gasp A serious Agenda review!

If I fall down I'm gonna get back up
Right back up man to where I left off
I won't be caught by the fear of the
battle because I got my crew on my back
You know I've already

Burnt My Dread
Tear up your fear I got it locked down
The end is coming near so burn your dread

This will be a deeply persona(l) review. Apologies for any editing mistakes, this is nearly 5.5k words long so it’s hard to edit completely. I have a hard time quantifying this as even a review of the game in question, Persona 3 Reload. It's a rather exhaustive account of my experiences with Megami Tensei, video games, remake discourse, and life in general over the past five years, with a bit of actual review of the game itself towards the end. But I also (at this point in time) believe it to be my magnum opus. This beast of a review is insanely long. However, I couldn’t write this any other way. As of posting, it is still March 5th, 2024, so I win. Happy P3 Day.

Like almost everyone else who got into Persona as a teenager, I can safely say the Persona(and MegaTen) franchise changed the trajectory of my life.

I discovered Megami Tensei almost 5 years ago, in the spring of 2019 or so. The game that introduced me to the franchise was none other than Persona 5. I heard about the game through TGA and the smash announcement, but I didn’t immediately hop on it at that point. My memory’s a bit fuzzy, so I don’t know if that was when I first heard of P5 or if it just put it on my radar. Anyway, throughout the spring of 2019 I was getting into anime a lot more, so it’s only natural I recalled that silly RPG. At this time I was also going through a quest to beat all the PS4 exclusives. During this period of my life I had no friends, while also coming off of a period of around 4 years of being bullied. So of course with all these factors P5 was perfect for a game over the summer. Suffice to say I was immediately hooked on the game and also the wider series. Games had spoken to me before, like God of War which I had just played that winter(2019). But never had something grasped me so tightly like P5 and the wider series had.God, the music, the visuals, the themes, the style, everything. My parents had a rule where I wasn’t allowed to play M rated games, and like every kid would have I found a way around such rules. I streamed P5 on both my Vita(during the day) and laptop(during the night) with Remote Play, staying up till midnight grinding palaces and confidants. And then once I was done, I’d hop on youtube, listening to the OSTs of the games, trying to learn the lyrics(mass destruction was a doozy, lemme tell ya) Every single night of that summer was a blast because of this routine and I certainly hadn’t felt a spark like this in so long due to the aforementioned bullying and mental health issues. It’s no secret that a game like this was perfect for someone like me, you can see so many stories like mine throughout the fandom. Rebelling against your oppressors, denying expectations, hell just being a loner eventually finding a group of people who get you were all perfect for me and so many other people. Throughout all the hardship everyone faced, just to see there was a point to it all. It was nothing short of inspiring seeing the Phantom Thieves rebel against scum and trying to change society from the ground up. So inspiring that it made me want to give friendships another chance. Anyway, I beat the game one week after my 2nd year of high school began. I remember being particularly angry about needing to wait until the weekend to play again due to my parent’s rule of no gaming on weekdays. I let the specialty pizza my family ordered go cold because I was too focused on beating the game. From there I was inspired to start making friends again, I met a few people at school that year that also really loved the game, and I remember feeling really happy again.


The next 2 years(2019-2021) are some of the best ever for me. I delved into so many MegaTen games, P4G, SJ on the DS, the SMT 4 duology, Nocturne, Shin Megami Tensei V. I got into Nier Automata, which had the same magical energy to it. The next year I played Replicant and was even more astounded at how beautiful it was. The party is up there as one of the best in gaming. I played both TWEWY and its sequel(which unfortunately I didn’t like as much), but the first game also had a similar life changing effect. I started Trails in the Sky around this point, a series I’m still chugging along to this day, with Cold Steel 2 in the lineup as the next JRPG I’m tackling. One thing leads to another and in the spring of 2021 I have a somewhat sizable group of friends that can all be traced back to P5.


Without giving away too much context, I fell out of love with P5(and really everything else I loved) throughout all of 2022 and 2023. Despite P5 leading me to a place where I felt happy again, I met some rude people as well. So for these two years I really began to despise P5, not only for believing it led me to such a place of sorrow, but also because of the… elitist culture(?) surrounding it. I’m not really sure if that’s the best way to describe it, but that’s how it felt to me.


What once was an innocuous and benign part of the internet I chose to ignore became my very existence. Day after day, pointless bickering after pointless bickering, argument after argument. After a while… it gets to you. Because of how much P5 had meant to me, my relationship with it was tied to my self worth. I mean, how could I not, it’s defined my taste in media, what values I abide by, and like I said prior introduced me to many of my friends. Due to being told how awful it was so often (and many other games I liked, including the aforementioned Nier Replicant and Automata, God of War, Spider-Man) I began to nitpick everything, in hopes of hating the games so I could be liked by these rude people. It probably sounds silly and superficial that my love for a game is so easily bent, but to me, these years didn’t just affect something so simple as my views on a game. It changed me, made me depressed again. Trying to change yourself for others does that to you. As of right now, this process is still lodged inside my psyche and I still believe Persona 5 is a dogshit game, despite(and perhaps alongside ) singing its praises just a few paragraphs earlier. I believe most of what I “like”, if it can even be called that, is complete and utter soulless trash that only idiots can like. There have been numerous attempts over these years to both “fix” what I love so that I can be liked as a person again, because deep down I was led to believe I was the problem. Hell, you can see it in my reviews. God of War, Ragnarok, Spider-Man 2, Eternights, Neon White, Tears of the Kingdom. These games, for me, turned into battlegrounds where I had to prove they were good, and many times, I failed. I always alluded to some problem I didn’t really have to just keep this new voice in my head quiet. Be that the writing, “movie games”, whatever. I couldn’t simply enjoy them anymore, because I kept trying to use them as a way to prove I was worthy of love. “Look at me, I’m a person worthy of love, I hate the bad games too, or at least acknowledge how shit they are. Like me now, please.” You’ll notice a discrepancy between my ratings(and hell, 90% of the reviews themselves) of these games and the supposed hatred I harbor toward them. All of them are still highly rated and positive. No matter how hard I tried to change myself, who I was, or what I liked, despite the self loathing, my heart wouldn’t budge.


Every game I mentioned above has had some sort of guilt intertwined to it, well that is every game except one. None other than the Trails franchise. It was detached from the guilt simply because this person didn’t really engage with Trails at all. Perhaps this is why Trails of Cold Steel 1 came at such a pivotal moment, during one of the worst points of the past few years. why it means so much to me. I expected nothing of it, after being mildly disappointed by Azure, as well as hearing it was hands down the weakest game in the franchise. With absolutely no expectations, it blew me away. Amazing music, amazing cast, amazing world, getting lost in all the references to past games… It had captured me the same way P5 did all those years ago, made me feel again after being so empty for so long. This feeling was, unfortunately, not for long, and the guilt came back. But something was different this time.


Around this time I started writing more longform reviews,as well as changing up my ratings to be more in line with my heart again a bit later down the line. This was a necessary change, but it didn’t do much at the moment because real changes had yet to occur, both external and internal. But one thing led to another, and I’m here now.


There was a time, around 4 years ago I bought Persona 4 Golden on my Vita. It had to have been August or September of that year, just after beating P5 vanilla. I remember texting my friend about how I was about to waste another 60+ hours of my life. I don't remember the last time I did something like that. What I mean is, I don't remember the last time I was super excited, truly, fully excited to get into a game. I came straight off the heels of the best gaming experience I'd had in my life, incredibly excited to start a new journey in the same series. Nowadays, and I'm sure it sounds silly to call myself this, but in the gaming enthusiast space I've kind of lost that joy. It's always about being ultra critical, ultra "objective", and with remakes especially, compare compare compare. Every last change scrutinized, every small detail taking you out of the experience. See, when I played Persona 4 Golden on my vita, I didn't go into it thinking about how shitty the fog effects were, in fact I had no idea this change to the fog was even a thing until a couple months ago. If you showed me a picture of P4 and P4G, I doubt I could tell the difference if they were unlabeled. Now it’s the first thing that comes to mind with Golden. I'm so concerned with problems I don't even care about. If you asked a 14 year old Agenda who just started P5 which version of P3 he would play, Reload or FES, he would choose Reload. I would choose Reload, too. I miss this game series. I miss actually enjoying things.


That's why I've been really happy with my past reviews lately, especially things like Donkey Kong Country 2 or F-Zero. I list all the little critiques I have, but at the end of the day I have a blast and rate it super high. Those are my critiques, not anyone else's. It's been so fucking tiring trying to be someone else. I feel partially inclined to hate every Persona game I loved in the past, too. In my day-to-day life, I'm surrounded by so much MegaTen. From my phone/lockscreen background, to my phone being filled to the brim with MegaTen OSTs. My PC lockscreen is one of Royal's key art. I am listening to Sound Test while writing this. I have SEVEN Phantom Thief figures, a Thanatos figure, AND I ordered Izanagi. My PFP on this site is Sumi for fuck's sake. I love this series so much. I would love to get through P2 IS and EP, Digital Devil Saga, and all the other Megatens I haven't played . Yet simultaneously, not for a second can I stop being reminded how much I should hate Megami Tensei, or should hate Persona 3 Reload. I'm really tired of this act of ripping apart the things I love just so I can get validation from the wrong people.

I understand there’s a certain futility to sharing all this on a public game logging website but it’s intrinsic to my experience with P3R so I had to include it as a (very long) preface. Oh, right, before we get into the actual video game review. One last thing.


To everyone who blabs and blabs about remakes being soulless, passionless, directionless, and all the other buzzwords Backloggd Gamers ™ love to use: how did you arrive at that conclusion? Because you prefer the older look of the original? Because to me, from all the promotional material Atlus(especially Atlus West) has put out, this game is clearly a labor of love to the original. You can see all the dub VAs(both old dub and new) admire each other's work, and every cast member seems to have such a strong attachment to either the character they play or the franchise itself. Take Zeno Robinson for example, new voice of Junpei. He openly mentions how P3 is his favorite game ever in these Behind The Scenes interviews. Every single one of these cast members has something great to say about Persona. It's common knowledge at this point the Reload project was given to new staff at Atlus while the veterans finish out their careers with Metaphor. There are no sources for this, but I'd assure you that all the people working directly on the game back in Japan also have an immense love for P3, and judging how young the staff is probably grew up with the original or FES. If you were given the opportunity to work on something you love, would you not pour your heart and soul into creating the best possible version of that? To deliver that to a new audience? I ask you, Backloggd Gamers ™, what is "soul" , if not a game made by people who adore and are passionate for the original? You already know the answer to that. You already know it's a meaningless buzzword, you already know you're only doing these things to stir drama, and are too egotistical to let new fans have their fun. You just want to stir some drama so you get the attention you desperately crave. "Soul" to Backloggd Gamers ™ is not a synonym for passion or love, it's just a way to gatekeep people from having their fun, from believing things to be profound.

And because this will inevitably get misinterpreted: It's fine if you prefer the original, or don't vibe with the warmer P5 esque artstyle. What isn't fine is complaining about how gaming is dead or being a complete dick towards those who love Reload, especially new fans. Persona (and the wider MegaTen franchise) has some of the best combat, music, stories, themes, and characters in RPGs and gaming as a whole. To gatekeep or make new fans feel ashamed for getting into the franchise like this is immature beyond belief. The Backloggd community has quickly become more toxic than Letterboxd. You aren't cool, and no one outside your private elitist discord server respects you for it. There are many more important things to be mad about in this world than antagonizing people about what version of a video game they play and prefer. Grow the fuck up.


I apologize for the rant, but I've been needing to get that off my chest for far too long. Let's get into it.


Persona 3 FES, as I put it two years ago, is a game with growing pains. Because it is the first of the nusona games, that was bound to happen. FES suffers from some really shitty SLinks, most of them are quite forgettable. In fact, I forgot the plot of every SLink I did in FES besides Akinari. FES also had this system called tactics, which while I still don’t really think is a massive problem and the hate is overblown, it can still lead to some frustrating outcomes. The male party members don’t get social links of their own, which was disappointing. The portraits have a washed out look, and the game could look a lot better. The OG dubbing in P3 was very stiff for most characters outside of SEES, and even in SEES there’s characters like Fuuka, Ken, and Shinji who sound stiff as a plank. Persona 3 was a very ambitious game indeed, but it shot too high and has some flaws because of it. I think I understand why some people might prefer FES, despite being more flawed, because the flaws give it the charm of being overly ambitious.


That being said, I feel like Reload was necessary. Persona 3 no longer feels like the black sheep of nusona. It feels confident in itself, more so than the original. Doubling down on the imagery in full HD, all while keeping the positive themes of living life to the fullest despite the inevitability of death. Everyone knew what made things click, and kept it, while giving it a fresh coat of paint. To hell with accusations of sanitization, this is the essence of Persona 3 chiseled out while being propped up by those who loved Persona 3 and wanted to make it better. I do not believe there is a reason to play FES anymore, unless you vibe with the little chibi guys and/or want to see how we got here. And if you don’t, that’s fine too. Life is too short to engage with games you don’t feel inclined to.


On second thought, there is a reason to engage with aspects of the original P3. That being, the OST. I think most of the remixes are better, or at least stand toe-to-toe with their original counterparts. However, there are songs that do lack a “punch”. The only egregious examples I found myself were Unavoidable Battle and Living with Determination -Iwatodai-. Both of these lack the drums that made the originals so captivating. Those drums push you forward, but with… bongos… or a severely muffled beat/reverb it doesn’t have the same effect. I found this really odd, considering the drums go hard on Burn my Dread -Last Battle Reload-. I always preferred the Future Arrange from the P3 movies for this song anyway, but missed the heavy drum beat. This arrangement makes the drums heavier, while Lotus Juice makes the lyrics the most situational they’ve been.The OG Last Battle felt vaguely about the themes of P3, but this, this version of lyrics, encapsulates the development Makoto has undergone. It goes so fucking hard. I also don’t really understand why some people have said the version of Battle For Everyone’s Souls sounds worse. It sounds heavier, in fact better, to me, and I was worried it wouldn’t be as good considering how they neutered Unavoidable Battle.


It is somewhat disappointing that no P3 Movie songs were integrated. I love the Movie OST. Light in Starless Sky, One Determination, Fate is in Our Hands, Persona Summoners, they’re all really great songs and I wish they became unique encounter themes. But alas, there wasn’t a good place to play them, I suppose.


As for the new vocalist, I think she does a fantastic job. I love how she sang When Moon’s Reaching Out Stars, the new lyrics for Changing Seasons, and of course the new songs. Full Moon Full Life fucking hits and keeps up with this thesis I have going that they know exactly what P3 is. The lyrics, the sound, so fucking good and it slips into P3’s musical identity perfectly. People unfamiliar with the Persona 3 Movie OSTs and the rearranged albums might think that Color Your Night isn’t very P3-esque. However, when you look at Deep Breath from Burn My Dread -Reincarnation- album, you’ll see this happier, chiller sound is nothing new for P3. I think she does the boss tracks and Memories of You justice.


This sense of doing tracks “justice” keeps popping back up in my mind. It’s what separates the Nier Replicant OST from most of the Trails Evo Tracks. Nier Replicant OST “gets” Nier songs. Whereas Trails Evo Tracks mostly seem like they throw things at the wall. Some of these Evo Tracks are really good, like Steel Floor Obstructing the way, or Silver Will Evo Version. But others, like Fateful Confrontation or Till the Night of Glory, just don’t understand what made the songs work. I firmly believe P3R’s OST “gets” what made P3’s OST work, outside of the exceptions I made earlier.


It is disappointing as a longtime fan that Yumi is no longer the star of P3’s sound, but she is getting older. She was a chainsmoker for years, too. Look at the 2022 concert, she’s struggling. Shihoko Hirata, and Lotus Juice killed it in that concert. It’s sad, but Yumi’s been active since 1991. It’s understandable she cannot do it anymore, especially with the chainsmoking. The old versions still exist, my preferring the newer versions of the songs doesn’t mean I’m trying to revise history like some Backloggd Gamers would choose to believe Remake fans do. I love Yumi Kawamura, but time marches on, and I’m all for a new era of Persona 3.


That’s another thing that keeps popping up for me, coexistence. The OG and Reload can coexist. However, that doesn’t mean you’re obligated to play both. Such a stupid idea to gatekeep art. Those who like the original and dislike Reload can exist, same as those who like Reload and dislike/don’t want to play the OG. You don’t lose gamer privileges if you only play the remake. It’s up to you whether you want to play both or not. Same goes for reload. You don’t lose gamer privileges if you only play the original. Or both, you can like both too. Objectivity is a myth, so play what you like.

Anyway, I found the gameplay to be much improved in Reload. Tartarus is much more fun to explore with blocks feeling unique. Despite this, I found it quite hard to adjust to some of the later blocks, like Harabah. It was quite jarring at first but I got used to it. I love the depth added to the blocks, it really feels like a gigantic tower now. Hell, even the entrance to Tartarus compared to FES is insane. This is Tartarus done right. I played on Merciless and I found it a tad easy, except bosses. Maybe that’s just my MegaTen-addled brain speaking, but it really makes me want to play SMT Nocturne Hardtype for some ball busting challenge. I missed Megaten combat so much. I missed the element names, the buffs, the… everything. It really is peak gaming. The persona formula is always something that is so addicting, makes me wanna replay Golden and Royal right away, but I know I’m better off if I wait on those.


Presentation is another huge improvement. I’d mentioned how the portraits look washed out in the original, here they have much more vibrant colors. Not only that, but battle menus, UI, all of it is super beautiful. Reminiscent of Persona 5, but so clearly Persona 3 in its identity. The moon, the overwhelming amount of blue and green, it’s all so pretty. Battle presentation has also taken a huge leap in quality, with awesome Theurgy animations that encapsulate the personalities of the characters. Shift animations, cut-ins, All Out Attack animations and AOA finisher art. It’s just so fucking awesome, I don’t know what else to say.


Voice acting is also awesome, I prefer nearly every recast to the original. Like my friend Lemmers put it, Aigis and Yukari are both awesome recasts, I don’t see the issue people have with them. Ken and Shinji are both wonderfully recast. Shinji’s death in the OG wasn’t memorable for me, nor were either of the characters. But here, with better casting and direction, it got me to tear up. Ken is now one of my favorites because of his voice. Junpei is the star of the recasts, though. He can be so chill and friendly, yet also has such a deep resentment and rage to his voice at the flip of a coin. It’s such a good performance, and I absolutely hope he gets nominated at TGA for best VA. I don’t think a single voice actor is bad in Reload. The VA in reload has also made SLinks plenty more memorable.


I’d like to touch on a really neat part of the game for a bit. That being the atmosphere. Despite what I’ve seen online, I don’t think Reload is too bright, in fact the lighting shift that occurs in January hits even harder because of the way Iwatodai Dorm is lit normally. I never had an issue with it. Another thing is the general atmosphere in January. It’s a much more memorable time of the year than FES. It feels like a hazy daydream, especially with the Lo-Fi rendition of Memories of the School in the background. Almost similar to Royal’s third semester, except there isn’t anything actually wrong about the world itself here. Everything proceeds exactly as normal and it’s such a whiplash to the player. Every single one of these characters will die in a month, yet life must go on. You must study for tests, you must hang out with friends like normal, you must talk about where you’re going to college or if you’ll get a job. It’s a perfectly executed shift in atmosphere/tone and I think the whole game’s a lot more memorable for me. I remember more about Golden which I played back in 2019 than I do FES in 2022.

Now for the part everyone’s been waiting for, the story. It’s a very emotional and beautiful narrative, one I’ve become more and more attached to over time. Reload takes aspects of the movies, P3P, and FES to make it the most enthralling it’s ever been.Perhaps it can be said it didn’t hit me as hard when I first played it because I had already begun to close myself off from feelings. But it’s different now, and I’ve become a lot more familiar with the themes explored. Living for yourself, moving forward, overcoming dread, and of course, learning what it’s like to feel. I cried multiple times throughout, a feat I cannot credit FES or the movies with. It’s just a perfect narrative I think, and I’m super excited to see what theme P6 tackles next.


Somehow these games always reach me in the times I need them most, huh?

It's a really weird feeling that us "started-with-p5"s aren't going to be the newest members of the fanbase anymore. It's even weirder to think how the 14 year olds of now are discovering these games for the first time. A whole ass journey into one of, no, the best franchise in gaming awaiting them afterwards. I think there's something really... beautiful about this being someone's first MegaTen game. In 5 years, those 19 year olds'll be reminiscing on it the same as I do with P5, all the people they've met, how they grew and changed. It's a really nice feeling, at least for me, to think of these games as a benchmark of change. It feels like yesterday sometimes that I just beat Yaldabaoth, or that I met some of my friends for the first time. But I've grown quite substantially, even if I'm blinded by these feelings of inadequacy and guilt most of the time. I don't know where I'm gonna be when Persona 6 comes out, I don't even know who I'll be when Metaphor comes out later this year. I don't know if this guilt I feel will have subsided yet, but knowing that P6 will be there regardless, at some point in time, is very comforting. This franchise, specifically Persona, it's... home. I don't know how something so profound, having such a life changing effect on so many, could ever be seen as anything but beautiful. Perhaps I should be more grateful that I was deeply affected by it, rather than being fueled by hatred of those I don't understand, propping myself up by tearing others down.

It's funny in an ironic sense that some of the biggest proponents of "P3R soulless" seem to have missed the themes of the game. Someday, we’ll all die. It would do us all some good to uplift others. So why spend your life filled with negativity and hatred? You shouldn’t bring others down for preferring the remake or the original. For those who really want the original, they will play it. It’s not right to tear down those who just want to play Reload. I emulated FES because I wanted to play Persona 3 nearly 2 years ago. If you want the OG Persona 3 experience, you can find ways to have it. But that doesn’t make it right, let alone necessary, to shit on those who had the gall to prefer the remake. I, for one, will likely never go back to FES. But if you want to, go right ahead. Life is too short to not fill it with art that moves you.

Some days I woke up hating Persona 3 Reload, when just the night earlier I was having a blast climbing Tartarus. I don’t know if I can ever get this voice out of my head. But if I’ve learned anything from these past 7 months alone, from this game, it's that life is too short to cut off feeling emotions. Life is too short to give up trying to reclaim what I love. It will probably never be “the same” or “normal”, but everything’s constantly changing. Despite how much I romanticize the early days discovering of P5, I still had plenty of problems during that time, from the trauma, to the unsavory political views I had for a while(I’d rather not talk about that lol). My love for Megami Tensei and Persona was never static, it was always fluctuating when I found new games, like Nocturne and Strange Journey. So while I may never have another P5 honeymoon phase, and while I may be hurt, I still fucking love MegaTen. I still fucking love Persona. It just went away for a while, and I’m sure tomorrow it’ll go away again. But I owe it to myself to keep trying, to keep believing in myself until I can say I love them with confidence every single time. After all, it’s my life, so I gotta burn my dread, right? What more can I do but keep going?



With that, there’s one last thing to be said. Thank you to those who stuck with me when my actions didn’t really make sense. Thank you for trying to understand anyway, and supporting me when it did make sense. Thank you to those who stuck with me during the worst part of it, and for making the other side a little bit happier. You know who you are.

I want to play so many great JRPGs this year, so many great games in general, it’s so much nicer when I let myself be free like this. Stay tuned.