A couple of weeks ago I finally wrapped up Persona 3 Reload. This was one of my most anticipated games of this year. I’m happy to say that it was everything that I was expecting.
Story
I really like the story of Persona 3. I definitely would consider it my favorite in the series. Playing through it again only solidified that opinion. As per the usual with the Persona series you’ll be playing as a second year student that is transferring to Gekkoukan High. Stepping off the train at your stop, you’re immediately greeted by a bizarre sight. How will the rest of your story unfold?
Combat
The combat is like all other Persona games, turn based. The only difference between Reload and the original Persona 3 and Persona 3 FES is that you can control your party characters. In the original game you could not directly control party members. There have been some changes to combat with the addition of Theurgy attacks and Shifting.
Shifting essentially works like like the baton pass. If you get a critical hit or strike an enemies weakness, you can let another character attack without them using their turn. This adds a new way to strategize in combat. The other new addition are Theurgy attacks. Each character has a Theurgy attack that can deal a lot of damage to an enemy or enemies. To use the attack each character has a gauge they need to fill up during combat. Each character has different conditions for filling their gauge. Yukari’s gauge fills up quicker when you heal teammates as opposed to Mitsuru’s where hers fills up faster when inflicting status effects. These attacks will also ignore enemy resistances and deal great damage.
Finisher screens were also added into the game. These were first implemented in Persona 5 and are also in Persona 5 Royal. There are some other new additions, but I’ll let you discover those yourself.
New Dialogue
If you’ve played the original, it’s not going to be an exact one to one with nothing new. New dialog and side story content has been added. You can now spend time with your teammates and learn more about them. Each character has several events. I highly recommend doing these hangout like events as you learn some more about the characters, especially the ones that don’t have social links like Junpei and Akihiko.
Music
The music features remixes of the original songs. There are also new songs that were made for this game. I enjoyed the remixes as well as the new songs that they made. Both songs included below are new for this game.
Persona Changes
There have been some changes to Persona in Reload. These changes were made obviously since there have been two more entries after 3. New Personas have been added that were not in the original. These were added from Persona 4 and 5. Some Personas have had their weaknesses and resistances tweaked to account for the new stats from the later games. New skills have also been added like Eiha. Be sure to double check personas since their weaknesses might have changed. There are also some new skills added that I don’t remember being in the original.
Social Links
When I first played Persona 3 I isn’t have the chance to go through a lot of the social links. After playing reload and going back through, I enjoyed a good portion of them. I had no idea how much I missed out on when I first played Persona 3 years ago. I highly encourage doing as many as you can. Just like in the other games some social links require you to either reach a certain point in the story or meet specific requirements in order to access them. Make sure you’re raising your social stats.
What Almost Made me Cry: Spoilers
As I mentioned earlier there is some added dialog and hangout events for characters. One of these characters, Shinjiro , has a side story revolving around Mitsuru and Akihiko attempting to get him to return to school. After you finish all his hangout events it’s still unknown if he’ll return to school. Unfortunately he is killed by Takaya during the story. After his death the chairmen asks you to help go through his room. In one of his drawers there is a completed form showing his intention for him to return to school. That scene hit hard since I didn’t expect it at all.
Final Thoughts
I think that this was a great remake. Atlus did a great job keeping the feel of the original while adding more content for several characters. This honestly made me want to play the game again. Before reload came out I had only completed Persona 3 once. This is rare for me since I’ve finished 4 and 5 at least two times each. For me, with the modernization I would definitely recommend this version to people looking to play Persona 3 for the first time. Thank you all for reading!
Confused on the different versions of Persona 3? I have wrote a post about the different versions: https://thegamerwithglasses.blog/what-version-of-persona-3-should-you-play/
Fantastic!
Atlus did a great job remaking Persona 3. I loved the new content that they added in. I would definitely recommend this game!