While I didn’t enjoy this as much as I would’ve hoped for, it’s damn nice to play another Persona game.
I’m a relatively new fan to persona, Persona 5 was the first game I played in the franchise. As a high schooler at the time my mind was blown by that game and P5R went beyond my expectations and blew me away again. I never played the original P3 so have nothing to say about this game being a Remake and for the sake of this review I will do my VERY best not to compare this to P5R since I want to look at P3R as it’s own game. With that being said, Persona 3 Reload is an interesting game that does take inspiration from P5R. As always I LOVE the art direction for Persona. You go through the daily life of a high school student to hang with friends and study for school. You can join clubs which I thought was really cool. You also get to open up new social links to build bonds in these clubs. You can do all sorts of activities that can gain you new items or accessories or increase your social stats that can benefit you on the combat side of the game during the Dark Hour. There’s many mechanics for you to use to better yourself, your gear or your team. You can also explore and find Twilight Fragments around town which are very useful to open locked chests within Tartarus. Which brings us to combat side of things. Combat is so slick and fun. You’ll pretty much go dungeon crawling in Tartarus for a big chunk of the game where you fight shadows and get loot. Sometimes after a battle you’ll get Shuffle Time which is a system that allows you to choose a reward. These rewards can be anything from money or bonuses to collect or personas and buffs for your run through Tartarus. I really like the visuals and layout for Tartarus which the art direction does great on. I also do appreciate that different sections of Tartarus which would eventually change up the layout and halls for the floors you go through so that you don’t go through same hallways. It’s also good that more things open up in Tartarus so that you don’t always just do the same thing. Eventually you’ll have to rescue people that have wondered into Tartarus and you will eventually start to encounter Monad Doors which lead into a Red Area where you can fight formidable shadows for great rewards. You can also take on requests for Elizabeth where you have to do quests for her in daytime and during the Dark Hour. And with Elizabeth there’s indeed a Velvet Room to fuse your personas. While I did like Tartarus, I did get pretty bored sometimes since it got repetitive unless I had a challenging fight. And that’s an issue I had with Personal 5, Mementos felt like a slog and Tartarus did begin to feel like slog later on in the story. Also the soundtrack is AMAZING. Like in P5R, I loved to just randomly hang out just to listen to the music because it was so good. Atlus doesn’t miss with their OSTs.
Story wise, it was pretty good but I wasn’t all that impressed. The story was okay for the first 40 hours as we have a goal we’re set on but doesn’t do much with that goal other than having to go up Tartarus to find out more and recruit new members to help in our fight during the Dark Hour. After that, the story started to pick up for me, specifically when we started to learn more about the Dark Hour and started encountering the antagonists of the story. The social links in the game were hit or miss. Some will be “meh”, some will at least be interesting, and a few I loved. I didn’t really like Nozomi’s or Hidetoshi’s social links since they were either uninteresting or just couldn’t bring myself to enjoy them. And then we have SEES, our team that fights to find out the secrets of the Dark Hour. The characters are well written and well voiced acted. Junpei is the only character I had a love hate relationship with. He can be funny but cringe most of the time for trying too hard to be funny. I also loved characters like Yukari because of her deeper connection to the story. I also love Akihiko for his cool and upstanding attitude. Or even Aigis for looking for her way of life which is interesting to see. And of course I can’t forget Mitsuru because, one I think she’s totally gorgeous, and two I really liked her social link. Besides all that, it’s really nice how you can just hang out with any of your crew members at the dorm, sadly this doesn’t increase your bond with them but you can still increase your social stats or get items like food or drinks from it. The remaining hours of the story were great and my goodness the ending hit me hard on the heart.
Honestly, I really couldn’t put my finger on why I didn’t enjoy this as much as I would’ve hoped for. Not sure if it’s because the story didn’t get to me as much due to pacing issues or if I felt like something was missing from the game. Nonetheless, I definitely recommend Persona 3 Reload as it’s a great game. There’s a lot to keep you busy and a lot to take advantage of.
I’m a relatively new fan to persona, Persona 5 was the first game I played in the franchise. As a high schooler at the time my mind was blown by that game and P5R went beyond my expectations and blew me away again. I never played the original P3 so have nothing to say about this game being a Remake and for the sake of this review I will do my VERY best not to compare this to P5R since I want to look at P3R as it’s own game. With that being said, Persona 3 Reload is an interesting game that does take inspiration from P5R. As always I LOVE the art direction for Persona. You go through the daily life of a high school student to hang with friends and study for school. You can join clubs which I thought was really cool. You also get to open up new social links to build bonds in these clubs. You can do all sorts of activities that can gain you new items or accessories or increase your social stats that can benefit you on the combat side of the game during the Dark Hour. There’s many mechanics for you to use to better yourself, your gear or your team. You can also explore and find Twilight Fragments around town which are very useful to open locked chests within Tartarus. Which brings us to combat side of things. Combat is so slick and fun. You’ll pretty much go dungeon crawling in Tartarus for a big chunk of the game where you fight shadows and get loot. Sometimes after a battle you’ll get Shuffle Time which is a system that allows you to choose a reward. These rewards can be anything from money or bonuses to collect or personas and buffs for your run through Tartarus. I really like the visuals and layout for Tartarus which the art direction does great on. I also do appreciate that different sections of Tartarus which would eventually change up the layout and halls for the floors you go through so that you don’t go through same hallways. It’s also good that more things open up in Tartarus so that you don’t always just do the same thing. Eventually you’ll have to rescue people that have wondered into Tartarus and you will eventually start to encounter Monad Doors which lead into a Red Area where you can fight formidable shadows for great rewards. You can also take on requests for Elizabeth where you have to do quests for her in daytime and during the Dark Hour. And with Elizabeth there’s indeed a Velvet Room to fuse your personas. While I did like Tartarus, I did get pretty bored sometimes since it got repetitive unless I had a challenging fight. And that’s an issue I had with Personal 5, Mementos felt like a slog and Tartarus did begin to feel like slog later on in the story. Also the soundtrack is AMAZING. Like in P5R, I loved to just randomly hang out just to listen to the music because it was so good. Atlus doesn’t miss with their OSTs.
Story wise, it was pretty good but I wasn’t all that impressed. The story was okay for the first 40 hours as we have a goal we’re set on but doesn’t do much with that goal other than having to go up Tartarus to find out more and recruit new members to help in our fight during the Dark Hour. After that, the story started to pick up for me, specifically when we started to learn more about the Dark Hour and started encountering the antagonists of the story. The social links in the game were hit or miss. Some will be “meh”, some will at least be interesting, and a few I loved. I didn’t really like Nozomi’s or Hidetoshi’s social links since they were either uninteresting or just couldn’t bring myself to enjoy them. And then we have SEES, our team that fights to find out the secrets of the Dark Hour. The characters are well written and well voiced acted. Junpei is the only character I had a love hate relationship with. He can be funny but cringe most of the time for trying too hard to be funny. I also loved characters like Yukari because of her deeper connection to the story. I also love Akihiko for his cool and upstanding attitude. Or even Aigis for looking for her way of life which is interesting to see. And of course I can’t forget Mitsuru because, one I think she’s totally gorgeous, and two I really liked her social link. Besides all that, it’s really nice how you can just hang out with any of your crew members at the dorm, sadly this doesn’t increase your bond with them but you can still increase your social stats or get items like food or drinks from it. The remaining hours of the story were great and my goodness the ending hit me hard on the heart.
Honestly, I really couldn’t put my finger on why I didn’t enjoy this as much as I would’ve hoped for. Not sure if it’s because the story didn’t get to me as much due to pacing issues or if I felt like something was missing from the game. Nonetheless, I definitely recommend Persona 3 Reload as it’s a great game. There’s a lot to keep you busy and a lot to take advantage of.
LeonardoMF93
19 days ago