Before I start, I have to say this: THE STORY WAS FANTASTIC!! THE SOCIAL LINKS WERE AMAZING AND I ENJOYED MY TIME PLAYING THIS GAME, that said, there is a reason why I can't give this game a full 5*, and its mostly down to Atlus' greed
Atlus has this tendancy to rely HEAVILY on releasing a game, then a year or two later, releasing the same game But Better™, we've seen that this year too with Shin Megami Tensei V (2021) and Shin Megami Tensei Vengeance, charging full price for the second title, not including save transfers, but justifying it by including the DLCs and some extra content sprinkled every here and there. While this was needed with Persona 5 Royale, I thought its fucking weird to introduce such monetization system with a game that's supposed to be the "Definitive" Persona 3 experience. The main problem with Persona 3 is that there is no Definitive experience, Portable has its pros and cons, and so does FES, so when Reload got announced, I thought it would finally be the game to break that debate and release the game with all the content, QOL Adjustments, revamped gameplay and such of the two aforementioned titles, but instead what we got was just Persona 3 kinda FES but not really because you have to pay 35 bucks for The Answer lol™
I also noticed the handicapping of the game itself, there's barely anything to do during the night, same thing on off days, at least after you finish the Social Links, besides just idk raising Academics or something, sure you can hang out with different SEES members and unlock different characteristics for all of them, but it takes like 3 hang outs to unlock 1 characteristic, that's not enough to fill up that huge time gap we have by the time you go near the end game, Tartarus also gets very monotone after a while, I know that it was 2006 and Persona was still finding it's footing, but this brings me to my next point, isn't this game supposed to be a remake? I'm not asking to make Persona 4 type dungeons or Persona 5 type palaces, but having to go to Tartarus a lot of the time can be so daunting and exhausting that when Elizabeth tells me someone got lost I genuinely get so upset because I realize I have to go to Tartarus
my biggest problems really just stem from the very obvious signs that theres going to be a Persona 3 Reload Ultimax or some shit that's going to have FEMC, The Answer and things to do during the night and weekends in the late game, and even more improvements to gameplay and Tartarus (like tagging out teammates?? dude Final Fantasy has had this feature in the 90s, why can't i switch Koromaru from Ken mid battle? this is supposed to be a remake, i.e. improvements over original game with the main story elements mostly being intact)
the "expansion pass" is also scummy, as paying 35$ for outfits and music and an extra story element does not mean its fully accepted to actually pay half of the game's original price to experience The Answer, let alone the justification of calling it a "Expansion Pass"
I also had the misfortune of playing this game on PC, which meant Denuvo destroyed the performance horribly during random scenes like idk Koromaru and protagonist going to the police station, or just walking around Tartarus would drop my frames from 120 to 30ish, I hope denuvo leaves this game alone honestly
now beyond that, this game's story is fucking amazing and you owe it to yourself to play it idc, this game's story, music, characters, cast, anime cutscenes, cgi cutscenes, they're all incredible and i'm plenty happy to see it be modernized, i believe its not the definitive edition of Persona 3 just yet, but honestly? its not too far off of it, in due time we should be getting a true "Definitive" persona 3 experience.