Japanese Role-Playing Game developer ‘Atlus’ has recently decided to port one of their most famous and successful games “Persona 3” to modern consoles, with one issue, it’s the portable version.

Persona 3, released in 2006 is the first game in the current iteration of the ‘Persona’ series. The game combines classic RPG battle mechanics with visual novel style dialogue. The game later received an updated version titled “Persona 3: FES”, which added new content and gameplay.

 When the PlayStation Portable became extremely popular, Atlus decided to port Persona 3 with cut content and no cutscenes. Persona 3: Portable is that version and its version Atlus decided to port to modern home consoles and PC.

There are many, many issues with this port, the most major in my eyes is the use of Artificial Intelligence to upscale the game’s graphics. While this can look okay in some places, the stylized backgrounds take the biggest hit. Many areas in the game look like they were melted with a hair dryer. Smudged textures and horrible looking areas are extremely common in this port.

One major example of this is the main character’s room; a place you go to every single game day. The entire area looks absolutely horrible, there is a heater in the back of the room and it looks like it was made of clay. It is blasphemous that there are this many issues with the beautiful art style the game is known for.

As an additional problem, the loss of the cutscenes in this port is a very bad thing. Some of the most important moments in the story happen in these cutscenes and they are completely absent, only described and talked about through dialogue.

In my eyes, there is one thing worse than this however, one thing that I cannot get over. The audio in every battle is compressed to the point it sounds like it was coming out of an old radio. It becomes extremely grating and there is no way to fix it. This happens in every single battle.

On a more positive note, having these games easily accessible is a great thing, and the female protagonist of this version is always welcome. The story is of course, great and the strategy in battles is, as always, perfect.

While I am glad that new people will be able to experience this great game for the first time, this is an example of the laziest possible port you can do for such a beloved game. If you are to play any of the modern Persona ports as your first experience, definitely do not pick this one.