PERSONA 3 RELOAD: EVERY PARTY MEMBER RANKED! 

Obviously the actual strongest character is Akinari Kamiki. Have you seen the amount of damage he deals to Persona 3 players?

Junpei is so busted. How does no one talk about how junpei is a literal CANNON who can just knock down anything in a pinch. He's so good like I never see anyone say this

If it weren’t for story reasons, Shinji would be busted as fuck.

at a certain point you are so OP it doesn't matter. once you beat the reaper once, you can beat him again,and now your at a high enough level to get helel and satan to use armagdon. which will one shot almost any boss but nyx(cuz of the multi HP bars)and the secret boss,and the secret boss is a puzzle fight. so at the point where minimaxing matter it is no longer an issue. so if you just want to pick your fav character,go for it, it won't matter that much. then again big number go brrrrrrrrrrrrr. it's fun to minimax to see uber dmg builds.

My biggest issue with Koro is that he doesn't learn Debilitate until at 77 when you're either close to finishing the game or you've grinded to the point that you really don't need it.

I love the band merch mod that you put in the game, seeing Yuki, Junpei, and Aigis wear My Chem, Nirvana and Pierce the Veil is fitting

I'm guessing Mitsuru's 2nd theurgy is Almighty because if it was Ice, then there would actually be no point in using her first theurgy. Maybe if one of her theurgies were AoE they could both be Ice based.

Hot take: if youre an experienced persona player, then most of the lower ranked characters can be top ranked

Canonically Fuuka can probably keep up in battle even though she is not fight based, but many of Oracle's effects can be pretty broken on battle, plus her stats just show that if protected by Juno, she can quite literally take if not more hits than what could be Aigis Junpei or even Mitsuru She would def not be as broken as Rise in terms of fighting, but she could preobably keep up on battle

A bit unrelated, but just wanted to say that I find it funny how Junpei when invested and with the right set up, CAN do more MAGIC damage than MITSURU with his second Theurgy and can ONE SHOT the Reaper (which just so happens to be the STRONGEST magic Theurgy). Akihiko could do the same with one shotting the Reaper, but I just find it hilarious how Junpei, known for being THE crit demon is also the strongest mage. If only they made Mitsuru's second Theurgy also Ice.

Great vid! I used Yukari, Junpei, and Koromaru and just spammed Yukari and Koro’s second theurgies. The dmg output was ridiculous

Shoutout for having Aki at A+. That boy does not play when it comes to damage. I heard so many people complain about how he got nerfed, but dude almost one-shot Nyx's final phase during my first playthrough and I was below level 80 on hard mode. He did the same on Merciless too (but I was level 99 with better equipment, so idk how fair it is to judge that). He is completely broken, especially when paired with Yukari. I will gladly lose out on debuffing for that amount of damage 😅

YOU GET IT. I was telling my brother how fucking broken Koromaru is in this game compared to the older games!!!

Mitsuru can be really strong since she has a access to ice amp, a weapon with magic boost and a accessory with ice boost getting the max damage boost possible, using it together with Yukari for concentrate on her Theurgy and Koromaru for debilitate, she can give a tone of damage with diamond dust

This list is based and spoken from the heart, I like it.

I knew I wasn't crazy when I found Akihiko good, people were always bashing him but he never leaves my team lol

I think you’re incorrect about Mitsuru, she is great. Diamond dust + concentrate, one of the best theurgy abilities in the game AND rakunda?! I found her almost undroppable for boss fights since it’s optimal for MC to concentrate on damage as much as possible. Without Mitsuru, you’re basically forced to use a MC turn debuffing defense every 3 turns which is so wasteful. But you’re spot-on in other ways. She is one of the worst party members for exploring Tartarus. Her damage output (even with the SP heavy diamond dust + concentrate) can’t compare to physical users and ailments are honestly useless. Her def debuff is still amazing, but it is less relevant since fights against basic enemies rarely last longer than a couple turns. You can swap between Aigis / Akihiko / Junpei and not a lot changes since they offer a lot of the same things. But you swap out Mitsuru? You lose that ever important def debuff which no other party member can replicate (until Koromaru gets debilitate in the end game). For most of the game, she’s the most important party member for boss fights. C tier doesn’t do her justice! She’s an A tier character for me, but definitely drops off if you judge them purely by their usefulness in the end game. Also as a sidenote, I actually love how balanced the cast is in this game. Every character has their pros and cons, they’re all viable and they constantly shift in viability throughout the game. I had so much fun just messing around with different party setups

Ok for Mitsuru, she is amazing against reaper. You debil and concentrate with her and bam large damage and stopping it from going past neutral. But you just gotta run the ice skills and the ailment freeze combo with ice boost and such it works really well with diamond dust and really good freeze chance.

I personally put everyone in S tier. All of them are good imo. But for me, its the MC, Shinji, then Yukari, then Junpei, then Koromaru, then Akihiko, then everyone else. 👍

Love seeing just a phase mod in this video

To show the how big the gap of physical and magical damage is, doing no MC runs in Nyx with a phys party (Akihiko, Junpei, Koromaru) with no healer and no buffer is twice as fast as running a full magic party (Mitsuru, Ken, Yukari). The noticable weaknesses for the magic party is they need theurgy to deal with Nyx's resist and null magic phase. Phys party has the option of both Akihiko and Koromaru to deal with null phys phase. For Yukari to be helpful at all she needs to not attack to try and build theurgy. Ken is surprisingly very useful. He has access to a light boost weapon so his damage is not bad even with a null weakness accessory. He can keep Heat Riser active on himself and Mitsuru, and he can block weakness for Mitsuru on phases where Nyx will spam fire. Divine Punishment does pretty okay damage and Divine Intervention is there if anything goes really bad. You could replace Yukari or Ken with Akihiko and that party would probably do a lot better. I would have to try it but my bet is the weak link is Yukari. But if you replace Yukari why would you not just replace Mitsuru with Junpei?

I’m gonna have to light my torch now for that shinji placement (I agree with your list tbh)

Junpei was my favorite because when i played the game he got so many damn crits on minibosses and bosses that didnt have any weaknesses. Those free All-Out Attacks felt like a gift from heaven lol

Your take is really weird, considering how strong Mitsuru is. She gets Ailment Burst, which increases critical hit chances for THE WHOLE PARTY. She is the only character in the game with this ability, MC can't get this on a persona. After doing Junpei's hangouts to get the critical rate increase, and giving him the gear that increases crits, you get guaranteed crits in battle with Mitsuru on enemies if you start with them distressed, which is often with the ambush attack you get to start battles. I did this too with MC on a high crit setup, guaranteed crits in mid game with a physical build with Mitsuru in the party. She's the only S tier party member, beaten by Junpei only IMO. If we don't consider the main character as an option of course. Mitsuru is the only character who gets spirit drain too, so her resource management shouldn't be a 2/5. I think my ranking is influenced too because I exclusively used the dark elemental weapons with her the entire game from the point they were available. Dark coverage for totally free is huge, especially when her basic attacks otherwise leave a lot to be desired. And later game she gets the dark elemental weapon that has a good chance to add poison, which is awesome with Junpei and her Ailment Burst. I pretty much never took Mitsuru, Junpei or Akihiko out of my party except for when leveling others up or using Shinji.

reload tier lists are so funny. "okay yeah at the bottom you have shinjiro. he's broken beyond belief but you bench him later for. reasons." and then *every* single placement afterward everyone is like "now i know people will disagree, BUT" geniunely cracked party members in this one

Thank you for bringing up how goated Akihiko is. You get so much reward outta just doing stuff you should be doing anyways. Getting 25% extra outta buffs is kinda nuts, considering, again, you should be doing it anyways. Plus theurgy charge, and hella damage, it makes him my number 2. Also helps that he's unlocked really really early on, which just benefits him even more! Love this guy.

I’m about to say a lot so mentally prepare yourself if anyone’s reading this and tell me your thoughts on what I say (skip around if you want) About Junpei and Aigis Me personally, I feel that synergy and support matters more than damage due to mc having highest dmg potential by far. This would mean that I personally think that junpei is the worst in the game due to having nonexistent support moves other than marakukaja which aigis has. And, in using junpei, you’re basically forced to use koromaru unless you want to waste mc turns using revolution or rebellion. Aigis has matarukaja and marakukaja, dekunda (which when paired with Ken’s dekaja, you basically control the entire fight and Ken can constantly heal aigis due to her only using physical attacks) and aigis can heal even tho some don’t run diarahan on her. About mitsuru I personally think she’s one of the better characters in the game. As I said before, I’m someone who does value synergy and support over damage because mc can cover damage, but mitsuru can literally do all of it. Damage output is insane, she can debuff defense which is super valuable and her second theurgy gives debilitate. Ik her characteristic suggests that she plays around with ailments, but as someone whose almost done with my first p3 playthrough and who kept her in the team the whole game, I can’t remember one time I actually used ailments with her when I can just debuff, do damage, concentrate or use items. And if you wanted to use ailments with her, she works great with all physical users, especially junpei and akihiko because akihiko also has a debuff which lowers attack. This provides damage reduction and damage increase as the same time, and that’s not even including yukari who can just masukunda which akihiko can masukukaja which allows you to output a ton of damage while being hard to hit and when you are hit, you’re taking less damage. I like using this “aoe debilitate” because a lot of gatekeeper floors especially have more than one enemy, which makes debilitate less efficient (which isn’t even including how late koro gets it). Mitsuru can quite literally work with anyone which for someone like me, is very valuable. It’s also why I view how people rate mitsuru very unfair because her entire kit, while putting some emphasis on status ailments, it’s not like she only relies on them and offers absolutely nothing else (quite the opposite) About Ken (and technically aigis) I think Ken’s characteristic is not as bad as people think because his moves cost so much sp and since his support is so good that ur not even using his second theurgy much, it doesn’t even matter about his first theurgy because the damage isn’t very good. As I said before, Ken and aigis can literally control any fight due to their supportive capabilities and great synergy with each other to the point where any other character (minus junpei) can fight with this duo. Want Ken to only support and not heal while still doing decent magic damage? Use yukari. Want aigis to do more damage? Use mitsuru or koromaru. Want even better survivability with great damage? Use akihiko. You can use anyone with this core which leads me to my final point. About team cores I feel as thought every character (except mitsuru because she can literally fit anywhere) has one specific character that they pair with better than anyone else Yukari + akihiko: great survival with masukunda, masukukaja, matarunda, and yukari’s busted healing on top of her second theurgy. Aigis and ken: I did already mention it but ken can heal after Aigis uses a ton of physical attacks while they both can control the fight with dekunda and dekaja Junpei and koromaru: this one is the most obvious, charge from koro second theurgy, debilitate, revolution and junpei getting more value off of hitting crits Mitsuru + any: defense down is always good, great damage on her own, if ur gonna use ailments she greatly helps physical teams, etc. here im just explaining what she brings to the table because almost every other character (except junpei because aigis would rather use marakukaja over him who’s just doing damage) benefits her in some way. That’s all i had to say tho. Great vid btw

When they were designing Marduk they genuinely gave him everything

The fact that Junpei isnt top 3 is a CRIME. My guy is BUSTED late game, legit crits almost every attack he does and bros thuergy literally heals him up after spamming his moves.

One thing people forget about Mitsuru and her traits, downing and dizzy ARE ailments, you can just wail on a downed enemy (which you can get even without weakness bc of almighty attacks that down) and inflict dizzy, and keep wailing crit after crit

A build advice for you, would be to get rid of samarecarm for yukari and ken, later down the game you can just buys full revives unlike in fes, so it’s honestly a waste of a skill slot and it’s the same with the party members that get access to healing (like diarahan), leave the healing to a healer, cause I’d rather have a 200 hp item that heals the full party instead of a wasted slot. last thing get rid of virus breath on koro, he either supports or magic attacks, almighty is useless for him.

if shinjiro couldve been used at the end, he woudlve been BUSTED

criteria is definitely important, this list seems pretty weighted towards the back half of the game i tend to weight the early and midgame just as much as the late game, and i also assume little to no grinding which is VERY different to the context of this list everyone will talk about grinded level 99 characters vs nyx but level 20 characters vs hierophant, level 40 characters vs strength & fortune, etc... are arguably way more important. eliminating grinding also means limited crafting materials and suddenly good gear becomes much more contested thing that works without grinding always works, thing that works with grinding only works with grinding is my logic so with that being said here are some thoughts mitsuru i think is unironically great. there are so many fights in the game where just casting rakunda is doing more than yukari or junpeis entire kit is. she also gets a tier 2 skill early so she keeps up in damage for a bit. once you start getting good physical skills, offensively shes completely outclassed but i cant overstate how good a defense debuff is when resources are limited. i hate her but i begrudgingly used her for almost the entire game for a mandatory encounters only run. ken for me is entirely an argument of availability vs divine intervention. divine intervention is the single best move in the game, full stop. no matter the context of the run you pop divine intervention you won the fight ggs. double reflectors trivialize every single encounter in the game. the problem is hes the last (non shinjiro) character to join and hes ass until he gets divine intervention, which comes very late. junpei i think went from getting underrated by most people to getting overrated. hes not bad. his early game is great, and his late game is bonkers but he takes so much effort to get there. his characteristic is insane but its not fully reliable on its own. basically he wants a lot of craftable gear which is a contested resource other characters don't really need, and it takes him a LONG time to learn good physical skills. aigis also takes a lot of effort to output good damage, and her late game is not all that impressive. but her support tools are great so you dont really need to put any effort in her for her to just cast buffs on people. i think she is very good. akihiko is bonkers i think hes top 1. not even just late game. he gets his element boost relatively early. tarunda is really good. he gets his boost weapon wayyyy earlier than everyone else. if you can live without strike amp he literally needs 0 craftable items. earlygame someone needs to take a turn to cast tarukaja on him and his second theurgy is kind of ass, but other than that hes nuts yukari i think is actually not very good. her early game is abysmal (she actually gets 1 shot by ravens if you dont buy her equipment and this trend continues for a while). her support is kind of whatever. all she does is heal. this is replicable by items. in boss fights tarunda + single target heals is doing more than yukari healing. group concentrate is nutso but it comes super late and is still worse than divine intervention and group charge. ken is a straight upgrade to her in every way (once he finally joins anyway). shes not BAD but she just takes a ton of effort. i wonder how long koromaru will be overrated by everyone... he joins late, has terrible stats, his gauge requirement is awful, and debilitate comes at level 77. there is no guarantee party members will actually hit level 77 before nyx, only the protagonist is guaranteed to hit that level. even if they do its SO late that its basically a non-factor. group charge is nuts and he gets it right away but the gauge requirement is so so bad that you dont get it every fight unless you are explicitly grinding random encounters so he has it. also his damage is comically bad once you start looking at his stats/the resources you have in context to every major story fight instead of just at the very end of the game that being said i think hes pretty good. revolution is fantastic and group charge, when you can get it, is fantastic. like yukari tho he kind of just takes a lot of effort to be good outside of his theurgy. sorry for wall of text and even though i disagree with a lot video is still well made!

If only P3R was on Switch. This makes me want to play it even more 😅 I think that I'll be using Junpei, Ken, and Koromaru. That team sounds fun to use.

For Shinji (when he’s available) Unless its some reward for saving people or like that I don’t see any Aoe Auto Skills that are obtainable via level at that point. They likely have to be from Skill Mutation Auto Mataru is obtained by Atavaka at level 75 (fusible at 72) Auto Maraku is obtained by Hecatoncheires at level 53 (fusible level 47) (this is the one you might have by the time Shinji leaves) Auto Masuku is obtained by Siegfried at level 55 (fusible at 54) Its very possible to have it by Skill mutation but i feel like thats not as strong as a point against him. at that point of the game id say having auto Riser is pretty good. Aigis is likely to only get Marakukaja while Shinji is in and i dont see anyone else who’d have aoe Buffs at that point (they seem to get it right after he would’ve left) I want to say more about other characters so ill get to that when i wake up. Ehh screw it ill talk about Ken and Yukari before sleep Ken does more damage than Yukari just straight up Ken innately joins with Kougoan (37), a Heavy Bless Skill so what right? Well it has a higher base power than Garudyne a Skill which Yukari learns at level 50 (the base power of 350 to 220). But he gets access to Gae Bolg relatively quickly a +25% boost to Bless. And i think its starting to become a bit clear. And the only period where Yukari actually outdamages him is when She has access to Wind Amp Accessories while Ken is waiting for his. As you overlevel the damage disparity decreases and at level 99 the damage difference is basically Ken is Yukari with Single Target Boost. Im not done yet He also has a significantly better Theurgy Charge conditions at his fastest he can get Theurgy every other turn. And he can actually keep this loop up by spamming Support Skills skills then Theurgy. This basically means at worst hes only spending about 2 Sp to use 2 samrecarm, Mediarahan and Full Party Shields. I believe Yukari at her Fastest is only three turns but she doesn’t have a clean loop and Tranquility is hurt by the fact that only Akihiko and Mitsuru make good use out of Theurgy (even then Akihiko only wants it for Theurgy otherwise hes spamming Phys). (Koros strongest skill is Getsui not even he wants it) The only thing Yukari outdoes him in is ailment cures and that’s extremely easy to cover with items. Yukari is also slower than most of the party so its not really like she would act in time to save the party from ailment shenanigans. Kens also just generally better with Physical teams than Yukari which is generally accepted as the meta of the game.

I rarely watch gaming tier lists, but I have to say, you NAILED this tier list haha. By the end of the game I tried out a bunch of party members after I got them all to lvl 99 - and what was my final party? Protag, Yukari, Akihiko and the goodest boy 😄 Good stuff man.

imagine if koromaru said "get your personas ready folks, this ain't gonna last long!"

4:25 I think you are missing the point of the charistic here. It doesn't just apply to her. It applys to everyone. So having her in the party with Junpie or aigis means they are receiving another buff to their crit rate. And while I agree its pointless for full moon fights. It makes travelig and grinding Tartarus way easier, especially when you have the ambush ability and can inflicte distress to at least every enemy. You can then abuse the party level catch up system to get the boss fight party members ready. So in that aspect she's really great at her role

For Mitsuru, Freeze is an ailment that almost every enemy in the game is vulnerable to.

I never expected to see Koromaru as the best party member without counting the protagonist, Revolution is really good, but is dangerous as well because it increases the crit rate of the enemies as well, but I'm so happy to see my queen Yukari as the second best party member.❤❤❤

I think many members depend on the overall party composition, but i found your reasonings to be fairly interesting. Tbh i kinda agree on a few points like with Mitsuru, although not everything Out of curiosity, who was on your final team to clear the game?

Great list! I would move Mitsuru up because throughout the entire game I kept her in party to lower the foes defense. On trash mobs sure not super useful but on all Monad Passage enemies and challening encounters and bosses, I always want Marakunda up. In the endgame when Koromaru gets Debilitate yeah, she basically can be replaced by him and you lose nothing else. But I relied on her to consistantly keep all encounters from going past 3 rounds for 970% of the game (because you don't have her in party for the first 20%, and then she gets left behind in the last 10%).

This was well constructed if you ask me! At some point I wanna check out Reload myself and dig into the changes it has, but it's nice every party member really does have a niche this time around. I feel bad about Mitsuru since her kit is perfectly in line with the kind of character she is... except oh no, some bosses don't let her inflict statuses. So that tosses part of her vibe out the window ._ .

So random but i love your accent saying these abilities. Great video

I disagree with most of this.

Fuuka being the best persona user anyway bc she can't take damage is true...even with the other navigators. Rise in Arena Ultimax and Futaba during hacking in Strikers... Fuuka is truly Messiah

Do you know what awesome about all of this? It's the implication you are going to have to fight all these guys with their Theurgia & Shift in the Answer and let's remind ourselves exactly what kind of pairings we're talking about. Ken + Akihiko = Heat Riser + Akihiko's characteristic, sure let's do it but Akihiko-San if your health is too low don't worry Ken'll just heal it right back. Junpei + Koromaru = I know people twitchy about hurting the doggo but I'd be more worried about the doggo massacring me especially with revolution boost on Junpei, god god. Yukari + Mitsuru = Say Gogeta what was that you were saying about status affliction? I must remember to bring Odin into this fight because holy hell.

17:32 From what game is this music from?

just wanna say, i think atlus was being super cheeky with making mitsurus gimmick applying ailments. now we "HAVE" to use marin karin

I ran Koro, Yukari and Akihiko on the Reaper once and the guy got one shot by Revolution + Power Howling + Electric Onslaught

I pretty much agree with your list besides yukari and Ken's placement I would switch them I value Ken's utilty alot more and plus is 2nd Theurgia is crazy good.

I think the only big part of the breakdown you missed is their final weapons. Because they all have unique abilities attached to it, it plays a big role in how strong a character is. Personally I think Aigis' puts her above Junpei.

I think the party members are too strong too early. Yukari for example makes the game trivial from very early on. In a game like Persona Q it wouldn't be an issue because the game is balanced around it but here it feels like it's a regular Persona but everybody on the team is crazy strong.

This list is pretty much the most accurate thing possible from an objective point of view, although I think Koromaru is a way to high on the list. My problem with Koromaru's kit is the same thing you praised, the amount of different skills he has. I like when a party member is focused on one type of skill alone, making the most out of it instead of trying to derive their power into a more balanced role. For example, I almost didn't use Makoto in my P5R playthrough because Morgana was simply a better healer and if I wanted any buffs, I could switch personas to apply them myself. I don't know other people who have played Reload, but even I (with my 2 braincells) could tell Akihiko and Yukari are a must have when farming the Reaper. In the third slot I always get Junpei because of his higher critical chances, which is nice against an opponent without weaknesses.

My poor wife, being put so low... Mitsuru was probably my best part member aside from the MC. Did so much damage.

I got a few notes Long story short both Aki and Junpei, specially Junpei can outdamage MC without DLCs Junpei has over 80% crit rate if built properly and his trait is 1.4x, which means a crit is 2.8x in merciless compared to the usual 2.01x, on top of all that he has both the strongest phys AND magic theurgy As for aki buffs affect him in 1.82x instead of the usual 1.4x so he's the avg highest damage Aigis and Shinji are on the same boat, aigis has phys amp but shinji has better moves overall, so they're the same pretty much damage wise And Yukari is just replaceable honestly she's the second worst after Mitsuru Ok hear me out don't hate me, she's useful but she's outclassed in every single way 1. Best healer stays being the inventory, items are so easy to get for healing and you'll never ever need to cast mediarahan 41 times 2. Tranquility is just worse Power Howling as it stands since this is a very phys dominant game and you pretty much never will be running magic in an optimal run, although if magic was better in this game she would be bumped higher for sure 3. worst damage period, and that's fine because she's a support, is what i would say... if damage wasn't the most important thing in this game, you'll never need to heal if you just defeat everything first and use the 99 life stones in your inventory after battle or heal with shuffle time based koro top 1 tho as for the best party overall Koro, Aki, Junpei and this is backed up by statistics and datamined information anyways that's all my feedback for now, good vid man!

Yukari really is peak, she’s the one I ended up going down the relationshiping her at the end she’s just so fuckin useful she was calling herself useful and she’s broken

A tower of shadows killed by doggo, now that's I call " impawsble paws of entitlements"

Beat the game with Aki, Koro, and Yukari. I had a feeling they were high tier!

Unironically, i feel like in a more balanced game, Mitsuru would be much better. Ailments are busted, so they need to make bosses immune, so Mitsuru's kit and characteristic really wanting to be able to land ailmenrs suffers, because all the hard encounters are immune, and the encounters that aren't are better answered with weaknesses, or are exceptions the game clues you in on that make them free. If they were weaker (Confusion and Charm didn't always drop turns, Distress didn't reduce damage as much, Poison in general was weaker, etcetera), more enemies could afford to be vulnerable, so Mitsuru in turn would be much stronger, especially with an AoE Distress move and her characteristic having excellent synergy with crit stack

The og Akihiko are well know to be the debuffs master. that's why he was essential to the team while facing strong opponents. They nerfed his debuff skills on Reload whoever Atlus crack up his damage to make it up. so yeah Akihiko are still S-Tier for me.

So I think Ken should be ranked higher based on having an extra element like the dog does which really helps out going through the tower. Yes his damage isn't good but having tons of tools on weird turns where a party member is down from a one hit ko. Being able to resurrect and give full protection for a turn without risking main protag on dying to reset the fight.

Ken carried me through the game. His reflect skills made the game so so stupidly easy. I did need high damage party members to make up for his low damage

bro completely ignored Aigis' insane buff game

Junpai has surprisingly never failed me when I needed him, that's why I always have him on my team

I honestly used who consistently had critical or just good buffs, types in general. Unlike other games, the reaper only becomes an issue later in, so if you can get to the shrine, get spirit drain and ability drain on a good defensive persona duplicating cards, and endlessly heal your team while quick battling, and you get enough valuables, money, and equipment to get to reaper early and do an early clear and get crazy levels

I actually enjoy the harem party not bc it’s a harem party but bc it’s actually pretty damn good. Aigis boosts your entire team and has fairly strong physical abilities. Yukari has cheap heals that are super strong and debuffs the enemy. Mitsuru also debuffs the enemy while being able to do 3k damage per hit

Aigis is the best mainly because of how she changes late game. She gets additional dialogue and her theurgy animation is so crisp and I love it

For every persona game I’ve just been using who I like and it’s been going great so far.

Ok....hot take incoming lol. I love koramaru for one specific reason. His high agility and revolution skill so early. Take turn one pop rev, and if you put auto attack buff on your mc starter persona, have a Crit base heavy striker persona and on turn one you constantly one shot or Crit chain on groups to one turn most encounters I spoke too soon lollllll

Juts like you say. some times i playt with the hearth and play soround by beautiful ladyes, but when you need damage, you need a Sanada sempai and Konohamaru

Finally some Koro love, he was my main sidekick from day 1 by far one of the best party members in persona history, the items he get as well are too op

Im super late but i hope you read this. One thing that you forgot that turns yukari’s damage rating from 2/5 to 5/5 is the fact that she’s the only character with an auto concentrate equipment in the game. This coupled with the fact that there’s barely any enemies in Tartarus that resist wind means she’s easily the most efficient character for one turning groups of enemies with magarudyne

As someone who played all P3 franchise, Junpei got buffed bigtime.i always stop leveling him before, but now he’s A crit machine better than Aigis and Shinjo combined, Atlus totally broke my boy.

I wanna add to your A-rankings If you're REALLY up for it you can incense Junpei's luck to 99 and that has allowed me to crit 90% of the time (even on nyx but the lack of 1 more sucks)

man koro is both the strongest party member and the best character story wise. what a beast.

bro top three was the exact team i ran lfmao, they meshed so well together and since i didn't need to switch out the party i just.... didn't. made nyx on merciless look like a joke after 3 tries.

finally Akihiko gets the recognition he deserves, now i can go back and 100% the game

I remember clearing an entire block, and Yukari had only used 10% of her sp bar. This is why she is on my A and B team. Team A: Yukari, Akihiko, and Aigis. Team B: Yukari, Mitsuru, and Koromaru.

I think Mitsuru's characteristic isnt ment for her. It says it boosts crit rate, not just her's. I say this because i notice that crits seem to occur a lot more when she's around and status effects are applied

Instead of saying stuff like "its my opinion" why characters are ranked as they are. You are showing why you do rank them as you do, everything from resources to pure facts how the game currently is. Huge respect.

Was not expecting all my p3 reload team members to be the highest ranking for reload lets good

My waifu Yukari is SSS for me, I use a hp skill so the mc charges is super and yukari heals so she can use her super rinse and repeat

I have to agree with you that Ken has a very _meh_ combat trait. But one of the neat things that I abused in my playthrough was the fact that you can also give Ken a regenerate 3 acessory to make him recover 18 sp per turn At that point, he basically never ran out of sp 😅

Mitsuru can recover some SP with skill drain if you go that route, Marin Karin is basically useless though. I just use her to lower defense and pump out big magic damage.And honestly, I know crits can be really good, but... physical damage kinda sucks outside of that, especially early game, making Junpei absolutely useless most of the game.

To me the break skills like ice break are useless because why would I waste a turn nullifying an enemies resistance to a certain element when I could just use something else I guess you could make an argument for enemies that null everything but It you can’t push it pull it If you can’t pull it Megidolaon

Here’s something recently discovered. Sukukaja affects multi-hit skills and helps make more hits happen. This makes them more powerful on average than expected (like Junpeis Blade of Fury outdoing Akihikos Gigantic Fist). But more importantly it means Sukukaja is finally a decent Buff now)

Not sure if you've done this but would be nice to see a tier list of all the personas unlocked for maxing out a social link.

Mitsuru's characteristic with Phys Hero, Junpei and Aegis makes it so if you ambush an enemy and give them confuse you are guaranteed to hit a crit every time.

Fuuka's actually busted this time. Party wide SP/HP recovery OR charge/concentrate, maraku and masuku before big fights, distress for all enemies in the floor, weakness analysis, never gets hit

Mitsuru is a beast with ice amp, and with concentrate can dish out best magic damage. You just don't know.

Great analysis. I may have been greatly undervaluing Koromaru in my own playthrough, possibly because he can run out of SP very quickly. While end game is a fine point of reference, as you would necessarily need one, it's also generally not very applicable. Not only because level 99 makes any fight (excluding Elizabeth) a non issue for any lineup, but also because it's a long RPG with different variables throughout the game. To be more applicable, you would probably need like a per month tier list which is a lot more work. Plus the varying amount of situations can make each party member more useful. I would absolutely pick Ken over Yukari for a handful of fights for his second theurgy alone. But for the scope of the video, super good. :)

This was a great list and high quality vid, even if I don’t agree with a lot of it. The main thing I disagree with though is Ken and Yukari. I’ve just never seen the Yukari hype, Tranquility is great but that’s kinda all she has and magic (other than some Theurgies) is really underpowered and some party members literally cannot benefit from Concentrate. Her healing is cheap yes but in effectiveness it’s no better than Ken’s, and Ken benefits from the high cost. Ailment restore is kinda useless since you can buy the items so easily as well. The main problem I have with Yukari especially when comparing to Ken is offensive momentum; Yukari can heal but she can’t really prevent damage in the first place without a lucky Sukunda dodge, whereas Ken can prevent damage and more importantly knockdowns in the first place allowing you to play more offensively and recklessly. My experience with Yukari on merciless was basically having to rely on her and recuperate every turn which really cuts into turns. Ken is just broken especially with his second theurgy. Ken can do more outside of just healing on his free turns without theurgy too unlike Yukari (and invested his Kougaon does more than Garudyne since light and dark are stronger if you care about that, Garudyne really kinda sucks as a best regular damage option). Yukari also straight up has horrible synergy with Junpei and especially Aigis so she can’t slot onto every team effectively. Ken especially on merciless is amazing and he’s straight up busted for a low level reaper fight. Plus his SP restore (which stacks with invigorate skills if you want) and multi-element access is great for Tartarus runs. The SP restore helps more than hurts since he can stay below half SP comfortably and throw out his broken theurgy every few turns without having to worry too much about running out of SP. I think a lot of people overrated Yukari because they see her characteristic, say “wow she must be the best healer” and basically never look back. Using her means you basically have to rely on her healing and makes her look great since she appears to be carrying the team health wise. My personal ranking from bottom to top would probably be Mitsuru, Yukari, Junpei, Koromaru, Aigis, Akihiko then Ken for the main party members.

Barring some placement I disagree with, definitely really good arguments here. I honestly haven’t even considered how busted Koro really is in this game, or how pointless Mitsuru’s second theurgy being almighty was. The only placement I could really disagree with is Ken. He’s definitely not stellar, but utility as a tool box I feel is a bit underrated. I feel like he’s a perfect for the last spot on a team, since you can essentially build him in any way you want to fill a role. However there is definitely a valid argument in just using the character that already fills that role, but there are definitely some cases where he could be a better pick. Say you want to have a team with Aigis and koro, and are looking for a healer. Yukari is immediately the first pick, but then you run into the issue of her and Aigis both having an elec weakness. Ken wouldn’t have that issue, plus he can provide more coverage to the example team. All probably circumstantial, but wanted to put my 2 cents in, Great ranking 👍

If you completely ignore ailments on Mitsuru (they're useless anyways) you can instead give her spirit drain and leave mabufudyne there to help her resource management

Koromaru going from being one of the worst party members in the original P3 into the debatably the best is the character arc of the century.

YOU RATED YUKARI RESOURCE NEAR inexhaustible when grinding. THIS IS WHY I MENTIONED SP DRAIN. Makoto and Mitsuru have INFINITE SP.

Koromaru: "Arf arf..." Aigis: "Koromaru says: 'oh, you got 20 points, leader? Heh... one point difference..." Makoto: "Nah, Koro-chan. You got 19 because that's all you could get. I got 20 because that's all there was to get"

Personally, for me, everyone is actually good. Obviously, we have busted teammates, but even the ones that are not are very decent with great skills.

characters aside, astarte's one shot kill is busted if you put apt pupil, pierce amp, pierce boost, single target boost, auto rebellion card on her. she's my favorite to fight bosses since i'm still pissed to this day that atlus doesn't include my boy yoshitsune to the compendium.