I didn't finish it, but I came very close to the end. I don't know where all this deep writing people talk of is. If it's somehow all stuck behind the endings, that's bad. What I saw of the writing was very mediocre and didn't lead anywhere. Many characters have no purpose to exist. I also don't buy the "lots of hidden symbolism" thing because it genuinely feels like SH2 fans online thought far deeper than the actual writers did.

And, unlike the first game, it was either great fun or really boring gameplay wise. Has some amazing areas but some which are absolute snoozefests. Not even talking in regards to the horror factor. Many areas just were really bland. The amazing areas make up for it, but I prefer how Silent Hill 1 was more consistent in terms of keeping my attention.

It doesn't work.

3 is a game that has a lot of idiosyncracies and quirks to it that allow it to stand out among not just other entries in its series, but JRPGs in general. The limitations and frictive elements reinforce how finite the experience is and encourage engagement with its time management systems. Reload, as I vaguely riffed on with my one sentence review before, largely strips the game of most of the charm and leaves me with a product that is perfectly competent and yet feels deeply artless.

Persona 3 back in 2006 was designed as a fresh reboot with a fresh set of eyes on the series as whole. It's a monumental game for Hashino and Soejima -- while it wasn't their first work on Atlus' games, the duo created something distinctly... theirs. Something about the complete lack of involvement of the original creative names behind the game, including the no-brainer inclusion of Shoji Meguro at minimum, puts a bad taste in my mouth. It's not even that I'm drunk off auteur worship and think a loving product can't be made with new hands. It's that... Persona 3 is not a new product. It's an old one with a lot of significance to Atlus' history.

Reload manages to take a step back on almost every mechanic established in the original as a purposeful statement. One of the most immediately noticeable is the removal of a functional tactics/AI system. Others have highlighted the flaccid, restrictive and ineffective system in the remake and how it's largely not a replacement for the experience on the PS2. Without getting too into details, I'd rather highlight the logic behind its design from Hashino himself.

Hashino: There are a lot of RPGs out there where you can control every aspect of your party members, including what kind of underwear they are wearing… but because we wanted the player to relate to the Hero more than any other character in “Persona 3”, we wanted the other characters to feel like “other people”.

Soejima: It was important to make that distinction. It helped to emphasize the concept of Social Links, and it also allowed us to show off the improved AI. It would have been extra cool if the party members had been completely free of player control, but we knew that would be pushing it a bit too far, so we gave the player control over their equipment at least.

Hashino: It’s true that we got some feedback stating that the party system was “too difficult” to control effectively, but I’ll honestly say that I don’t regret doing what we did with it. I’m glad we stuck to our guns on that one.

You don't have to love the mechanic in the original, there's room for criticism in how it was implemented and established. However, it helps no one to not understand the very purposeful thematic statements Hashino wished to express -- the individuality and independence of your comrades in SEES. Reload does not even attempt to improve upon and evolve these systems, but does away with them as if they're just worthless cruft and "clunk" that needs to be stripped away.

Similar frictive elements have been gutted, such as the fatigue system, the maze-like structure of Tartarus being morphed into wide, open spaces with no intrigue or rat-brain navigation, and a myriad of other changes adjusted for "modern sensibilities". Reload is explicitly designed to model after 5 and the philosophies and approaches that game established.

I think the frustration here comes less from Reload being a bad video game in isolation and moreso how frustrating a precedent it sets. I do not want to live in a world where older properties and works are reheated and find themselves homogenized with recent best-sellers.

Played the enhanced edition, and man i feel so mixed on this game, as a massive fan of old survival horror the level design is generally pretty great, although the combat is pathetically easy and they shower you with so many heals and ammo that it makes saving anything useless. The main issues i have with this game come in the formatting of the story, i truly do not understand the massive praise this game has for tackling emotional issues, it seems like it correlates vagueness with any amount of depth or maturity, and it especially felt insulting towards the arc with angela and the abstract daddy, the voice acting was especially abysmal and not even for the time, the original silent hill had better voice acting than this.

... just ... holy fuck. Jesus Christ.

How many good things can you flush down the toilet?

This game has amazing characters, a unique style and premise and an extremely powerful story and plot.
Aaaand it ruins all of that with some of the worst design blunders I have ever seen in my life. It simply beggars belief.

Let's start with the fact that this game has the pacing of a glacier. The beginning up to the first dungeon is particularily bad.
How was this acceptible?

Another one of the worst offenders is actually that some of the best characters in the game (Shinji, Akihiko, Aegis, Junpei) DO NOT HAVE A FUCKING SOCIAL LINK! WHY?!? It makes absolutely no sense and egregiously prevents these great characters from having the same impact and screentime as the characters that do have social links.
Some that do are actually not only just... bad social links, but also bland characters, like Kenji, who is just a complete bufoon and his social link is so cringe I actually had to force myself to finish it.

Oh, and the backtracker-dungeon, the so called Tartarus is a gigantic grindfest that constantly interrupts the storys momentum and your immersion and it TAKES ON FOREVER! WHO MADE THIS?!?!? AND WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA AND SHOULD BE KEPT IN THE GAME?!?

... what else? Oh yeah, you... can't... control your party members directly... like... ever. They are always NPCs and you just have to hope that they make the correct decision.
... just... wow. Like... seriously??? Who programmed this shit?

This is basically what's wrong with this... thing. There is some other stuff you can critizise but it just pales in comparision to the monumental blunders I have just listed. They make this game impossible to enjoy and impossible to appreciate everything it does well.

Don't play it. At least not this version.
Try out the PSP Version or some certain... questionable version (not FES, that's also pretty bad).