Publisher: Atlus
Developer: Atlus, P Studio
Available for: Playstation 5, Playstation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows
Reviewed for: Playstation 5
Hello, and welcome to the first review of 2024! At the end of the GOTY list for 2023, I said that the first review would likely be for the new Prince of Persia, but that game has fallen off for me, and then Persona 3 Reload came out. So, instead, here we are! Like many others, my first foray into the long-running Persona series was through 2017's Persona 5. I didn't finish it in its year (I only got to the first palace), and as such, it earned a relatively low spot on the top 10 list on the strength of my existing progress alone. However, when I finally found the time to get through the rest of the game the following year, I loved it. I loved it so much that I "posthumously" gave it the 2017 GOTY spot alongside the original GOTY winner, Yakuza 0. It's easily in my top 5 favorite games of all time. When I heard that Persona 3 was being fully remade, I wasn't instantly dying to play it. See, one thing I know is that Persona 5 was the first game in the saga to feature actually designed dungeons. Prior to it, all the combat sections took place in randomly-generated dungeons. I don't like that kind of thing, but more on that later. So, let's get this out of the way early: Persona 3 Reload isn't even close to better than Persona 5. But it is excellent, and if you're like me and you have the same context as me, I don't think you'll regret playing it. And if you're a newcomer, I'd say this is probably a good starting point. Let's get into it!
Now, the instrument used in this process is not actually a gun. Rather, it's a thing that looks like a gun. The reason for this? Something along the lines of "the primal fear that comes with that kind of thing is what is required for the summoning". There are going to be some super light story spoilers here....just details about who joins your party, so nothing serious, but be warned. This process alone is upsetting, because it means that every time you use a special ability in the gameplay, you have to watch one of these kids point a gun-shaped object at their heads and pull the trigger. That's....kinda the big reason I was hesitant about buying this game. I already knew this detail about the game before I bought it. I'm a person who struggles with depression, so I was actually kind of worried about what having to watch this might do to me. But I'll say this if you're also worried about it....the experience is a lot less intense than I was expecting. There isn't a loud gunshot sound, there isn't a lot of recoil in the animations, just about everything that makes a gunshot a gunshot is missing. I would say that this makes it likely you won't be affected if you're a...struggling individual...were it not for one other thing. Because these characters are in high school, they're kids, as I've already said...but one of your party members is a kid kid. One of your party members is a 10 year-old boy. That's one detail I didn't know going into this. I hoped beyond hope they'd give him a water or nerf gun or something, but no. They give him something that looks like an actual gun (a revolver, to be exact), and yes...he puts that to his head and pulls the trigger. Not only that, he's the only character in the entire game that expresses actual suicidal ideation. I don't care if you think I'm woke, weak, or disrespecting the original game for saying this: that is NOT ok, and I should take more points off for that than I'm going to, but I don't intend to break my own rules of only one point off per misstep. Another party member is a dog, and he just has a collar that is magically able to activate his Persona. Why couldn't the literal elementary school child get something like that? From what I hear, this remake already changes several "problematic" things about the original game (I put that in quotes because all I see is complaining and I don't actually know what the removed content was), so why leave this in? I can accept suicide-adjacent content that ties in excellently with a game's overall themes of death and accepting life for the ugly thing it is (like this game does). But I'm also a gun enthusiast with integrity and a knowledge of the respect that guns both require and deserve. Showing children (whether 10 or 17) holding guns to their heads and pulling the trigger is unacceptable, and not only that, it's a dangerous thing to haphazardly show kids doing with teen suicide rates around the world being what they are. Nothing woke about it, just facts. It doesn't even matter that these aren't actual guns. Go to my state of Texas, arguably the most irresponsibly gun-crazy state there is, and you'll nonetheless see people practicing trigger discipline with gas pumps. People with any kind of knowledge don't play around with anything with a trigger. Ok, rant over. The story beyond this one detail is actually really good.
If there's one thing I can give Reload that it has over Persona 5, it's that the story takes significantly more risks. While I was able to predict certain plot twists right from the beginning, there were several events that were totally unexpected to me because Persona 5's story trained me to believe that these stories, though always good, are pretty "safe." Not so with this one. Absolutely go into this game expecting your usual JRPG story about a group of teenagers killing God with the power of friendship...but don't go into it expecting only that.
But before we get too much further, let's talk about how these weaknesses come into play. At the start of a given battle, if you're against an enemy you haven't faced before, you'll have no idea what their "affinities" (strengths and weaknesses) are, and you'll have to figure it out through trial and error. Unlike a Pokemon battle, you can't look at a new enemy and make assumptions about weaknesses based on appearance. And just because an enemy uses ice attacks doesn't mean they're weak to fire.
Now, when it comes to the effects that a damage type will have on you or an enemy, there are a few: weak, neutral, resist, block, reflect, and drain. Weak denotes that if this type of damage is applied to the target, it does more damage. Neutral is self explanatory. Resist means that damage is basically halved. Block means that no damage of that type will be taken. Reflect means that if you hit an enemy with this damage type, you'll take the damage they would've taken (albeit with your own resistances applied). Finally, drain means that being hit by this damage type actually heals the targeted entity.
When you hit an enemy weakness or get a critical hit, the enemy will be "knocked down", and the character that landed that hit will get a "1-more" turn, meaning they get to use one more action (this also applies when an enemy hits one of your party's weaknesses). If you know the affinities of every enemy on the field, you'll likely use this 1-more to swap to a different party member to hit the weakness of another enemy, and rinse and repeat as needed. The reason? If you "knock down" every enemy in a battle, you get the opportunity to launch an "All-Out Attack" that deals massive damage against all enemies that are still alive. If you don't happen to know the affinities of everything on the board, you can use the 1-more turn to use healing items or switch to another party member to roll the dice and see if one of their skills finds a weakness in another enemy you don't know anything about. So, it's all up to your tactical skill.
So...besides the damage that an all-out attack does, why should you strive to get those as much as possible? Well, it's because of the way that these systems I've been talking about tie into level design. If you've played Persona 5, then this game's combat setting, Tartarus, is basically an inverse Mementos, rising up instead of going down. It's a series of floors in which the enemy placements, treasure chests, and other modifiers are procedurally generated. When you win a battle, there's a chance to trigger a "shuffle time" wherein you pick from a collection of rewards. These rewards can be extra experience points, extra money, a new persona, a bit of healing, an increase in experience gained from every battle until you call it quits for the evening, the list goes on. These shuffle time rewards truly add up, and they're what makes taking your time in Tartarus worthwhile, and the chance of triggering them is increased by knocking enemies down. However, you're guaranteed a shuffle time when you win a battle with an all out attack. Now, the only downside to this is that more often than not, you'll need to use skills that require skill points (think of that like a magic meter) in order to trigger these all out attacks. That means that if you're going to go all-in on going "all-out" to get as many shuffle time rewards as possible, you'll be doing so at the cost of overall progress in a given evening. As you add more and more party members you can swap party members out when they run out of SP, and there are items available to restore this meter in the field, but those items aren't exactly plentiful or cheap. Some of the shuffle time outcomes can also restore some SP, but that's obviously a dice roll and other rewards might be more enticing. So, you'll need to keep this balance in mind.
As I already stated in the intro, I don't enjoy the procedural generation thing. But I will say that there are enough modifiers to at least keep things interesting. Plus...if you're like me and you feel no shame playing a game like this on easy because you're here for the story, you'll be able to get the combat for a given section of the story out of the way within an hour or so over the course of one in-game evening and get to the stuff you're here for quickly!
Firstly, let's talk about the social links. These are your classmates, friends, acquaintances, and unusual strangers you find outside of school. And a lot of them aren't great. For one thing, in a departure from both Persona 4 and Persona 5, none of your male party members are social links. There are little "episodes" where you can learn more about these guy friends, but there's no gameplay benefit whatsoever. And the earliest female party member you can actually start a social link with only has that ability unlocked after over 30 or so hours. That party member is a member of the team you start the game off with. So, when it comes to the characters (both male and female) that you actually want to get to know, you're basically SOL for the majority of the runtime. And that leaves you with random classmates and some strangers. Some of them are quite interesting. I legitimately loved Bebe, the french weeaboo foreign exchange student, for instance. For another example, as someone with an incurable illness, I found myself legitimately choking up talking to the character initially referred to as "stripey." And the social link that started out as my absolute least favorite (like, I was thinking, "why would anyone think I'd ever want to talk to this person?") 100% caught my interest later on because, out of nowhere and having nothing to do with their character prior to this moment, they turned out to possibly be involved in a doomsday cult. So, it's not all doom and gloom. But for all the good social links, there are plenty of bad ones or mediocre ones. For instance, Chihiro, the student council treasurer. Her "I'm scared of boys" personality just didn't give her any priority over literally any other social link. Speaking of the student council...the disciplinary guy, Odagiri, was another one that I kept putting off to the side. Unlike Chihiro, I felt like there was probably something interesting that might come up later on with Odagiri, but his crusader attitude rubbed me the wrong way to the point where I preferred to prioritize other social links even if there was no guarantee that I could immediately upgrade them. Now, Persona 5 certainly had a couple social links that weren't strong. But I've never had to hold my nose and force myself to progress through as many social links as I had to here. I maxed out quite a few, but most of them weren't because I wanted to know more about the relevant characters. But perhaps the biggest issue with the social links in Reload is that there are only 2 available at night. There are 10 levels in every social link. If you made every correct dialogue choice and did everything else correct, it would take you 20 evenings to max out both of these links. This is a game that spans almost a year on a day-to-day basis. I hardly need to break down the math for you. And while these links show up slightly later in the game, it's still child's play to max these out with months worth of time to spare even if you make mistakes when trying to progress these relationships. But, I think I'm getting ahead of myself a bit.
How do social links work? What benefits do they offer? Well, during a time slot (day or night depending on the character), you'll choose to spend time with the character in question. Then, a scene will play out where you have a conversation with them, and sometimes more intensive things will happen. You'll have choices to make in dialogue, and your goal is to choose the correct options. There's no major consequences for choosing the wrong thing, but if you don't pick the correct options, it can sometimes be time-consuming to move the relationship to the next stage of the 10-stage roadmap. Each social link is tied to a tarot arcana (Sun, Moon, Tower, Hierophant, etc), and as it just so happens, every arcana contains a handful of the available personas you can create. With each consecutive rank you get in your relationship with a social link, you'll get a sizable experience bonus when you create a persona within that social link's arcana. By default, you can't create a persona with a minimum level that is higher than your own level. However, this rule doesn't account for those social link bonuses. Even one rank in a social link is enough to raise a created persona's level by at least one after its creation. So, say you have the ability to create a persona the exact same level as you. Depending on the arcana the persona falls under and how far you've progressed the social link tied to the arcana, you can end up creating a persona several, several levels above your own, granting you MASSIVE combat benefits. Unlike in Persona 5, the experience boosts are the only gameplay benefit, but it's still a worthwhile benefit. But beyond the gameplay benefits, there's also the romantic side of things. See, nearly every female social link you have in this game can be your love interest. There are exceptions: the little girl, the online friend, and other taboo love interest for a high school boy aren't options, but beyond those, all female social links can be romanced. So, if you want your character to sweep one of this game's female cast members off their feet, you can achieve that goal by maxing out the character's social link. You can romance as many women as you want...but these games always feature severe consequences for that, so maybe don't try it.
So, that's it for the social links, now let's talk about the social stats. Unlike in other games in this saga, there are only three social stats to speak of: Charm, Academics, and Courage. Needless to say, these stats basically determine who you, as a character, are. You start out not very popular, not very smart, and not very courageous. As a result, what time you don't spend increasing social links or making progress in Tartarus is spent on self-improvement. For instance, if you want your character to become more brave, you might go to the karaoke bar and sing, or you might have him play a horror game at the arcade. If you want to be smarter, studying is the obvious answer, but you can also go out to certain restaurants to eat meals rich in Omega-3 to expand your mind. If you want to become more popular, you can answer questions correctly in class to become the envy of your peers or take on a customer-facing part-time job. These are just a couple examples of the many, many things that can be done to increase these social stats. Now, what's the point of these stats other than role playing? Well, certain social links cannot be started without meeting a certain rank of one of these stats, so not trying to improve every aspect of yourself can lock you out of experience bonuses for certain personas until you manage to get to the right rank. In addition, certain dialogue options are locked behind similar stat walls. Finally, if you want to romance one of the original three female party members (at least one of which is likely to be your choice by sheer virtue of the fact that you spend the most amount of time with them), you'll need to have maxed out one of these stats...here's a little hint so you don't do research and accidentally get anything spoiled: "Brown = Charm, Red = Academics, Blue = Courage". So, you'll want to try to dedicate yourself to each of these stats in order to get the most out of your time. Fortunately, you're likely to max out all these stats before you reach the most quickly available party member to romance if you're diligent in how you use your time slots. But that comes with a bit of an asterisk. See, stat-raising activities, just like social links, are available at day or night. But unlike the social links, the stat activities are largely available at both time slots in equal number. That probably sounds like a good thing, and it is, but it also teams up with the lack of evening social links and contributes to the simple fact that the game's evening segments run out of gameplay benefit FAST.
But before I close this segment, let's talk about those evening segments just a little bit more, because the developers seemed to understand that at a certain point, the evenings no longer provide much gameplay benefit. For instance, you have the ability to buy "hints" from a certain vendor that let you in on little secrets scattered across the game map or give you the ability to start battles in Tartarus with a couple extra benefits. In addition, this same vendor also sells dating site codes, which can be used to speed up the process of getting a social link to the next rank faster (which comes in handy if you made the wrong dialogue choices). All of these things I've discussed are accessed via the shared computer in the dorm, which is only available at night unless there's no school. In addition to this, there are also little character "hangouts" that are occasionally available. In these "hangouts," you'll spend the evening doing things like watching movies, cooking, tending to plants, and other things with a party member for a little bit more character content. You'll also sometimes get a useful item for your Tartarus expeditions, and after going through a couple of these episodes with a character, they'll gain a new passive ability. So, when the major content runs out, there's still some stuff to do that has some minor benefits.
Let us review:
Irresponsible use of gun content - 1.0
Social gameplay woes - 1.0
The final score for Persona 3 Reload is...
8.0/10 - Great
Excellent work, Atlus, excellent work!
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