Steam Deck SteamOS 3.5.16 Preview improves Persona 3 Reload performance

Reviews are overwhelmingly positive, so clearly the game has something going for it. But I just can't tell what based on the screenshots and video; it looks like a visual novel crossed with Final Fantasy style combat (hence the JRPG part, I guess).

Anyone who played it that can speak to the wide appeal?

Reviews are overwhelmingly positive, so clearly the game has something going for it. But I just can't tell what based on the screenshots and video; it looks like a visual novel crossed with Final Fantasy style combat (hence the JRPG part, I guess).

Anyone who played it that can speak to the wide appeal?

It's difficult to compare persona to anything else. It blends a turn-based jrpg, with pretty normal mechanics (not much dissimilar to how pokémon works, except you can fuse Persona together to get completely different ones) and a graphical adventure where you actually NEED to cultivate relationships with other characters (called social links), which in turn are able to boost your abilities and grant your persona a few bonuses (and also several fusions require you to reach a certain (usually max) rank with a social link to unlock). All of this is combined with dungeon exploration experience which is very tasteful. And that's just the game, I left the best for last: the story. The story is phenomenal for each persona game (except, arguably, the first) and the characters, especially those with social links, feel alive (as they're living their story while the plot advances). This one isn't the great masterpiece Persona 5 Royal was, but then again this is a remaster of a game that is nearly two decades old. I highly recommend all the saga, you can play whichever you want first, as the stories are not connected to each other, be warned however that they're very long titles even if you play just the main story, and they all have multiple endings (p3r is 80 or so hours long, p4g is around 100, p5r 120 or so).