Is the answer in Persona 3 Portable?

Persona 3 Portable School question and exam

School Questions + Exams
Every now and again at school you'll be asked a question by your teacher (or sometimes helping out Junpei). Successfully answering the question slightly increases your Charm. There is no penalty for getting questions wrong. You'll also have to do exams during mid-terms and so fourth which normally consist of five questions and an Academics check on the last day to fully calculate your score. So correctly answering all the questions and having Academics maxed to Genius will result in the highest score of your class. If you do well in your exams, Mitsuru will give you a reward depending on how well you do.

Date Answer
4/8 Utsoba Kubota
4/20 Mud huts.
4/27 6,000 Years ago.
5/6 Soft water.
5/13 1,700 km/ph
5/15 Bread
5/19 (Exam) Bread
5/20 (Exam) Faster than sound.
5/21 (Exam) Hard water.
5/22(Exam) Nara
6/15 And...
6/17 Shamanism
6/22 Jellyfish
6/25 Dowsing
6/29 It can go either way.
7/3 The Global Heritage Pavillion
7/8 I failed, it's over now.
7/9 The Konden Einen Shizaihou
7/10 Kabbalah
7/11 Imperial Prince
7/14 Dowsing
7/15 Octopus
7/16 Minamoto No Yoritomo
7/17 I went, I learned.
9/1 Superconductivity
9/10 Gochisou-sama
9/11 The Hermatica
9/14 Can't let others produce.
9/26 The Tetractys
10/7 To excite the audience.
10/13(Exams) Husbands
10/14(Exams) Moses*
10/15 Zero electrical resistance
10/16 Coup of Meiou
10/19 Fourteen
10/22 By fermenting them.
10/23 Madam Blavatsky
10/26 Wristwatches
10/29 Lactase
11/7 Winter mornings are pleasant.
11/12 The Upanishads
12/7 Ozone
12/11 Cacti
12/14 1185
12/15 Oxygen
12/16 Left-hand rule
12/17 Winter mornings are pleasant.
12/18 Cacti
12/21 Kido
12/22 Euphoria
1/18 Circe

*The actual answer is Pythagoras but due to an error the game thinks the correct answer is Moses.

Personas 3-5 just broke free of the Playstation and landed on Xbox, and fans across the internet have been shooting their own heads off with questions: primarily if the games will also come to Switch (well possibly) but also “why Persona 3 Portable” and not the graphically superior Persona 3 FES.

Table of Contents Show

Related Posts
The Callisto Protocol Reveals PC Specifications
The Witcher Remake Confirmed by CD Projekt Red to Be Open World
Is Persona 3 Portable different?
What happens in Persona 3 the answer?
Does Persona 3 the answer have multiple endings?
Is aigis in Persona 3 Portable?

Well, there are actually quite a few reasons. P3P may not have all the content of FES but it does have the right content to bring the game to a new audience.

The Callisto Protocol Reveals PC Specifications

The Witcher Remake Confirmed by CD Projekt Red to Be Open World

What’s The Difference

So what’s the big deal with Persona 3? Why does it matter that Portable is ported? Well, Atlus has a habit of re-releasing their games with some expanded features. For Persona 4 and Persona 5, this was P4 Golden and P5 Royal. They’re the same game but with extra stuff, so there’s no real point in porting the older original versions: everything they have is included in the new version.

Follow @GamerBraves

Persona 3 however has two enhanced rereleases: Persona 3 FES and Persona 3 Portable. Persona 3 FES released in 2007 for the PS2. It’s more or less the same game as the original but added a new epilogue chapter for the game called ‘The Answer’ which added a new dungeon, a new playable character, and a more thorough conclusion to the events of Persona 3. Also, you can date the robot now.

Persona 3 Portable was released in 2009 for the less powerful PSP handheld. This version seemed more focused on simply adapting the game to the PSP. In an effort to squash all of Tartarus into one tiny PSP UMD, The Answer was removed and the 3D explorable overworld was replaced with a 2D point-and-click visual novel style. Even the anime cutscenes that were included in the original game were also replaced with still pictures. As such graphically P3P can be considered a downgrade from FES and even the original Persona 3. You can still date the robot though.

Both Games have new features that the other doesn’t. This means there’s no “definitive” version of Persona 3 the same way there is for its sequels.

But before you write P3P off, it makes up for its lack of 3D models with a number of quality-of-life features. Most importantly: you can manually control your party members.

If you’ve only played Persona 5, you may be surprised to know that the original Persona 3 only let you control the main character with the other three-quarters of the team being AI, and they weren’t exactly smart AI. The many accounts about Mitsuru’s unhealthy love of casting Marin Karin can attest to that.

Thankfully P3P fixes this. You can now control each character the way you do in P4 and 5. Players can also guard against enemies and party members will block the main character from fatal blows. There are also two new difficulties added to the game.

Speaking of Persona 5, did you hate how Morgana constantly told you to go to bed in that game? Well P3 FES does that as well but even worse. If you stay up too late, you get tired and if you get tired, you can’t go to Tartarus or work on certain social links. You’ve gotta put a lot more work into your time management skills in FES but all of this is gone with Portable which gives you far more freedom and flexibility.

The biggest difference to P3P however is that the game gives you the option to play as a Female Main Character. While this may not seem like much, playing as a girl creates a ton of new replay value for the game with different character interactions, exclusive social links, and even a new handsome Velvet Room Attendant you can go on dates with.

Why Persona 3 Portable

While there’s no proper evidence yet, I’d say Atlus chose to remaster Persona 3 Portable simply because it’s more accessible and dare I say, more casual friendly.

It needs to be repeated, but the fact that you can control each of your party members and make sure they actually heal you and not the boss you’re fighting makes Portable far less frustrating than playing through FES. Combine that with less stress over time management and more difficulty options, and it’s easy to see why Atlus would want this to be people’s introduction to P3.

We need to keep in mind, that this is going to be the first time that Persona is coming to Xbox consoles. Many people will be playing Persona 3 for the first time and as much as I love the game, it is over 15 years old and parts of it haven’t aged well. Porting the version with the most up-to-date gameplay is probably the best way to bring the game to modern audiences even with the downgraded visuals and presentation.

What about The Answer

The other elephant in The Velvet Room is The Answer not being included in P3P. To be honest, while The Answer provides a decent epilogue to Persona 3, I wouldn’t say it’s really that necessary to the overall experience.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that The Answer’s dungeon crawling was really repetitive and could get incredibly tedious after a while. The Answer also doesn’t let you use the Persona Compendium meaning you have to make use of whatever Personas you find. Did you enjoy experimenting with fusing different Personas? Too bad: that’s your Answer.

By comparison, I’d actually say the female main character adds a lot more replayability to the game as it allows players to experience the far better main Persona 3 campaign with a huge amount of new content. You can now have social links with your individual male party members, even Koromaru! I think this gives the game far more replay value and more room to learn about the game’s world and characters.

In an ideal world, Atlus would release a full remake of Persona 3 with content from both Portable and FES but alas, that world is not reality. That being said, I’m happy that Persona 3 is coming to newer consoles for new gamers to play in some capacity, and given the different options, I can understand why Persona 3 Portable was chosen.

Persona 3 Portable is coming to Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, and PC in 2023. The game is currently available for PSP and PS Vita if you have one of those lying around.

Is Persona 3 Portable different?

Persona Portable is the trimmed version of Persona 3 for the PlayStation Portable. It mainly has the same story as Persona 3, but it does not include the epilogue of Persona 3 FES, nor does it have characters acting out each scene.

What happens in Persona 3 the answer?

The Answer. The events of The Answer begin on March 31, shortly after the end of the original game. During the opening sequence, it is revealed that the protagonist has died; the other characters speculate that his death is related to him defeating Nyx. The school year has ended, and the dorm is to be closed down soon.

Does Persona 3 the answer have multiple endings?

There are essentially two endings and the routes are pretty clear. If I remember right there's only one choice that affects the ending. Just choose not to do "it", what "it" is will become pretty obvious when it asks you.