So here’s a flow chart!

Did you start with 5? Then play golden first as it’s the closest in both gameplay and quality of life out of the two.

Did you start with the OG persona 3? Then start with maybe P3P because you can have the FeMC route and have a new perspective of the game!

Did you like the combat in 5 but didn’t care about the exploration of Tokyo? Then okay P3P. The story still holds up and the combat had a load of quality of life improvements from vanilla 3 and Fes.

Did you want my personal opinion? No? Welp I still think Golden is the much better game unless you’re a diehard 3 fan.

Golden Pros: open world, fluid combat, engaging story, really fun characters and the happiest game you’ll play about a Serial murder case.

Golden Cons: Teddie is annoying, some characters feel a little… useless in the overall story with how their social links work. They’re good but don’t really lend much, if you’ve played golden you know who. The fact that everyone knows that spoilers did the spoiler thing and, to me personally, the opening hours of golden are rough if you aren’t committed to seeing the story.

P3P pros: great story, alternate story route with different social links, the music is phenomenal, characters don’t feel too shallow at times and Akihiko gets special mention and you’ll either know or see why. Also actual party control makes the game a lot more fluid.

P3P cons: the game plays like a point and click for the most part due to the limitations of the PSP. They reworked a lot of the social link requirements on characters to be easier so OG players who haven’t played portable may get a little whiplash from that. And my only real major gripe is the almost entire omission of any CG cutscene, even on screen cutscenes rarely exist which diminishes the impact of some scenes, which if you played the OG or Fes you’d know but if you haven’t you won’t really miss out on what should have been.

Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.