Persona 3 Reload preview - an extremely promising return to Tartarus
Persona 3 Reload may not have FES or Portable content, but it's shaping up to be a definitive edition of the game that birthed the modern Persona template.
Despite Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 Royal being two of my all time favourite games, I've never quite managed to get through Persona 3. The FES and Portable editions of the game both added substantial changes that made it hard to pick between them. The biggest changes being 'The Answer' – an epilogue to the story – in FES, with Portable hosting a second campaign starring Kotone Shiomi: the series' second ever female protagonist (after Maya Amano in Persona 2: Eternal Punishment). I went with FES but didn't make it past the second Full Moon Operation due to the lack of controllable party members – which was introduced in Portable.
In the end Persona 3 Reload isn't taking a side and is instead remaking the original game with improvements based on later entries. Truth be told, I didn't expect the return of Kotone Shiomi as that amount of new content was easier due to cutbacks in other areas (mainly taking a visual novel approach rather than the overworld exploration of the PS2 versions), but no The Answer was a shock. And yet despite these cutbacks, my time with Persona 3 Reload has me convinced it will be the best way to go.
In the demo I had access to the early floors of Tartarus and the first Full Moon operation (which are where the games boss fights take place). And Immediately this is a striking remake. Persona games look good regardless of hardware limitations, but Reload is stunning thanks to its use of Unreal Engine 4 – for the first time in the series – alongside it running at 60fps unlike Persona 5. Most crucially, Persona 3 takes on one of the greatest aspects of Persona 5 – the menu and UI design – without losing touch of Persona 3's already distinct visual style.
In terms of gameplay it's largely the same Persona 3 you know and love with some key changes made. The number one change from the original Persona being the welcome removal of the stamina system, which would tire your party members out leading to negative effects during battles like increased chances to miss, and sometimes just leaving your party entirely for the day. The snappy menus of Persona 5 also return to make combat feel as fluid as it can for a turn-based RPG.
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Other than the visuals and gameplay Atlus has also remade the games iconic soundtrack. While Lotus Juice is returning for the remakes of the iconic tracks, vocalist Yumi Kawamura isn’t taking part, with singer Azumi Takahashi taking up the mantle. The music included the brand new battle theme It’s Going Down Now and – of course – the absolute banger that is Mass Destruction returns with a new arrangement that retains its infectious refrain of repeating the word 'baby'.
I never got to see any of the overworld aspects of the game (which to be fair would be a pretty hard segment to squeeze into a 40-minute demo) so I never had a chance to see any of the social links – or find out what has been added to this remake to compensate for the lack of social links for male party members.
Atlus and Sega clearly understand that many players are in the same boat as me in regards to this entry, and Persona 3 Reload is exactly the game you need it to be. This doesn't feel like some lazy cash-grab of a remake, this feels like a proper Persona release.
Not that I needed any more convincing but my time playing the game has me even more excited for what was probably my most anticipated game of 2024.
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