Persona 3 Portable FemC route was a wonderful way to experience P3 for the first time

I went into P3 Portable FemC with some hesitations since I heard it wasn't the ideal way to experience the game and that the FemC route will make The Answer awkward to play

But for me it felt like the perfect way to play Persona. I previously finished Persona 5 and liked it but got burnt out on running around the city for the social links. I briefly tried Reload and put it down because it felt similar. Eventually I decided to try P3P.

Clicking around the VN format just felt like the ideal, snappy way to experience the social sim side. Especially because it was pretty easy to clearly see what you could interact with. Even though it didn't have the animated cutscenes it was nice to have the scene play out in my head a bit

I also really enjoyed FemC because she didn't feel like a self insert (since I'm a guy). And without forced romances I felt like I could play her as just a girl who was making friends in highschool while saving the world (and then getting a robot gf at the end)

Tartarus was a bit tedious (I dropped down the difficulty to Easy for the end game since I didn't want to grind), but the top down view felt much better for the maze like dungeon crawling. The idea of overcoming one massive dungeon is something I enjoyed

In total I spent 60 beautiful hours with this game and didn't feel burnt out or feel like it stretched for too long, even if there were slow sections. The story and characters just felt so great and the slightly darker tone to the game really clicked with me

And I'm not saying this to shit on Reload, but I tried playing it for The Answer DLC and I switched to watching the FES cutscenes instead (I only just started so please no spoilers). The new voices and designs aren't bad at all, they're just SO different that it felt so wrong. I miss the goofy Fuuka look and voice, Aigis' robotic cadence + her bug eyed character sprite, and Ken's strange voice, etc

Part of me wants to jump into P4G next but I think I need another break. Anyways off to cry again about the ending 😭