Atlus, you beautiful bastards, you've done it again. I played Persona 3 FES last year and liked it, but felt it was hard to go back to after Persona 4 and 5 tweaked and finessed the formula so perfectly in the years following its release. And almost like these absolute chads were responding to me specifically, they said here you go lil' buddy, here's literally exactly what you want: Persona 3 but it's Persona 5 level quality. And goddamn it, this whole thing is just immaculate. It looks incredible, the music is god-tier, the UI is visual candy and the game plays like an absolute dream.

And when you have all that stuff in place, every element that worked about the original Persona 3 just cooks so much harder. You get the best Persona story of the lot, with this genuinely beautiful parable about fearing death and how facing it head-on is the only way to truly live. You get a bunch of great characters who you genuinely fall in love with over 100 hours (except Kenji, Keisuke and the Gourmet King, who are still the utter definition of a nightmare blunt rotation). And Tartarus, which was tedious as hell in the original, is now streamlined into a very manageable and fun gameplay loop. Hell, I've never given a shit about the series' fusion mechanics, but this one had me glueing together all my little magical buddies so I could build literal Satan.

Genuinely, Atlus are just god-like when it comes to this series; Persona is maybe the most consistently phenomenal, must-play RPG franchise around and, with this, they just cement that no one does it quite like them. They just make the impossible possible. They introduce an idea and you go, eh, why would that work? But you suddenly realise the bizarre Frankensteining of a quirky high-school simulator and a tactical pocket monster battler just somehow clicks, and it's all because they are unprecedented and making innocuous ideas into the most compelling mechanics possible. And that's largely because they're so good at writing loveable characters and goofy but strangely investing storylines to go with them.

These games always just reignite my love and passion for playing games. Now I'm at the elderly age of... checks notes... 26 and have made a career out of having to play games every day, it's rare I'll sit and play a 100 RPG just for funsies. But P3 Reload is the kind of experience that detests the idea of filling 100 hours for the sake of filling 100 hours. It's always switched on, telling a new story, giving you some new thing to pursue or actively rewarding the time you've invested with meaningful character moments or arcs. Yes, I think it's a bit of a waste to make a P3 remake without adding the FeMC route or The Answer expansion, but for what's here, this is another must-play RPG from what might be my favourite RPG franchise ever.