At the risk of sounding lame, I cried when they showed Aigis at Yakushima Beach during the teaser reveal. Suffice to say, I was greatly anticipating this game, and my expectations were sky high. I was never going to agree with every change made to the story or gameplay, but the fact that this remake even exists is a minor miracle. The fact that 80-90% of the changes are positive is an even greater miracle. I'm grateful that I got to experience this story again in glorious HD. All that being said, I did want to share my thoughts on some of the major changes: the good, the bad, the in-between while the experience is still fresh in my mind. I'm just going to throw my thoughts out there, so apologies for any rambling or half-formed ideas. And I'm not going to cover every thought I have about every minute detail of the game; only the major ones. This review is going to be long enough already.

The good:
-Fully-voiced social links. This was the most obvious, slam-dunk positive addition to the game. Some people may disagree with my other positives, but not this one. The social links in P3, on balance, are the worst of the modern games, but having them voiced elevated the worst S-links to tolerable and the mid-tier links to good. Special mention to Maiko's VA Grace Yu and Yuko's VA Shelby Young (cast her as a main character in Persona 6, please!).
-Speaking of the voice acting, I think the main cast mostly knocked it out of the park. The only characters I thought were worse were Yukari and Akihiko, but then only slightly. Allegra Clark and Zeno Robinson knocked it out of the park as Mitsuru and Junpei respectively, and everyone else I think were slightly better than their previous voice actors.
-The linked episodes. This was the biggest surprise to me. I thought going in that the introduction of linked episodes for the male members of SEES was a cop-out, but I actually ended up liking these significantly more than the traditional social links with the female members of SEES. The fact that they are tied to specific times within the narrative and the fact that there were only five of them, and therefore each episode was longer and more substantial was a wonderful change. I think it's fairly obvious that the developers are using P3R to try out new concepts and ideas for P6, and I really hope they change party member social links to be more akin to these linked episodes. Tie social link progression to the story so characters can react to events in the narrative. Involve other characters more in others' social links. You'll end up with something more narratively satisfying.
-The UI. They were able to ape some of the style and slickness of Persona 5's UI while still staying true to the original source material. P3 is a much darker game, both literally and figuratively, so I am glad they didn't go full-P5 and make the presentation too vibrant and too snappy.
-Persona fusion and the Compendium. As in it was a lot easier to customize Personas to your liking. It was no longer prohibitively expensive to summon Personas from the Compendium. You didn't need to have space for every Persona needed for a special fusion. All of the QoL improvements to fusion made in P5 were carried over. It's a very obvious improvement, but worth pointing out.
-They kept Tara Platt as Elizabeth. Unlike most, I was perfectly fine with Atlus recasting SEES, but no one else on earth could play Elizabeth. They could do the fourth Persona 3 remake in 2062 and they would need to roll her out in a wheelchair to record her lines.

The bad:
-Lack of the original battle system. I'm not going to pretend that the original AI-controlled, tactics-based turn-based system wasn't flawed. I'm not going to pretend the switch to a full user-controlled party wasn't always going to happen and be preferred by the overwhelming majority of players. I just wish they had retained the original battle system as an option. If they were able to improve upon it, even better. The Tales games allow the player a great degree of control over the AI-controlled party's behavior and tendencies; why couldn't Atlus try doing the same?
-Difficulty. Would it kill Atlus to make a Merciless difficulty that is actually difficult? The first couple full moon bosses were difficult, but by mid-game I only died once, and that was because I wasn't paying attention to my health on a random battle. Nyx Avatar, which took me nearly 90 minutes on hard difficulty in FES and is my favorite final boss in any JRPG ever, was barely a speed bump in Reload. I beat it in about 15 minutes on Merciless and was never in danger. And I didn't grind nearly enough to make the endgame as trivially easy as it was. I was only one level higher than the network average, and only spent two nights per lunar cycle in Tartatus, save for January which I spent three nights. Atlus had to have known that a huge percentage of people playing Reload would have already played the original, so having a truly insane difficulty for us more experienced players would have been great. I'm doubtful this will happen in 6, but I would love a real difficult experience at least once outside of the original P3.

The in-between:
-Music. Full Moon Full Life and Color Your Night are great additions to the Persona music canon. But the remakes of the original songs are a bit of a mixed bag. The only overworld song I thought they improved upon was Changing Seasons. The rest were either as good or slightly worse.
-Tartarus. I know they were limited to what they could change to Tartarus without betraying the fundamental concept of Tartarus. But it still felt kind of meh to explore. Having more delineated themes in each section was a plus. The major arcana shuffle time cards added to the fun of exploring, too. Monad doors? Fine. But I think what was missing was the danger/risk aspect of exploring Tartarus in the original game. It's too easy now to sneak attack shadows, so ambushes are almost nonexistent. And as crazy as it sounds, Reload actually made me miss the tiredness mechanic from the original. Without it, grinding Tartarus is a lot more mindless. You lack the sense of danger, the need to rotate party members in and out, and the risk/reward aspect of exploring Tartarus that you had in the original. Do I push through those last few floors to get to the border floor tonight even though one ambush will likely wipe out my party? Do I grind for money solo and exhausted so I can afford that new weapon or armor I want?

All that being said, I still absolutely love this game. The themes this game explores are more relevant now than when it was originally released. The last quarter of the game, and especially the ending are perfect. The cast is great. The music is great. The sense of atmosphere is great. Persona 3 Reload was able to surpass the original in my eyes. It's not a perfect game, but it deserves a perfect score.