In addition to the mechanics, presentation, and QOL features copied directly from P5(R), the tone of P3R is also nearly identical to P5(R). This is a problem because the story of P3 really lends itself to a darker, more melancholic tone. Just watch the opening cutscenes from each game back to back. (P3 , P3R). The original opening scene is so much darker and tense. Why is Yukari talking so much in the new one? It doesn't work for me and many of the changes are like this.

P3R is essentially P5(R) DLC (credit @mikesinouye). Folks from ATLUS gave an interview about how careful they were to not change too much, but playing the game makes me laugh at this. Like they changed nearly everything mechanically to be like P5(R), even in cases where it doesn't make sense. The example in the article of what they preserved is keeping cell phones the same lmao. It's just silly.

Some of the changes are good and the game is good overall. But by mashing together the gameplay/tone of P5(R) with the story and setting of P3, the result is worse than the sum of their parts.

Also, 'So dance, while I put you in a trance' with that fucked up vocal performance is actually absurdly good. And 'So dance if you want, go ahead / Free to do whatever, I'm chilling on my bed' in monotone mumble rap is trash and makes me cringe every time I hear it.

I love hyper demon (HD). It improved upon the core appeal of devil daggers (DD) while fixing some of its biggest flaws. I believe it's one of the best spiritual sequels ever made (in the ballpark of DOOM, Dark Souls, and Bayonetta).

I saw the following one sentence 1.5 star review on here recently:
"Hey remember when the first game didn't need pages and pages of tutorials"

This review is funny to me because it isolates one of the biggest flaws of DD but touts it as something essential. DD didn't have a tutorials menu. But what is a tutorial? Is it just something the game labels as 'tutorial'? Must a tutorial be separate from the game proper? I don't think so; I argue that DD's first few minutes serves as enemy tutoriaIs in all except name. Among many other changes that improve replayability, HD extracts and largely removes these enemy tutorials. I only played each of the tutorials in HD once. However, because they are inextricably baked into DD, I played each of the enemy tutorials in DD hundreds of times. Am I supposed to believe this is a good thing?

It is common now for people (including the 1.5 star reviewer above) to believe that the 'correct' way to design games is to have seamless, built-in 'tutorials' that show the player how to interact with something rather than telling them. Ideally, these don't bring attention to themselves and are thus not labeled by the game as tutorials. It works great for many games, but DD->HD highlights a way in which a more 'traditional' approach to tutorials can be better for replayability. It's difficult to hide/obscure a tutorial and also make it optional because an unknowing/first-time player won't know not to skip it. This means that hidden tutorials are often mandatory, ensuring that experienced players still have to go through the tutorial even though they won't gain anything from it. DD has an extreme version of this, in my view. Sorath (DD/HD dev) recognized this, removed the tutorials and made them optional. In doing so, they had to reveal the tutorials as what they are which is maybe not ideal but, in my opinion, is completely worth it for the boost to replayability of HD over DD. You only live for a limited amount of time, please don't spend it replaying tutorials.