Through the newest issue of Famitsu, Atlus has revealed a new PSP port of Persona 3 with a bevy of new features that weren't in P3FES:
-Selectable gender of player, male or female, with several things unique to female and new additions to male
-Choice between party AI or full control, ala Persona 4.
-Also as in P4, you can use the square button to travel to various locations instantly instead of frequenting the map every time.
-5 difficulty levels: Beginner, Easy, Normal, Hard and Maniacs.
-Elizabeth has been seemingly replaced by a new male counterpart.
Game comes out in Japan on November 1st, same day as the PSP Go... so expect a digital release along with the retail UMD. Kinda weird they went and skipped over porting the Persona 2 games, was looking forward to those. 🙁
Still need to get started on the original release, but I haave Dragon Quest IV first.
Still, I expect this is to make some more money off of an already existing game rather than shoving aside the likelyhood of a Persona 2 remake, expecially as Persona Portable isn't out yet, and any profit from both might lead to P2's remake being more liekly anyway.
Full scans from Famitsu. Looks like they're going to drop all or most of the in-game rendered "events" for simple 2D backdrops during cinema scenes/S.Links. Also gone will be all the walking around school/mall/train station freedom/tediousness, to be replaced with menus. So instead of having to slog around the mall or school to talk to NPCs or enter rooms, you'll be choosing from a menu.
Battles and Tartarus will remain the same, in full 3D. Looks like there will be new costumes for your party (Yukari in Santa garb). Also, it's hard to make out but it looks like the Velvet Room will allow for card upgrades during fusion, ala Persona 2. In P2 you can toss in an Essence card and Spell Card into the fusion mix to customize your Persona with a stat upgrade or a spell it would otherwise never learn.
Seems like they have to pare the game down considerably in order to get a 4 Gigabyte game to fit on a 1.8GB UMD. I wonder if the voice acting will be cut as well?
EDIT: The Famitsu site has a couple of new screenshots and two videos of the game running on the PSP GO. Game loads fast (no doubt because it's running off the memory stick). There are a few lines spoken during exploratory scenes and battles, proving VAing is still in... but it's still possible they could cut story event lines, as they are the most prolific. And is that NOT Mass Destruction in battle!? Oh dear... I hope it's an exclusive track for FemC.
