Platforms: PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox Game Pass, PC
Genre: JRPG, Turn-Based, Dating Sim, Monster Collecting

I grew up playing Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei Persona franchise. I was in high school when I first played Persona 3 and Persona 4 on the PS2; the same age as the protagonists featured in the games. Now, almost two decades later, a sense of nostalgia loomed over me as I once again booted up Persona 3 and I didn’t feel any sense of déjà vu. Instead, it felt like I was greeted by an old friend, familiar yet significantly altered by change and the passage of time. After spending almost 90 hours in the span of just one week, and as someone who played the original Persona 3 (and not exclusively Persona 5 like certain people, yeah, I said it), I can safely say that Persona 3 Reload is the reimagined and updated, almost definitive, version of the classic JRPG from 2006 (yeah, it’s been THAT long).

Baby, Baby, Baby

If you’ve ever played Persona 5 or the recent port of Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden, Persona 3 Reload will be familiar to you. It follows the same basic established formula of the Persona franchise; you’ll playing in a sort of relationship/dating sim half of the time and a conventional turn-based JRPG during the other half. You start off as a new transfer student at a school in a new town/area. Things get weird fast and before you know it, you’ll be shooting yourself in the head to summon mythological gods and demons. Just another normal day for a Persona user. I won’t waste time on the basics in this review and I’ll assume that those reading this will already understand the basics of the Persona franchise. When you aren’t dealing with school stuff and engaging in conversations with friends/strangers, you will be dungeon crawling in Tartarus and collecting Personas.

What’s the difference between Persona 3 Reload and previous versions of Persona 3? Well, besides the obvious visual and graphical upgrade, the best thing about a modern ‘remake’ like this is the quality of life improvements, and there are a ton of them in Persona 3 Reload. One of the earliest new mechanics in Persona 3 Reload is the introduction of a Rewind mechanic. It’s essentially just save scumming turned into an official feature, but it’s great for several reasons; if you forgot to save before an important decision or made a mistake, you can undo it by simply using the Rewind mechanic to reload back to earlier in the day, yesterday, or even a few days before. As a seasoned Persona player, I didn’t really use this mechanic much because I was already save scumming a lot, but it’s a nice feature to have if you don’t want to have to manually save scum.

Another major change in Persona 3 Reload, that many older Persona 3 players will notice, is that ALL of the Social Links in Persona 3 Reload are now voiced. Yes, every line in every scene during Locial Links (these are the dialogue and interactions between your character and friends). Oh, and for those who have only played Persona 5, Social Links are what Confidants were called in older Persona games. That’s not all, as Persona 3 Reload also features a lot of extra dialogues and interactions that weren’t in previous versions of Persona 3 Reload, especially those featuring the members of SEES (the name of the protagonist’s team in Persona 3 Reload). Because of this, I don’t consider not having a female MC (this is what I will use to refer to the protagonist from this point on) to be a major loss. With the sheer amount of voiced lines in the game, Atlus would have had to have devoted more time just to record the same lines just for the purpose of having another version of the MC, which is a waste of resources.

Going back to those extra scenes of dialogue and interactions with the members of SEES AKA your party members, they’re more than just that. In previous versions of Persona 3, I hated how I sometimes had to waste my time with pointless interactions with friends, NPCs and party members, and not get anything out of it in the end. Time is the most precious commodity and resource in Persona games, and time management is a huge part of the game. Well, Persona 3 Reload adds new extra scenes of dialogue and interactions with your party members (it’s important to note that these are separate from Social Links), which mostly happen in and around your dorm. These include brand new activities to participate with your party members such as a communal kitchen, watching movies/TV, reading books/manga and gardening. At first, I thought these would be a waste of time to do, but it turns out that each party member that you perform these activities with will earn new abilities, permanent buffs or at the very least, a stat increase.

In other situations, you could obtain items as rewards for spending your time with them. For instance, when you’re gardening with your party members, you not only can unlock a new ability/buff for them, but you also get to harvest the plants as consumable items once they’re grown. Another example is watching a movie or reading a book with them; which both gives them an ability//buff and a social stat increase for your MC. Overall, kudos to Atlus, because they’ve made almost every single activity in Persona 3 Reload to be worth doing for some reason or the other, which wasn’t always the case in previous Persona games. I appreciated it when I knew that my time in the won’t be wasted. Oh, and another specific activity I would like to mention is something I really enjoyed. Persona players will know that when exams happen in these games, you’ll have to spend a lot of your time studying. Well, in Persona 3 Reload, I loved it that when exams were near, your party members cum dorm mates would be available for group studying, and not only did you get extra points for your Academics stat by joining these study groups, they were quite often fun little extra interactions.

I took the time to specifically mention the study group thing because these are little new additions that only past Persona 3 players would really notice, and because there are a lot of them; probably too many to mention every single thing. There are a lot of new small activities that make it easier to increase your social stats (Courage, Charm, Academics) in the form of using the computer at your dorm lobby/lounge with apps and programs you can buy from a store. These new little things will make older Persona 3 fans happy, as there were many things that were tedious in the original Persona 3 that have been improved. Of course, a lot of work has gone into improving the combat so let’s get into that now.

The biggest complaint about Tartarus (the name of the dungeon in Persona 3 Reload) in previous versions of the game was that it was repetitive and difficult. Yes, unlike Persona 4 or Persona 5, Persona 3 only has one dungeon in the entire game, and you’ll continuously progress through this dungeon by going up its hundreds of levels. Persona 3 Reload does improve on the visual aspect a bit by making sure that the different blocks in Tartarus now have more distinctive looks and don’t just look like the same drab corridors like in the original Persona 3. However, the music is still somewhat repetitive and cycles between the same few tracks, so you still can’t expect different tracks for each dungeon like in Persona 4 and Persona 5. Of course, grinding in Persona 3 is now a lot more fun and a lot less tedious than ever before. For one, the annoying Tired mechanic is gone, so you don’t have to worry about your MC and party members getting debuffs because of a stupid mechanic that’s only there to make things harder for no reason. Persona doesn’t have to be Darkest Dungeon.

Combat and dungeon crawling in Persona 3 Reload is basically what you’d expect from the franchise, but it’s clear that Atlus has taken what they learned from Persona 5 and implemented that into Persona 3 Reload. No, there aren’t any useless and pointless guns that are separate from your main weapons in Persona 3 Reload. No, the MC can’t use multiple weapon types like in Persona 3 Portable. That said, there are several new mechanics. Besides the usual treasure chests, there are now breakable objects scattered throughout Tartarus that you can simply attack to gain ‘valuables’ (items that you can sell later for money) or consumable items. The Shuffle Time mechanic after battles has returned (where you can collect more Personas or gain buffs or skill cards) with the introduction of a new Arcana Burst mechanic. Major Arcana cards are rare but they bestow better rewards and buffs like increased stats or increased EXP. Once you collect enough Major Arcana cards, an Arcana Burst gives you even better cards during Shuffle Time. There is also a new mechanic where random optional Monad Doors will appear in Tartarus, and there are special powerful Shadows inside with rare rewards if you defeat them. They help spice up the monotony of grinding normal enemies since they usually force you to strategize more and provide more challenge than simply hitting the enemy’s weakness.

During actual combat, there’s now a new Shift mechanic in Persona 3 Reload that’s similar to the Baton Pass mechanic in Persona 5. This allows battles to flow more smoothly and faster because it gives players the ability to switch characters after hitting an enemy’s weakness. This way, grinding feels less like a chore. One of the biggest changes of all in Persona 3 Reload is a new mechanic that has never been in any of the previous Persona games; Persona 3 Reload finally introduces proper ultimate attacks or super attacks (supers) into the franchise. They’re called Theurgy (yeah, that doesn’t really roll off the tongue as well as limit breaks) and how they work is that once you fill up the Theurgy meter/bar, you can unleash a powerful ultimate attack. What makes it more unique than a usual ultimate attack is that each character can fill up the bar faster by performing character-specific actions. For instance, Yukari Takeba can fill up her Theurgy meter faster by using healing skills. Also, it’s fun to use Theurgy attacks because each character has at least two different Theurgies, and they’re always fun and flashy to watch. That being said, it would have been better if I could have the option to simply skip the Theurgy animations instead of having to fully watch them every single time they’re executed.

In terms of pure content, Persona 3 Reload doesn’t really change up the basic Persona 3 story and characters like Persona 4 Golden or Persona 5 Royal did. While Persona 3 Reload does add a lot of new additional dialogue and scenes (especially between the MC and party members), the game has the same fundamental story as Persona 3. Yeah, if you’re expecting Persona 3 Reload to be a stark departure or something more akin to what Final Fantasy VII Remake did, you’d be disappointed. Most of it is still what you already know from the original but modernized and expanded upon to make this the best version. Persona 3 Reload still features some 2D animated scenes, but some of the other 2D animated scenes from the original Persona 3 have been converted into an in-engine rendering. It depends on your preferences, but many of these new cutscenes rendered in the new in-engine visuals do look great. In some cases, they improve on the scenes in many ways by lending more emotional heft to them. Some of the more major story beats were previously in the more static older engine, but now come in pre-rendered gorgeous cutscenes.

In all the ways that matter, both big and small, Persona 3 Reload is the near definitive version of Persona 3. The only thing stopping it from truly being the definitive version is the lack of certain content that was available in the Persona 3 FES and Persona 3 Portable. Like I previously mentioned above, not having a female MC in Persona 3 Reload (and the several exclusive Social Links that came with it) is understandable, considering how much more of the game is now voiced. It would have taken a lot more time and resources just to add a playable female MC into Persona 3 Reload; it was much more doable in Persona 3 Portable considering visual novel-esque and voice-less dialogue nature of that game. What’s harder to forgive is the lack of The Answer in Persona 3 Reload. The Answer was the playable epilogue and true conclusion to Persona 3 that was included in Persona 3 FES. Perhaps Atlus plans to add The Answer as a paid expansion down the line but right now it’s a glaring omission that prevents this version of the game from being truly definitive.

Last but not least, how could I not mention the music? I have always liked the music in Persona 3 and Persona 4 more than that in Persona 5. Persona 3 Reload still features many of the original game’s iconic tracks, such as Mass Destruction (the battle music with the BABY BABY BABY) and the cool Burn My Dread playing in the background. The soundtrack remains iconic, but there are a few additions. There are now two different battle music tracks. Unfortunately, Mass Destruction is no longer the only battle music in Persona 3 Reload. Battles in the game will randomly switch between Mass Destruction and the new It’s Going Down Now, which sounds good but sounds closer to the vibe and tone of Persona 5 than it does in Persona 3 Reload (that might just be my preference though).

Burn My Dread

In conclusion, Persona 3 Reload is worth playing for both old fans (who’ve played the original Persona 3) and newcomers because it is quite simply the most playable version of the game with modern quality-of-life improvements and new mechanics that make it near definitive. While the lack of certain content (like The Answer epilogue) stops it from being able to truly definitive; if there’s one Persona game that you want to play, there’s no reason to choose Persona 5 when you have Persona 3 Reload.

PROS

• All the Social Links are now fully voiced.
• The addition of new dialogue and interactions at the dorm that also come with their own rewards while adding more time spent with SEES party members outside of combat.
• New mechanics like Shifting and Theurgy that spice up the combat and make combat/grinding less tedious.
• Beautiful in-engine cutscenes that add more emotional heft to certain moments.

CON

• Absence of The Answer, which prevents Persona 3 Reload from truly being “definitive”.

FINAL SCORE: 90/100

Persona 3 Reload was reviewed on PC based on a review copy provided by SEGA. Persona 3 Reload is out for the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox Game Pass and PC on 2 February 2024.