Persona 3 Portablefollows a group of persona users known as SEES, as they attempt to climb the seemingly never entering tower of Tartarus during the Dark Hour that appears each night. While you initially only have the main character and two others to use on the front lines of exploring, you’ll slowly meet more persona users and grow SEES to a surprising nine members.
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The final boss of Persona 3 Portable has a total of 14 phases, making it a drawn-out and challenging fight. Bringing the best people with you to Tartarus and the many boss fights will help make this game significantly easier, especially now that you can control your allies in battle.
Junpei is a physical-heavy fighter, learning many different physical skills along with only a few decent fire spells. He has a high strength, but a much lower magic stat. While he is one of the first party members you get, he should be transitioned out pretty soon for some of the other options available.
Junpei excels in physical damage and can learn spells that will deal high amounts of damage in the game’s later stages. While he excels in that area, his lack of magic or other abilities leaves him very limited in his usefulness and can only be used as a straight damage dealer.
Shinjiro is another party member who focuses purely on physical damage and has no magic options. Shinjiro does have a higher strength than Junpei and learns very powerful skills, but he is in the party for a short time due to narrative reasons.
His tankiness and survivability in battle set Shinjiro slightly above the last slot. Shinjiro comes with passive skills that regenerate health and possibly counter enemy attacks. These skills protect him more and help him focus purely on offense.
While it may be off-putting to use a middle schooler in life-or-death combat, Ken is a very well-rounded option with a lot of versatility. Ken doesn’t do much damage with physical attacks or magic but does descents amounts when accounting for his possible insta-kill abilities and healing capabilities.
Ken’s Luck stat helps make his light insta-kill spell more effective, and his lightning magic allows him to cover two elements' weaknesses on his own. Ken also learns great healing spells and is a perfect alternate healer should your main one go down.
A Persona using dog will make you want to use this character throughout the game even though he’s not the best. The fact that his persona is also a dog completes the package and makes Koromaru an incredibly memorable member of SEES.
Koromaru has decent strength and magic stat but doesn’t excel in either. Koromaru’s selling point is his incredibly high agility, making him, more often than not, the first to act in difficult situations. This can be important as you’ll usually be able to use an item for immediate healing or take out an enemy before they can use a devastating attack. He has a wide range of dark insta-kill spells, fire spells, and physical attacks, making him very versatile.
Fuuka operates as your navigator and doesn’t fight on the front lines like the rest of the members of SEES. While she operates separately, this can leave her open to suddenly act between turns and offer restoration of your HP/SP or other status effects.
Fuuka can also learn the healing wave ability, which will heal your active team upon reaching a new level in Tartarus, which is excellent for longer trips. As Fuuka levels up, her random boosts become much more efficient and can quickly turn the tide of any battle. These boosts don’t happen as much asRise’s In Persona 4 Golden, but they are still often enough to help win many battles.
While Mitsuru was almost unusable in FES, thanks to spamming Marin Karin, Persona 3 Portable allows you to control her and utilize the character to her fullest potential. Mitsuru has incredibly high magic, and after getting Ice Amp in her later levels, she will be able to do significant amounts of ice damage to enemies.
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Mitsuru also learns a few healing spells, which help make her more adaptable and a great damage dealer to anything not resistant to ice. Her high magic stat makes her limited healing spells much more potent. Mitsuru also learns the Spirit Drain skill that saps SP from enemies, helping recover a necessary resource and remain in Tartarus longer.
Akihiko’s interest in boxing leads players to assume he’ll be a very melee-heavy character, and while he has great strength and decent physical skills, he’s much more than that. Akihiko has access to many electric-based spells and a minimal number of healing spells that quickly fall off in the late game.
Akihiko also has access to a few supportive spells that can lower an enemy’s defense, attack, or hit/evasion rate. These skills are great against bosses that fight alone, as debuffing their defense will often be easier than buffing your entire team’s attack.
Aigis focuses purely on physical damage while also being an incredible support character, buffing your team in almost every way. Aigis’s lack of magic does limit her capabilities, but she quickly makes up for this when using Orgia Mode.
Orgia Mode helps multiply her current damage output and makes her already strong physical attacks even more powerful. Bring a robot, Aigis also has very high Endurance stats and is hard to take down no matter what the enemy throws at her. Aigis also has a wide range of buffing spells that will eventually affect the whole party at once.
Yukari is one of the first members to join your party, and there is no reason to switch her out for the rest of the game. Yukari has a shockingly high magic stat, making her the best healer available in Persona 3 Portable. She also uses wind magic that significantly scales from her magic stat to do a ton of damage.
Yukari also learns some of the better healing spells, soon becoming able to heal the entire team at once. Further scaling from her magic stat, these healing spells will be borderline as powerful as astronger spell from other users, including the protagonist.
