Hi Conronorock i've been seeing you post about persona for the past 8 years and I've decided to find out what the hell it is. I googled it and there's like 20 games. As a newcomer to the series and everything persona, would it be ok to just start with persona 4? thanks in advance
Well, judging by your URL I'm gonna guess you know what stands are. Persona is about a bunch of teenagers who use stand-like things called a Persona to fight evil shits called Shadows. People will debate over it, but PERSONAlly (haha get it) I'd start with P4, yeah. Persona 3 has a more serious plot, but the gameplay isn't as refined as 4, it expands greatly on the nature of Personae and Shadows, and feels a lot more close-knit with your teammates. If you have a Vita, you can get Persona 4 Golden, which is like an enhanced remake with a bonus dungeon, more story events and an explanation for part of the true ending, which is a bit bullshit.
From there I'd move to P3, and if you don't mind some worse navigation, Persona 3 Portable. Portable has the combat improvements 4 made, along with a protagonist I prefer a lot more to the default. If you do play Portable, be sure to look up the cutscenes, as they're left out. Once you've gotten through all of those, you COULD play The Answer, which is an epilogue for P3 including on the FES re-release. I've heard it's kinda long and boring, so maybe just look up a longplay instead.
Persona 2 is a duology I haven't played myself, and Persona 1 I tried playing and I couldn't get into it. You don't need either of them to enjoy Persona 4 Arena, the fighting game spinoff, which is a total blast and lets you play as older versions of P3 characters. The second one, Ultimax, is coming out in September.
So to recap, I'd do Persona 4 first, Golden if you can, followed by Persona 3, Portable version if you want, and then Arena. I leave the first two to your discretion.
Wow, that's a lot of text to a yes or no question. This is by no means the "correct" way to play Persona, it's just in my view an optimal way to play. Besides one scene in 4 and P3P, there's no real relation between the two besides Personae and Shadows, so you can really mess around in any order you please.
