For reference, I played the Steam version of Persona 3 on hard difficulty.

Persona 3 Reload is a near-perfect experience for me personally. This game has a lot going for it but Id be lying if I said I enjoyed every aspect of this, as I believe they dropped the ball on a few instances in this game. This review won’t contain any major story spoilers but I might hint at some stuff in here. Read at your own discretion. I'll first go into what I like about this game and what it does good.

Firstly, the graphics and engine upgrade is one of the first things you notice, everything looks much cleaner and a lot better. Compared to P5 it's a massive graphic update. They went overkill with every aspect of the UI as well, making sure every menu has some sort of graphic, at least in the pause menu, each one of them having a hidden meaning which I think is a nice touch. While they toned it down in terms of the splash screens doing all-out attacks compared to P5, the simpler style still fits well. Where they shine is the theurgy special attacks. It all just looks amazing. The characters feel less stiff and more lively during any sort of talking sequence.

I consider this battle system the best out of 3, 4, and 5 (Insert obligatory persona joke that the first 2 don't exist.) They brought back baton pass under a new name, shifting. A standard version of giving your turn to another party member without the added benefits of baton pass in Persona 5, which is fine considering it was incredibly broken. And, you're never gonna believe this, you can CONTROL your party members. Yep, you heard me right. Shocking shit I know. On top of that, they rebalanced every party member from the original Persona 3, regardless if there is a “best” party every character is viable regardless of team comp as long as you fuse enough personas for the main protagonist. The new system to Persona 3 and what makes it unique is the newly implemented theurgy system. Every turn in battle fills up this meter so unleash a super move each character has. Each character has their own criteria to boost the meter more to get the move faster (I.E Yukari’s meter fills faster when she heals hurt party members.) My one issue with this while it adds that dopamine when you get it, there's no downside to using this, and is just there to make the game easier without any repercussions using overpowered moves. Other than that, this game is incredibly balanced in my opinion. I was over-leveled for a majority of the game with min-maxed personas and I still had some trouble with bosses. The battles encouraged me to use items as well and correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't as encouraged or even necessary in 4 and 5. On top of all of this, the shuffle system is completely revamped and is no longer random, you can even reliably trigger it by finishing the battle with an All-Out Attack. The only random thing about it is which cards appear. While admittedly, it loses a bit of its identity, and no reason for it to be called shuffle time anymore, this is a much better and welcome change. The enemy AI is much smarter in this game and follows up more with hitting weaknesses. The most notable fight that I had trouble with was The Reaper. He was easily the hardest fight in this game and it doesn’t come close in my opinion. It took me around 40 minutes to beat him using all of my resources. And on top of all of that, there is still more minibosses through these doors that appear randomly that will reward you a decent amount. There still isn't even stuff I’ve covered but the point is that they made the gameplay loop more engaging and intuitive. Never have I felt the need to keep fusing until now. I finished with an 89% compendium registry. I usually finish with around 50-60% which I think says alot.

The story in this game is 1 to 1 with the original with added segments of the antagonists of the game for the better. They are done much better and build the characters more throughout. And this goes for all of the characters. Comparing it to the original, every character is more fleshed out and given more opportunities to learn more about them and it was done amazingly. Sadly, you can miss a few as all of them are timed therefore missing out on the character-building. Another neat edition is the characters talking mid-combat to each other when they shift or hit a weakness. It's a very small thing that can go unnoticed but for me, it added a lot.

The VAs in this game also killed it, dare I say this is my favorite entry in terms of the voice-acted cast. I think the social links being voice-acted for sure adds a lot. I didn't think I would enjoy this cast more than the original but they nailed it and I actually prefer them over the original.

Now, some minor nitpicks that I want to point out before I go into my dislikes are one of them being that I personally think the VA for Yukari just misses some lines. None that ruined the game nor killed the character for me but enough to the point where it was bothersome and annoying. I can't remember what lines exactly but besides those few she is fine. Makoto (the protagonist) also is too quiet when getting shifted compared to when he summons his persona it doesn't match the energy. One more thing is that the “child” voice actors definitely don’t sound like children. They just sound like adults putting on their best teen impression.

Ok NOW onto my dislikes I have with this game and my main grievance with this remake is that it's TOO faithful of a remake. Meaning they didn’t fix some of the issues that FES had. Including some certain story scenes where it ruins the theme of the game. IYKYK. While the confidants are much better voice acted, aside from the party members I find it extremely hard to care for any of them nor do they add much to the story. I was hoping they would add or even change most of them to make them more appealing or at least somehow relate to the character. The only confidant that I felt that was done well was the sun arcana. My favorite arcana in the entire series at that. Shame that they didn't expand on them as much. And while I was invested from the get-go because I already knew the story, it still took too long for the game to pick up during the story.

Expanding on my point that it's too faithful of a remake, there still isn't enough to do at night around the midgame. Once your stats are maxed out and you get every character's special characteristic there is literally nothing to do. Also very disappointing to see they didn't expand any areas you could go to. I excused the first game as it was a first in the series but seeing them stick to it in the remake is inexcusable. Another thing that really killed the impact of one of the scenes was one of the scenes during the end of the game. I won't go into details but I really don't see why they changed it and the original was much more impactful.

All in all, I still think this game is amazing and does enhance the original in many ways but sadly downgrades it in others. An almost perfect remake in my eyes that they sadly didn't push as much as they should've. Thank you for taking the time to read this review as this is the first time I've decided to go full lengths to review a game this important to me.