They’re all great games that you should play.

Why not both?

Yeah

To me, it's more a question about, if Persona 5 will make the older games look worse. After all, P5 was meant as the new gold standard for Atlus, so I'm simply worried if my expectations for P3/P4 will be too high.

Yeah both are great but for the one to play first I'd say persona 4 because it's my favorite one between the two

A general rule of thumb: Everyone's first Persona game is usually their favorite.

For instance, a lot of people say P4 is better than P5 because P4 is the first one they've played.

A general rule of thumb: Everyone's first Persona game is usually their favorite. Yeah, I can tell that might be a good rule of thumb :D I'm thinking of starting with P4 when I can get my hands on it. P3 might be harder to do so.

P3 is actually easier to play than P4 because the PS2 emulator is much more difficult to use than the PSP emulator, but then again, I think P4 is a better bet.

Play Persona 1.

You kinda have to know what you're getting into doing them after P5. First of all you're getting into a PS2 game, so expect bad graphics by modern standards. Second, expect to suddenly be missing stuff you probably liked like 90% of the Velvet Room's features, and confidant (now Social Link) special abilities, and Baton Pass, and Guns. Third.... I'd suggest you play Persona 3 Portable in order to directly control your party members. Original P3 and FES both required you have your party on AI control. You can do whatever Persona 4 you want, but I'd say Golden is the better experience. And better voice actors.

You kinda have to know what you're getting into doing them after P5. First of all you're getting into a PS2 game, so expect bad graphics by modern standards. Second, expect to suddenly be missing stuff you probably liked like 90% of the Velvet Room's features, and confidant (now Social Link) special abilities, and Baton Pass, and Guns. Third.... I'd suggest you play Persona 3 Portable in order to directly control your party members. Original P3 and FES both required you have your party on AI control. You can do whatever Persona 4 you want, but I'd say Golden is the better experience. And better voice actors. Thanks forthe great answer. Graphics aren't my biggest concern. It's more about gameplay mechanics, side missions, amount of grinding etc. Mainly things in the gameplay that can frustrate the player ;) Also heard a lot about Persona 3 where you can't control your party members. When you say portable, do you mean a specific version of the game?

You should just watch the original Berserk animation. Infinitely better.

Uhm, that came out of nowhere? Why? Is it related to Persona?

Might as well be. Persona could only get better if it was set in that universe.

When you say portable, do you mean a specific version of the game? Well, it is a specific version of Persona 3 for PSP

P4 is probably easier to get into because P3 still works on some principals that are a little dated

Might as well be. Persona could only get better if it was set in that universe. mmmm..... no

Personally P3 is a favorite of mine, for a bit of clarification, the PS2 versions, (original and FES) have your party members on AI control meaning you can't tell them what to do, PSP has the option to control them. If you do play P3, I recommend the easiest difficulty, just so that grinding is not a pain. The dungeon is pretty bland in comparison to 5

For a serious answer, I would suggest playing Persona 3 first, over 4. This is mostly due to a personal bias, 3 is my personal favorite, and I think 4's story and characters are extremely messy, to say the least. Persona 3 however has two different versions of note. Persona 3 FES, originally for PS2, is an updated version of the original P3, also on PS2, which makes playing the actual original pointless. I will get back to this version in a moment. The other version of note is Persona 3 Portable, which was made for the PSP, this version actually has a significant number of differences from FES, so it's worth going over. The biggest difference between Persona 3 FES and Portable is in terms of presentation. While FES will present the game in a similar enough manner to how you'd be used to from P5, and potentially P4, Portable instead shifts the presentation of cutscenes to a visual novel format, and all exploration outside of the dungeon is done through something more resembling a point and click game. In my opinion, this change in Portable is enough to severely hamper the experience for people playing P3 for the first time. A common point I see brought up when suggesting Portable over FES is the subject of party control. Yes, FES does not allow you to directly control your party members, only the protagonist. Everyone else is controlled by the A.I., while Portable lets you control everyone directly like every other game in the series. While I understand the frustration this can cause, I would argue there is not necessarily a problem with it, as in practice it's not that hard to plan around this, using tactics, or attempt to manipulate the A.I. into doing certain things. More importantly is that the game is sort of balanced around this fact to begin with, but Portable gave you this, and other abilities, without actually trying to rebalance the game, making Portable really easy and simple to break. On the subject of actual exclusives, the two versions do have some unique stuff. Most notably is FES's epilogue chapter, and Portable's new protagonist. FES adds a new playable chapter that takes place after the end of the original game, called "The Answer". This part is often criticized for it's writing, and while I disagree on some common complaints, I think I agree with most people when I say the gameplay is terrible. The Answer is just a non-stop dungeon grind, with the game fixed on the highest difficulty. It's a chore, but thankfully is easily ignored, since it's optional. Also optional and easily ignored is Portable letting you choose to play a male or female protagonist. There's actually quite a few differences between the two. Still, if you play Portable, I would recommend the Male protagonist route first, not just because he's the canon and original playable character, but the female protagonist is... weird. I won't go too into depth because... read above, do I need to keep talking at this point? Anyway, point is the female protagonist is kind of odd, as her demeanor sort of clashes with the games intended message and arc, and while the female protagonist has several different Social Links than the male protagonist, most of them are very poor in comparison. Of course, this is all opinion, but it's always worth hearing different sides. Implying you didn't just skip that wall of text.

Tbh, I liked P5, but I'm really loving nocturne now.

Personally, I started with P3 and I think it's the best of the two. P3 as a more serious story, like P5, while P4 is a lot more happy. Don't get me wrong, they are both good games. But honestly I think it depends on what you want to play. If you want to play a game that is serious like P5, then play P3. If you want a relaxing game that takes its time serious, go with P4.