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Persona 3 is perhaps the most important entry in the Shin Megami Tensei spin-off franchise. By establishing several series pillars, including the popular social link system, Persona 3 laid the foundations upon which the two main entries in the line would be built. Unfortunately, by today’s standards, this 18-year-old title is unaffordable in many ways. Persona 3 Recharge remedies that advance the cast, story and exceptional turn-based battles in a faithful remake with the modern conveniences of Persona 5 Royal. While it’s a massive success, some lingering outdated elements from the original keep Reload from reaching the heights of other modern games in the series.
In a premise familiar to Persona fans, you control a transfer student who arrives at his new high school. However, when night falls, it’s far from a normal schoolboy’s existence as you enter an anomaly known as the Dark Hour. Here, everyone is confined to coffins except for powerful humans who can wield magical entities known as Personas. Using them, the cast must hunt Shadows around the city, primarily in a procedurally generated tower known as Tartarus.
I love exploiting the many quirks of the combat system on the way to victory. Landing a critical hit with one character before switching to another to hit an elemental weakness, then buffing enemies with a powerful all-out attack, is relentlessly exciting. Being able to directly control every character in your party is a no-brainer by today’s standards and a huge quality-of-life improvement over the original base game. In fact, almost every innovation from Persona 5 is present, and the addition of the Theurgy system diversified my combat strategies in fun ways.
Theurgies are powerful, cinematic ultimate abilities that charge throughout the battle. Because each character’s meter charges (and each ability provides different effects), I often found myself deviating from performing character-specific actions, whether healing, summoning Personas, or attacking with physical abilities, during battles with minor enemies. Going into a tough battle with a full group of loaded counters always gave me a confidence boost, even if they were far from instant win buttons.
Battles are as exciting as the series has ever looked, but one key Persona 5 improvement didn’t make it to this remake: hand-crafted dungeons. Even with this version’s addition of Monad Doors that house powerful mini-bosses and special rewards, the randomly generated floors of Tartarus that serve as the game’s main dungeon feel dated. After hours of dungeon crawling, the experience can become monotonous when you’re scaling hundreds of generic floors filled with the same monsters. Thankfully, the boss battles and the sequences leading up to them are as compelling as ever, offering the best combat in the game and often revealing my favorite character moments from the story.
Speaking of characters, Persona 3’s excellent cast gets to shine more than ever thanks to additional voice acting and more social scenes. I loved balancing the social elements of a typical high school experience with the extraordinary circumstances presented to my protagonist. However, I am disappointed that the female protagonist option included in Persona 3 Portable is neither present nor the added epilogue from FES. In a modern remake that comes decades later, it’s unfortunate that there’s no content in the earlier versions.
Because of the modernized and expanded social links, I really felt like I got to know a lot of the side characters better. I became emotionally invested in stories involving a motivated track athlete who overcame an injury to inspire a younger family member, an elderly couple dealing with the loss of their son, and a young girl who was struggling in the midst of his parents’ divorce.
Forming bonds with these characters offers boosts for certain Persona fusions, but I mainly pursued the Links to further unravel the narrative threads. Later, you can also form closer bonds with your group members, but even before that, you can spark new skills within your team by cooking, gardening, or watching movies with them in the dorm. While the repetitive and stiff animations sometimes took me out of the moment, Persona 3 Reload’s emotional beats hit hard as themes of death and loss resonate throughout this long story.
Even after nearly 100 hours, I was sad to part ways with my team, feeling like I’d built bonds with them that transcended any kind of in-game social bonding metric. Even with some outdated and repetitive elements inherited through the 18-year structure of the original, Persona 3 Reload is one of the best entries in one of the most acclaimed modern role-playing franchises in video games.
Source: gameinformer.com