Okay, I'm hoping that a lot of people here have played both games and no one has made this thread before... :)

I completed Persona 4 recently and decided it was the best game I have ever played. Ever. IMO the game has it all - likeable characters, great story (maybe slightly generic, but it's not always a bad thing), challenging boss fights and slick presentation.

Due to how much I loved Persona 4, I bought Persona 3 FES even more recently and have been struggling to get myself to play it every now and again - probably because I feel like it will be a disappointment compared to it's sequel. I'm not very far in to P3:FES but to me the scale seems larger, but the story and characters seem a lot weaker than Persona 4 at the stage I'm currently at.

I browsed the Internet for reviews for both and compared the two and found that although Persona 4 had higher scores from critics (P4: Meta=90, GR=92.40% / P3:FES: Meta=89, GR=87.63), Persona 3:FES was usually higher in Top 10/25/50/100/whatever lists in general (e.g. IGN's Top 100 PS2 games where P3:FES is #26 and P4 isn't even on the list and I swear there's a lot more!)

Answer truthfully, to all that have played both games, which is your favourite Persona game of the two? Post why, I'm particularly interested in what you have to say about the characters and story.

Characters in P3 are definetely worse.

But I just love the city setting which made me like it a lot.

Initially I thought I liked it more but I really didn't because in P3 it takes too long for the story to move on, like 30 days....the remaining days are spent socialising and fighting in tartarus......soon it became a chore to play the game. The story was interesting but the gap in between was a bit too much.

I played P3P by the way.

Both are awesome in the end but I'll put P4 ahead because of pacing and character. 

If we just take the story though P3's was more interesting.

I dunno... I find the city setting cold and souless compared to Inaba.

And I was hoping the game wouldn't be like that, but I guess I'm willing to play through that if the story is interesting enough.

The story is definetely interesting enough as you get further into it, as you read the old documents your mind will start to wonder about many things.

It just doesn't move as fast as Persona 4's was moving.

I don't really like rural settings, I love cities.

IMO, Persona 3 has a bad start, but improves A LOT until the end. While Persona 4 is awesome when you start, but then it isn't that good when you finish.

Both are equal ... ly boring.

Having played both I would say that Persona 4 is definitely better than 3, mostly because 4 is 3's sequel and Atlus improved on a lot of the mechanics.  Also 3 takes quite a while for things to come together and for you to understand the greater purpose of going into the dungeons while 4 gives you an overall goal right from the get go. 

Really? I think it took more than 2 hours to see anything else than people chatting on P4.

which isn't that long in a 60 hour game.  What I'm talking about is how Persona 3's Tartarus was rather inoccuous and they were just going there for research until much later in the game which is kind of a boring goal while Persona 4 you were going in dungeons to not only save your fellow classmates but to solve the overarching murder mystery.

Btw, I get that you don't like these games, but coming into a thread trying to compare two games in the series and just saying both suck is pretty trolly.

Well, people whine for far less. Few skippable cutscenes and that seems to be too much. Can you skip those talks on P4?

I compared those games the best way I can. I'm sorry if I am not praising those games.