Hey just a few questions

[antiPLUR]

I am old enough to be familiar with this entire series but don’t know anything about it. Wanted to ask some questions:

1) I briefly played the first one because it was loaded on the PlayStation mini console that came out several years back. It looks completely different. Is this like one of those “Final Fantasy” situations where none of the games have anything to do with each other?

2) There is some kind of Pokémon thing going on in some of them where you capture enemies and make them your allies. Can you elaborate on that? Is that a good comparison? Is it the core gameplay mechanic?

3) The game has a huge fan base and massive appeal to that target market. It’s a remake of a previous title that I haven’t seen but the original was released in 2006 according to Wikipedia and the trailer shows very modern graphical fidelity. I assume the $70 price is justified due to that. It currently holds the top spot on Steam for the “Top Selling Games” category. Can you comment an “elevator pitch” that you would say to a friend who you wanted to give it a try?

Thanks in advance

[Sket_Tles]

1) The majority of the games are entirely self contained. If It's a different number, the most you can expect are some minor characters from previous games or references and the like. There are spinoffs to several of the games, usually holding the same number in their title, so just double check for that. 3 Reload specifically is fine to play on its own.
2 and 5 are the only games with direct sequels, technically speaking. 3 does have a postgame story mode that is currently only available in the PS2 FES version, but it is fairly unnecessary to appreciate the main game's story. There's also rumors of a post launch dlc that adds this back into reload, but take this with a grain of salt.

2) The Pokemon comparison is apt, but its probably more similar to something like Dragon Quest Monsters. It differs game to game, but in this one you have several human party members who all have a single "persona" (Monster) that they will keep for the entire game. Your main character can swap between a plethora of personas, and has a chance of gaining new ones after battles. These are registered to a compendium from which you can summon them again at any time for a fee, you can also overwrite their base level with any levels or move changes you've made to them. You can also fuse 2 or more personas together to make new ones, after which you can select a few moves from each parent persona to give to the child. It's a very in depth system with lots of room for customization, to the point that while generally speaking you probably want to keep swapping out personas for better ones for the whole game, there are resources out there such that you could put any moves or abilities on any persona you wanted if you really wanted to bring a low level starting persona to the end.

3) I don't think I could personally justify the $70 price point, though to be clear Persona 3, the original at least, is a great game. Reload, alongside the graphical and stylistic updates, carries over a lot of quality of life features from modern entries in the series and makes changes to the original that make the whole experience much more palatable to a modern audience. You will definitely get your money's worth, easily 100 hours+ of content if an hour-to-dollar ratio is any kind of qualifier for you, but if you're on the fence the ps2 FES version is not a poor experience by any means. The portable port that is also on steam, although that is the lesser of the three.
Regardless of your stance on the extra $10 for a game that isn't even entirely new, I would consider 3 to have the best story of any of the 3 modern persona games. The original was what first started the wheels of the blend of life sim, visual novel, and jrpg that the series as been known for today, and despite some minor mechanical hiccups (that this remake has ironed out), it honestly knocked it out of the park. Its tackling of the themes of death and the joy of life are also very well done, and beautifully written. It's worth being experienced in any form, if yknow, you've got a good 100+ hours lying around.

[Sket_Tles]

To put it more succinctly;

1) They are almost entirely self-contained

2) You don't capture them, you randomly gain monsters after battle and can fuse them to make basically any obtainable monster

3) Game very good. Maybe not 60 upped to $70 good, but the older PS2 and portable versions very good too.

[antiPLUR]

Thanks!