Atlus is bringing Persona 3 to the PSP in Japan, but it’s more than just a quick-and-dirty port.
Persona is proving to be quite the cash cow for Atlus, and will continue to be later this year when the third game in the franchise gets its third iteration, when Atlus releases Persona 3 Portable for the PSP in Japan. Revealed in this week’s Famitsu, Persona 3 Portable will come out on November 1 and features a host of new features that might make it worth it to devote another 60-80 hours to dating your classmates and dungeon crawling.
The biggest addition is the inclusion of a new female main character, who, as you can tell from the scans, sports short brown hair and a passing likeness to Persona 4‘s Rise Kujikawa. She’s got the same dangling earphone accessorizing as the male protagonist, but the fact that she is actually sorta smiling and doesn’t have her hair in her face might mean that she’s not exactly of the same emo-tastic breed as him.
The female character isn’t just a quick gender swap like in a Pokemon game. Considering a huge part of Persona 3 is developing sometimes romantic relationships with other characters, it makes sense that Atlus is retooling the game with new relationships and different events. This probably means you’ll get to go out with dudes as opposed to girls, but who knows, maybe Atlus will let you play both sides. That would be nice and progressive of them. The male main character mode will also feature new events and social links, so manly men don’t have to feel left out in the cold.
Persona 3 Portable is based on the last version of Persona 3, the expanded FES. Other new features include five difficulty levels, including the exciting sounding “Maniacs” setting, and some conveniences brought over from Persona 4: the ability to fast travel around the world map with an always accessible menu and the option to manually control all characters in battle.
So, three versions of Persona 3. This sounds like a pretty worthwhile update, though. Atlus has yet to announce a domestic release, but I’m pretty sure you can count on it. Better side aside 100 hours of your life while you’re ahead.
[Via IGN]
