I played this just after P3 the first time I beat it in 2018, so now after beating Reload I decided to look back at this. It is something that doesn't deserve (In its entirety) particularly high praise nor scathing criticism. It's the story of Persona 3 continued and it does that mostly well. What it does horribly, however, is its pacing. Its a lot of repetition until you clear the dungeons and by that point the game is already over. what's worse is the lack of a Compendium. I realize this game is like a 1/3rd the length of P3 but even so the persona count is well over 100, so why bother to leave it out? This leads to a general disinterest in fusing and finding every persona possible.

I like the game's continuation of 3's story and how these characters are dealing with the events of 3's finale but it just ends up being okay.

Also for what it's worth I don't mind ATLUS releasing the answer several months after the game's launch. The whole point of The Answer is to resolve the questions of 3's finale and Imagine being someone going through 3Load in mid february and still being in august or september in-game, while people who have too much free time are posting nonchalantly about events from later on that the answer deals with.