It feels like it hasn’t been long since I last played Persona 3. That’s because the portable game’s port came out just a year ago. The optics of dropping a game’s port right before announcing a remake aside, we are once again given cause to return to Tartarus and fight the good fight against the Shadows. Persona 3 Reload does a pretty pitch-perfect job of remaking and upgrading the game for a faithful experience that has all the bells and whistles one would expect from a modern game in the series. That being said, I still consider the game to be one of the less appealing series titles due to its narrative and characters, but judging it against its two successors isn’t exactly fair.
Persona 3 Reload does feature some new narrative here and there, as well as full voice acting for social links. But this is still very much the same story in most ways. You play as a silent protagonist who joins the SEES team to explore the tower of Tartarus, which replaces the local high school every night at midnight during something called The Dark Hour. While the game’s two successors often had my interest piqued, I never cared that much for Persona 3‘s story or characters. They’re well above average for a video game, but they never really drove me forward comparatively.
That being said, the presentation of the game has never been better. Everything has been remade in the Unreal Engine and the whole game has the same high standard of quality you’d expect from an Atlas title. Character models are actual person-sized just like in Persona 5 and the game has a similar kind of flashy exuberance to it, although the art direction isn’t quite as in-your-face as that game’s is. This is undoubtedly the best way to play the entry now, even if it lacks the female protagonist and The Answer, which will likely come in down the line as DLC.
Standing in the shadows
Just as before, your goal in Persona 3 Reload is to work your way up Tartarus, which has over 250 floors. You can head here at night and spend the rest of your time going through the protagonist’s daily life, interacting with people to increase your Social Link levels, which grants additional experience when fusing personae. Or you can work on your personality stats to unlock further opportunities. It’s still a great system. It helps that things have been massively streamlined to be much like Persona 5. It’s easy to hop where you want on the town map with just a few button presses.
One feature I adore is the network-connected daily opportunities you can bring up. This shows you all of the available Social Links or other potential choices for every day. It’s an incredibly useful feature that gives players so much more information when deciding on what exactly they should be doing. It all serves to make playing Persona 3 Reload feel similarly efficient to its successors and that’s an all-around win. You can only advance in Tartarus upon making it further into the year, as you need to get past certain events during full moons once the time comes.
For the most part, though, the social sim aspect of Persona 3 Reload is incredibly familiar. It’s the same as what you’re used to, just more convenient than ever. Granted, none of this needed much changing. The core that the series adopted with the original release of this game is just so unique and strong that keeping things familiar was really the only way to go here. And that’s because what really needed updating were the dungeon-crawling aspects.
Crawling in the dark
Naturally, manual party member control returns to Persona 3 Reload. But so many of the bells and whistles of later games appear here. You can switch between party members immediately after hitting a weakness, just like in Persona 5, plus there are more skills and more Personas to acquire than before. The biggest change, however reflects one of the original’s most common criticisms – how repetitive and unremarkable Tartarus itself was. The different areas feel so much more disparate now, as opposed to feeling like a change in wallpaper.
You’ll also find different gimmicks on display. It obviously can’t touch the hand-crafted nature of Persona 5‘s palaces, but it’s a big improvement all the same. Combat itself feels just as satisfying and refined as to what fans have become accustomed, so carving your way through Shadows while exploring feels better than ever. Another new addition is that characters get ultimate attacks, which can definitely turn the tide of battle. You’ll also make use of a feature called Twilight Fragments that are used to open chests or even restore your party’s HP and MP at clocks, although this is so expensive that it’s only worth it in specific situations.
Persona 3 Reload is a solid remake of the original that maintains everything that was great about it while refining and streamlining the gameplay. If you’ve played the earlier versions recently (and you very well may have considering when the port of Portable dropped,) you might feel that the sense of deja vu is a little too strong, but this is easily the best way to experience Persona 3 and another testament to the greatness that the series is continuing to offer.
Persona 3 Reload: Flashy and full of substance, Persona 3 Reload is the best version of the game by any margin. – Andrew Farrell
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