I started a high-stress job at a young age. I matured faster than I should have, which was in some ways a good thing but kept me internally isolated among friends. I've lived a good life, but I feel like I missed out on a lot of things I'll never get back. My teenage experience was altered in a way that cannot be undone.

I am apocalyptically anxious. I have a constant ringing in my chest assuring me that any given day could be my last. It takes Herculean mental effort to stop myself from wasting away thinking about my mortality, ironically depriving me of the ability to fully enjoy the one life I get to lead.

Now, you do some math and tell me how you think this game made me feel. Yeah. I know right? Jesus Christ.

I wrote like 1000 words trying to qualify how uninformed I am on both Persona 3 Reload as a work of remake (in summary, I feel like it's a zero-sum game between the gameplay improvements and the lost [say the line backloggd reviewer] ludonarrative [uproarious cheering] / aesthetic coherence, but who am I trying to fool here. I didn't play the original) and JRPGs in general (in summary, I've played like 20 ever, none of them came out after I was born and don't have the word Pokemon somewhere in the title) but I'm just going to own it. I'm a vacuum, in a vacuum. This is my first Persona game and essentially my first post-2000 JRPG. If you want the thoughts of a warlock who knows what FES and P3P and PQ2: NCL and PDA-STP mean, then go somewhere else. If you want the ramblings of an uninformed dweeb who was reduced to a small puddle of jelly in his apartment on a Tuesday night, stick around.

This game contains one of the great casts, in any media. SEES are a completely believable set of high schoolers (some would argue they seem too adult, I would counter that these are all people who've been forced to mature by life circumstances beyond their control, shown through the contrasted immaturity of the surrounding cast) who respond to each other like a bunch of high schoolers. Junpei is childish, Yukari is mean, Akihiko is a poor communicator, Mitsuru is alienating, Fuuka has no self-confidence, Shinji is depressed and asocial, Ken is a child desperate to be seen as mature, Aigis has no grasp on emotion or social norms and Koromaru is a dog. At least, when they enter the story (and Koromaru does, in all fairness, remain a dog). What's most compelling is that if you take all of these base-level ideas for character archetypes and make a nice slow-cook casserole, the result is not peaceful cohabitation. The characters don't immediately get along. For once! I saw a negative review saying they act too much like co-workers, rather than friends, and that's so perfectly put I struggle to understand how that person didn't see the intention here. They take a long time to grow to care for one another. I don't know exactly when, but eventually Yukari's jabs at Junpei lose their venom. Everyone learns to love each other, but you couldn't possibly pinpoint when. The arc of this group's relationship is astonishing.

Social links are a superb extension of this. They're simplistic, maybe even a little shallow, but just so goddamn endearing. They strike a perfect balance between deep investigations into character interiority (Aigis) and adorable goof-offs where you're helping an old lady find her cat (also Aigis). Special attention must be paid to the voice cast. I played in English (Hark! Heretic! Burn the Witch!) and everyone was perfectly composed. To use a personal favourite cliche, everyone sounds the only way they possibly could. So good.

The narrative, without getting into spoilers, involves the death of every single person on planet Earth. It takes an uncompromising tone and expert plotting to create a story where I spend the entire time genuinely unsure, up until the final moments, whether or not the good guys will beat the bad guys. October 4th will wipe the floor with your little ass as much as it does the characters. Persona 3 doesn't fuck around with death. It is an ever-present threat, and at no point was I sure of anyone's continued survival. The stakes are always so high, and the game never betrays them, even with so many breaks for levity.

This combat system is very flashy and very satisfying, mechanically and visually. I remain a staunch defender of turn-based combat, so even when it gets a little shallow at times here (there is virtually nothing any one-enemy encounter can do to overcome attack/defence debuff moves, including the final boss), I'm always having a good time. Shift is crack cocaine steroids. All-out-attack is the cherry on top. Theurgy is the second, smaller cherry on top of that cherry. It's a damn fine cake at the end of the day. Just not much to it for how much of it there is.

Tartarus has, to my knowledge, greatly improved since the original game, but is still the weak link. I'm grateful the game seems to be balanced somewhat with the knowledge that players will mostly blast through Tartarus dodging shadows because I got pretty sick of anything else by the back half. But the game is merciful enough to allow this, and once the combat-to-social-sim ratio is weighted enough to the latter, I welcome the occasional change of pace. The game does a good job of letting you choose when to waste your time, but it is still wasting a bit too much of it in that dumb old stack of bricks.

The game looks fine (aside from the UI which is the fucking Sistine Chapel of menus) but is ultimately a little too Unreal Engine-y for me. A scourge on modern video game art design. Sega did not hire this man, but they might have used his Mario 64 PC demake as a reference for one too many models. Just a me thing mostly, but I will almost certainly spend the entire time playing that MGS3 remake scowling (WHAT DID THEY DO TO HIS HAIR!?), so it is a pretty big me thing. For all the shit the new soundtrack has gotten, allegedly a betrayal of the original aesthetic ambitions and an artless repetition of Persona 5, I think the visuals are far more at fault. Except for one battle theme involving the dinkiest electric guitar riff I've ever heard, I thoroughly enjoyed the soundtrack and thought it fit the game well. Unlike say, the psychedelic Tartarus floors, which are "cool," but fit this game about as well as an extended visual novel segment would have Thumper. Tell me that's the point, see if I give a shit.

Then there are the tougher moments. Not including Junpei's little freakout when you give him the flowers for Chidori. A pretty accurate representation of how certain teenage boys react to any compassion. Stung in an all too familiar way. I'm thinking more like the beach cutscene. Not so happy to use the lens of Junpei as a scapegoat there. Must the camera leer at the under-age girls for so long? Really? Must the teacher canonically want to fuck my under-age character? Really? Must 'The Gourmet King' be in this game? REALLY?? The cavernous lows of this game surprised me. Every truly awful moment feels imported from another universe to the sensitively told exploration of mortal fear of the game proper.

In one of my more dumbass contrarian opinions ever, I was pretty mixed on the ending. It's a very heartfelt and compassionate conclusion, but it did not jerk my tears in the way many describe and I'm not convinced it's a particularly good payoff on the tens of hours of philosophical rumination I did strongly connect with. I guess I'm just not one for happy tears (this definitely isn't true, I cried last time I played Super Mario Galaxy 2 just because of how much I love it). But the game flirts with some genuinely devastating stuff in the last few hours, and if it had gone in any of those directions I'd probably kick it up another half-star.

God, a lot of hand-wringing for a review of a 60-hour RPG where I was compelled by the story for at least 58 hours. Look past the flaws and enjoy the whole (challenge), epically failed again.

YAS QUEEN WORK MAMAAAAAAA SLAYYYYY
No but seriously, this is such a great game. It’s fun, it’s camp, it’s a total bop. Although we now have this less horny bayo (A FACT THAT IS ACTUALLY EXPLAINED IN THE GAME, MIGHT I TELL YOU) she is still amazing, she’s still serving, still a legend, and still the moment.
Bayo 3 has some of the best moments of the entire saga, from Diva’s Dance references (but make it demonic!) to some of the best showdowns of videogames.
The last 2 hours of the game got me screaming, ugly crying, laughing, and, surprisingly, dancing.

It honestly is a wonderful ending to the saga. Please, PLEASE, do play it. You’re gonna have so much fun.
(Do I wish this was actually a ps5 game? Yes. It would be wayyy more amazing, ‘cause it just pushes the Switch systems right to it’s limits. But if a Switch game is all we could get then I’m effing GRATEFUL)