This review will mainly be evaluating Persona 3 Reload as a remake. I replayed and wrote a review on Persona 3 FES late last year, specifically so I could best compare it to Reload. If you’re interested in my thoughts on that version of the game, you can check out the review here. I do consider it to be a companion piece to this review, but it is rather long, and not at all required to understand my thoughts regarding Reload. This review also turned out to be rather lengthy, so don’t feel obligated to read both.
Persona 3 has always been a pretty contentious game amongst fans of the series. The story is generally well-loved, but almost everything regarding its gameplay and structure have always had a mixed reception. It doesn’t help that there are multiple versions of the game that have been released over the years, with content exclusive to each version, as well as their own pros and cons. Persona 3 FES was a second version of the game that released on the PlayStation 2, and included an additional campaign known as The Answer, which served as an epilogue to the original story. It also had several minor changes and additions to the original game, which was now referred to as The Journey. Then, there was Persona 3 Portable for the PlayStation Portable, which introduced its own unique additions, including a female protagonist that had exclusive new story content to her. However, to compensate for being on a platform with weaker hardware, many elements of the original game had to be changed or scaled back. Several 3D environments were removed, anime cutscenes were replaced with in-engine ones, and it lacked The Answer altogether. As such, there was no “definitive” version of Persona 3, one that included all of the content introduced in FES and Portable without any of the drawbacks of either version. This is what made the notion of a full-on modern day remake of Persona 3 an exciting prospect.
For better, and in some cases worse, Persona 3 Reload is an extremely faithful remake. It maintains the core structure of the original game, and it delights and surprises with its own excellent new additions and quality of life changes to the story, combat, Persona fusions, social links, and Tartarus. In other ways, it feels lacking in certain regards, specifically the presentation of certain areas in the game. It does incorporate various features that were introduced in both FES and Portable, but it currently doesn’t include the biggest draws of both titles: The Answer and the female protagonist. While The Answer will be an upcoming DLC release, the staff has sadly confirmed that FeMC will not be added. The lack of FeMC is a huge bummer, and making The Answer DLC when the game already costs $70 is not at all a good look. Though I have to admit: in all honesty, I can’t really see a world where something like The Answer isn't made into DLC in the current video game business landscape. I’m not defending the decision to make The Answer DLC, it's just a sad fact of the industry. If The Answer being DLC and the absence of FeMC is enough to convince you that the game isn’t worth it, well, I think that’s a reasonable position to have. Despite this, however, I do think that Reload still provides an excellent time thanks to those aforementioned additions and quality of life changes that genuinely enrich the original game.
The additions that were by far my absolute favorite were the ones that dealt with the story. The male party members did not have social links in the original game, so Reload introduces new “Link Episodes”, which function similarly to social links and give more insight into how the events of the story are affecting these characters. I think they’re written excellently, and fit very naturally within the structure of the game and its narrative. Shinjiro’s in particular is especially moving given the context of his role in the story. You can also do activities with your party members when you return to the dorm in the evening, such as growing plants on the dorm’s rooftop, studying together, watching TV, or making food in the kitchen. These hangouts feature special dialogue where you bond with your friends, and they also provide additional gameplay bonuses, such as increasing your social stats or providing exclusive recovery and support items. Persona 3 has one of my favorite video game casts of all time, and being able to spend more time with the cast like this was an absolute delight and very heartwarming.
The rest of the main story doesn’t really see much in terms of drastic changes. Everything unfolds the same way it does in the original. However, there is one change to the story that I am not a fan of. Yukari is noticeably a lot nicer and far less stand-offish compared to how she was portrayed in the original. They didn’t make any major changes to her lines as far as I could tell, but she’s a lot less angry and aggressive in her delivery. When she chastises Junpei for example, she sounds disappointed and tired as opposed to irritated or annoyed. I’m not sure if this is more in-line with what was intended by her creators or not, but I’d be shocked if it was. I understand a lot of people have gripes with Yukari’s attitude in the original game, but I think that’s missing the point. Yukari gradually overcoming her bitchiness, opening up, and becoming close friends with the people she had problems with was a big part of her development as a character, and I think that minimizing that aspect of her personality was a mistake.
Combat has been heavily modified. In response to the backlash of being unable to directly control party members in the PlayStation 2 versions of Persona 3, Persona 4 re-introduced the ability to do so, and Atlus have kept this option in all of the releases/revisions for every mainline game in the series ever since, including here in Reload. The tactics system has always been a controversial and heavily debated topic, with people constantly arguing over whether or not the system even worked properly. I discussed this in more detail in my review of FES, but to reiterate my opinion here: I thought that the tactics system in FES generally worked as intended outside of minor instances. I actually like the tactics system a lot, and I thought that it made the characters feel a bit more real. However, the security of being able to pick and choose which skills to use at any time was the reason why I never used the tactics system again since direct commands were introduced in Persona 4.
Long time Persona modder MeovvCAT has explained in a couple of Tweets that the tactics system was heavily gutted in Persona 4 and hasn’t functioned properly in pretty much any Persona game ever since. I think that is why there’s an overall negative perception towards the tactics system. MeovvCAT has also mentioned here that problems with the tactics system have carried over to Reload as well, and while the vast majority of the people who play these games use direct commands, I don’t think that it’s too controversial to say that I think the tactics system should still be fixed, and the fact that it hasn’t in Reload after there have been problems with it for so many years is pretty disappointing. I do miss how the AI party members in FES felt like they had a sense of individuality, but I was still able to immensely enjoy combat in Reload with the direct commands regardless.
In comparison to FES, combat in Reload feels significantly easier. I typically play games on normal difficulty, but for Reload, I actually cranked it up to hard and was able to get through it just fine. It was still challenging at points, but I think playing through FES a few months ago actually prepared me very well for Reload’s hard mode. The Shift mechanic, which is equivalent to the Baton Pass from Persona 5, goes a long way towards making fights easier. At the same time though, it’s really satisfying using this mechanic to keep the opponent from being able to do anything. What I feel is the most notable addition to combat are the new Therugy attacks. These are big cinematic special attacks that the cast can perform which are extremely strong, especially if the Therugy has an element the enemy is weak to, because it can knock the enemy down and leave them open for an All-Out Attack. They can trivialize bosses on normal, but I found that they were absolutely necessary against red Shadows and bosses on hard. They’re also beautifully animated and a great spectacle to watch.
Fusing Personas has largely been simplified. You’re no longer capable of fusing more than two Personas at a time. You can now search to see what you can create with the Personas you currently have. There are still special Personas in the game like Thanatos that you can create by fusing a set of certain Personas together, and the game now tells you what Personas are needed to create these more powerful special Personas, and what level you need to be at before you can make them. Honestly, I can’t see these changes as anything but improvements. While it wasn’t too hard to get by with the original system, I think that these changes make it more encouraging and less of a headache to experiment with fusing. In FES, it felt like fusing specific Personas was impossible unless you had a guide handy because of the overwhelming amount of different types of combinations. In Reload, I felt a lot more encouraged to go out and make these special Personas in particular since now I know what to look for and when.
The only changes Social Links see are that they’re fully voiced, and you can now complete female characters’ Social Links without dating them. This was a very welcome change and I’m glad they added it. The rest of the Social Links are pretty much the same, including the more infamous ones like Kenji and “Maya”. I feel like these probably could’ve been changed, but it is what it is. They’re a product of their time, and you technically don’t have to do them.
Tartarus functions in much the same fashion, but it’s been given a much needed facelift. Each block of Tartarus now has its own small group of floor layouts, as opposed to FES, which felt like it used the same small number of layouts throughout the whole game. Tartarus has also been supplemented with a lot of new features and events that make the climb a lot less monotonous. Since this review is already as long as it is, I’m not going to list them all, but these new events are introduced gradually as you make it higher and higher in Tartarus. I think spreading them out the way the game does goes a long way towards enriching Tartarus and making it feel a lot less repetitive. It’s still not quite clear how much you should grind in Tartarus before you fight the boss at the end of the month, but you now have the option to go back to a specific date if you find yourself stuck.
While the game does mostly look great with its new combat animations and its tremendously sleek UI, the game’s presentation is lacking in a few areas. The lighting in general looks very off, and this was a very common complaint amongst Reload’s most vocal detractors. The game as a whole just looks very bright, and while I do agree that it doesn’t look especially good, you can simply turn the game’s brightness down, which fixes the issue. I’m not going to lie, I find this complaint to be very overblown. What I don’t think is overblown however, is how the game handles NPC crowds. I think that areas where there are a lot of NPCs like the school and Club Escapade don’t look good at all. The NPCs don’t have facial features and barely animate. It looks especially bad in Club Escapade where everyone just looks like they’re frozen in time, barely moving or dancing at all. This is more of a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things, as there aren’t very many crowded areas in Persona 3, but I do think it is something worth acknowledging.
I’m probably in the minority, but I never felt that Persona 3 really needed a full-on remake. FES used to be one of my favorite games of all time, despite being a little rough around the edges. The thing is, Reload manages to smooth most of those edges out. I don’t feel like Reload as a whole is significantly better than FES, but I really do love what it adds to supplement the original experience, especially the new story content. Reload manages to be a great new version of Persona 3 to enjoy. It does suck that The Answer is a DLC expansion and that FeMC won't be coming to the game at all, but Reload's own unique additions really made me happy, and I think this version has enough heart that it justifies its existence.
Persona 3 has always been a pretty contentious game amongst fans of the series. The story is generally well-loved, but almost everything regarding its gameplay and structure have always had a mixed reception. It doesn’t help that there are multiple versions of the game that have been released over the years, with content exclusive to each version, as well as their own pros and cons. Persona 3 FES was a second version of the game that released on the PlayStation 2, and included an additional campaign known as The Answer, which served as an epilogue to the original story. It also had several minor changes and additions to the original game, which was now referred to as The Journey. Then, there was Persona 3 Portable for the PlayStation Portable, which introduced its own unique additions, including a female protagonist that had exclusive new story content to her. However, to compensate for being on a platform with weaker hardware, many elements of the original game had to be changed or scaled back. Several 3D environments were removed, anime cutscenes were replaced with in-engine ones, and it lacked The Answer altogether. As such, there was no “definitive” version of Persona 3, one that included all of the content introduced in FES and Portable without any of the drawbacks of either version. This is what made the notion of a full-on modern day remake of Persona 3 an exciting prospect.
For better, and in some cases worse, Persona 3 Reload is an extremely faithful remake. It maintains the core structure of the original game, and it delights and surprises with its own excellent new additions and quality of life changes to the story, combat, Persona fusions, social links, and Tartarus. In other ways, it feels lacking in certain regards, specifically the presentation of certain areas in the game. It does incorporate various features that were introduced in both FES and Portable, but it currently doesn’t include the biggest draws of both titles: The Answer and the female protagonist. While The Answer will be an upcoming DLC release, the staff has sadly confirmed that FeMC will not be added. The lack of FeMC is a huge bummer, and making The Answer DLC when the game already costs $70 is not at all a good look. Though I have to admit: in all honesty, I can’t really see a world where something like The Answer isn't made into DLC in the current video game business landscape. I’m not defending the decision to make The Answer DLC, it's just a sad fact of the industry. If The Answer being DLC and the absence of FeMC is enough to convince you that the game isn’t worth it, well, I think that’s a reasonable position to have. Despite this, however, I do think that Reload still provides an excellent time thanks to those aforementioned additions and quality of life changes that genuinely enrich the original game.
The additions that were by far my absolute favorite were the ones that dealt with the story. The male party members did not have social links in the original game, so Reload introduces new “Link Episodes”, which function similarly to social links and give more insight into how the events of the story are affecting these characters. I think they’re written excellently, and fit very naturally within the structure of the game and its narrative. Shinjiro’s in particular is especially moving given the context of his role in the story. You can also do activities with your party members when you return to the dorm in the evening, such as growing plants on the dorm’s rooftop, studying together, watching TV, or making food in the kitchen. These hangouts feature special dialogue where you bond with your friends, and they also provide additional gameplay bonuses, such as increasing your social stats or providing exclusive recovery and support items. Persona 3 has one of my favorite video game casts of all time, and being able to spend more time with the cast like this was an absolute delight and very heartwarming.
The rest of the main story doesn’t really see much in terms of drastic changes. Everything unfolds the same way it does in the original. However, there is one change to the story that I am not a fan of. Yukari is noticeably a lot nicer and far less stand-offish compared to how she was portrayed in the original. They didn’t make any major changes to her lines as far as I could tell, but she’s a lot less angry and aggressive in her delivery. When she chastises Junpei for example, she sounds disappointed and tired as opposed to irritated or annoyed. I’m not sure if this is more in-line with what was intended by her creators or not, but I’d be shocked if it was. I understand a lot of people have gripes with Yukari’s attitude in the original game, but I think that’s missing the point. Yukari gradually overcoming her bitchiness, opening up, and becoming close friends with the people she had problems with was a big part of her development as a character, and I think that minimizing that aspect of her personality was a mistake.
Combat has been heavily modified. In response to the backlash of being unable to directly control party members in the PlayStation 2 versions of Persona 3, Persona 4 re-introduced the ability to do so, and Atlus have kept this option in all of the releases/revisions for every mainline game in the series ever since, including here in Reload. The tactics system has always been a controversial and heavily debated topic, with people constantly arguing over whether or not the system even worked properly. I discussed this in more detail in my review of FES, but to reiterate my opinion here: I thought that the tactics system in FES generally worked as intended outside of minor instances. I actually like the tactics system a lot, and I thought that it made the characters feel a bit more real. However, the security of being able to pick and choose which skills to use at any time was the reason why I never used the tactics system again since direct commands were introduced in Persona 4.
Long time Persona modder MeovvCAT has explained in a couple of Tweets that the tactics system was heavily gutted in Persona 4 and hasn’t functioned properly in pretty much any Persona game ever since. I think that is why there’s an overall negative perception towards the tactics system. MeovvCAT has also mentioned here that problems with the tactics system have carried over to Reload as well, and while the vast majority of the people who play these games use direct commands, I don’t think that it’s too controversial to say that I think the tactics system should still be fixed, and the fact that it hasn’t in Reload after there have been problems with it for so many years is pretty disappointing. I do miss how the AI party members in FES felt like they had a sense of individuality, but I was still able to immensely enjoy combat in Reload with the direct commands regardless.
In comparison to FES, combat in Reload feels significantly easier. I typically play games on normal difficulty, but for Reload, I actually cranked it up to hard and was able to get through it just fine. It was still challenging at points, but I think playing through FES a few months ago actually prepared me very well for Reload’s hard mode. The Shift mechanic, which is equivalent to the Baton Pass from Persona 5, goes a long way towards making fights easier. At the same time though, it’s really satisfying using this mechanic to keep the opponent from being able to do anything. What I feel is the most notable addition to combat are the new Therugy attacks. These are big cinematic special attacks that the cast can perform which are extremely strong, especially if the Therugy has an element the enemy is weak to, because it can knock the enemy down and leave them open for an All-Out Attack. They can trivialize bosses on normal, but I found that they were absolutely necessary against red Shadows and bosses on hard. They’re also beautifully animated and a great spectacle to watch.
Fusing Personas has largely been simplified. You’re no longer capable of fusing more than two Personas at a time. You can now search to see what you can create with the Personas you currently have. There are still special Personas in the game like Thanatos that you can create by fusing a set of certain Personas together, and the game now tells you what Personas are needed to create these more powerful special Personas, and what level you need to be at before you can make them. Honestly, I can’t see these changes as anything but improvements. While it wasn’t too hard to get by with the original system, I think that these changes make it more encouraging and less of a headache to experiment with fusing. In FES, it felt like fusing specific Personas was impossible unless you had a guide handy because of the overwhelming amount of different types of combinations. In Reload, I felt a lot more encouraged to go out and make these special Personas in particular since now I know what to look for and when.
The only changes Social Links see are that they’re fully voiced, and you can now complete female characters’ Social Links without dating them. This was a very welcome change and I’m glad they added it. The rest of the Social Links are pretty much the same, including the more infamous ones like Kenji and “Maya”. I feel like these probably could’ve been changed, but it is what it is. They’re a product of their time, and you technically don’t have to do them.
Tartarus functions in much the same fashion, but it’s been given a much needed facelift. Each block of Tartarus now has its own small group of floor layouts, as opposed to FES, which felt like it used the same small number of layouts throughout the whole game. Tartarus has also been supplemented with a lot of new features and events that make the climb a lot less monotonous. Since this review is already as long as it is, I’m not going to list them all, but these new events are introduced gradually as you make it higher and higher in Tartarus. I think spreading them out the way the game does goes a long way towards enriching Tartarus and making it feel a lot less repetitive. It’s still not quite clear how much you should grind in Tartarus before you fight the boss at the end of the month, but you now have the option to go back to a specific date if you find yourself stuck.
While the game does mostly look great with its new combat animations and its tremendously sleek UI, the game’s presentation is lacking in a few areas. The lighting in general looks very off, and this was a very common complaint amongst Reload’s most vocal detractors. The game as a whole just looks very bright, and while I do agree that it doesn’t look especially good, you can simply turn the game’s brightness down, which fixes the issue. I’m not going to lie, I find this complaint to be very overblown. What I don’t think is overblown however, is how the game handles NPC crowds. I think that areas where there are a lot of NPCs like the school and Club Escapade don’t look good at all. The NPCs don’t have facial features and barely animate. It looks especially bad in Club Escapade where everyone just looks like they’re frozen in time, barely moving or dancing at all. This is more of a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things, as there aren’t very many crowded areas in Persona 3, but I do think it is something worth acknowledging.
I’m probably in the minority, but I never felt that Persona 3 really needed a full-on remake. FES used to be one of my favorite games of all time, despite being a little rough around the edges. The thing is, Reload manages to smooth most of those edges out. I don’t feel like Reload as a whole is significantly better than FES, but I really do love what it adds to supplement the original experience, especially the new story content. Reload manages to be a great new version of Persona 3 to enjoy. It does suck that The Answer is a DLC expansion and that FeMC won't be coming to the game at all, but Reload's own unique additions really made me happy, and I think this version has enough heart that it justifies its existence.