• Hey everyone, staff have documented a list of banned content and subject matter that we feel are not consistent with site values, and don't make sense to host discussion of on Famiboards. This list (and the relevant reasoning per item) is viewable here.
  • Do you have audio editing experience and want to help out with the Famiboards Discussion Club Podcast? If so, we're looking for help and would love to have you on the team! Just let us know in the Podcast Thread if you are interested!

StarTopic Persona 3 Reload |ST| Tart"Я"Us (Read OP before posting)

In early July now, and oooh some plot and backstory! Even knowing as little as I do now, I can see this getting way darker the way some of these (very) small tidbits seem to be hinting
 
Found something interesting about the Moon Social Link, if you don't start it before the start of the vacations it won't appear during it.

0b681ede-3ba3-4de9-8a60-cab94b5b557c.png

773f28d6-ae85-435a-aa88-aa4c1f10ed4d.png

I'm glad I made a save during the last day of school to try this, I tried find more information about the availibility of this social link and I didn't found something useful.
 
I'm only in September, but I wanted to bring up something very cool.

Persona openings are generally excellent, but I felt the one small issue is that Full Moon Full Life didn't hit as hard for me compared to others. That said, listen to the full version on the soundtrack:

It honestly might be my favorite Persona opening song, and I didn't expect it. They cooked with the original music in Reload.
 
I never played the original, but I'm really enjoying this on gamepass. I played the heck out of Persona 5 in 2017, this seems more focused and grounded in comparison (outside of one parricular 10 second anime cutscene that was lame). I like Tartarus a lot more than the palaces/memntos too I think. The game is definitely a looker on an OLED TV.
 
The more I play Reload (mid-August) right now, the more it's destroying my "all 3 modern Personas are equally good for different reasons."

It's really doing the most to edge out Royal in many (but not all) aspects.
 
Aurelia said:
The more I play Reload (mid-August) right now, the more it's destroying my "all 3 modern Personas are equally good for different reasons."

It's really doing the most to edge out Royal in many (but not all) aspects.
Click to expand...
I think I'm going to end up ranking P3R above P4G, I am really liking it a lot. That said both of those are significantly below P5R for me still. 5, and Royal in particular, just does so many things that I feel are improvements over them and (especially) lean more into things that I personally like better, mostly the dungeons and overall plot structure and how much detail is in everything. There's just nothing that hits like the P5R dungeons do to me. Not just in other Persona games, but really any other RPG I can think of period.
 
SammyJ9 said:
I think I'm going to end up ranking P3R above P4G, I am really liking it a lot. That said both of those are significantly below P5R for me still. 5, and Royal in particular, just does so many things that I feel are improvements over them and (especially) lean more into things that I personally like better, mostly the dungeons and overall plot structure and how much detail is in everything. There's just nothing that hits like the P5R dungeons do to me. Not just in other Persona games, but really any other RPG I can think of period.
Click to expand...

All quality points but I think the hard deviation and opinion comes from the fact that I really like Tartarus and actually enjoyed Mementos more than I enjoyed Palaces. But it all depends on what you're looking for during your fighting segments.
 
Aurelia said:
All quality points but I think the hard deviation and opinion comes from the fact that I really like Tartarus and actually enjoyed Mementos more than I enjoyed Palaces. But it all depends on what you're looking for during your fighting segments.
Click to expand...
I can definitely see that! I usually have a strong dislike for randomly-generated dungeons and the sort of repetitive floors in games like this one and P4, though. I was fine with Mementos as a companion to palaces - sort of a nice side area to go do some side quests and get some combat in in long stretches between palaces - but without the actual 'meat' of a big dungeon to go along with them they just don't work for me nearly as well.

I find myself wishing that some of the places you go in this game during the Full Moons like (spoilers up through July in P3R) the train station/train and the love hotel had been expanded out into much larger crafted dungeons. I think that could've worked really well, although retooling things to that extent would be a lot of work.

But I know that's just my personal preference, and the different designs and features of Tartarus as you get more into it are pretty cool.
 
Played a ton yesterday, I'm on 7/27 now, currently exploring Tartarus. And I'm not really sure how to feel about the third block. I was getting a little tired of the look of Arqa but this block feels very confusing to navigate, and I'm not digging the music for it either. But I appreciate the variety at least.
 
KilgoreWolfe said:
Played a ton yesterday, I'm on 7/27 now, currently exploring Tartarus. And I'm not really sure how to feel about the third block. I was getting a little tired of the look of Arqa but this block feels very confusing to navigate, and I'm not digging the music for it either. But I appreciate the variety at least.
Click to expand...
The music is interesting - it seems to slightly add instrumentation and little bits with each further block you go to, but it's a very slow buildup. I liked the music in the "doorway" where the special clock is a lot, it seems like it's the final version of the music track? Maybe sort of a preview of a much later floor?
 
SammyJ9 said:
The music is interesting - it seems to slightly add instrumentation and little bits with each further block you go to, but it's a very slow buildup. I liked the music in the "doorway" where the special clock is a lot, it seems like it's the final version of the music track? Maybe sort of a preview of a much later floor?
Click to expand...
I think the final block's variation of the music works very well, it's honestly among my favorite dungeon themes from the series because of the buildup before hand. Honestly my only major complaint is that I wish we could've played other Persona dungeon music in prior floors. Literally just adding the option would've been a godsend, but oh well.
 
I genuinely cannot stress this enough:

Spoilers for September-October in Persona 3: Do Shinjiro's side story in September. It unlocks an additional scene after the events of October 4th that is making me a sobbing mess

Outside of that, the fact that I'm playing a remake to a game that I know inside and out and still getting hit like a truck in spite of my knowledge is so damn commendable.
 
SoldierDelta said:
I think the final block's variation of the music works very well, it's honestly among my favorite dungeon themes from the series because of the buildup before hand. Honestly my only major complaint is that I wish we could've played other Persona dungeon music in prior floors. Literally just adding the option would've been a godsend, but oh well.
Click to expand...
Honestly surprised that wasn’t a $4.99 DLC given Atlus’s penchant for doing that in previous games (and FES had this option too).
 
shoptroll said:
Honestly surprised that wasn’t a $4.99 DLC given Atlus’s penchant for doing that in previous games (and FES had this option too).
Click to expand...
It's a surprise, to the extent where I don't know if I should be annoyed or happy. Weird company.

Like... would it have hurt to be able to play stuff like Secret Laboratory, Heaven, Hollow Forest, Price, Mementos Depths, Whims of Fate, Ark, When My Mother Was There or Gentle Madman? Like... they're good pieces of music...

Oh well, it's Atlus thus they Atlus.
 
SoldierDelta said:
I genuinely cannot stress this enough:

Spoilers for September-October in Persona 3: Do Shinjiro's side story in September. It unlocks an additional scene after the events of October 4th that is making me a sobbing mess

Outside of that, the fact that I'm playing a remake to a game that I know inside and out and still getting hit like a truck in spite of my knowledge is so damn commendable.
Click to expand...
The Shinjiro Linked Episode has been very good. Honestly I liked more than his social link with the FeMC.
 
5 was my first entry into the series and I was completely blown away with the gameplay and aesthetics. It was, to this day the most stylish game I've ever played. It would have been my first JRPG I played all the way through since FFX and the moment I rolled credits I ran through it again.

I loved everything about the game, I wanted to get my hands on P4 Golden straight away but the asking price for a Vita at the time put me off, so my introduction to that was through the original P4 animation. I fell in love with the characters and pulled the trigger on a Vita and Golden and played all the way through it.

I found with my P4G playthrough that although I loved the characters and the story (more so than 5) the gameplay was a bit jarring to me as it lacked the polish that Persona 5 had. Also found that in P4G I max ranked all my Investigation teams to 10 as soon as I could and besides Nanako and Dojima I didnt really actively try the others. I blame this attitude to social links on the animations minimal time put into them.

So, now time for 3. About 11hrs in. Really enjoying it so far, I never played the original on Ps2 or PSP but any game which leans on what P5 did to improve the series I'm all for.

The lack of party social links is a bit different for me, but it's my understanding that at the least the female members of SEES become one? The Social links I've engaged with so far are interesting, without anyone standing out thus far, though I am, at best rank four or five with them.

On the social links also it seems that unlike P5 there is no pay off for leveling up a social link outside of progressing their story.

The music is great, I don't have the original to compare it too but it's almost as good as 5. The track at night is a banger.

Looking forward to putting more time into it.
 
0
Just gotten into October just before the full moon mission and this has been awesome so far.
I was a little worried heading into the game that they wouldn't quite understand what made the original special or the new content would focus on certain character tropes like the spin offs like to do but I've been pleasantly surprised by how much care and attention to detail they put into this

The new linked episodes have been great, they've done a great job of fleshing out characters like Shinjiro and Ken, hinting towards what lies underneath their surface. I've loved the night time hangouts as well like watching the drama series with Yukari and seeing her find inspiration in the kind and strong female protagonist and reading Yakuza novels with Aigis has been fun too.

Ultimately what I've loved most about revisiting P3 so far is just the reminder of how much Yukari is my favourite character ever. It took a little bit to get used to Heather's performance of her having spent so long attached to Michelle's performance but her Social Link being fully voiced has meant Heather has gotten to perform some of the softer side of Yukari and I think she nails that side of her really well. But yeah going through that Social Link again and experiencing her night time hangouts as well as her general story stuff and it's just yeah, I have never related to a character more than I do with her and it's been incredible going through that with a new lens
 
I’m in early August and I have yet to start a Linked Episode, I think? What triggers them? Is it related to the guys calling you to hang out at night?


wiill64 said:
Just gotten into October just before the full moon mission and this has been awesome so far.
I was a little worried heading into the game that they wouldn't quite understand what made the original special or the new content would focus on certain character tropes like the spin offs like to do but I've been pleasantly surprised by how much care and attention to detail they put into this

The new linked episodes have been great, they've done a great job of fleshing out characters like Shinjiro and Ken, hinting towards what lies underneath their surface. I've loved the night time hangouts as well like watching the drama series with Yukari and seeing her find inspiration in the kind and strong female protagonist and reading Yakuza novels with Aigis has been fun too.

Ultimately what I've loved most about revisiting P3 so far is just the reminder of how much Yukari is my favourite character ever. It took a little bit to get used to Heather's performance of her having spent so long attached to Michelle's performance but her Social Link being fully voiced has meant Heather has gotten to perform some of the softer side of Yukari and I think she nails that side of her really well. But yeah going through that Social Link again and experiencing her night time hangouts as well as her general story stuff and it's just yeah, I have never related to a character more than I do with her and it's been incredible going through that with a new lens
Click to expand...

Awesome to hear. Always nice to experience your favourite character in a new way. I’m happy for you!
 
Irene said:
I’m in early August and I have yet to start a Linked Episode, I think? What triggers them? Is it related to the guys calling you to hang out at night?
Click to expand...
Oh if you check your messages you'll sometimes find ones from the likes of Junpei and Akihiko asking if you want to hang out
Also when you're on the map screen there will be areas with !! above them which signify there's a character there that can have a linked episode hang out and the character themselves will have it too
In September I've had some triggered by messages from Mitsuru asking me to check in on Ken as well so the best thing is to keep an eye on your messages from characters you wouldn't normally get messages from
 
I finished the Devil and the Tower SL during September. Good thing you have all those new activities to hang out with your party and unlock some traits.

Ah, and I guess I should be studying to impress later a senpai :p
 
0
wiill64 said:
Oh if you check your messages you'll sometimes find ones from the likes of Junpei and Akihiko asking if you want to hang out
Also when you're on the map screen there will be areas with !! above them which signify there's a character there that can have a linked episode hang out and the character themselves will have it too
In September I've had some triggered by messages from Mitsuru asking me to check in on Ken as well so the best thing is to keep an eye on your messages from characters you wouldn't normally get messages from
Click to expand...
Are there very many of these? I'm in late July and I think I've only had the option to do two of them - one each with Junpei and Akihiko.
 
SammyJ9 said:
Are there very many of these? I'm in late July and I think I've only had the option to do two of them - one each with Junpei and Akihiko.
Click to expand...
They're slow to begin with and then once Koromaru, Ken, and Shinjiro join they become more frequent
 
So the entire mini-arc with Junpei in early July feels... really pointless and out of nowhere? He just kind of suddenly gets an inferiority complex and is bitter and resentful toward the PC for being so good at everything and is a pain about it for like a week and then after exams and the beach trip is announced he's randomly fine again and apologizes? I get what they were going for - and thankfully it was short-lived - but it also feels very abrupt. Maybe they do more with it later on and this was just the seed for things to come, but it still felt pretty jarring to me.
 
SammyJ9 said:
So the entire mini-arc with Junpei in early July feels... really pointless and out of nowhere? He just kind of suddenly gets an inferiority complex and is bitter and resentful toward the PC for being so good at everything and is a pain about it for like a week and then after exams and the beach trip is announced he's randomly fine again and apologizes? I get what they were going for - and thankfully it was short-lived - but it also feels very abrupt. Maybe they do more with it later on and this was just the seed for things to come, but it still felt pretty jarring to me.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that felt really out of place to me too. I'm glad it was brief.
 
0
I think I'm doing good with my Social Links, this is all my progress at October 22. The only thing I'm worrying is if I max out my academics for late November... or before the final exams of the second semester.

P310220.png
persona3reload1022.jpg


It's a shame the Dating Site Note software is not available yet, otherwise I would have finished all my social links at this point lol
 
0
Damn, some of you are way ahead of me. I'm in early June, and really vibing with this game. The art style, the music and the game loop. Going to school with these interesting teachers, everyday life like going Karaoke or the Arcade, meeting your social links, and sometimes I just go around the citing while enjoying the music.
The social links might not be as fleshed out as the ones in P5 and don't have gameplay perks, but it's very much worth it going through their stories. The answers the protagonist can give range from "I would say the exact thing" to "You're the biggest asshole ever", and that counts as a huge plus in my book. I did spend a lot of time with the elderly couple, the track team, Tomochika and Odagiri, but I improved my stats and can now see Bebe and the Gourmet King.

Tartarus as a randomly generated dungeon is also not really an issue to me, and the mix with the social sim part of the game work perfectly well. Yes, and someone mentioned it already here, you can go through a section of it in 2 days and then it's just there to get new personas and some items.

Did I mention the music? I love Color Your Night, Full Moon, Full Life is one of my favorite openings and It's Going Down Now one of the best battle music.
 
Voicing the social links adds so much to the game. I never cared for characters like Bebe before, but putting a voice to him helps so much.

Just unlocked the dorm activities, which seem pretty neat. Dunno why it took so long to unlock them though, given how dry the nighttime period is for the first couple months.
 
One thing I'm noticing so far is just how many more enemies don't seem to have weaknesses as opposed to most other SMT/Persona games. Maybe I'm exaggerating but it feels like a lot more than usual - I just fought a weakness-less magic powerhouse floor guardian on floor ~83ish that was pretty rough.
 
0
Another reason this game needs to be on Switch: I was just wrapping up Tartarus on floor 91, beating the two floor guardians and then going through the Monad Passage, and got to the final fight at the end - and my power went out for an hour. Ugh. I guess time to see what kind of auto save I get?
 
SammyJ9 said:
Another reason this game needs to be on Switch: I was just wrapping up Tartarus on floor 91, beating the two floor guardians and then going through the Monad Passage, and got to the final fight at the end - and my power went out for an hour. Ugh. I guess time to see what kind of auto save I get?
Click to expand...

There is no auto save.
 
Aurelia said:
There is no auto save.
Click to expand...
You’re right. Welp. It’s not a ton of progress lost, but it is really damn annoying especially since I was on the fourth of four mini-bosses with no save chance between. I had hoped that there was some kind of hidden auto save kind of like how the game saves at every time change for the Rewind feature, but no. That’s only for in-game and I assume only when the time of day changes.
 
I had to sacrifice my Christmas Eve date so I can hang out with the senpai artist. I'm honestly fearing I can't complete all the social links. I hope the last round of Linked Episodes are in the night x_x
 
0
I'm on 10/2 now, really hoping I can finish before FFVII Rebirth comes out. But this has been a great time, I'm really falling in love with this game.

That said, while overall I don't mind the new mixes of the songs (and the new songs are flat out fantastic), I did listen to the original version of Master of Tartarus and... yeah, Reload's version is a downgrade.

Mind you, I still quite enjoy the new version, but the original is just so much better.
 
0
Thunder84 said:
Voicing the social links adds so much to the game. I never cared for characters like Bebe before, but putting a voice to him helps so much.
Click to expand...
I've straight up ignored his Social Link back in P3 Fes and Portable.

Now he's my favorite outside of the girls (who all obviously get more screen time and effort into their social links). Such a good friend.
 
I finally met Aigis, and survived the beach episode! It… wasn’t too awful. Junpei is obnoxious as expected, but at least he gets constantly dunked on through the whole thing. But I did miss having a character who’s off in his own world, like Yusuke and his lobster in P5.
 
0
I'm about 22 hours into this so far, decided to give it a shot to see how much my feelings have changed with time and the remade stuff. I've hit a point in my life where fast paced dungeon crawling is the main thing keeping me going on this one. I actually am still stuck in the place of really wanting to vibe with the day life/social sim stuff cause it is pretty cute, but then I keep getting blindsided by incel tier writing or things being overly leering when girls are involved. I want to say it's not that often I have to kinda roll my eyes at it, but it's more than I want to. Then the social links in general feel pretty darn padded out and short all things considered, just not well written still. I wish the remake had bothered to try and fix this, but I guess it wasn't a priority to do too many writing touch ups outside of like Operation Babe Hunt tier issues.
 
Decided to do the bad ending to end the game early, and to make a new game plus. I had the old man from the bookstore diying in Tartarus because I skipped the dialogues when Elizabeth called me to warn me, I thought it was just some random NPCs again lmao.

I'm not sure if I would have been able to do all social links anyway.

Anyway, the bad ending is so good. Really depressing stuff. It's funny how they always make the bad endings worthwile to watch.
 
0
I feel like I’m somewhat losing steam on this game. I just got to summer school in mid-August but like… man the plot has still barely moved. It showed signs of life with the beach trip and getting some backstory, but then went right back to nothing much happening. I did just get a few new social links so that’s something, but I feel like I’m still waiting for things to really kick into gear. I’ll keep plugging away, though! I wanted to finish this before Unicorn Overlord but I’m not sure that’s going to happen.
 
SammyJ9 said:
I feel like I’m somewhat losing steam on this game. I just got to summer school in mid-August but like… man the plot has still barely moved. It showed signs of life with the beach trip and getting some backstory, but then went right back to nothing much happening. I did just get a few new social links so that’s something, but I feel like I’m still waiting for things to really kick into gear. I’ll keep plugging away, though! I wanted to finish this before Unicorn Overlord but I’m not sure that’s going to happen.
Click to expand...
P3's plot is pretty slow overall. It picks up a ton in the last 2-3 months, though. That's when the majority of the memorable plot sequences happen, IMO. I think you'll be rewarded if you keep playing. Compared to 4 and 5, a lot more happens towards the end, whereas those kinda taper off in the final sequences.
 
84 hours for my Platinum. We came, we saw, we Tartarus'd, and Reload helped 3 leapfrog over the others of the modern era in my own ranking.
 
0
SammyJ9 said:
I feel like I’m somewhat losing steam on this game. I just got to summer school in mid-August but like… man the plot has still barely moved. It showed signs of life with the beach trip and getting some backstory, but then went right back to nothing much happening. I did just get a few new social links so that’s something, but I feel like I’m still waiting for things to really kick into gear. I’ll keep plugging away, though! I wanted to finish this before Unicorn Overlord but I’m not sure that’s going to happen.
Click to expand...
You're right on the fringe of everything really picking up speed. September is where things start to heat up, and then it's more or less full speed ahead from October onwards.
 
At least the new school track rules, it might be my favorite track in the game? Definitely top three, at least!

🎵 “Sun’s up, another day goes by, look at the time fly…”
 
After beating P3R I still think that the social links in P3 and P4 were handled better than in P5: in P3/4 you helped people to overcome their problems, while in P5 you always go to Mementos because confidants just give up after the first slop they encounter (I know that it's hard to break away from your past, it's just that literally every npc confidant (except for one) is doing that).
 
SammyJ9 said:
I feel like I’m somewhat losing steam on this game. I just got to summer school in mid-August but like… man the plot has still barely moved. It showed signs of life with the beach trip and getting some backstory, but then went right back to nothing much happening. I did just get a few new social links so that’s something, but I feel like I’m still waiting for things to really kick into gear. I’ll keep plugging away, though! I wanted to finish this before Unicorn Overlord but I’m not sure that’s going to happen.
Click to expand...

I lost steam too, and I’ve decided to shelve it simply because Rebirth is around the corner. It definitely slows down a ton during the summer. I just ended up grinding my social stats, haha.
 
0
Yazmat said:
After beating P3R I still think that the social links in P3 and P4 were handled better than in P5: in P3/4 you helped people to overcome their problems, while in P5 you always go to Mementos because confidants just give up after the first slop they encounter (I know that it's hard to break away from your past, it's just that literally every npc confidant (except for one) is doing that).
Click to expand...
I mostly disagree - yes, the whole going to Mementos to change hearts thing got a big formulaic and repetitive but it added a nice bit of extra conflict and punch to the social links. In general the social links in 5 just feel like they have so much more going on, and I love how they often tie into the actual plot a lot more. So many social links in 3 are just like… a random person who has some problems, but you just talk them through a little and then it’s over. The links feel so much less involved and “small” I guess
 
Started this game this weekend. Some thoughts:

  • Hate that I had to set my system settings to English to play in English (Xbox)
  • I had lots of nostalgic moments, I played the original when it came out, FES ans P3P, so lots of fond memories of this game
  • Hate the Twilight Fragments thing. They seem to be unfarmeble
  • Like the baton-switch in tbis game, it makes for a good tactical conservement of MP
  • Weird how, according to Elizabeth, it matters to have a Persona equiped that corresponds with the tarot of the social link you try to raise. This wasn't in the original I believe?
  • Gone are the fatigue statusses, which makes for much fun exploring
 
SammyJ9 said:
I mostly disagree - yes, the whole going to Mementos to change hearts thing got a big formulaic and repetitive but it added a nice bit of extra conflict and punch to the social links. In general the social links in 5 just feel like they have so much more going on, and I love how they often tie into the actual plot a lot more. So many social links in 3 are just like… a random person who has some problems, but you just talk them through a little and then it’s over. The links feel so much less involved and “small” I guess
Click to expand...
I can understand that, maybe I just like them to be separated from the main story.

7threst said:
Hate the Twilight Fragments thing. They seem to be unfarmeble
Click to expand...
Doing the social links will make you literally swiming in them.
7threst said:
Weird how, according to Elizabeth, it matters to have a Persona equiped that corresponds with the tarot of the social link you try to raise. This wasn't in the original I believe?
Click to expand...
If I remember correctly, it was in P3P (never played the PS2 games).
 
SammyJ9 said:
I feel like I’m somewhat losing steam on this game. I just got to summer school in mid-August but like… man the plot has still barely moved. It showed signs of life with the beach trip and getting some backstory, but then went right back to nothing much happening. I did just get a few new social links so that’s something, but I feel like I’m still waiting for things to really kick into gear. I’ll keep plugging away, though! I wanted to finish this before Unicorn Overlord but I’m not sure that’s going to happen.
Click to expand...
Hold on a bit more ! Things getting crazy starting in September ! And then from there every month has a big story event.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


Back
Top Bottom