“Persona 3 Reload” Review

Atlus has returned to the world of Persona 3 with a ground-up remake that utilizes the lessons learned from Persona 4 and Persona 5, both improving greatly on the original… while also showing how much the series has improved since.

In 2007, the Western gaming world turned its attention to an obscure JRPG that had been quietly released for the PS2: Persona 3. This game, a spin-off of the niche Shin Megami Tensai series (which at that point was most well known for the extremely bizarre Digital Devil Saga), had a lot going against it; its previous installment (or the first installment, rather) had been the victim of one of the worst localization efforts in the history of the medium, forcing its sequel duology to go untranslated and largely unknown across the ocean.

But this game was different. Not because of its plot (though that was very much acclaimed), or its gameplay (which divided critics over both its pioneering social aspects and its repetitive and idiosyncratic combat mechanics). No, this one became (in)famous because of a meme, and that infamy made it known as the ‘An Hero’ suicide RPG.

Yet in spite of that infamy, the game found an audience. That acclaim would then find its way to the follow-up, which became a massive global success and made the Persona name one to be proud of. Now, in 2024, Atlus has returned to the world of Persona 3 with a ground-up remake that utilizes the lessons learned from Persona 4 and Persona 5, both improving greatly on the original… while also showing how much the series has improved since.

What Is It?

Persona 3 Reload is the remake of the cult classic JRPG Persona 3, recreated from the ground up by Atlus (the modern home of off-kilter Japanese gaming). Originally released back in 2006, the game did not really find an audience in the Western world until internet meme culture, for better or worse, discovered the unusual title and turned it into a cult classic. With the release of Persona 4 in 2008, the series finally found the mainstream footing it had been looking for, and a whole new group of gamers exploring the previous installment… and finding it kind of meh in comparison. But with this release the original story and characters can now be enjoyed with a graphical and gameplay overhaul that takes elements from all succeeding Persona games.

Plot wise, Persona 3 more or less helped establish the series’s forumla that the rest would follow: It’s 2009 and you play the stock ordinary Japanese high school student (only male this time), who has just transferred to a new school located on Tatsumi Port Island in Japan. This city, founded and largely funded through the Kirijo Corporation, is the nominal origin and source of an unusual supernatural phenomenon: the Dark Hour. This phenomenon largely exists as an extra hour in the standard 24 hour day and can only be directly experienced by a select few (everyone else is largely held in suspension in metaphorical coffins). During this time period, malicious entities known as ‘Shadows’ manifest in the streets, along with a non-Euclidean and downright Lovecraftian structure called Tartarus. This building takes the form of an unusually tall and ever-changing tower (hints it’s nickname ‘the Tower of Demise’) and appears in the area where your character’s high school just so happens to be located. The phenomenon of the Dark Hour is not only unnerving, it is also the source of a disease known as Apathy Syndrome, which, as the game goes on, begins to affect more and more people.

So obviously, someone has to do something, and in this case that burden belongs to the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad (SEES). On the surface they’re just an oddball after-school club. In reality, they are a select group of Persona users backed by the Kirijo Group in order to study and ultimately end the Dark Hour for good. After awakening your own Persona you become a member of SEES and divide your time between your normal school life and shadow-hunting adventures in Tartarus, while making connections with various other characters… and maybe even finding love.

Why Should I Care?

The first thing you’ll probably think when you boot up this game is that it looks an awful lot like Persona 5 because it does! Stylistically, despite being a remake of Persona 3, this game takes a lot of visual cues from that game, right down to the cell-shading and the faceless NPCs. That’s just your first sign that, although this game is still based on Persona 3 and still follows its plot bit by bit, some drastic changes have been made. For one thing, unlike in the original, you can control your entire party in combat instead of them being mostly autonomous (though that’s still an option). Other things you’ll notice include brand new social events with other characters that are exclusive to Reload, various new anime cutscenes, and a remastered soundtrack.

But other than that, it’s still largely the same. By day you’ll go to school and attend classes, take exams, befriend various NPCs (some of who are potential romantic partners), join a club and generally take part in all of the romanticized parts of Japanese high school life. By night you’ll explore Tartarus, fighting enemies and gaining experience to level up yourself, your party members, and your various Personas (summoned by firing handgun-shaped devices called Evokers into one’s head, hence the memes) and climbing floors until you hit a border (which are opened up after fighting bosses). During the Full Moon, you’ll go to various parts of the city during the Dark Hour in order to fight boss characters, all of whom have their own quirks (the first one involves trying to stop a monorail car before crashes). Of course, there’s also various things to do in between such as getting a part-time job, studying, playing arcade games, and in general getting to know Tatsumi Port Island and what it has to offer. You’ll also be doing the usual Persona routine of registering Persona, as well as combining them to attain newer, stronger ones.

And, of course, there are shenanigans afoot. But I won’t spoil those.

What Makes It Worth My Time And Money?

I’ll be frank: with hindsight being 20/20, the original Persona 3 was good in spite of itself. The writing, the characters, the social elements were all incredibly groundbreaking for their era… but the meat n’ potatoes gameplay of the original just wasn’t very good. Reviewers back then largely criticized the game for its repetitive combat and dungeon design–two things which Persona 4 would improve drastically. Reload fixes these issues pretty much note for note with combat similar to Persona 4 and quality of life fixes similar to those in Persona 5.

But if anything, playing this newer version is just a reminder of how much larger and more developed the worlds of the successive games would be. Don’t get me wrong: the people you’ll meet in this game are just as likeable and easy to get attached to as the those later games have… but it also just seems a lot smaller in comparison. The over-world, in comparison to the later games, just seems so much more compact and dull.

But with all that said: It’s still Persona 3, and if this game looks lesser in comparison to the ones that came after it, that’s only because the foundations it laid were so solid that they still largely hold up all these years later.