In love with: Persona 3 Reload

Oh hey, it’s Persona 3. Again. But is anyone surprised, given how important this particular entry is? Not just for Persona sub-series, but for the general Megami Tensei franchise. Inventive mix of life simulation and turn-based party-based RPG dungeon crawling. Memorable story and characters. Unforgettable soundtrack. I’ve always had plenty of criticism for the game, but even I couldn’t resist wanting to play it again. Despite saying that I won’t do that 3 years ago after finally completing a playthrough of Persona 3 Portable. Persona 3 Reload is great. Easily my first pick for Persona game recommendation as of now in fact (yep, over Persona 5 Royal and Persona 4 Golden). But it’s not without flaws and downgrades.

So yes, this is indeed the fourth time Persona 3 has been released in some form. The original game was 2006. That was followed by an expanded version Persona 3 FES in 2007, which had some updates to the base game but also included a playable epilogue chapter called Episode Aigis/The Answer (depending on the region of release). Then in 2009 the game was ported to PSP with the new version called Persona 3 Portable that had quite a few downgrades, but also a lot of improvements influenced by Persona 4. And provided a completely new experience of playing through the game as a female protagonist, who had lots of unique elements to her story. And then in 2024 we got this current release – Persona 3 Reload.

Apart from massive visual overhaul, this version is a combination of old and new ideas. Some of the elements from the original game, or changes and updates from FES and Portable were transplanted here with little to no changes. So the ability to directly control every party member from Portable is here. Some of the elements and mechanics were tweaked to work much closer to how they do in Persona 5 Royal. For example, save menu is just one button press away at any time you’re not in a dungeon, instead of being tied to save points. Or the ability to give your extra turn to a different character during combat. Quite a few of the elements are new interpretations of what we saw before. The special “fusion” skills were turned into special attacks that work on their own set of rules. The social link events from the female protagonist story were turned into “linked events” that work as simplified “social links”, so now you can finally hang out with the male members of your party. There’s a lot of stuff that feels fresh, even if you have played Persona 3 before, which also make this version of the game far more accessible and fun.

But to get there, the game also shed some of its unique mechanics that were present in all previous versions of Persona 3. Concept of “fatigue/exhaustion” from exploring Tartarus (the main dungeon of the game) is completely gone, so instead the game attempts to limit prolonged dungeon exploration by making health and skill point restoration more limited. While other mechanics that relied on exhaustion are redesigned or removed. This makes raising social skills and social links considerably easier. Helped by the fact, that social skills no longer “degrade” over time, so the life simulation aspect is less stressful. Fusing Persona cards is also a lot simpler to do, with much more helpful information and automation of the process. Even the “shuffle time” mini-game after battles, that provides additional bonuses, is no longer a mini-game and has no “shuffle” – you just select cards manually with no tricks involved.

All of this makes sense – these more complicated or inconvenient elements were often criticized by players themselves and as the series went on, got simplified or removed in newer titles anyway. Persona 3 was the first of its kind, it was leaning a lot harder into some mechanics and systems that were clearly influenced by dedicated life and dating sims, so seeing everything streamlined is okay. For me it’s a clear upgrade, but I’m sure there will be people lamenting these changes.

However, where the Reload unquestionably drops the ball, is in the tone and presentation of the game. It’s especially felt during the opening hours and gets less prominent as the game goes on and people, who never played the original, will not even know that something is wrong. But it’s worth discussing. You see, the last 3 Persona titles all have had their distinct “vibe” and clear narrative direction that was represented through audio and visual elements. The ever popular Persona 5 is an adventure thriller about fighting against the corrupt system. Persona 4 is a murder mystery in a quiet town. Persona 3 was a horror story about death, loss and learning how to live through it. The first few hours of the original game were presented in a very creepy, unsettling way. Cutscenes had lots of industrial city droning ambience, abrupt cuts, digital and analogue noise.

Persona 3 Reload has most of its presentation edges rounded. The game isn’t as glitz and style as Persona 5, of course, but the opening hours of the game are mysterious, not horrifying. Everything is sleeker, nicer. Some of the cutscenes that were switched from being traditionally animated to using the game 3D models instead lose a bit of their grit. Notably, one of the early cutscenes that shows what may happen to normal people who stay awake during the Dark Hour, moves a lot of what’s happening off-screen, making it not just less terrifying, but also more confusing as a result as you don’t get what is happening. And on top of that, as it was always the case, pre-rendered cutscenes using the traditional animation simply look better even when they are shown at a higher resolution, while the new 3D-based cutscenes have a lot of ugly visual artefacts baked into them.

Again – if this is your first experience, it won’t be a problem. The game does become less of a horror and more of a melancholic story, full of hope, but sad nonetheless. And for that, the whole presentation works perfectly well, with some of the newer approaches to the UI being cool and useful anyway. It’s just that the opening introduction to the game hits very differently in Reload, compared to the original version or FES (sadly, Portable version was already heavily compromised in regards of presentation, apart from the awesome intro video unique to that version).

Which is why I feel like this is the Persona game I would recommend first. If this is your first experience with the series, Persona 3 is still the strongest in terms of the story, that was only tweaked and updated in good ways, with nothing of value removed or changed for the worst. Now its gameplay is one the same general fun level as for Persona 5 Royal. Quality of life features are overflowing and this title is very easy to pick up and play, and then replay in New Game plus, as these titles are not really meant for “perfect” playthroughs on your first attempt (though going for one if you’re familiar with older versions of the title is a lot easier). The difficulty selection is as good as it is in all recent titles too, which is great for people like me, who are not huge fans of turn-based combat and sometimes might wish to switch to the easiest difficulty for a couple of hours, just to speed everything up. But should also accommodate those, who love this gameplay with harder difficulty options.

So apart from the tone issues for the start of the game, this is basically a perfect new version, right? Well… Apart from the legitimate question of game preservation, I do think that for most people this version will completely overwrite the original release. But remember, that there is also FES and Portable? While it’s cool that Linked Episodes bring some of the story elements from the female campaign of Portable, it’s not quite the same. There are many people who straight up prefer the female protagonist from that version over the canonical one, as they have a distinct personality and fun unique story events. And yet, that aspect remains locked to the release of Portable. Bringing a female protagonist into Reload would be a huge undertaking, given the amount of cutscenes, voice lines and etc. that would need to be redone, but the demand is there. Especially after what Atlus has done with Episode Aigis.

Speaking of Episode Aigis/The Answer, in FES this was an additional epilogue-like chapter that covered events happening shortly after the ending of the main game with Aigis being the main protagonist (hence the title). And in all my years of hearing about FES, I never heard anyone saying anything good about it. It was a tiresome dungeon crawl with zero life sim elements, or even fun aspects of social life affecting the RPG mechanics – just endless grind using the most basic elements of the combat mechanics. Whatever excuse for a story it had was terrible, as most of the things it had to say were already said (and better) during the main game, and all of the new elements you would learn could be summed up in one sentence and were not adding anything meaningful to the story anyway.

When Episode Aigis/The Answer content was not included in the Persona 3 Reload release, people were surprised, as they expected the remake to be quite definitive. But at the same time, people who did play the original were of the opinion, that it’s for the better. And if Atlus were to include this type of epilogue for Reload, they should completely rethink what it should be. And of course, that’s not what was done and Episode Aigis/The Answer is exactly the same type of horribly boring crap that the original is. Just with all of the quality of life improvements of Reload and a few improvements over the original version (like having access to all Persona-related features, except the social link effects). And somehow this is sold for over the half the price of the main game, even though as far as “enjoyment” goes, I would not recommend it even if it were free. Just, don’t bother. Even reading up the “story” is unnecessary, as it adds nothing of value.

Persona 3 Reload is a fantastic game. Improved in all ways that it could be improved with a relatively small amount of compromises. But sadly lacking the female protagonist story of Portable. Which is made even more sad with the fact that Atlus completely squandered their chance of making Episode Aigis/The Answer any good, while charging an obscene amount of money for the result. Grab the game, ignore the DLCs that SEGA of recent years can’t help but be greedy about as they add almost nothing of value. Watch the cutscenes from Episode Aigis afterwards, unless you really non-stop dungeon crawling with Persona 3 mechanics. And you’re all set. Just make sure to plan your time, not just in the game, but in real life as this one is, as usual for the series, quite long.