This review contains spoilers
NOTE: Played this game on PC gamepass and did a max social link run as I beat FES: The Journey shortly before I started reload. Got all achievements and the only request I didn't do was "Beat the Ultimate Adversity" since it was too hard and cbs.
This game lived up and exceeded all my expectations. While I did like the story elements of 3 a lot it didn't connect with me as much as 4 and 5 did, and the gameplay (especially tartarus) took a heavy hit on my enjoyment of the game. I can safely say though that gameplay wise I ran into no annoying issues, and that it is by far my greatest praise to reload.
The gameplay of FES, to put it bluntly, at the best of times is bearable. Not controlling party members isn't my big issue however, as once I realised that if you just don't put them on act freely they have a 90% chance to do what you want them to. No, my biggest issue with FES's gameplay is that tartarus is one of the worst dungeons I have ever played through in my life. It is 250+ floors of fighting the same fucking enemies to the same fucking music (that adds one more midi instrument every 2 months) and make save scumming a necessity since dying puts you all the way back to your last save. It was a miserable experience for me and made me borderline almost drop 3FES completely because of how ass it was. Tartarus in Reload however, is a LARGE improvement. While there is an argument that a lot of the same points against FES tartarus can be made against reload tartarus, the added benefits and features to the gameplay made it 100 times more enjoyable to go through floors in reload compared to FES. For starters, the new battle theme is a great new addition that adds some variety to encounters (although i will say they massacred mass destruction compared to its edition in previous versions of 3). Getting items from breaking pillars for more money at the end of my grind sessions also is a great addition, as it resulted in me needing to grind for money less and also just kept me awake going from point a to b on floors. Fighting enemies and being able to control my party members properly is also a welcome addition, and the new theurgy skills added were fun to experiment with, especially with the skills obtained from party members I obtained later on in the game (ken is my goat). I also found shifting to be really fun and it made experimenting with different party members against different encounters of enemies really fun and enjoyable. My only gripes with combat however is that:
A) it is WAYYYYYYYYY too easy. I played this game on hard and only sturggled on the secret boss and about 2 encounters in monad doors. It wasn't so easy that I could just turn my brain off but i wouldnt be telling the truth if i said at times in between battles and dungeon crawling i would put on a youtube video to illeviate my boredom.
B) You (protag) can only use one weapon type. In FES while I did fucking hate going through tartarus I at least enjoyed trying out all the different weapons on my character to see what worked best for a specific block, and this feature being absent form reload is a bit of a disapointment (although I will say if you could equip different weapon types the game would probably be even easier than it is now).
C) While the game is really easy most of the time, It has some REALLY bad difficulty spikes in tartarus; The main one being the secret boss basically requiring to grind for the reaper (which isn't bad but you become so overlevelled it makes the final boss laughably easy), and a situation where in block 5 I struggled to kill one stronger enemy type (dunno the name but it's weak to piercing use madyne skills and is a massive damage sponge) while the normal enemies were so underlevelled comparatively they ran away from me.
I really liked the story of this game also. Doing the social links I missed out on in my playthrough of this game let me see some really cool conclusions I was thankful I saw (keisuke's arc and hayase off the top of my head rn were great and are some of my fav links in the series). The main story also was amazing, but one aspect I didn't really appreciate too much was that on replay and also with some added cutscenes and dialogue in reload, this game does NOT understand show not tell. The Ryoji reveal scene immediately comes to mind as half of it is just the party repeating to you bar for bar what Ryoji just told you. Another scene that comes to mind after watching some other people's opinions on the game is the intro scene with added dialogue from yukari, and the final scene of tartarus disappering missing a lot of the impact from the original cutscene in FES. Another one i also disliked was a cutscene where takaya admires the original evoker, as it just straight up revealed that him jin and chidori were kirijo test subjects halfway through the game, which took a lot of the impact that came from the reveal in the og game that was honestly one of my favorite twists in the game. I did however really like outside of this the more scenes with strega in this game. I never really got the argument that these guys weren't a prominent enough force in FES and that they didn't have too much screen time, but the added screentime in this game as learning about them more was one of my favourite experiences in FES and Reload (side note: I was spoiled the ending of P3 before beating FES so I cared a lot more about strega since I genuinely didn't know their role in the grand scheme of things).
The music in this game admittely while mostly good, did have some changes that I wasn't too fond of. I loved full moon full life and colour your night a LOT, and the reload version of changing seasons is one of my favorite tracks in a persona game period. However. WHAT DID THEY DO TO MASS DESTRUCTION AND MEMORIES OF THE CITY?! Memories of the city especially. That was one my my favorite tracks in P3 and they just ruined it. There's no higher octive on the piano it sounds so close to something amazing but they just fumbled the bag it pisses me off so much.
Anyways, while I do have a lot of gripes with P3 reload, as it makes some amazing changes with some questionable ones too, it is in no doubt the definitive way to play persona 3 IMO. If I'm ever going to replay persona 3's the journey, it will most likely be this version. With that said however, of the "modern persona games", this is probably my least favorite. It's not that I hate it, but that I simply like the other ones more. This is definitely a must play for this year however and I will be incredibly shocked if this doesn't get nominated for GOTY.
This game lived up and exceeded all my expectations. While I did like the story elements of 3 a lot it didn't connect with me as much as 4 and 5 did, and the gameplay (especially tartarus) took a heavy hit on my enjoyment of the game. I can safely say though that gameplay wise I ran into no annoying issues, and that it is by far my greatest praise to reload.
The gameplay of FES, to put it bluntly, at the best of times is bearable. Not controlling party members isn't my big issue however, as once I realised that if you just don't put them on act freely they have a 90% chance to do what you want them to. No, my biggest issue with FES's gameplay is that tartarus is one of the worst dungeons I have ever played through in my life. It is 250+ floors of fighting the same fucking enemies to the same fucking music (that adds one more midi instrument every 2 months) and make save scumming a necessity since dying puts you all the way back to your last save. It was a miserable experience for me and made me borderline almost drop 3FES completely because of how ass it was. Tartarus in Reload however, is a LARGE improvement. While there is an argument that a lot of the same points against FES tartarus can be made against reload tartarus, the added benefits and features to the gameplay made it 100 times more enjoyable to go through floors in reload compared to FES. For starters, the new battle theme is a great new addition that adds some variety to encounters (although i will say they massacred mass destruction compared to its edition in previous versions of 3). Getting items from breaking pillars for more money at the end of my grind sessions also is a great addition, as it resulted in me needing to grind for money less and also just kept me awake going from point a to b on floors. Fighting enemies and being able to control my party members properly is also a welcome addition, and the new theurgy skills added were fun to experiment with, especially with the skills obtained from party members I obtained later on in the game (ken is my goat). I also found shifting to be really fun and it made experimenting with different party members against different encounters of enemies really fun and enjoyable. My only gripes with combat however is that:
A) it is WAYYYYYYYYY too easy. I played this game on hard and only sturggled on the secret boss and about 2 encounters in monad doors. It wasn't so easy that I could just turn my brain off but i wouldnt be telling the truth if i said at times in between battles and dungeon crawling i would put on a youtube video to illeviate my boredom.
B) You (protag) can only use one weapon type. In FES while I did fucking hate going through tartarus I at least enjoyed trying out all the different weapons on my character to see what worked best for a specific block, and this feature being absent form reload is a bit of a disapointment (although I will say if you could equip different weapon types the game would probably be even easier than it is now).
C) While the game is really easy most of the time, It has some REALLY bad difficulty spikes in tartarus; The main one being the secret boss basically requiring to grind for the reaper (which isn't bad but you become so overlevelled it makes the final boss laughably easy), and a situation where in block 5 I struggled to kill one stronger enemy type (dunno the name but it's weak to piercing use madyne skills and is a massive damage sponge) while the normal enemies were so underlevelled comparatively they ran away from me.
I really liked the story of this game also. Doing the social links I missed out on in my playthrough of this game let me see some really cool conclusions I was thankful I saw (keisuke's arc and hayase off the top of my head rn were great and are some of my fav links in the series). The main story also was amazing, but one aspect I didn't really appreciate too much was that on replay and also with some added cutscenes and dialogue in reload, this game does NOT understand show not tell. The Ryoji reveal scene immediately comes to mind as half of it is just the party repeating to you bar for bar what Ryoji just told you. Another scene that comes to mind after watching some other people's opinions on the game is the intro scene with added dialogue from yukari, and the final scene of tartarus disappering missing a lot of the impact from the original cutscene in FES. Another one i also disliked was a cutscene where takaya admires the original evoker, as it just straight up revealed that him jin and chidori were kirijo test subjects halfway through the game, which took a lot of the impact that came from the reveal in the og game that was honestly one of my favorite twists in the game. I did however really like outside of this the more scenes with strega in this game. I never really got the argument that these guys weren't a prominent enough force in FES and that they didn't have too much screen time, but the added screentime in this game as learning about them more was one of my favourite experiences in FES and Reload (side note: I was spoiled the ending of P3 before beating FES so I cared a lot more about strega since I genuinely didn't know their role in the grand scheme of things).
The music in this game admittely while mostly good, did have some changes that I wasn't too fond of. I loved full moon full life and colour your night a LOT, and the reload version of changing seasons is one of my favorite tracks in a persona game period. However. WHAT DID THEY DO TO MASS DESTRUCTION AND MEMORIES OF THE CITY?! Memories of the city especially. That was one my my favorite tracks in P3 and they just ruined it. There's no higher octive on the piano it sounds so close to something amazing but they just fumbled the bag it pisses me off so much.
Anyways, while I do have a lot of gripes with P3 reload, as it makes some amazing changes with some questionable ones too, it is in no doubt the definitive way to play persona 3 IMO. If I'm ever going to replay persona 3's the journey, it will most likely be this version. With that said however, of the "modern persona games", this is probably my least favorite. It's not that I hate it, but that I simply like the other ones more. This is definitely a must play for this year however and I will be incredibly shocked if this doesn't get nominated for GOTY.