It doesn't work.
3 is a game that has a lot of idiosyncracies and quirks to it that allow it to stand out among not just other entries in its series, but JRPGs in general. The limitations and frictive elements reinforce how finite the experience is and encourage engagement with its time management systems. Reload, as I vaguely riffed on with my one sentence review before, largely strips the game of most of the charm and leaves me with a product that is perfectly competent and yet feels deeply artless.
Persona 3 back in 2006 was designed as a fresh reboot with a fresh set of eyes on the series as whole. It's a monumental game for Hashino and Soejima -- while it wasn't their first work on Atlus' games, the duo created something distinctly... theirs. Something about the complete lack of involvement of the original creative names behind the game, including the no-brainer inclusion of Shoji Meguro at minimum, puts a bad taste in my mouth. It's not even that I'm drunk off auteur worship and think a loving product can't be made with new hands. It's that... Persona 3 is not a new product. It's an old one with a lot of significance to Atlus' history.
Reload manages to take a step back on almost every mechanic established in the original as a purposeful statement. One of the most immediately noticeable is the removal of a functional tactics/AI system. Others have highlighted the flaccid, restrictive and ineffective system in the remake and how it's largely not a replacement for the experience on the PS2. Without getting too into details, I'd rather highlight the logic behind its design from Hashino himself.
Hashino: There are a lot of RPGs out there where you can control every aspect of your party members, including what kind of underwear they are wearing… but because we wanted the player to relate to the Hero more than any other character in “Persona 3”, we wanted the other characters to feel like “other people”.
Soejima: It was important to make that distinction. It helped to emphasize the concept of Social Links, and it also allowed us to show off the improved AI. It would have been extra cool if the party members had been completely free of player control, but we knew that would be pushing it a bit too far, so we gave the player control over their equipment at least.
Hashino: It’s true that we got some feedback stating that the party system was “too difficult” to control effectively, but I’ll honestly say that I don’t regret doing what we did with it. I’m glad we stuck to our guns on that one.
You don't have to love the mechanic in the original, there's room for criticism in how it was implemented and established. However, it helps no one to not understand the very purposeful thematic statements Hashino wished to express -- the individuality and independence of your comrades in SEES. Reload does not even attempt to improve upon and evolve these systems, but does away with them as if they're just worthless cruft and "clunk" that needs to be stripped away.
Similar frictive elements have been gutted, such as the fatigue system, the maze-like structure of Tartarus being morphed into wide, open spaces with no intrigue or rat-brain navigation, and a myriad of other changes adjusted for "modern sensibilities". Reload is explicitly designed to model after 5 and the philosophies and approaches that game established.
I think the frustration here comes less from Reload being a bad video game in isolation and moreso how frustrating a precedent it sets. I do not want to live in a world where older properties and works are reheated and find themselves homogenized with recent best-sellers.
3 is a game that has a lot of idiosyncracies and quirks to it that allow it to stand out among not just other entries in its series, but JRPGs in general. The limitations and frictive elements reinforce how finite the experience is and encourage engagement with its time management systems. Reload, as I vaguely riffed on with my one sentence review before, largely strips the game of most of the charm and leaves me with a product that is perfectly competent and yet feels deeply artless.
Persona 3 back in 2006 was designed as a fresh reboot with a fresh set of eyes on the series as whole. It's a monumental game for Hashino and Soejima -- while it wasn't their first work on Atlus' games, the duo created something distinctly... theirs. Something about the complete lack of involvement of the original creative names behind the game, including the no-brainer inclusion of Shoji Meguro at minimum, puts a bad taste in my mouth. It's not even that I'm drunk off auteur worship and think a loving product can't be made with new hands. It's that... Persona 3 is not a new product. It's an old one with a lot of significance to Atlus' history.
Reload manages to take a step back on almost every mechanic established in the original as a purposeful statement. One of the most immediately noticeable is the removal of a functional tactics/AI system. Others have highlighted the flaccid, restrictive and ineffective system in the remake and how it's largely not a replacement for the experience on the PS2. Without getting too into details, I'd rather highlight the logic behind its design from Hashino himself.
Hashino: There are a lot of RPGs out there where you can control every aspect of your party members, including what kind of underwear they are wearing… but because we wanted the player to relate to the Hero more than any other character in “Persona 3”, we wanted the other characters to feel like “other people”.
Soejima: It was important to make that distinction. It helped to emphasize the concept of Social Links, and it also allowed us to show off the improved AI. It would have been extra cool if the party members had been completely free of player control, but we knew that would be pushing it a bit too far, so we gave the player control over their equipment at least.
Hashino: It’s true that we got some feedback stating that the party system was “too difficult” to control effectively, but I’ll honestly say that I don’t regret doing what we did with it. I’m glad we stuck to our guns on that one.
You don't have to love the mechanic in the original, there's room for criticism in how it was implemented and established. However, it helps no one to not understand the very purposeful thematic statements Hashino wished to express -- the individuality and independence of your comrades in SEES. Reload does not even attempt to improve upon and evolve these systems, but does away with them as if they're just worthless cruft and "clunk" that needs to be stripped away.
Similar frictive elements have been gutted, such as the fatigue system, the maze-like structure of Tartarus being morphed into wide, open spaces with no intrigue or rat-brain navigation, and a myriad of other changes adjusted for "modern sensibilities". Reload is explicitly designed to model after 5 and the philosophies and approaches that game established.
I think the frustration here comes less from Reload being a bad video game in isolation and moreso how frustrating a precedent it sets. I do not want to live in a world where older properties and works are reheated and find themselves homogenized with recent best-sellers.
Parallax_M
1 month ago
I'm personally cautiously optimistic about the changes to the battle system since I always viewed the party control mechanic from the original P3 as sacrificing gameplay for increased immersion and uniqueness - which it certainly does - the battle system in the original P3 is undeniably very unique and fits perfectly with the design philosophy of the game. It also was a pain to use IMO and could make battles quite tedious at times. I never really viewed it as a somewhat inaccessible or archaic system that actually made the game better to play once you got used to it, which is how i would describe stuff like the movement and aiming in RE4 or the UI in the original system shock. So yeah unsure if I'll view P3R sacrificing immersion and uniqueness for the sake of gameplay as a successful trade off but curious to find out when i play the game at some point.