A faithful remake that's tweaked and added to just enough to make it feel fresh, snappy, modern, and approachable. I loved the improved Tartarus a lot, and it made struggling up its many blocks much more captivating in the moment to moment. Heck, the stellar new dub that covers much more of the game elevates the already great story and makes this version worth a look on its own.

The vibes are a bit different in a couple areas (mostly at the beginning and end) and your mileage may vary when it comes to those changes; I personally enjoyed them as a different take on familiar scenes. The rebalancing is also mostly a positive I feel, but it tends to lean a bit on the easy side, so I would recommend starting on a harder difficulty especially for veterans of the series.

I think they could have even been a bit more liberal with the tweaks even, maybe remix/rewrite/punch-up some of the weaker social links, perhaps alleviate the later months where they won't let you do a whole lot with more new events or more opportunities to do things. These aren't huge make-or-break things though, I respect that they wanted to go mostly as faithful as possible.

Good game, my new favorite version of Persona 3, and the one I would recommend to most people.