I'm not usually big on nostalgia, but as soon as P3R's intro started with "crazy how time flies", it hit me in such a big wave. I may not have played the original 18 years ago, but I did 8 years ago and that wave of feelings never stopped throughout the game.

It kept hitting me how on that original playthrough I was the same age as the main characters, and am now just now hitting what is (hopefully) my 1/4 life milestone. And with that in mind, god DAMN do the themes of this game hurt even more when you're not a kid anymore. Almost every story beat comes across so much stronger, and by the last few hours I was a mess of emotion.

As for the graphical and gameplay changes, while I thought a couple cutscenes from FES were better(the intro specifically), otherwise it was all great changes that only served to enhance the original. Lack of party control was always a contention people had with the original, and while I didn't hate it, I'd still consider full control an improvement if only because it makes the other party members all feel more important instead of the main character doing 90% of the work. All the events they added to night time to upgrade your party members was also an amazing change both to give them more screentime and fill a slot that, after you max your stats and Tower/Devil links, would pretty dead outside of Tartarus. Another thing always missing from FES was of course the male party members' social links added in P3P, something 4 and 5 also thankfully had. While linked episodes aren't a 100% replacement(especially for anyone who wants romance), they fill the spot nicely and alongside all these other factors help make P3R as close to a "definitive" version of P3 we have, something that was missing before.