Pretty much just FES but better... mostly. Portable looks at all the issues with the character cast and thinks "hm... what if we just fixed every single issue with them, and made the best cast of social links in the franchise?" And so they did. However, in classic Atlus fashion when something great is added something is taken away; in this case it's that the games visuals were stripped down to work with a small portable console and animated cutscenes were removed. I personally still value the changed social links WAY over these downgrades, but I understand why people don't like it. Personally, I recommend playing Reload first, then trying Portable.

Salve o Corinthians
O campeão dos campeões
Eternamente
Dentro dos nosso corações
Salve o Corinthians
De tradições e glórias mil
Tu és orgulho
Dos desportistas do Brasil
Teu passado é uma bandeira
Teu presente é uma lição
Figuras entre os primeiros do nosso esporte bretão
Corinthians Grande
Sempre Altaneiro
És do Brasil
O clube mais brasileiro
Salve o Corinthians
O campeão dos campeões
Eternamente
Dentro dos nosso corações
Salve o Corinthians
De tradições e glórias mil
Tu és orgulho
Dos desportistas do Brasil

The only decent version of Persona 3 for years. Every criticism I've seen of this game compared to the original has basically been a pro rather than a con.

Visual Novel style? Kinda fits the RPG whose overworld consists of only text. The Answer's not included? Good. No animated cutscenes? Potentially good, I do genuinely think people who see this as a huge loss need to play games other than Persona tho.

The social links for female side are also markedly better than OG's tho I will say whoever wrote Ken's needs to be locked up and I feel like that's an incredibly cold take. But at the end of the day it's still Persona 3, if you wanna play FeMC that bad I'd say just play Q2.

The game that changed Persona forever.
To be completely honest, for me the Portable version of Persona 3 is the weakest game of the modern Persona games, the lack of cutscenes really takes away all the emotional impact, and the pacing is very bad. Ultimately I still like the overall story, it's a fun journey from beginning all the way to the end, and the ending is phenomenal.
The characters are the best part of the game in my opinion, they are very likeable and they grew on me as I progressed through the story.

The gameplay is actually pretty good, it's typical turn based combat with some additional clever mechanics that were later improved in the newer games.
This was the first Persona game that introduced the social simulator aspect which I love, I always enjoyed meeting new characters, making bonds with other people and interacting with the side content, this is what makes Persona such a unique and interesting series.

What I didn't really enjoy is Tartarus, think of it like this, there are hundreds of empty levels where you do the same thing over and over again, it's incredibly repetitive and boring and I stopped playing the game multiple times because of it, which is a shame because there's definitely some wasted potential.

As for the music, it's really damn cool, at first I wasn't a fan of the Rap part but after listening to the entire soundtrack, I didn't mind it anymore, it's a solid soundtrack overall and it has some beautiful songs.

I enjoyed this game a lot, however I do think that the Portable version is not the ideal way to experience Persona 3, the absence of the cutscenes and the fact that there's almost no exploration hurts the game quite a lot, and on top of that, there are some things about it that are outdated, but it's still a fun experience, it's the game that made the Persona series popular, it reinvented the wheel and succeeded in doing so, but for me it just didn't hit as much as Persona 4 and Persona 5 did.

Final Rating: "Great" ~ 8/10.