Finally finished Persona 3 Portable after being stalled on it for an entire year. It was...average? It just felt largely unimpressive. Competent enough, yet never standing out in any way. The characters and story were better than Persona 5, but that's not a very high hurdle to clear. The combat was fun enough, though by the end it almost feels pointless since the game is only difficult at the beginning. It's balanced in a way that once you become strong, you remain strong until the end - and I never did any grinding beyond battling every enemy in my path. But Tartarus was so boring, and on second glance the stat-raising, daily content and story dialogue weren't particularly engaging. It kind of had me feeling like Persona is a setup that only works so long as you don't look at it too closely, else it all comes apart at the seams.

In particular I have to mention the final boss because it had me in genuine shock. It's a horrifically boring battle from how easy it was. Just by being competent at the game and keeping track of what personas I could fuse, I went into it with one that nullified both instakills + had full heal, plus one that negated all physical damage, and that totally trivialized the boss. And these aren't ones I grinded for either, just ones appropriate to the level I was (73~). It took like 25-30 minutes but presented absolutely no threat the entire time, and rather than any kind of tension I spent the majority of the battle thinking about how much fun I had with other final boss battles instead. And the battle theme was a super short loop to boot...