Persona 3 Portable is being ported to Steam and modern consoles this month, as is the more modern Persona 4 Golden, making it a great time to be a Persona fan. Even though there are rumors of the game getting a full remake in the near future, this port is still going to reach a lot of new players for the first time. Whether those players are already familiar with other Persona titles or they're completely new to the franchise and are looking to use Persona 3 Portable as an entry point, they might find themselves discovering features that could be very different from what they expected.
One such feature is Character Conditions, which can greatly affect a party member's usefulness during those long dungeon crawls. Without fully understanding the Character Condition system, it can force players to exit the dungeons of Tartarus before they might be ready, which can be a big problem given the timed nature of the game. Here's what new players need to know to have a better understanding of Character Conditions.
There Are Four Different Conditions
There are four Character Conditions that affect each character's performance during dungeon segments: Great, Good, Tired, and Sick. Good is the default condition, so when a character is in the Good Condition, they will have normal stats across the board. Great is a step above Good and gives characters a boost to several stats, including accuracy and critical hit chance. Further, characters with the Great Condition can spend much more time during dungeon exploration before they begin to get tired.
The Tired Condition is a step below Good. A Tired character will begin to have lowered stats, including accuracy and defense, making battles more frustrating and slow. Finally, the worst Condition is Sick, which increases the debuffs from the Tired condition even further. The character's own attacks become much weaker, making it extremely difficult to achieve any sort of progression within Tartarus. Once the party leaves Tartarus, if any characters have slipped into the Tired or Sick Conditions, they can't return until they have had time to recover.
How the Conditions Change
As the player spends more time exploring the dungeons of Tartarus, the party members will naturally begin to slip from Good to Tired, and this can occur much more quickly when a character experiences a death in battle. Continuing to push even further with a Tired team can make the characters drop even further to Sick. While the protagonist has a few options to quickly recover back to the Good Condition, all other characters will only recover with time and patience. A Sick character will take much longer (up to a full week) before they return to Good status, so it's in a player's best interest to avoid the Sick Condition whenever possible.
In terms of boosting from Good to Great, the protagonist again has a few options, such as visiting a shrine or sleeping early, but the other characters do not. All characters apart from the protagonist only reach Great on set days of the in-game calendar.
How To Make the Most of Conditions
First and foremost, players should take their time exploring Tartarus. In the early game, when there isn't much to explore there, players should explore Tartarus in short bursts and then spend a day or two in school life to keep all characters in the Good Condition. In the later half of the game, there will be more to explore but also more characters to choose from, and players can simply rotate around party members to keep a fresh team while using alternative methods to keep the protagonist in top shape.
Further, keeping all characters at a decent level and properly equipped will prevent them from dying against the tougher enemies and keep them in Good Condition for much longer, granting the player that much more time for exploration.