Two things you should know about me before you read this review; I have never played the original Persona 3 (this is my first ever Persona game of any kind in fact) and I am typically not a fan of JRPGs -- I find them overly long, tropey and samey. But Persona is a series I've always been meaning to tick off my list, so when this remake was announced I decided to go in with a completely open mind and finish the thing start to finish no matter how I feel about it.

So, having now finished Persona 3 Reload, did it do anything to change my perceptions?

No!

I don't know if I've ever played a game that felt like it dragged quite as much as Persona 3. For the first third of the game it feels like practically nothing happens, you just crawl along a bunch of setup and mundane character interactions at a snail's pace, but then the final act I feel is also super dragged out. In the last month (and likely well before) your social skills are maxed out and you're just skipping through the days, waiting for the end to come. It has some serious pacing issues, and I think you could literally cut it down to half the length and maybe call that reasonable pacing. I can honestly say I did not hate this game at all, but any game that overstays its welcome like this makes you enjoy it less than you would otherwise by result of its insistence. I do not think this game justifies its own length at all.

And a large part of this is owed to the characters and story, which...Man, if you're gonna be like 60% visual novel...You've gotta have a better story and characters than this. I'm really trying not to judge too harshly in this regard because this is a remake of a 2006 game and I think it's fair to say a lot of the characters probably wouldn't have felt quite so played out back then. But damn if I didn't feel like I could predict basically every scene as soon as it started up. The moment Junpei says whatever he says about how you're always the one saving the day or whatever after the 3rd or 4th major shadow I was like "oh this is the beginning of his jealousy arc, isn't it?" and I was right. The moment we showed up with him in tow for this super unnecessary scene with all the female characters in kimonos at the shrine towards the end I was like "oh he's gonna be a sex pest about this isn't he" and I was right (dude seriously wtf is up with that scene at the shrine I still can't figure out the point of it). I distinctly remember thinking to myself early on in the game "there's gonna be a fat guy character whose whole personality trait is eating isn't there" and SURE ENOUGH. GUESS WHO I FUCKING MET LIKE 20 MINUTES LATER.

When I tell you this game is tropey I mean that 5 of the main cast have dead parents at the start of the game, and then another one's dies right in front of you too! Technically, 6 of the main cast start with dead parents if you count the fucking dog, who was the best character by the way! Because he didn't talk! This game truly has no idea how to give characters tragic backstories or grief to get over without killing off their parents, lmao. I get that the game is about death, but c'mon. I just didn't particularly like any of the characters in this game. I kinda like Takeba because she was one of the few characters who felt like they didn't boil down to the same one or two things they like talking about? Junpei is a sex pest! Akihiko likes boxing! Aigis is Elizabeth again but was less entertaining! I kinda liked Takeba and Amada and that's about it. And on the note of characters being predictable, how about that heel turn for Ikutsuki, huh? Didn't see that one coming! (Disclaimer: I saw that one coming. Somehow it still managed to underwhelm me.)

I'm harping on the story and characters a lot because it's a significant part of the game. I just found it mostly mindnumbing, I'm sorry. In the lead up to the 12th major Shadow fight it's basically all characters will talk about. They all just spend days on end going "this is the last fight! hope you're ready!" and like...You know it's not the last fight. You've just unlocked a whole new bunch of Special Fusions that go waaayyy past your current level, Fuuka specifically mentions you not even being close to the end of Tartarus on one of your recent trips, and you can see that the game's calendar goes into March of next year! They are just saying nothing of consequence. It's all they can say. The same thing happens in the final month! You've got this big decision to make, but the characters spend the whole month telling you about how they've already made their decision, even though it's literally your decision to make! But what else are they gonna say? Is Junpei gonna talk about wanting to look at cute girls for the 10,000th time? Is Akihiko gonna say some shit about training? This game is spread way too thin for characters that are nowhere near deep, interesting or likeable enough to support its runtime. I've decided to be nice here and not talk about the summer vacation or school trip sections. I consider this mercy.

I'm giving this game some points because - like everything I've seen from all Persona games, its presentation is genuinely the best in video games right now. The soundtrack is of course incredible (if not a bit repetitive) and the UI and menus? Man. Idk wtf the UX designers at Atlus are smoking but they are just on another fuckin' level man. I don't think another team have ever been so clearly head-and-shoulders above every studio in the world on one specific thing. FromSoft and architecture, maybe? What blows me away is the little touches. The way the character icons change depending on the status effect they're inflicted with, those gorgeous win-screens, the coloured backgrounds in all the social menus. Ugh, oh my fucking god, man. Why does this series about anime teenagers of all things have so much fucking sauce? Western games are yearning for just a bit of this style. All these intangibles come together to mean that Persona 3, whilst an exercise in narrative monotony does at least have incredible vibes, which is the least you can do. You can't polish a turd, but you can roll it around in glitter.

I also wanna say that I actually liked the combat quite a lot. It's among my favourite JRPG battle systems I've seen. Snappy, surprisingly deep, highly customisable -- yeah, I liked it! I'm aware that combat was given a lot of quality-of-life changes from the original, and that's one of the other things that holds me back from giving this a 2 star rating or lower. I really can tell that this is an excellent remake on its own merits, and was very appreciative of its modern sensibilities (in particular, the fast-forward button. Holy shit, thank you god.) Unfortunately, the combat was delivered to me in the form of Tartarus, which got old about as fast as everything else! I did appreciate the occasional layout/aesthetic changes, but it's not enough to make up for the monotony. Have me doing combat in any context more interesting than trawling through 250+ hallways, and I'd just call combat an objective plus for Persona 3.

So, yeah. It didn't really do it for me unfortunately. It puts a lot into its story and characters and I just did not think they were good enough. I genuinely did try and go in with an open mind! But I also don't really know what I was expecting, I kinda knew that it did a lot of stuff I hate in video games before I began. It even does that "multiple choice questions where your answer doesn't matter at all" thing that JRPGs love doing for some reason! But hey, I've finished a Persona game now, no one can ever bug me about it again, and I did make literal Satan towards the end of the game and he did have what looked like 6 titties, so that was pretty cool.