This one will stick with me for a long time, maybe forever.

It might be because of the strange overlap between the protagonist’s life and my own, where I spent most of 2009 as a third-year high schooler with strikingly similar hair, working in a local cafe and trying to figure out how to connect with others. It might be because — at least at the time — I was deep in the throes of depression without the vocabulary to properly describe how desperately apathetic I was about everything. People saw me as charming and intelligent and mysterious, and I saw myself as a blurry non-entity. I simply was, although I did not want to be. Looking at Makoto was like looking into a mirror. Uncomfortable until affirming.

Above all, Persona 3 is about time. How long will you dig your heels in before considering forgiveness? How long does it take to open up to someone new? How long do you even have left? The answers are never clear, nor should they be. Our relationship with the time we spend alive is, at its core, marked by the assumption that there is more ahead of us — for better or for worse. We can delay or we can strive, both in service of “then” instead of “now.”

But Persona 3 revels in “now.” Every day of the calendar is another opportunity to push outside the boundaries of who Makoto believes himself to be. Work at the cafe every day, and the added pocket change is just a backdrop to the human element. After weeks and months of toiling away, dealing with customers somewhere on the spectrum from hostile to jovial, you’re slightly more charming than you were before. These experiences, mundane or not, add up. A change in our being and a change in our outlook takes tremendous effort, and — of course — time and repetition. What came before builds us into who we are, and what comes next will build us even higher upwards upon that foundation.

Makoto is not alone, the dormitory building he finds himself in is inhabited by a group of students all struggling with their own internal crises. Healing takes help as much as it takes time. Over the course of the school year, these tenuous acquaintances blossom into a magnificent fellowship — the bonds between them feel lifelong, unbreakable. The more Makoto begins to find his own reason to push forward, the more he finds the power within himself to come to the aid of others around town. An elderly couple who lost their son, a disgraced monk who ran away from his family, and a woman who retreats into the virtual world of an MMO to escape her sadness are all looking for those same two things: More time, and a little bit of help to find it.

It’s through these relationships that Persona 3 finds harmony between its exploration of theme and gameplay. As the aptly named “Apathy Syndrome” takes root amongst the population, the collection of misfits within Iwatodai Dormitory need to strike a balance between saving the world at large and saving their own personal worlds. Nights spent climbing the seemingly infinite tower of Tartarus are occasional otherworldly skirmishes sandwiched between exams and days spent playing games at the arcade. The human experience is all-encompassing, and sometimes everything feels like navigating a tower of nightmares.

But the funny thing is, just as time heals, time also paves the way towards making the tower of nightmares more manageable. Tartarus starts as a metaphoric and literal burden, but ironically grows into a place of comfort. Before long you’ll bump up against the limitations of how high the tower will let you climb and you may — curiously — find yourself disappointed there are no more floors left to ascend for the night. You’ll just have to wait until the next full moon.

And the cycle repeats. Spend time with others, push yourself to be better, handle the hard stuff as best you can, keep moving forward. It all works in such perfect unison that I find myself days after the finale missing the world of Persona 3 deeply. But as much as I miss it, I’ve found myself carrying it with me all the same.

Because I could keep going on about its narrative and how fluid its battle system feels, and I could sit here and tell you exactly what Persona 3 is trying to say about our lives, but it’s the hours I spent living Makoto’s that continues to resonate.

You need to live it to feel it.

You need to put in the time.

That was fucking awesome. Excellent monster catcher. Of course it takes some aspects from Pokemon, namely the creature collection and evolution aspect, but the battle system and its volatility and difficulty feel MUCH more inspired by Megaten, which is even more evident when you realize the story takes many of its beats from games like Persona 3 (there’s literally a character who’s just like Koromaru here). It’s also very pleasing to look at, with a style of chibi sprites roaming around a 3d-rendered overworld, and obviously that’s pretty clearly reminiscient of the graphical style of Pokemon Gens 4 and 5. The open nature of the game scales very well too, and in many ways the map and its grid, and to a degree, the premise, remind me of old handheld Zelda games, particularly the ones on the GameBoy Color and Advance. If any two games inspired narrative aspects here, I feel like it’s a marriage of Link’s Awakening and Persona 3. Does that mean it’s anywhere near as melancholic or existential at times? No, but it has the capability to talk on that. Referring to this as a “Pokemon Clone” is a disservice. It’s a love letter to that series, but it’s also its own thing. As for negatives, the postgame quests are very grindy and repetitive, but the core game is so utterly addictive that it can offset this. Also the game can run a bit oddly. It’ll stutter in some cases to load in the environments. Nothing unplayable, but your immersion can and will be gutted at moments like that. Overall an amazing time.

Persona 3 Reload is a game that I was super excited to play the moment that it was announced, even though I only played P3P for the first time last year. The worst part of the original, to me at least, was the combat. P3R fixes this by pulling from all of the best aspects of P5R and putting those aspects into this game. I am of the belief that, in terms of the vanilla story, Persona 3 has the strongest, so now that I feel it has the strongest story and comparable combat to P5R, I think that P3R comes close to being the best game in the franchise.

In terms of what this Persona games best, there are a couple of things. I think that the main narrative and the way that it weaves all of your other party members in works better than the other Persona games that I have played. It made me more invested in the stories of all of the SEES members. Another thing about the game that was particularly strong was the voice acting. A big reason I feel this way may be due to the fact that a majority of the game, including all of the social links, are voice acted. This made some of the characters, especially Yuko's, stand out much more to me than when I played P3P. Really all of the voice acting in the game with all of the new cast was great. I also enjoyed the little easter eggs with a majority of the original cast of P3 and even some of P5 making little appearances. The update combat is nice as well, with it being more streamlined than ever making the long Tartarus grinds feel less tedious than before. The addition of Theurgy is pretty cool too, with it being super fun and overpowered at times in the game.

Another that P3R does exceptionally well, like all of the Persona games, is the music. The soundtrack for P3 was already great, but with several new tracks and remixes of almost all of the old ones it may be the best music the franchise has to offer. The new night time theme Color Your Night, new Iwatodai Dorm theme, new battle theme It's Going Down Now, and new opening Full Moon Full Life are all some of my favorite songs in all the Persona games. The only song that I didn't enjoy as much as the original was Mass Destruction, but by the end of the game due to all of the upgrades you can get it was rare to hear this one over It's Going Down Now since that was the song when you went into a fight with an advantage.

Though a lot of little things were changed in the game, I would argue that this is about as faithful as it gets when it comes to a remake. They did make a lot of things easier to do and added some elements from other games to make this the definitive version, but the story and social links remain mostly unchanged. I did like that we were given time to spend with the male SEES members, which was previously only an option when playing as the FEMC in P3P. Another small change that was made that I enjoyed some was the visual changes to Tartarus. This wasn't a huge change even if it did help the tedious grind just a little bit. I did expect them to change a little more, but it didn't make the game any worse by not making any major changes.

The lack of change didn't hurt, but after replaying P5R last year it does kind of make some of the original lows of the game stick out a little more. Some examples of this are some of the lulls in the story, particularly when the characters were on break. There wasn't enough social links available to do in those breaks when the game wasn't forcing you to watch your character do something like go to a track meet. Also towards the end of the game the night time segments are still lackluster with all of the night social links maxed out and no more stats to raise. Lastly, though I love the story, it does take a little bit to really get interesting. The first half of the game is just a lot of grinding your way up Tartarus and doing social links, but once you have all of the SEES members it really picks up.

Overall, Persona 3 Reload is the best way to play Persona 3. It does so much right and has just enough changed to feel like a more modern game while till staying incredibly faithful to the original. The story, combat, voice acting, music and just about every other aspect of the game is as good as it gets. I love Persona 3 Reload and I feel it is as close as you can get to the quality of Persona 5 Royal without making any drastic changes. The game is a masterpiece.

So far first impressions but I can't think of a single thing wrong with the game so far.

Movement and combat is some of the best in series. Hard mode is challenging but manageable (I have beaten smt 3 on hard so maybe I'm just built different.) The UI is incredible but you've seen 50 million reposts of it on Twitter.

A lot was added to the story and dorm life to flesh out the story and they knocked it out of the park. I felt more connected and interested in the characters this time.

If the game can stick the landing this will be the best persona game.

Are we so gullible? Do we as an audience not demand anything from our art? There's no story, no new mechanics, no real characters, no interesting or enjoyable visuals, no compelling gameplay, no original ideas at all in fact. Is a faceless strawman to antagonise really enough to get millions of people to play an Unreal Engine asset flip made as artlessly as possible? Is no one else actively disturbed by how blatantly and gracelessly this rips mechanics from every popular game of the last 2 decades, without integrating any of them together whatsoever? Has art ever felt this cynical before?

Feel free to discount my opinion. I am a 'salty Pokemon fanboy' after all, and I only gave this game an hour or so of my not particularly highly valued time. I personally just prefer the art I engage with to care for the art form it sits within, even a little bit. Palworld hates video games. It sees nothing more within them than a collection of things to do and hopes that by shovelling a flaccid farcical version of as many of them as possible into your mouth it will somehow constitute a 'video game' when all is said and done. It doesn't. I'm deeply saddened that so many gamers think so lowly of our art form that they genuinely think this is acceptable.