Persona is so funny because on one hand you have this strong meditation on death and the importance of forging bonds with people, and on the other hand your teacher is a predator who considers using her position in the school to get you alone so she can have her way with you.

What works in persona games often really works, really well. Here you have this game that, as I say, has this central theme of death or ending that runs through almost all of its social links. Its social links explore the different relationships we can have with death, and some of them work really well. Akinari Kamiki’s social link is a little forced in its opening but is one exploration of how you might find meaning in your life even if you’re dying of a terminal disease. Bunkichi and his wife’s social link concerns having grown old, and mourning the death of their son. It’s no surprise that one of your party members gets murdered too (I’ll come back to this later), as witnessing and mourning someone is always an interaction with death. The story mandated social link with Pharos/Ryuji is also so important because he literally is death, and not just his arcana! All of this is made better, I think, by knowing that the lovely ending of the game has our protagonist pass away in his sleep. Personally, I love this ending. In the final exploration of death as a theme what is the other way in which we can interact with death as a topic? It is to die ourselves. The protagonist closing their eyes in warmth and sunlight, surrounded by a loved friend is the perfect way to die isn’t it? It’s a happy ending, despite the fact that we are no more. I don’t know. Apparently people don’t like that the protagonist dies? Especially as it’s kind of only vaguely suggested that something is wrong, and not made explicit until The Answer that the protagonist closes dies when he closes his eyes. Still, I really like it.

Not all the social links are good! In fact one of the problems with this game’s social links is the fact that we are really encouraged to be a yes-man in them to get the best social link points to level them up faster. The Emperor arcana dude, Odagiri I think his name is, absolutely sucks. I hate his guts and I hate that to level it up I have to tell him that he’s right by being a complete piece of shit loser. The Justice arcana girl who is scared of boys also blows chunks. I like that you can tell Maiko it’s probably her fault her parents are divorcing. It’s nuts that there are only two social links you can do at night because it really ends up feeling like there’s just not that much to be done at night? Thought Matatsu and Tanaka are two of the most fun social links because they’re not annoying school kids! Also coming off Persona 4 and 5 where there are social links with all party members available from the moment of getting the party member. Levelling them up is fun and rewarding. And in Persona 3 you can only social link your female party members? And only with a social stat maxed out? This is terrible! I get that P3R is a very faithful remake and that is cool, but this is something that feels like should’ve been modernised. Like you have all these hangouts at Iwatodai dorm, as well as the fact that each character has “link episodes” which function as social links basically, resulting in you being able to fuse special personas. So ATLUS kind of want to have their cake and eat it too, but I don’t feel like it works. It’s much harder to keep on top of these link episodes, especially when they only exist for the boys, because the girls have social links… make it make sense! Also, it’s really hard going back to P3 and P4 and doing social links where you don’t get tangible benefits for doing them. I don’t mean to sound like a baby, but at least in P5 if you did a social link where you didn’t like the character, you often at least got something interesting out of it. Not so in P3!!!! I can’t believe they didn’t find a way to incorporate this into P3…
On the topic of social stats, I don’t mind there only being 3 stats in this game, but I think activity balancing was waaay off in this game. I had all three stats maxed out by October without using guides for them, which meant that they became completely arbitrary metrics for the last three and a half months of the game, which sucks! That’s so lame. The pacing around social links also feels really off, because when I had the option to do Mitsuru’s one, no one else was available for like 2 weeks, so I just powered through it at one time, and same with Aigis. On one hand it’s kind of nice to be able to focus on them, but it feels really disconnected from the rest of the game.

I have some character beat issues too. Ryoji should’ve had a social link separate from Death? He’s so important to the latter part of the story but doesn’t actually have a particularly long part in the story, and it’s a little weird. I think Chidori and Junpei’s romance is kind of garbage, and Junpei ends up less endearing that say, P5’s Ryuji because he is much more intentionally pervy which sucks. I think Takaya has a really great look, and his voice actor is amazing, but it’s no surprise that people no remember Takaya over Persona’s other villains. Takaya’s motivations aren’t particularly inspiring or thought-provoking. There’s a scene where he talks about how car accidents cause loads of deaths every year, but we don’t try to stop them the way we try to stop the Dark Hour. Then we say “that logic makes no sense”, and that conversation is just sort of over. There’s no actual part of writing that seriously engages with Takaya’s point of view, because he doesn’t really have one, and it’s a shame because I see potential in him as a villain that we just don’t really get. I think he sort of fails as an example of someone who is embracing the theme of Death as a good thing to strive for in some ways? All he really does is kill Shinji, which is its own muddied murder/sacrifice. Listen, one of the things that makes Aerith’s death so great in the original FF7 is that she doesn’t sacrifice herself. She gets murdered. It’s infinitely more tragic. Stop heroically sacrificing characters!! Shinji’s death would’ve been a million times better if he JUST got murdered outright. Ikutsuki ends up being one of the most frustrating villains ever because his place in the story beforehand is so underused. We’re told that he’s the chairman of the school, and this adult who can interact with the Dark Hour but doesn’t have a Persona. Okay, that’s interesting, why is that? We should be asking questions about what Ikutsuki is doing and what he is doing to actually support SEES. I like that he’s a funny, silly, nice man. I wish he had a bit more active involvement with the plot, but the problem with Persona games is they often don’t HAVE a plot until the last quarter. Anyway, his betrayal is disappointing because there’s no indication of who he was beforehand. I think one of the things that is so brilliant about Persona 4’s villain is that his social link is optional. And if you do it, you certainly don’t find out that he’s the villain, so the reveal later is still a shock. But the social link allows his mask to slip just a little bit. It allows you to look at him and go “this guy is actually a lot more jaded and bitter than I thought, that’s kind of weird”, then when the twist comes around, suddenly his social link makes so much more sense. Ikutsuki is missing this entirely, just being a nice guy who makes jokes then suddenly wants to kill you. Whatever man! Boring.

I think that’s all I gots to say about the story… battle gameplay is good! Each Persona game mixes its gameplay up a little bit, and I really enjoyed that the physical attack types were all different in this one. Changing light and dark skills to actual attacks was really needed in 4, so it’s nice to see that update in reload too. Theurgies are cool, if not a bit overpowered. When the final boss had 75% of his health I used Armageddon which does 9999 damage to the boss, and it just killed him instantly. Like, getting Armageddon wasn’t very hard so this was a bit of a disappointing end to the final battle hahaha
But actually fighting gate keepers was fun, and I liked mixing up my team and thinking about how I was going to use my Personas. Once I fused Beezlebub I didn’t need to fuse ever again. As my social links and social stats were all done, I took the lord of flies to the arcade every day and maxed out his strength, magic, and agility, and gave him two stacks of Dark Amp, so he did stupid damage. Great game lmao
Tartarus sucks, and I hear it’s massively improved from the original game. I’m sure it has! But also it’s not improved enough. One of the problems of remaking a game like P3 is that Tartatus is there so you have to do something with it. You can’t just scrap it, which if you were making a new Persona game you would. I don’t know what the option is but Tartarus is really boring, and knowing that the creepy Dark hour is out there somewhere but we just can’t see it because we’re in a tower just sucks. The Dark Hour honestly feels under utilised from a creative point of view, but whatever

So, I like Persona 3 Reload. It’s probably my least favourite, because the story is worse than 4, and the gameplay is worse than 5, but it’s certainly not a bad game. I just think Persona as a series really improves later.

I mean really, Persona 4 introduced raining to its days, so it ends up having different things going on. Inaba is so cozy compared to Iwatodai, and Tokyo isn’t cozy in 5 but it is busy and elaborate and exciting. Iwatodai just doesn’t feel that interesting or cool. This game felt too small at times, like knowing that there is a group of people with Mitsuru’s dad and Ikutsuki who know about the Dark Hour who just kind of… let us get on with things as they are? Idk, it’s certainly not a plot hole or anything, but it is an oversight I think.
So yeah, P3 has the best soundtrack. P4 has the best story. And P5 has the best gameplay. Update P3R and put Kotone in it now please