I tried my best to go into reload relatively blind, I played FES beforehand but I didn't watch a majority of the trailers or any of the gameplay footage. Going in, I was expecting reload to be good and fix most of my issues with FES. After playing FES and reload almost back to back, I was surprised at how faithful reload was. Most of the changes made feel additive and serve to improve the pacing of the original game's story while also fleshing out a few characters' motivations.
My biggest issue with the original game was its over reliance on rng in the 100% experience. This is the biggest detractor for me whenever I think about replaying FES (just the thought of spending hours rerolling move inheritance while fusing personas hurts). As expected, reload fixes this by letting you pick the moves you want to inherit directly which I really appreciated. I was not expecting the game to go even farther and retool Elizabeth's requests that heavily relied on rng in FES. There's no more rerolling floors to try and get a gold chest to spawn only have another small chance of actually finding the weapon or item you're looking for. Additionally, while reload still has gold shadow requests, the shadows don't immediately disappear if you so much as look at them, so you actually have a good chance to hit them and not have to waste 30-60 minutes having to reroll floors trying to get them to spawn again. These changes alone drastically improved the completionist experience for me.
The original game is also notorious for having a strict time limit when going for max social links. Reload does a few things to alleviate the stress of trying to complete everything (more opportunities to increase social stats, hermit not taking up a whole day, etc.). I still ended up maxing my last link the day before the final boss, but my playthrough was very unoptimized. The game adds new hangouts/storylines for the male SEES members so most of the time I managed to save on social links was spent maxing these as well. I still really appreciated the added flexibility in maxing out all the social links and it only adds to the replayability of the game for me since I never felt the need to be super particular about doing every link on a specific designated day like I did on my 100% run of FES. The idea of replaying the game and optimizing my route just gives me a sense of satisfaction that I haven't felt since playing Majora's Mask for the first time.
Party members are controllable now, and while I am a defender of FES's battle system and think the hate for the AI party members is very overblown, I can't deny direct party control just feels better and helps speed up the pace of fights.
Tartarus has a lot of changes too. I ended up appreciating the new camera angle a lot more than I thought I would since it greatly reduced the amount of ambushes due to me swinging my sword too early or my aim being off by just a little bit. There's also more stuff to do in tartarus besides climb floors and fight bosses/enemies now plus a few new floor gimmicks to change up the gameplay every once in a while. Being able to run and fast travel on floors you've explored before are also nice QOL changes that help keep the pace of the game going. I liked tartarus in the original game, so I'm not sure if these changes are enough to sway the people who hated tartarus in the original game, but I'd imagine the QOL changes alone would greatly improve your tartarus experience if you hated the original.
If you're trying to get into the modern persona series, I'm not sure if reload is the best game to start with over royal. Reload is very faithful to the original game and the original persona 3 can be a bit of a slow burn. In contrast, I think royal's opening is a little faster paced and it's first conflict leaves a stronger impression/hook. If go into reload with this in mind, I think you'll really enjoy it.
To address the elephant in the room, it does suck that we still don't have a definitive persona 3 experience since reload lacks the P3P exclusive content, but with The Answer dlc being confirmed, I feel I can confidently say that reload is the definitive FES experience for me.
Overall, I really loved my time with reload. Persona 3 is just a really special game, and the new changes really enhanced the overall experience for me. I love the added character stuff and it only serves to help flesh out the world I loved from the original game even more. Reload might be the closest a non-pokemon rpg has felt to a comfort game for me. I know I'm going to replay it and experiment with new routes many times in the future.
My biggest issue with the original game was its over reliance on rng in the 100% experience. This is the biggest detractor for me whenever I think about replaying FES (just the thought of spending hours rerolling move inheritance while fusing personas hurts). As expected, reload fixes this by letting you pick the moves you want to inherit directly which I really appreciated. I was not expecting the game to go even farther and retool Elizabeth's requests that heavily relied on rng in FES. There's no more rerolling floors to try and get a gold chest to spawn only have another small chance of actually finding the weapon or item you're looking for. Additionally, while reload still has gold shadow requests, the shadows don't immediately disappear if you so much as look at them, so you actually have a good chance to hit them and not have to waste 30-60 minutes having to reroll floors trying to get them to spawn again. These changes alone drastically improved the completionist experience for me.
The original game is also notorious for having a strict time limit when going for max social links. Reload does a few things to alleviate the stress of trying to complete everything (more opportunities to increase social stats, hermit not taking up a whole day, etc.). I still ended up maxing my last link the day before the final boss, but my playthrough was very unoptimized. The game adds new hangouts/storylines for the male SEES members so most of the time I managed to save on social links was spent maxing these as well. I still really appreciated the added flexibility in maxing out all the social links and it only adds to the replayability of the game for me since I never felt the need to be super particular about doing every link on a specific designated day like I did on my 100% run of FES. The idea of replaying the game and optimizing my route just gives me a sense of satisfaction that I haven't felt since playing Majora's Mask for the first time.
Party members are controllable now, and while I am a defender of FES's battle system and think the hate for the AI party members is very overblown, I can't deny direct party control just feels better and helps speed up the pace of fights.
Tartarus has a lot of changes too. I ended up appreciating the new camera angle a lot more than I thought I would since it greatly reduced the amount of ambushes due to me swinging my sword too early or my aim being off by just a little bit. There's also more stuff to do in tartarus besides climb floors and fight bosses/enemies now plus a few new floor gimmicks to change up the gameplay every once in a while. Being able to run and fast travel on floors you've explored before are also nice QOL changes that help keep the pace of the game going. I liked tartarus in the original game, so I'm not sure if these changes are enough to sway the people who hated tartarus in the original game, but I'd imagine the QOL changes alone would greatly improve your tartarus experience if you hated the original.
If you're trying to get into the modern persona series, I'm not sure if reload is the best game to start with over royal. Reload is very faithful to the original game and the original persona 3 can be a bit of a slow burn. In contrast, I think royal's opening is a little faster paced and it's first conflict leaves a stronger impression/hook. If go into reload with this in mind, I think you'll really enjoy it.
To address the elephant in the room, it does suck that we still don't have a definitive persona 3 experience since reload lacks the P3P exclusive content, but with The Answer dlc being confirmed, I feel I can confidently say that reload is the definitive FES experience for me.
Overall, I really loved my time with reload. Persona 3 is just a really special game, and the new changes really enhanced the overall experience for me. I love the added character stuff and it only serves to help flesh out the world I loved from the original game even more. Reload might be the closest a non-pokemon rpg has felt to a comfort game for me. I know I'm going to replay it and experiment with new routes many times in the future.