Fun game overall, some nitpicks: Wish there was more enemy variety, less but larger encounters. Higher difficulty would have been nice, any kind of hard mode. Dungeon variety was one of my biggest gripes. Trickster should have been a pawn accessible vocation, not very fun for an Arisen imo. Story could have been waaay better, feels like it was rushed.

Pros: Exploration is still great, and even better than the first game. Gameplay was improved on compared to the first game for me, vocations as a whole were a blast. Decent spread of towns, though I wish a few had a reason to revisit. Overall still had the DD appeal.

I may update this rating after/if the eventual expansion DLC comes out, in case it changes base game any like Dark Arisen.

Has nailed pretty much everything I wanted from it. Each character got necessary buffs from remake, or just being newly introduced play fantastically and uniquely with their own kits. OST is beyond incredible. The world was beautiful, and loved the detail they added to it. Story beats were well done, and I'm definitely intrigued with the final part.

If I had any complaints it's that a few sections that were entirely too long IMO and could have definitely been shorter. Also Chadley please shut up, and #saveMAI from the jerk

By far can say Reload is the best way to play P3 now for myself. I don't think the OST replaces the original, but aside from that my few biggest gripes were them not bringing some QOL's in from other entries. Didn't bother changing up fortunes earlier in the game, making it pretty hard to max slink still compared to 4G/5R, did during the night.. but that didn't come until November 11th. There's one block in Tartarus Reload that is absolutely awful to traverse, I did not think they could make Tartarus worse in Reload, but they pulled that off.

Voice acting was incredible, scenes/animations fantastic, gameplay overhaul was very needed and made it an absolute blast to play again, though a bit on the easy side even on merciless. I hope theurgies(think limit breaks) makes it way into new mainline titles going forward, those were fun, same with characteristics(character specific passives).

The new events with the male chars and Strega were handled pretty great too, changed my mind on a few characters in general lol. I can definitely say my cons with FES weren't here in Reload, except for Tartarus still being a slog.