I reviewed this game here before a couple of years ago, it's been a while. I remember remarking at the time how the gameplay was mediocre but honestly I've changed my mind. I like the battle system and I really like how intricately designed the dungeons are. These are the best dungeons in the series next to Persona 5 and Q2. Some puzzles are a bit too hard for me but most of the time it felt fair and satisfying to explore. The encounter rate could be tweaked a bit but it wasnt that bad for me. I enjoyed the battle system, felt like it had a lot of strategy like Q2, the enemy encounters are tough as hell so binds and ailments are required to beat the enemies. The choice of making all out attack chance based depending on how many boosted characters you have was an interesting one, I used to hate this change but it makes you play in a way to avoid getting hit so honestly I didnt mind the change. But I must stress Q2s battle system is 100x better, that game's battle system is the gold standard of JRPGs while I consider this just "great." Enemy variety could be better however, I found myself facing the same group of enemies a bit much. But since they were challenging enemies I didnt mind too much.

The story, this is a divisive topic. I agree with the criticism that the main cast feels a bit too flanderised some times. But this isnt always the case, sometimes they genuinely feel fleshed out and some characters do get minor development which is cool. And the interactions were really well written. For being a crossover between P3 and P4 the actual characters from those games arent actually the focus. Which some people cant excuse but for me, I dont mind entirely. The focus are the newcomers Rei and Zen, which I loved from the first playthrough and I love now. I wont spoil anything, but the backstories they hold are heart-breaking, and their development comes from both Persona 3 and 4s theme, of facing truth and accepting death. Narratively it's really smart to combine these two themes into one. The conclusion these two characters have is both incredibly sad but inspiring. Even if you accomplish nothing in life, even if your life has no greater meaning in the grand scheme of things, even if you thought your life was nothing but suffering and despair, you mattered. It's a nice message to end on, it's something I cant forget and thats stuck with me since I beat it all those years ago.

So, while I understand people's disdain for this game, I personally enjoyed the gameplay and story even if they held faults. Honestly, a reason why I wanted to replay this game was because I'm attempting to make a game and one of my main characters from Persona Q is inspired me to start making it so this game was on my mind a lot during the last year, so I'm glad I finally got to play it. Thanks for reading