Ever since I played it for the first time in 2020, Persona 3 FES has been my favorite game of all time. After ~4 very long years I can say that has now changed. Persona 3 Reload is now my favorite game of all time.

I say favorite for a reason (yes im one of those annoying people who differentiate favorite from best sometimes sue me) because I acknowledge FES is far from the best game ever made, and I would still say Reload itself isnt the best game ever made. However, I would say no game has had a bigger impact on me and hit me harder than persona 3 has and I don't think that will ever change.

I'll spare an entire life story because nobody on backloggd.com wants to hear that but for some background I was not in the best state of mind when I had originally played FES, pretty much the exact opposite actually. I wouldn't call myself suicidal because I never attempted it and I knew even back then I never would because I was too scared, but for around a year straight I had thought about it pretty much daily. I was way too young to be thinking these things so I had no idea why I should live or what the point of life was. And while I would be lying if I said Persona 3 stopped me from being suicidal thoughts or anything like that because I still had them after beating it, however, I think Persona 3 was able to teach me why I should live.

As corny as this sounds Persona 3 gave me a glimmer of hope in my life, just enough that I needed at that time. While I wouldn't say my life is unicorns and ponies now, as I've gotten older I can look back on this game and its messages to push me forward. So while I wont pretend that a now 18 year old video game and its messages magically turned around my life, It did push me into the right path to having a better perspective on the beauty of what it means to live.

Now to reload, the actual game this is under (sorry that was long lol, but I felt it was necessary in my perspective of this game and why its my favorite of all time.)

I think its fair to say this version makes FES pretty much obsolete, while there are things I think FES does better such as some of the soundtrack and the atmosphere, at the end of the day this game is just way more fun which is what I care about the most when playing a video game (shocker). The biggest improvement in Reload and the thing that needed it the most was Tartarus, while I was never of the opinion that Tartarus was the worst thing ever created like a lot of people seemed to think, I'll admit it was definitely a slog to go through a lot of the time and that isnt the case here due to a combination of the improvement of gameplay mechanics (removing getting tired and now being able to control your party members) and how stunning some of the blocks look now (specifically the Harabah block good lord) Tartarus is a million times better in this game and I'm very happy they nailed the most important task in remaking this game.

The other biggest improvement is now for the first time in a Persona game social links are now fully voice acted from stage 1 to stage 10. I underestimated how much this would improve social links but it improves them a lot, Maiko in specific for me hit a lot harder with voice acting. Other than some other general improvements that you'd expect everything here is pretty much the same, which I say as a compliment in this day and age (looking at you FF7R)

anyway im near the end so I'll run through some minor nitpicks I had that dont really change my opinion on the game but oh well I'll mention them just because

-Do NOT give junpei the white flowers. if you know you know. its a shame that option was kept but oh well i fell for the bait
- the motion blur when you run is really weird at points, I didnt play on pc but apparently you can fix that thankfully
- This ones pretty unrealistic but I wish every major story moment (Makotos awakening, 10/4, etc) was able to be animated, I understand why it wasnt (especially because WIT's a really big studio) but outside of the last ~2 months sometimes where they decide to put a anime cutscene is really weird, like you walking to the train station to the Kyoto field trip is worthy of being animated but Makoto's awakening isnt?? idk lol but I will say the anime cutscenes we got were really good.
- you can kiiiind of tell this game was made on a lower budget than a normal new persona game would, such as pretty much every no name npc model being a direct port/reskin of a model from p5 or the lighting looking kind of weird in some areas

If you told me back in 2020 I'd live to see the day my favorite game ever got remade I'd call you crazy but here I am today, and I have Persona 3 to thank for a lot of that. Thank you to Atlus, everyone who worked on the original versions of Persona 3, and everyone who worked on Reload for letting me experience this game. (Except Hashino cause hes a hack and he'd kill my kind)