilities to strike a great balance between nostalgia and practicality. Giving Persona 3 the remake treatment would not only serve to iron out the kinks, but also add in elements from Persona 5 that helped revolutionize Persona games.
Why a Remake Makes Persona 3 Better
In particular, a Persona 3 remake could draw a lot of inspiration from what Persona 4 and Persona 5 did right. For one thing, the combat in Persona 5 was some of the best turn-based combat that the whole Persona franchise has produced thus far. Integrating the Baton Pass mechanic alongside 1 More added an element of flexibility that was never too overpowered, especially when many bosses were designed around abusing this mechanic. Persona 3 could implement a version of this, or at the very least allow players to choose their actions instead of party members acting freely based on AI.
Rather than specifically choosing what actions party members do on their turn, players would use the "tactics" menu to influence how party members react during battle. While this mechanic itself has persisted throughout each Persona game, subsequent mainline games gave players the option to deactivate that setting so others could control players independently. Leaving party members up to the will of the game's artificial intelligence can make combat spotty at best, with party members unpredictably using magic or skills vaguely. Even though changing tactics would influence that decision making, sometimes certain abilities would take precedence and not even make sense.
Especially now that Atlus has seen the popularity of Persona 4 Golden on PC, it's very likely that more ports to the PC from Atlus are coming, and if Persona 3 is among that bunch, it won't necessarily be a bad thing. Unfortunately there are just quite a few problematic gameplay mechanics throughout Persona 3 that players simply have no control over, and a remake would do well to put this entry in the franchise on the same level as the more recent ones.
Persona 3 is available now on PSP and PS2.