"Tell this asshole if he wants to learn how to (re)make my product (game), he's gotta do it my way, the right way!" - Jesse Pinkman

Persona 3 Reload is ultimately a barely passable remake of what I consider the greatest game ever made. I find a large amount of the game’s flaws go ignored among the myriad conveniences the game adds, but they make the game feel like something of a hollow shell of what it used to be.

This can be seen in every aspect of the game, from the very beginning, It’s been well documented already, but the atmosphere that was dripping from the animated cutscenes of the original is completely absent. The opening scene that disorients you, makes you feel as if nothing is as it should be, is replaced with Persona 5 cutscene.mp4. It conveys the story, and that’s all it does – it’s an extension of the same flaws that purveyed Portable. This is an unfortunate trend, as in taking a variety of elements from a game that already seemed to fundamentally misunderstand the source material, it worsens it further. It draws worthless lines from portable that are only there to compensate for a lack of visuals, adds menial things like Junpei’s perversion joke in the train scene, and most offensive, adds the Portable exclusive scene after Minato returns from the final battle. Where the original cut directly from Aigis crying to 3/5, the group now have to announce their individual reactions, turning one of the most beautifully poignant scenes in the game into something standard, dull, and thoughtless.

The modern sheen the game has feels like a coat of paint that hides Reload being a fundamentally worse, less cohesive piece of art than the original. The lighting in the dorm is ruined, draining the atmosphere from one of the most prominent and beloved locations in the game. The dramatic, perfectly framed lighting of the Nyx fight (conveyed acutely in the dancing game) is replaced with…pure green, as is thoughtlessly thrown at every other dark hour scene in the game, which betrays a total lack of thought or care, and makes the game feel like a total rush job. The Orpheus awakening scene, previously a definitive tone setter that acts as the most striking piece of imagery and sound design in the series, can now only be described as underwhelming. Most to all of the little animations the models would enact that made SEES feel so well characterised and alive are absent – and why? For all the bells and whistles the game feels like a sanded down version of what was ultimately a very small-scale game.

Most script changes feel thoughtless and for the worse, making many lines less impactful for no good reason – I can appreciate the attempt to provide a more accurate script to the Japanese version, and this works in some cases, but scenes like Akihiko’s awakening are betrayed by this. Nearly every line change here feels like it lessens the impact of the scene, with worse framing to boot. This is demonstrative of a fundamental lack of understanding of the original that can be seen in the worsening of Akihiko’s character, now adjusted and simplified to be more like his P4U counterpart, one of the most horribly flanderised depictions of a character that I’ve ever seen. I don’t know why anyone on the team thought this was a good idea. Most of the cast do not suffer as much as Akihiko does, but characters like Mitsuru do to a lesser extent, with traits being further emphasised to fit into molds that have been further solidified since the release of the original. One of my favourite scenes in the game is the meeting on the roof between Minato and Junpei, acting as a perfect capstone to one of the most well-thought-out arcs and dynamics in the original game. In reload, it gets replaced with a relatively generic feeling scene between the second-year trio, for seemingly no reason – Junpei does have a link episode that I assume was meant to compensate, but it fails entirely to capture what made that scene great and ends up totally forgettable.

Nearly all of the music is definitively worse – there are highlights, such as the new remix of changing seasons, but the majority have a strangely amateur quality, with the mixing feeling frequently unprofessional. Much of the instrumentals lose all of the impact they once had and Mass Destruction is infamous for this, but for me the worst example of it is in Iwatodai Dorm. I do admittedly love the new vocals, but they can’t save how poor the rest of it sounds. What makes this even more confusing is that all of the original songs are incredible, with Colour Your Night being one of my favourite songs in the franchise, an issue that I can only imagine was from trying to hard to be different from what was already perfect.

Lastly I’ll bring up where I think the game shines – a few key areas that I think fail to elevate the overall package. The combat is wonderfully fun and fluid, and I think theurgies are a satisfactory evolution of the showtime mechanic, but this is undercut by how ludicrously easy the game becomes with barely any effort, an issue that extends to even merciless. While the original was ultimately not a hard game, Reload becomes essentially thoughtless if you know what you’re doing. The combat animations are one of my favourite things the game does, with the way each character shifts to the other never getting tiresome, conveying their personalities and dynamics perfectly. Another is a few of the new character pieces added – I think the game massively elevates Shinjiro and Ken, the tragedy of both characters being emphasised in a way that only makes them more compelling, and Ryoji especially benefits from the greater degree of screentime Reload gives him. I’m glad the bond between him and Minato is now firmly grounded in a version other than the movies.

Personally, I think Persona 3 Reload is a disappointment, and not because it fails to be the “definitive” version many begrudged it for not being. It misunderstands, ignores and discards much of what made the original great, and it fails in aspects I could have never anticipated it would; I think the way the original uniquely excels deserves to be recognised. I still like the game overall, because the skeleton is one of my favourite things ever. But if I had to choose between Reload’s existence and a simple port of FES that bumped up the framerate, it would be an incredibly easy choice; a game that feels so deliberate against a pale imitation.

Great game. Overall experience was positive with some issues here and there. It is just fun being Spider-Man at the end of the day.

Story
It's good, at best, Kraven stuff is really cool, Miles' plot is great, Peter pre-symbiote stuff is great. Just, man. I don't love how the symbiote stuff was handled. I think the start with Harry using it with you is cool. But once Peter gets it it's weird. He becomes an asshole out of nowhere, it should have been much more built up to believe the suit would exaggerate it. His personality when he's an asshole is great though. Yuri gives him a great performance. Venom is, weird. He's barely in the game. Huge waste of Tony Todd. His characterization is inconsistent they couldn't decide if Harry wanted the suit on or not. Felt it would have been a lot more interesting if he stayed wanting to be with it. The "Heal the world" concept is interesting I just don't think Venom was the best to handle it. The budget web of shadows Symbiote Apocalypse stuff was weird. I get they need shit to do but all this stuff from one Symbiote is crazy. Idk. It's not the worst Symbiote story ever, just really inconsistent and too short.

Side Content Story wise is good. I like the EMF stuff, doing Science as Peter is very fitting and makes me enjoy him more. The Sandman, Wraith, Music Museum and Prowler stories were all good/great.

Gameplay
It's fun, both characters have fun abilities to make them unique and I love using the gadgets. Felt the dodge/parry stuff was a little irritating at times but it wasn't bad. Kraven, Peter and Venom were great boss fights. Negative Man's was cool too but the last phase being goons sucks. The "Stealth" sections while not mandatory to be stealthy the stealth the game wants you to do is really boring, slow and lacking depth. So I just ignored it eventually.

Side Content Gameplay wise was okay. Sandman just being goon fights is lame, Prowler stuff was okay, EMF and other science bits in the main story I actually liked. Hunter blinds and bases good, Symbiote nests okay. Hunter drones boring. Mysteriums good. Random crimes mostly were boring so I ignored them, sorry citizens of New York.

Other Thoughts
Most original suits for this game suck, a few were cool, but not enough to save them. Especially not the suits they force you to wear for certain cutscenes and gameplay sections(mega lame). First end credits song is super boring. This game has too many non-Spider-Man sections. I don't need like 3 different flashback sections, MJ missions (MJ is good in the story but I'm not playing a game called Mary Jane 2 I want to play as Spider-Man!) Too many dream sequences or similar shit like the Negative Man/Symbiote inner mind stuff I don't really like. It feels weird that a game called Spider-Man 2 needed more Spider-Man, but it did. Also Peter and Miles should have been "Greater Together" a lot more often. Only like a couple times you actually fight together. (Not even both vs Venom? Lame.) Also would have liked a feature where you can just meet up and hang out for a bit. Would have made their connection feel better.

At the end of the day, it's a great game that just needed to be cooked a bit longer, especially clear with this hopeful update they're making for excluded features and alleged DLC content. But we'll see what happens to that. For now, waiting for Spider-Man 3 where you fight the Green Goblin and like, the Spider Slayers (please).