Persona 3 Reload is the remake of the original Persona 3 game.
This game was made as a result of the over the years requests to remake persona 3 considering how many versions of the game there was back in the 2000s from the portable port to fes.
It focuses on high school students from the SEES club investigating odd supernatural occurrences in particular the dark tower and most importantly climbing up in order figure out what is really going on.
The game is set in the mid to late 2000s like in the original persona 3 but it feels more so, like a modern day persona game set in the current year really than in the 2000s. It still retains, the gloomy depression oriented atmosphere of the original persona 3 and the themes revolving around it too.
The graphics and updated artstyle is great and the music as before is pretty amazing.
The voice acting on the other hand combined with the dialogue in the game is pretty much just atrocious.
The characters themselves are where many of the expy carbon copies that you see in modern persona games, are where it has originated from and i would have called it original and interesting back then, but nowadays i wouldn’t necessarily call it that way and there were some characters that i did liked from Ken,Komaru and Mitsuru but on the flipside, i didn’t really liked Yukari considering how much of a drama queen crybaby she can be or Fuuka either since like Haru i just found them to be bland and uninteresting. I also didn’t liked other characters either like the teachers who pretty much were just annoying than really funny or interesting and the social links too yeah as expected its not really going to matter throughout the story making it pretty much useless unless you want the bonuses that comes with it.
So overall, I'd say Ken Komaru and Mitsuru were really the only characters i found interesting and everyone else to be not really the case.
The social links are there and like before you get rewards and bonuses and you can increase your social stats too for bonuses too. The regression feature isn’t as severe apparently as the older games and there isn’t a broken link feature either and also whats more interesting, is that the longer you visit the towers you’re not going to get sick or exhausted after a while unlike before.
The game economy is as expected of a modern persona game to be quite extensive maybe not as extensive as what yakuza games have to offer, but still extensive enough for alot of activities you can do to pass time like part time jobs case in point.
The main goal of the game as mentioned, is to climb up the dark tower and its a pretty harrowing long experience almost as it was in a video game like Pandoras Tower and its pretty straightforward too you just simply climb up and explore the current location you are in.
Theres breakable objects now where you can gain items from destroying them.
You can fast travel anywhere be it the tower or in Japan anytime with more locations to go to as time goes by.
Occasionally characters in your party will scout on ahead to see if the area is safe and give you items of what they have found.
Each part of the tower as time goes by has its own unique twisted feel to the area you are in and also, hidden bonus objectives from finding treasure thats rare of defeating a rare enemy.
The combat is straight forward turn based as before, where you can exploit enemy weaknesses and critical blows for extra turns, and being able to recruit and collect personas through the shuffle card system long with other bonuses.
Shift is the baton pass of this game where you can pass a turn to your allies.
Theurgy is a new feature where after a while of filling your meter you can deliver powerful attacks and all out attacks too are also here.
Theres alot of rebalancing stats and tweaking combat mechanics for your party members too in order for the most part make combat as fair as it can be.
The updated user interface too and cut ins were great.
You can take on requests like before in exchange for rewards.
Like before you can rename your character into anything you like and choose your own dialogue choices but in the end its never worth it since the character is always going to have a canon to go by, in addition to choices never really mattering in the first place.
Since the game is a remake, there's also new locations too that were not in the initial games like a manga cafe for example.
The online network feature is there now as a guide for stuff on what to do during the day.
The localization is really bad even more so than ever now, straying way too far of the original game from really cringey jokes that were not in the original game to alot of mistranslations too.
The Answer epilogue from the other updated games, is now locked as DLC which is really egregious.
The other annoying dlc stuff would be the persona 4 and 5 costumes as if ATLUS can’t stop themselves from milking the modern games enough already.
There isn’t any Female protagonist choice either too so for those who were hoping for it, your best bet is to buy the portable games or persona q2 just if you are really desperate to play as her but its not really a canon choice of story anyways unlike the spinoffs.
Also apparently the clubs that were avaible to join in the original game are not here, for this game oddly.
Even missing personas too from the previous games oddly didn’t appear but stilll the compendium and the lack of controable party members error has been long since rectified at least.
Theres also Kenneth Arnold a store where you can’t do anything but just there to exist unlike in the originals where you can apparently change music there.
Overall it was a pretty good game.
It gets 4 out of 5 stars.
It actually could have been a 5 out of 5 had there not been any removal of features or content for the stuff i mentioned in addition to only maintaining an accurate1:1 translation.
I can imagine the finale of the persona series, is going to revolve around tying up loose ends from the series over the years and most importantly, come back to this game’s story almost like trails into the reverie in some ways in regards to the infamous ending of Persona 3 and i can imagine how big that event is going to be the day ATLUS announces the final persona game.
I'll still continue to review other atlus games for now as of this writing since i'm going to keep on making it a point avoiding fandoms like the total plague at all times as well as making sure to maintain zero interactions with them at all times too as well period.
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