Surprisingly Lackluster.

I always heard people say this is one of their favorite games ever, and sure it's good but your favorite? I can see RDR2 being your favorite ever or maybe TLOU, but GTA V? I really don't get the appeal here, the game got a little stale towards the middle with the same exact gameplay loop of switching from character to character shooting something or racing something. I will say the side missions in this game are amazing. This game has everything from drug trafficking, to shooting up aliens after hitting some Mary Jane, to photographing celebrities having sex. The side missions in this game are really where the meat and potatoes are and they make the main story feel like a side dish.

Major improvements to gunplay, map density and companion/ character depth (DANSE!!!). Power armor is actually powerful now, and loading screens/glitches/lag spikes (as of 2024) are much less frequent when compared to other fallout games. Settlements, while janky, are a great addition. However, the game is lacking in interesting factions. By the time you discover two of the four major factions, you will have already sided with one of the other two. It doesn't help that the two you discover later are incredibly boring either.

I’d been slightly interested in the Persona series since about 2018, when I tried and dropped Persona 5 on PS4. I didn’t like the turn-based combat, and so that was the end of that. Aside from that, the only exposure I had to the series was my friends occasionally discussing one of their favorite games and the characters in it: Persona 3. And so, when a remake for Persona 3 was announced for XBOX, I felt like I had grown enough as a gamer to suck it up and give another turn-based RPG a try. Why not see what all of the hype about the funny robot girl and the fighting dog was about? So, I bought the game on a whim in February 2024.

And well…this was a transformative experience. After spending most of the latter half of 2023 playing games I didn’t feel too strongly about that got me in a funk, experiencing Persona 3 Reload over the course of roughly four months was like a cold bucket of water to the face. Never in a million years could I have expected the absolute work of ART that this game has been for me. Not only did I actually end up really liking the turn-based combat, the story and character writing blew my damn socks off. And with the last four months being a stressful period for me, starting life after college, Persona 3 Reload became an escape for me, and yet showed me so many new perspectives on friendship, memory, and the future—at risk of sounding super corny, I think I really needed that.

Utterly unforgettable game, both story-wise and gameplay-wise. Wish me luck as I proceed to attempt dodging spoilers for The Answer for another four months! Now, onto the review. As usual, I’ll start with the pros.

I suppose I’ll start with the non-Tartarus gameplay. First of all: when you aren’t fighting enemies, Persona 3 is essentially a 3D visual novel with cutscenes, which is a gameplay style I really enjoy. Literally the first thing I wrote in my review notes too! Nothing wrong with 2D visual novels, of course, but I love getting to see characters move around in a 3D environment and emote as they speak to one another.

The calendar-based progression is also a very cool mechanic I never got to see in its entirety when I tried Persona 5. It's a really cool way to represent a double life—attend school and goof off with your friends during the day, murder Shadows (your enemies) at night. But by far the most fun thing about it is that you’re occasionally restricted in what you can do based on what time of day or year it is. Only being able to work in Chagall Cafe at night, not being able to do school Social Links because all your friends are studying for exams, getting days off of school on Japanese holidays…it’s such a good way to make the world feel real. Same goes for story events also being tied to the calendar, like going on a summer vacation trip to the island of Yakushima, or. It ensures the days don’t get monotonous, and that there’s always a change of pace in the gameplay right around the corner.

Speaking of Social Links, I really love how their connections to the calendar and certain times of day means you have to balance who you want to spend time with (or even if you want to do Social Links at all, as opposed to other things like social stats)—it’s just like real life, haha. You’ve got to pick some friends over others (unless you wanna optimize it), and sometimes your social stat or Tartarus obligations come first and you gotta miss out. I never would have expected a game would make me enjoy planning a weekly schedule, but here I am praising it. It really makes you value the time you get, and again, it makes the world feel lived in since everyone has things going on that you just have to work around.

And I’m glad that we still get opportunities to hang out with our teammates after school even before we get to do their Social Links. Walking Koromaru (feat. random Social Link appearances!), watching scary movies with Yukari, meal prepping with Akihiko…it's the little things that make these characters feel that much more real. Plus, they have actual continuity, at least until you finish them. It would have been so easy to have the same few hangouts and just reuse them over and over, but nope, they’re little vignettes. I was especially impressed with the characters in Koromaru’s walks referencing other hangouts, like when I walked him with Fuuka and she mentioned the film festival I saw with her a few days prior. Was genuinely shocked to see that kind of depth in what I assumed was a means to grind social stats.

Social stats themselves are a neat mechanic too, though it’s not like they’re some mindblowing invention of the Persona franchise. In some games, they can be a little tedious to get, but I didn’t think it was all that bad in Persona 3. Most activities you can do to increase social stats have some sort of other fun or useful thing tied to them, like getting the bag at a part-time job, or hanging out with your friends at night in the dorm having fun dialogue and granting them skills in Tartarus. A special shout-out for tying Charm increases to answering questions asked by teachers correctly, especially since those questions are actually difficult occasionally. On another note, it's cool that we have to answer those questions correctly on exams and pass an Academics check to get good scores. I had this whole issue of grinding Academics for good grades and still maxing Charm and Courage first. It was hilarious.

One more non-Tartarus gameplay feature before I dive into the combat mechanics: I really like that players have the option to connect to the network and get a glimpse of what other players did on any given day. It's cool to see how your level stacks up to others, or if other players have the same exquisite taste in Social Links that I had.

Okay, now onto Tartarus exploration and Shadow combat. First up is some of the basics. The combat animations are very clean and look so sick. Seeing Akihiko one-two punch a Shadow or watching Aigis light up some poor demon is so satisfying. They’ve all got a good weight to them, and the sound design for attacks holds up just as well. Those compliments are doubly true for the Persona based attacks—loving seeing Vorpal Blade invert all the colors on the screen and cover the arena in scars, or dropping an absolute nuclear bomb with Panta Rhei or Diamond Dust. The enemy animations are just as good, and perhaps more so given the variance in Shadow models, Seeing Dancers dip each other underneath a sword slash, Snakes tie themselves in a heart-shaped knot, or Hands snap their fingers and point in the direction of their attacks is just such creative design. Also really love seeing teammates dodge attacks in some of the goofiest, most cartoonish ways possible as they taunt the enemy that missed them. There's just so much character in the way they move.

Attack affinities are such a breath of fresh air coming off of the comparatively ocean-wide, puddle-deep type effectiveness of Pokemon. We’ve got three types of physical damage and six types of magical damage (plus the “true neutral” Almighty), which is both easily digestible and a great place for a new player like me to have started at. The fun part is how many types of effectiveness there are: it's not just weakness (high damage), resistance (low damage), or null (no damage), but there’s also reflection (damage comes back at you), and absorption (damage instead becomes enemy healing). To use a Pokemon comparison again, that’s already a way more complex battle system with like, a third of the damage types to struggle to remember.

The REAL bread and butter of Persona 3’s combat system was ailments for me. There’s a good few ailments that all have really fun effects to plan around. I think Fear is definitely my favorite of the complex ailments because of how dangerous it can be: sure, there’s a chance your teammates may be too scared to act, but straight up having a chance for them to RUN AWAY and become unavailable for the rest of the battle is one hell of a thing to consider when you’re desperately low on health and have to consider if healing with Yukari is worth it when she’s afflicted by Fear and might just run away and become unavailable for the rest of the fight.

Shock and Freeze are the most fun to inflict because they interact with another mechanic Persona 3 did really well: critical hits. Oh boy, do I fucking love critical chance in games. Any game with a meaningful enough crit system has me rolling the dice more than a gacha addict thinking that 90% of gamblers quit before they win big. Shock and Freeze both prevent characters from moving, but both of them also increase the chance of a critical hit when attacking with physical skills. There’s a lot of complexity that comes from that single attribute. It presents a meaningful difference between physical and magical skills, and when physical skills either cost HP as opposed to SP, or cost NOTHING so long as you’re cool with attacking with your weapon and not a Persona, trying to play around crits really becomes less of an RNG dice roll (funnily enough) and more of an exercise in calculated risk. Persona 3’s excellent combat animations also come into play with crits: landing one with your default attacks plays a sick-ass animation where you complete a full attack chain that culminates perfectly in a zoom-in to the character that dealt them. Seeing Makoto slowly wind up a powerful sword slash, or Koromaru dive bomb some clueless Maya with the knife in his mouth is a great way to make crits all the more satisfying.

Speaking of satisfying crits, there’s Down (also inflicted by striking weaknesses, but I couldn’t find a clean segue into that fact lol), which knocks the enemy down and prevents them from moving, but also gives you “1 More” chance to attack, during which you can Shift and switch the character you attack with. Knocking every enemy down in one fell swoop lets you perform the legendary All-Out Attack, where your entire party absolutely wails on all the enemies on the field. This is one of the most satisfying battle mechanics I have ever had the privilege of performing in a video game. The absolutely DESTRUCTIVE lines of attacks I downed enemies with cannot be spoken out loud for fear of offending the gods. It is so much fun to scan for the weaknesses of enemies (thanks Fuuka!) and then devise the most abominable way to obliterate every single one in a single turn. It turned an already good combat system into crack cocaine. And again, the combat animation for an All-Out Attack is just sublime. The entire team (sans those with ailments) lines up in a dope-ass action pose, with the last one to down an enemy calling the shots in the very front, and just goes to town on the Shadows. I was very impressed with how there’s a unique animation for each character depending on their position in the lineup—Koromaru gets up on his hind legs in the front, and jumps if he’s in the back. Aigis jumps down from above, Junpei tips his hat, Makoto gets down low with his sword…the framing is just so good. Maybe I’m just easily impressed but DAYUM!!! It’s so awesome.

We even get cool portraits of characters after they wipe an arena with an All-Out Attack! Seeing “Mass Destruction” behind some killer character art with a line like “Done and dusted” or “On to the next bout” (or even “Woof! Woof! Woof!) just goes crazy hard. We also have Shuffle Time giving us Major Arcana cards to pick up and stack buffs that persist until we leave Tartarus. Once you get into late game, getting Arcana like Temperance for social stat buffs and Lovers for Fusion buffs is just so rewarding. And even if you aren’t performing All-Out Attacks, it's occasionally viable since attacking a downed enemy with another crit or weakness makes them Dizzy and unable to move on the next turn! Atlus thought of EVERYTHING with this combat system!

Okay, finally I’m shutting up about ailments. I’m starting to suspect no one on Earth has dissected about Persona 3 ailments like I have just now. This is what you get when I have nothing else to do today except write this review. Anyway, advantage and stat boosts. Nothing crazy to say here, just that I like that you have to be proactive about attacking Shadows while roaring in Tartarus first, so that they don’t ambush you and gain extra moves. And I like that stat boosts are straightforward: attack boosts affect both physical and magical damage, and accuracy and evasion are a single stat. No sense in complicating things more than they need to be. Bonus points to Persona 3’s stat boosts for charging and concentrating to double attack damage, which became one of my favorite ways to chase big number.

Another element to the elusive big damage number (shout out to the 999 damage attack achievement!) is the Theurgy, which I learned is a new mechanic in Persona 3 Reload. I’m sure there’s a lot of those I haven’t discovered yet… Anyway, holy shit are the Theurgies badass. Most of them are the equivalent to hydrogen bombs with insanely good attack animations, which of course is awesome, but there are some with great utility like Ken’s with guaranteed reflects, and Fuuka’s with a random positive effect. Frankly I’d still use them even if they sucked because they’re just that damn cool. Scarlet Havoc my beloved.

Okay, we’re done with combat itself, onto exploration. Random floors are nice, but it only goes so far, which is why I’m glad to get mechanics like Gatekeepers and Monad doors to provide challenges in between encounters. I especially like that the enemies in those encounters usually have some sort of gimmick that makes them fun to strategize with. And I’m especially glad that there are tons of voicelines your teammates say to keep us sane in the dungeon. Hearing Junpei whine about having no girls in the party is hilarious. Clocks are also a godsend mechanic, allowing you to both extend your outing in Tartarus (never expected me to praise THAT now did you) and boost underused teammates to your own level.

To wrap up this little Tartarus combat deep dive in a nice little bow, I want to compliment the pacing of all these mechanics being introduced and taught to you. Never did I feel overwhelmed by all of the knowledge I just got dropped on me, and yet at the same time, I didn't feel like they were babying me by withholding information I wanted to know. I appreciated being able to figure ailments out by myself ahead of the tutorial for them.

Two more Tartarus-related things before I get into the story and characters. I hope you’re still here; this review is probably twice as long as any review I’ve made so far and I’m still not done. Elizabeth’s requests are fine—there’s nothing particularly surprising about having little fetch quests in a game like this, but I do like that some of them involve taking her out on the down in a pseudo-Social Link and showing her normal Earth things while she reacts like a caveman just discovered fire. “A soda fountain? The idea sends an electric tingle across my tongue.” yeah Elizabeth, I felt the same way when I saw a Coke Freestyle at Wawa for the first time. Secondly…the Reaper. All I gotta say. That MF is so fun.

OKAY, we’re finally done with gameplay. Now…onto the story and characters. I will not be spoiling any major plot points, however I will discuss some small character moments here and there. Still, this is technically meant to be a spoiler-free review, so most of the discussion will be on what I liked about the storytelling rather than my thoughts on the story itself. I’ll start off by echoing what I said in the intro to the review…the story is such a ride from start to finish. I will be the first to admit that the story itself, when looked at structurally, is not remarkable in and of itself. Its CHARACTERS are what makes Persona 3 so good. I fully understand how people get brainrot about this series now. I thought it was excessive with Persona 5 worship but man I get it now.

These characters aren’t one note. Some games treat their characters less as people and more as stories. Their development follows a clean path, and everything culminates in a neat little bow at the end. Obviously this isn't how people grow and mature in real life; their “development” doesn’t have an “end”. I think Persona 3’s main characters break this mold. They don’t have one sole problem that dominates their arc—they have multiple issues they solve that aren’t necessarily related and get resolved at different times, which is a better approximation of reality. The conclusion of their arc doesn’t feel like the climax of a bunch of connected issues, but rather a realization someone would have after thinking about their life and generalizing all the issues they’ve worked through. And since the story takes place over the course of about a year (with almost every single day being playable!), character growth hits harder and feels more natural because you can slowly see characters changing day by day, whether it's through their dialogue after major story events, or their voice lines after school in the form on a random Tuesday in August.

The themes and conversations we see in the story are also very sobering. There are a lot of mentions of the future, memory, and death, and those are very poignant themes for someone like myself who is still pretty young and currently going through a large transition in my life from college to working. Both in the main story and with the Social Links, I asked myself a lot of questions like “how would I feel if I was going through this,” or I’d take the observations characters made on their own relationships and issues and see how they’d apply to me.

Forgive me for detailing some story specifics, but a big moment of reflection for me was seeing Yukari talk about how she felt forced into the Special Extracurricular Execution Squad, and how she then felt guilty approaching Fuuka with the same deal. She began to lament being a prisoner to the circumstances, and eventually reacted not with resignation, but anger towards Mitsuru and Akihiko for benefiting from her, Makoto, and Junpei’s toil when neither of them really knew what they wanted out of Tartarus’ exploration. And the Yakushima arc only complicates this issue. My life isn’t nearly as tumultuous as hers (obviously I’m not fighting demons every evening), but I really sympathized with feeling like you’ve been forced into something you never wanted to do, and having no choice but to see it through. Junpei’s anxiety over the future and how being a part of SEES is all he has going for him resonated with me in a similar way. He worries about drifting through life without a plan, not knowing if you’ll be happy with where you end up because you don’t have any idea of where you’ll end up. I don’t know where I’ll be going in the future either. Anyway, it’s these kinds of personal connections to characters’ stories that kept me so invested in seeing how they ended up, and what makes me believe Persona 3 Reload has some of the best character writing of any game I’ve ever played. I think that’s all I’ll say on the matter; going any farther is beyond the scope of this review.

Social links have more straightforward development (a straightforwardness I was expecting from EVERYONE when I started playing), but nevertheless they are still very touching and enjoyable to see happen. Kazushi’s link is a good one; it sucks to be put in a situation where you can’t do the things you love because of factors out of your control. Bunkichi and Mitsuko’s is another great one; they’re very charming and provide a great contrast to the events SEES goes through, since SEES is very young and the couple is very old. Hidetoshi’s is another great story of learning to accept other’s perspectives, and Maiko’s is a great view into a child’s view on relationships.

There’s just something about this game’s writing that makes it so easy to reflect on your own life. Almost everything remotely emotional or vulnerable a character says can be empathized with—I found myself having conversations with my friends while playing this game about how they feel about the things brought up. As I said before, my playthrough of Persona 3 Reload comes at a transitory period in my life, and it became a way to cope with its stresses and even help process those emotions I felt. To a degree I feel like I’m giving this game too much credit. But games are subjective experiences, so they mean things to different people. And this is what this game’s story means to me.

Sorry for getting very personal there. Let me switch to something not-at-all applicable to my life—romance! Kind of a weird thing to talk about after I just poured my heart out, but I couldn’t think of a better place in the review to discuss it. I do like that you can romance female social links; though it goes without saying that the inability to romance male social links is kind of exclusionary. Regardless, I enjoyed what we got. It’s kind of difficult to properly discuss something like this since everyone’s feelings on who the “best” romance is are subjective, but I enjoyed romancing Yukari. Since she’s a SEES member, there’s a lot of opportunities to reexamine dialogue she was with or about Makoto through a romantic lens, and that’s something I think is pretty fun (not like people are romancing non-SEES members amirite?). I’m also satisfied with the romance-exclusive dialogue you get with your character of choice, such as during Christmas Eve and at the very end of the game, though I will for once admit it's less than I expected. I straight up thought we’d get a new set of Social Links with our romance that were all romance-coded, as opposed to having the final few normal Social Links be romance-coded if you decide to go ahead with it. Wishful thinking I suppose. Still gonna be a diehard Yukari/Makoto fan.

And of course, I can’t discuss the emotion of Persona 3’s characters without praising the absolutely FANTASTIC voice acting and direction. Hooooooooly shit. I think the winner for best voice acting is Zeno Robinson as Junpei. I wasn’t all that on board with Junpei as a character when I first started, admittedly, but Robinson’s performance of some of Junpei’s most vulnerable moments is absolutely mindblowing. A shame I can’t discuss my favorite line from him, since it’s neck deep in spoilers. Anyway, I was also very impressed with the performances of Heather Gonzalez (Yukari), Dawn M. Bennett (Aigis), Justice Lee (Ken), and Justice Slocum (Shinjiro). But every voice actor was very good, not just those few.

Now, let me discuss the concepts of some of the features of Persona. I’ve always been slightly interested in tarot card readings and the Major Arcana, so playing an entire game where each person is linked to a Major Arcana card and signifies said Arcana is very cool. I’m sure much more qualified people than me can discuss the symbolism of tarot in fiction; I'm just going to leave it at “that’s neat.” The concept of Personas and the Evoker is also incredibly interesting; the act of shooting oneself with a gun-shaped object isn’t a very subtle metaphor, but it's incredibly striking and frankly, a little badass.

As Personas (and Tartarus) represent a truth hidden from reality, the act of using an Evoker to summon one reads as killing the false self to reveal the inner self, the “true” self. This trope isn’t exactly uncommon either, but Persona seems to be one of the series to do it the best. It’s very cool to see how each character uses them as well; hopefully I’m not overanalyzing this, but I did notice that Yukari is the only person that places her Evoker where she can see it when she uses it, perhaps to indicate she is the most afraid of death? Like, she can’t place what she’s doing out of her mind and has to focus on it. Cool symbolism there. And since the Persona represents its wielder, it's neat to see that they can change as the individual changes—bonus points for said Persona changes also yielding gameplay changes.

The nature of the Dark Hour and Tartarus provide an enduring mystery throughout the game that’s pretty fun to speculate on. Tartarus in and of itself is a mix-and-match of various mythologies; same with the Shadows and Personas. I don’t have much to say other than that it looks very cool. And having it be known only to those with Personas gives us a great look at how a bunch of teenagers cope with balancing exams in the day and demon hunting at night. I think I’d just about have a mental breakdown.

Time to wind down the pros, and talk about some miscellaneous things. First up, I gotta say, Twitter was right when they praised this game’s UI. Holy shit, I think Persona 3 has one of the most fluid and beautiful pause menus of all time. I love the Stats screen, and how Makoto hold up a mirror shard that reflects the eyes of the teammate you’re looking at. The Social Link screen is very cool too, with Makoto holding the tarot card corresponding to each person’s Arcana. The combat UI is very clean as well; I like that it’s a bit less flashy than Persona 5’s, yet still just as dynamic. Bonus points for having Koromaru’s being smaller than everyone else’s since he’s a dog. So cute!

Finally, I can talk about the soundtrack… Oh man, it is so damn good. Like, it has NO RIGHT to be this good. Usually when I talk about a game soundtrack, I mention all the tracks I liked, but there are just too many for me to list them all. I will list a few though: Mass Destruction and It’s Going Down Now are some of the best combat themes I’ve ever heard (right up there with The Rebel Path from Cyberpunk 2077 for me), Changing Seasons is such a feel good track for me (and literally so damn catchy too), and I love the vibes of songs like Deep Mentality, Color Your Night, When The Moon’s Reaching Out Stars, and Master of Shadow.

Three more bonus things, and then I will FINALLY get to the few cons I have. One, I’m glad that not only is there a log, but that you can re-listen to voice lines from the log. While I do like the music in this game, there are a few emotional moments I think hit a lot harder when there’s no music playing while they’re said. Two, you can pet Koromaru. Yes, I am one of the people that always wonders “can you pet the dog” in a game. Reporting in—you can pet the dog, plus a lot more cute things! And three, the conclusion of Maya’s Social Link at the end of the game. That entire sequence had me HOWLING with laughter. Fantastic experience all around.

Okay, now we get to the cons. Important to note is that none of these problems ended up compromising my experience to the point where I think I have to take off points. The game was so damn good that these negatives were rendered almost entirely moot. Still, no game is perfect, so here I go.

Without specifying for fear of spoilers, I think Ikutsuki’s arc and Junpei’s arc with Chidori could be improved. The former didn’t add much to the story at all, and frankly didn’t really need to happen in the first place. Could have just nixed it entirely and the experience wouldn’t have really changed; in fact, the end of the game could have been more mysterious and climactic without it. The latter is saved by Junpei’s amazing voice acting and character writing, but a lot of the interactions between the two take place behind closed doors, and it lessens the impact of the arc’s conclusion a tad bit.

We also did not get our female protagonist Kotone (I think that’s her name) that was present in Persona 3 Portable. I imagine this was done because Atlus changed up the narrative so much with the remake, and they wanted to make sure the story stayed cohesive without having to balance making two versions of every story beat to reflect the different protagonists. Still a sad sight to see players robbed of a choice they had in the past.

Finally, this game does have a considerable amount of weird teenager fanservice I did not want to sit through. I do NOT think having the token ”girls’ swimsuit reveal” scene was at all necessary, nor do I appreciate stumbling into a hot springs scene where I have to pick the right dialogue options to escape from the girls only bath. Like, what the hell Junpei? I didn’t sign up for this shit. And don’t even get me started on the hidden camera scenes. Just saying a sentence like that is sus enough. Sorry to end the review on such a strange note, but I have to bring it up. I was half-tempted to omit this part from the review, if only to avoid having to discuss such a weird topic, but I’m not pulling any punches, or so Akihiko would say.

If you made it to the end of my review, I hope I didn’t bore you to death. It is already like, four times as long as any other review I’ve made, and basically qualifies as a college-level essay. In fact I’m certain I put more effort into this review than actual assignments for my degree. I just haven’t felt this way about a game in a few months…it means a lot to me. I was absolutely blown away by Persona 3 Reload and how much of an impact it had on me, both in terms of how fun it was to play, and by how much its story and characters resonated with me. It’s truly been an unforgettable experience. Now…onto the next bout! See you in September when the DLC drops.

Objective rating: 5 stars
Subjective rating: 5 stars