Right but it has yet to touch P4, which is the most recent and most successful title.....

Persona 3 Portable sold pretty well considering that it's the third time the game has been released in Japan.

Enough with the personas, we need another game like Nocture, but in 3rd person view. Persona 4 was very disappointing as an "SMT" game. It was too colorful, and the story felt like something out of Scooby-Doo.

Very disappointing in your opinion. Ive played the past titles and I prefer the direction that P4 has taken the series.

Are you serious? Persona 4 was frieken awesome so what if it wasn't dark and moody like other smt game it was no way a disapointing smt game

Why do all the games in a serie need to be exactly alike? Persona 4 was dissapointing? Erm....no. 

It may have been dissapointing to you, yet to the majority of people that I know, it's amongst the best SMT released so far . The story felt like something out of Scooby-Doo? I guess we didn't play the same game then, seeing that Scooby Doo never had themes about rape, serial murder, child kidnapping, Schizophernia and other not so child or colorful like themes :P 

What game were you playing? Must not have been Persona 4!

I feel like I'm going to write a huge rant on Persona 4, but I hope I'm wrong. Persona 4 is an okay game with a lot of flaws, especially in the narrative department. It has a lot of pacing issues, and it reuses the same formula for every month.

First month:
- someone gets kidnap and you go rescue them
- the person yells "you're not me" and boss battle
- aftermath, no new info about the killer

Second month:
- someone gets kidnap and you go rescue them
- person yells "you're not me" and boss battle
- aftermath, no new info about the killer
- *insert funny filler here*

Third month:
- little plot progression
- someone gets kidnapped and you go rescue them
- person yells "you're not me" and boss battle
- aftermath, no new info

You get the point. For like 80% of the game, it just focuses on the characters, and the plot is put on the backburner. There are better ways to introduce or bring out a character's personality instead of dedicating one whole month to that character (look at Nanako, Teddie or Adachi for example.) I never got hooked into the story until near the end of the game where you know, the plot was back on. I appreciate all the themes the game tried to handle, but the execution wasn't that good.

Aside from that, there was a lot of unnecessary and repetitive dialogue. And don't get me started on the first three hours of P4. This has to be one of the most ridiculous things every. I hope to God the guy who came up with this isn't working on the new game. What I love about the MegaTen games is the dark, mature themes it handles along with biblical references and that it plays with your mind. P4 pretty much lack any methology. There was this Izanagi vs. Izanami thing, but it totally botched up it. They presented the story in the worst possible way: text-scrolling during the trip. I read the first five, but then I got bored of reading. I swear there had to be about ten or fifteen of those dialogue boxes.

I know P4 has some mature themes, but I just couldn't take it seriously. The style of the game looks like it's being targetted towards the younger audience, but the themes presented in this game aren't appropriate to them. The game didn't take itself serious, and the staff must've been confused on who the game was being targeted to.

The social links have great potential, but they have one flaw and that is being "one-liners." Instead of having a real conversation with the person you hang out with, you only say one line. Same thing goes for story when the party is talking about the case. You only say one line, and the party goes back into discussion. It doesn't affect how the conversation goes, and it's a waste of time. It worked out pretty nice in Nocturne and to a lesser extent, Devil Summoner 2, because the choices you pick affect the game's ending. Here in Persona, only one conversation makes a difference.

And lastly, I was surprised at how easy this game was. If you use mabufu and hit one enemy's weakness, you get another turn. No matter if another enemy absorbs it, you still get a free turn. Along with that, one of your party members can knock him out with a follow-up attack. It isn't as fun or challenging. Boss battles aren't that strategic anymore since many don't have a weakness. All you have to do is attack and heal. In DDS or Nocturne, you had to use -kaja spells or use void spells to stand a chance. Dungeon crawling is bland, and the dungeons are just copy-paste given a new facelift.

^ ur long pointless ranting is putting me to sleep. Persona 4 was one of the best RPG's ive seen in the past 5 to 10 years. Characters were well developed, storyline was simple, comical, and easy to get into. Personally i enjoyed it more than P3 to be quite honest. Cant wait for Persona 5 hope it comes to PS3 =)

Give him a break, he has really good points that bugged me a lot in P4. Have you played other Megami Tenseis than Personas? If you would've have played Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2, or even the older Personas on PSone you'd understand how much inferior and childlish the story in the PS2 Personas are and the soundtracks are just more kickass in the counterparts. . Now I'm not saying they're BAD games.

Persona 3 still had the cool religious themes that SMT:s usually always had, but Persona 4 was just too light-hearthed and like Mirson said the whole Izanagi- Izanami thing was so out of the place. And of course the difficulty was toned down, the boss fights were jokes.

I still wonder why they had to change the cool concept and make the enemies some generic 'shadows'. It was much cooler to fight againts demons and negotiate with them. It would have been cool in P4 with the character's wide and pretty well written personalities.