Persona games are the hardest for me to review for several reasons. The primary one is that I usually like the games and never enjoy writing reviews for games that I like, but even worse is that most of the people that I’m writing these reviews for ALSO like Persona games. So I’m not going to be influencing anyone’s decisions, not adding anything to the conversation, and not having a great time doing it. But it feels like something I want to do, so we’re going to dive in and talk about another excellent Persona game.
For the uninitiated, Persona 3 was the first Persona game that locked in the formula that every other Persona game has followed since: juggling the social circle of a teenager while fighting monsters with your friends during your time off. It’s proven to be a fantastic framework for a game, but since Persona 3 was first in line it was inevitably going to be less ambitious in scope and have experimental mechanics that were quickly dropped by its sequels. The biggest of these is also one of the only ones that remains in Reload: Tartarus, the spooky tower that appears at the end of each day and acts as the primary area for the game’s turn-based combat. Later Persona titles take you to a new area every month or so but Persona 3 is firmly focused on this massive tower, with the only objective being that you need to get to the top. Only you can’t get to the top until the game lets you, so every thirtyish floors there’s a barrier that stops you from climbing further until you beat a story boss that appears once a month. If this sounds repetitive it’s because it is, and if it doesn’t sound repetitive it’s because I haven’t done a good enough job of explaining it.
To be fair to Persona 3 you could break down the combat of its sequels in a similar way. Persona 4 especially is just running around the same kinds of corridors as Persona 3, though with a new paint job and objective every month as opposed to Tartarus’ decor change every other month and the same objective (climb tower). I think the repetition in P3 comes from your goal almost never changing throughout the game, as every single day it’s the same thing: climb the damn tower. Personas 4 and 5 at least manage to mix it up with time limits, thematic stages/bosses, and a feeling of the plot progressing as you conquer each new challenge, whereas Persona 3‘s plot stagnates through 80% of the game with the same objective, month after month, with just the occasional wrinkle thrown in.
Now that I’ve pissed off half the Persona fans in the room I’ll try to win them back by saying the combat makes the Tartarus grind worth it, assuming you like JRPGs in the vein of Pokemon with elemental weaknesses as a cornerstone. Predictably they removed the inability to control your party that bogged down the first two versions of Persona 3, and an anticipated treat is the addition of the “Shift” mechanic that acts as Reload‘s version of the Baton Pass from Persona 5. These abilities let you swap between active characters in exchange for the bonus turn you get from hitting an enemy’s weakness, and while Shifts are missing the great animations and overpowered bonus effects that graced the Baton Passes they still create a fun rhythm in combat that was missing from the older Persona titles. It also helps strike a balance between the classic combat of the originals and the spiced up version that Persona 5 brought to the table, especially since without the Baton Pass bonuses Shift just feels like a “nice to have” feature rather than a “why aren’t you destroying people by perfectly using this ability, you loser?”
Where the overpowered stuff comes in is when the super attacks, known as Theurgy, are introduced about a third of the way through the game. In the original Persona 3 fusion spells were powerful abilities that you could use by having multiple combinations of specific Personas in your inventory, but in Reload they reduced the number you can do, removed the requirement to have those Personas in your inventory, and gave every character at least one to use. These abilities are great world building, as they are powered by an energy meter that raises at different rates for different characters based on their actions in combat, and they are also busted beyond all belief. They completely ignore all resistances that enemies have, deal damage higher than you can normally get at that point in the game, can be affected by buffs/debuffs for even more damage, and are absolutely free to use whenever you want assuming you have a max energy bar. This means that once you unlock Theurgy attacks basically every side boss in Tartarus becomes a joke if you want it to be, with each character having a nice big “kill the thing in front of me” button that you can slam at any time, not to mention the support character’s absolutely insane ability to completely heal and revive everyone on the team as a free action.
This is not the first time that super abilities have been a tool in the Persona franchise but it’s the first time that they can be kept in your pocket for a rainy day and I’m hoping the dial it back in Persona 6 or the inevitable remake of Persona 4. That being said, this is the only addition that I wasn’t a huge fan of (outside of the Twilight Fragments I mentioned earlier) as every other small improvement that Reload adds to the franchise is nothing but a net positive. From the cool new cut-in animations to status effects actually being a reliable tool and not just a bad joke, Reload‘s combat walks a vexing line between being some of the best the series has been, but also worn down by the lack of engaging places to use it or many memorable bosses to fight. But there I go upsetting Persona 3 fans again so let’s just move on.
Another marked improvement over the original are Reload‘s Social Links, the relationship system of the Persona franchise that you’re encouraged to utilize to gain access to stronger Personas. Traditionally in Persona these Social Links are some of the best parts of the game but almost never have voice acting due to the metric ton of dialogue and the devs not wanting to splurge on VAs for characters that only show up in these scenes. However someone decided to put the budget to good use because every Social Link in Reload is fully voiced and it feels like a big step forward for the franchise, especially when some of the VAs for these side characters are just as good if not better than the main cast’s English actors (shout out to Shelby Young as Yuko). Other improvements include removing the “female characters get mad at you if you hang out with other female characters” system from the original that was just a pain in the ass, as well as an easier time completing Social Links overall compared to other games. And while you can’t have Social Links with your male teammates they added “Linked Episodes” as a neat feature to get the same sort of experience in the game without cutting out any of the existing characters, as Social Links are tied to the Major Arcana and Persona games have NEVER invented more of those (that’d just be silly, who would ever do that?). These Linked Episodes provide welcome depth to a few of these characters that weren’t there before, and quite frankly they have no business being as well written as they are (primarily Akihiko’s), so it’s great to see that actual thought and time went into them rather than just forcing them in under some feeling of obligation.
Something I was especially surprised by was the music, as with any game when you hear the remake is going to have “new music” there’s just a sense of dread that you cannot escape. But I found myself loving the new music, even the “-Reload-” remixes of the old tracks outside of Unavoidable Battle (it’s just doesn’t go as hard for me in the new version, don’t know what else to say), and frankly I loved most everything about the presentation. Outside of the occasional screen tearing (and my firm belief that something weird is going on with Mitsuru’s head in combat cutscenes) the game looks great, feels great, and sounds great. I found a handful of the English voices a little hard to embrace at first given my decade of history with the original actors but after about thirty or so hours I got over it, and they’re undeniably better overall from a quality perspective than the rough voice acting we had in the vanilla Persona 3. But if you don’t want to risk the dub at all there’s the Japanese voices with English subs as well.
It was at this point in writing that I realized I hadn’t said anything about the actual story of the game yet. You transfer to a new high school and discover that the kids living at the dorm with you are aware of “the Dark Hour,” a period of time at the end of each day that only certain people experience. During the Dark Hour the tower Tartarus appears and you’re able to summon Personas to fight the shadows within, and you’re recruited to help explore Tartarus and hopefully find a way to put an end to the Dark Hour. And… that’s about it. As I said earlier the framework brings the whole story down as month after month everyone keeps saying the same things because month after month you keep doing the same thing. The game also has a horrific case of “anime speak” at times where characters have private conversations as though they’re still being overheard, constantly referring to “that time” or speaking in half sentences to avoid giving exposition that they would in normal circumstances. The few different directions the story goes in the later half are worth sticking around for (they would have to be, honestly) but if you’ve played the later games and are expecting the same sort of story formula you might get frustrated by it going nowhere fast initially.
All that being said, the characters in Persona 3 are some of the strongest in the franchise, and while the story takes a LONG time to get going I think it also ends up being one of the best in a few key areas. The primary way, and the one I will close up this review ranting about, is this was back when Persona wasn’t so enthralled with its own existence as a franchise that it was too scared to take risks. This is not a Persona game that is worried about making sure all of its characters are around for the next five spin-offs, this is not a Persona game that leaves loose plot threads that are never resolved (well not after the DLC in September, anyway), and this isn’t a Persona game that brings back dead characters just to help fuel shipping wars. I think my favorite part is that all of the main characters have a lot of their development through the story itself rather than just being static outside of their Social Links, which helps with the feeling of progression of both the plot and the people in your party. But on the other hand it can also be a little redundant as some characters go through multiple “life affirming personal revelations” in the span of three weeks depending on when you do their Social Links. The point is, there hasn’t been another Persona game with the story like P3‘s for all the good and the bad that comes with it, and I wish we could have another Persona game like it in the future: one that makes the game for the sake of the game and not for the spin-offs that will come down the line.
I could go on about a dozen other little things they added to the game, such as new ways to gain social stats, random item drops in Tartarus, the interesting upgrades you can get from browsing the internet in your dorm, etc. but none of that answers the biggest question that I’ve been struggling with since the game’s release: should you play Persona 3 Reload before the other games? Three is first in the sequence before four and five, after all, and while none of the games are directly connected to each other there is a little overlap between them all, especially with P3 and P4. On the other hand, Reload is enough of a continuation from Persona 5 on a mechanical level that you might find the lack of voiced Social Links and gorgeous cut in animations to be a step back if you go from Reload to P5, not to mention the complete mechanical and graphical downgrade you’d land in if you did Persona 4 in between. I don’t have a good answer, and I suppose at the end of the day it’s up to the player to decide which one looks the most interesting, though given my previous rant about the story maybe ending with P3 would be best to ramp up into a stronger story experience. Once they remake Persona 4 the choice will be much easier, but regardless if you have any interest in JRPGs and the Persona franchise you can’t go wrong with Persona 3 Reload. The few archaic design choices that they were forced to carry over can’t diminish the glow-up that the rest of the package received… though I’m still expecting the DLC to be mind-numbingly dull.
