- Pronouns
- She/Her
As the first game in the “new era” of Persona, where the old RPG template was thrown out in favour of a new mix between dungeon-crawling, turn-based battles and a sort of social life sim, Persona 3 introduced us to a silent protagonist, a giant tower and a boarding school when it released back in 2006 on the PlayStation 2.
The game saw two additional releases and versions after its release - Persona 3 FES and Persona 3 Portable. Persona 3 Reload, then, is a from-the-ground-up remake of the original Persona 3, with enhanced graphics and UI and QoL improvements and so much more. Persona 3 Reload is a chance for both new and old fans of the series to experience the original Persona 3 without the restrictions of old hardware.
The story of Persona 3 centers around the Dark Hour, the hidden hour between midnight and the next day. You play as a student who enrolls at the boarding school of Gekkoukan, where he gets acquainted with a group of peers that make up an organization called SEES. (Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad)
During the Dark Hour, ordinary people get turned into myserious and eerie coffins, but somehow the members of SEES are able to retain consciousness during the Dark Hour, so they take it upon themselves to investigate this strange phenomenon. The Dark Hour also turns Gekkoukan into an enormous, labyrinthine tower called Tartarus, which is crawling with the enemies of the game, shadows. In other words, this is a mystery worthy of any special squad to solve.
SEES make up the central cast of Persona 3. Initially, the group contains Yukari, a popular girl that is mostly cheerful but not afraid to get sarcastic; Mitsuru, a member of the school council that is overconfident but hides a softer exterior; Ken, who is very intelligent for his age; Junpei, who is goofy but also sort of immature; Shinjiro, whose past tends to weigh him down which can cause him to put up an act; and finally, the upper-classman Akihiko.
The pulsating heart of Persona 3 is the dynamic between the imposing and dangerous nighttime, which centers around Tartarus, and the cosy and comfy daytime, which centers around Gekkoukan High School and its surroundings, Tatsumi Port Island. This dynamic between the two aspects of the game is what makes up the DNA of the modern Persona formula.
In school and after school, time management is essential. You can do tasks like doing homework or after-school activities to improve your skills - such as "academics" and "courage" - and you can go to the town’s shopping district to gear up for the following night in Tartarus. But you’re also free to just not do anything at all, and either go back to the dormitories early or just talk to people and chill.
You can also use your free time to get closer to your friends. Spend an afternoon in the sunlight with Yukari, for example, or have noodles with Akihiko. This will fill up your so-called Social Links, which in turn boosts your ability to fuse new Personas, your way of battling shadows.
Social Links are effective to boost your abilities during combat, but they are most of all imperative in fleshing out the game’s story and characters. Time well spent during these moments serve as opportunities to get to know your friends more, and they give you opportunities to learn more about what motivates, fears and delights them. Managing your schedule appropriately, you can choose who to spend time with after school, allowing you to choose which bond you want to deepen and which characters you want to get to know better.
The dungeon-crawling and RPG-battling of Persona 3 takes place in one massive dungeon, the previously mentioned Tartarus. It's a dark and foreboding place, and as the story progresses, SEES continues to climb, climb and climb, all in order to get closer to the mystery surrounding the Dark Hour.
Battles against countless shadows takes place here, battles that take the form of turn-based combat with a focus on elemental weaknesses. In vanilla P3, the floors of Tartarus generally consisted of plain and unremarkable hallways, occasionally interrupted by staircases that took you to the next floor. Tartarus has hundreds of floors, and there are some floors with bosses, and some floors locked behind story progression. In both vanillla P3 and Reload, the floors are procedurally generated.
A character can attack, guard or use their Personas in battle. The Personas are what allows you to use magic, and by using magic, you can find out a shadow’s weak point, which triggers an additional round for you. Knocking out all enemies with elemental weaknesses triggers the series' signature All-Out-Attack, where you and your allies rush in to whack the shadows into oblivion.
Outside of battles, you have the ability to fuse and equip various Personas, who each have a unique set of spells. Personas are acquired in a variety of ways, with one of them being from cards drawn after a battle in something called Shuffle Time. You can fuse and equip a number of Personas depending on which level you are. The fusions take place in a designated area, the velvet room, where you will meet a series mainstay, the sinister man Igor.
The Personas are all connected to Social Links in the way that they are categorized into the arcanas of the Tarot card table, (Fool, Lovers, Chariot, Hermit, Justice, etc..) which consists of 20 Tarot cards. So for example, you can obtain a Persona that is a Fortune Persona, and the character Keisuke belongs to the Fortune arcana, so spending time with Keisuke and maxing out that Social Link will make your abilities to fuse Fortune Personas stronger and more potent. Same goes for Chariot Personas and the character with the Chariot Social Link, and a Strength Persona and the character that has the Strength Social Link and so on.
Being a thorough remake and overhaul of Persona 3, Reload naturally brings with it a lot of changes beyond just making the environments richer, more detailed and more lived in. A ton of changes regarding combat, story, the UI and other areas have been implemented in order to drastically improve upon the original.
However, since its unveiling, Reload discourse has been circling a lot around what the remake actually doesn’t do. In the previous two versions of Persona 3 - Portable and FES - there were changes and additions made for those versions, which includes the female protagonist (otherwise known as FeMC) who had Social Links for male party members introduced in Portable, and there was as an epilogue episode called The Answer introduced in FES. These are all absent in Reload.
Changes to gameplay and combat
Tartarus, where all of the battles in Persona 3 takes place, has received several changes and tweaks. The floors are now distinct from one another, where a lot of floors has their own visual theme, as opposed to the drab and samey ones in vanilla P3.
In Tartarus, you can now find so-called twilight fragments, which are keys needed to unlock chests for rewards. There are also breakable objects that you can open up for more minor rewards. Additionally and most importantly, party members now occasionally converse with each other. These are all changes made to spice up the exploration of Tartarus significantly, in order to make it more rewarding than tedious to explore.
Combat has been altered in several significant ways as well. Two major things have been added to combat: the Shift, and Thaurgy. Shifting is where you receive an additional turn when you manage to hit a shadow’s elemental weakness, and you will then be able to pass on your extra turn to another party member. Thaurgy is a Limit Break-esque battle mechanic that has a meter that gradually fills when you’re attacking and guarding. When the meter is filled up, a character can fire up a powerful attack that deals devastating damage. Also, you can now control all your party members in battle, something that wasn’t possible in vanilla P3, and this will prove essential for you to properly manage spells and take down shadows.
A thing that impacted both combat and Tartarus exploration in vanilla P3 was the Fatigue system. If you explored too much of Tartarus, the characters would grow tired, and you would be unable to explore Tartarus the following night. Fatigue has been completely removed in Reload.
Changes to the characters and the story
Major steps have been taken to flesh out and expand the game’s characters. While no significant changes have been made to the Social Links present in vanilla P3, Reload is introducing a new social element called “Link Episodes”. These are tasks and quests that serves as additional story and character moments. Link Episodes are available for every SEES member, as well as a lot of other more minor characters, people such as Shidori, Takaya and Ryoji. (A tip for the Link Episodes is to do them as soon as possible, since they’re only available temporarily) The Social Links in vanilla P3 had a break system. If you would pick the wrong dialogue option during a Social Link, the character would get hurt or upset, and the Social Link would be permanently locked from further progression. This has been removed in Reload.
There are now new dormitory activities. You can cook to make items useful for exploring, you can chat with residents and rent movies. Also, the game introduces a brand-new area called the Mangastar Net Café, where you can spend time, which can further boost your stats.
Additionally, the English localization has a completely new voice cast. There are now much more voice lines in the game, as well as full voice acting for every Social Link, something that wasn’t the case in vanilla P3. And finally, a transphobic dialogue that was present in vanilla P3 has been altered in both the English and Japanese script.
Minor changes and the UI
Several quality-of-life changes has been made to Reload to make the experience smoother to play. Story objectives now appear on the screen, and there are mission markers as well as a more fleshed out map. There is also a new rewind feature, which lets you travel back to up to 2 days back if you aren't happy with how a specific event played out, and the teleportation system in Tartarus has been made more forgiving.
The user interface of the game has also received an overhaul, and is now much more vivid and detailed, leaning heavily into the blue tones that has become signature for Persona 3's style.
Aside from all aforementioned changes, there are several smaller changes that has been made to shuffle time, the velvet room, and more.
Lastly, the soundtrack has been revamped, with new remixes and even a brand new battle track. The sountrack is energetic, and has a hip-hop flair to it that helps it stand out from other entries in the series.
(Unfortunately, Wiping All Out, the GOAT Persona banger, is not in the game)
Persona 3: Reload comes in various editions. Aside from buying it either physically or digitally on available platforms, the game has a Digital Deluxe Edition, a Digital Premium Edition, a Limited Box and the collector's Aigis Edition.
The Digital Deluxe edition comes with a digital artbook and soundtrack.
The Digital Premium edition comes with the artbook, the soundtrack and the Persona 3 Reload DLC Pack, which includes all purchasable additional content for the game: The P5R Phantom Thieves Costume Set, the P5R Shujin Academy Costume Set, the P5R Persona Set 1, the P5R Persona Set 2, the P5R BGM Set, the P4G Yasogami High Costume Set and the P4G Persona Set.
The Aigis Edition comes with the physical artbook, soundtrack, all DLC items and an Aigis figure.
The Limited Box also comes with a physical artbook, soundtrack all DLC items, and a SEES armband.
Did they fix Tartarus?
The most significant overhaul Reload does to Tartarus is visual: Floors are now visually distinct, and stands out from one another. Additional elements like the locked chests and twilight fragments have been added. Reload also removes the fatigue system from vanilla P3, where characters would get too tired if they explored too much of Tartarus, which caused them to suffer status penalties.
But no, Tartarus might not be "fixed" in the way that many people had hoped for. It is still a massive tower with hundreds of floors, and it's still dungeon-crawling in the truest sense of the word. Players who are going in expecting a varied, interconnected and constantly surprising dungeon experience are going to come out disappointed, and if you thought Mementos was by far the worst part of Persona 5, you're probably out of luck.
So, the transphobic beach scene has been altered?
Yes. There was a transphobic scene in vanilla P3 that took place on a beach which included an egregious line of dialogue where a character talks to a woman and makes a transphobic comment about her that is played for a joke. Instead, the scene is about a lady trying to sell them sunscreen, which at the very least removes the trans panic from the scene. There are still aspects of Persona 3 that can cause discomfort, such as the infamous summoning method (shooting yourself in the head) as well as some dialogue some might find uncomfortable, including boy's club behaviour stemming from Junpei first and foremost.
Are the Social Links different?
Largely, the Social Links are the same. With the FeMC not included in the game, that means that there's no Social Links for male party members, (Whose character developments are now completely tied to Linked Episodes) only the female ones, all who can end up in romantic relationships when they get maxed out. But unlike in vanilla P3, the romances are now optional. The ability to break and permanently lock out Social Links is gone, but there's still the possibility for a Social Link to be "reversed" if you say or do the wrong thing, which causes the Social Link to stall until a certain condition can be met.
Is Reload coming to Switch or Switch 2?
At this point, speculation and a very vague interview answer is all we have. A leaker has said that Atlus is holding out for Switch 2 for a release, but it's just a rumour. Maybe a port is coming, further down the line. Maybe it's on Switch, or it's too late and it will come to Switch 2. Or maybe not. Who knows.
What are the recommended specs for PC?
Widows 10 or higher, Intel Core i5-2300 or FX-4350 or higher, 8GB RAM or higher, and GeForce GTX 650 Ti or higher.
And once and for all, what are the differences between what is now FOUR different versions of Persona 3?
The four different versions are Persona 3 (vanilla P3) which released on PlayStation 2 in 2006, Persona 3 Portable, released on the PSP in 2009, (and ported to modern platforms about a year ago) Persona 3 FES which was released on PSN for the PS3 in 2012, and now, Persona 3 Reload, which releases tomorrow on modern platforms. Persona 3 FES is most notable for having dozens of hours of additional content, most of which is contained in an epilogue called The Answer. It also has some minor new content, like a Social Link for Aigis, new Personas and new quests.
Persona 3 Portable is a version of Persona 3 for the PSP, which is much more constrained in scope: rather than being able to move around freely, you interact with the world via a visual novel-style, point-and-click interface. It also has the option to choose between the male or female protagonist, each with their own different Social Links and romance options. Persona 3 Reload is a remake of vanilla P3 for modern platforms, with lots of new and altered content.
Reviews dropped earlier this week, and Reload now sits at a metascore of 89. People have been praising the care and craft that went into the game, while also addressing the lack of The Answer and the FeMC route and its Social Links.
Persona 3 Reload critic reviews
Metacritic aggregates music, game, tv, and movie reviews from the leading critics. Only Metacritic.com uses METASCORES, which let you know at a glance how each item was reviewed.
www.metacritic.com
Persona 3 Reload Reviews
Persona 3 Reload is rated 'Mighty' after being reviewed by 125 critics, with an overall average score of 87. It's ranked in the top 2% of games and recommended by 96% of critics.
opencritic.com
Read this!
Before we get discussing about Persona 3 Reload, some important things needs to be said regarding this game's creator and the series as a whole. The Persona series are known for containing elements of queerphobic nature, with harmful stereotypes and offensive scenes, something that relates to the series’ figurehead Katsura Hashino, who is known for harbouring highly queerphobic, anti-LGBT+ and bigoted views that sometimes reflects in his games.
What needs to be taken into account for this thread to carry on is that it is perfectly valid to raise concerns, voice discomfort and post critique about the Persona series and Hashino, which needs to be taken seriously and not be met with diminishing, patronising or handwaving posts. It is simply not acceptable to talk down to people who don’t like Persona for perfectly valid reasons. And it is not tolerable to forgive and downplay examples of queerphobia in the series or in any of Hashino’s works. Do not ignore or dismiss the issues that the Persona series can have with these topics. While it's true that the transphobic beach scene has been altered in Reload, it doesn't absolve the game from scrutiny. Alongside talking about and discussing this game's story, gameplay, setting and so on in a positive manner, a space like this ST is also a valid ground for critique to be voiced and discussed. Please keep this in mind going forward.
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