Persona 3 Reload Review: Gameplay Impressions, Features and Videos

Persona 3 Reload from Sega and developer P-Studio hopes to continue the strong surge of remakes and remasters in recent years by bringing up a beloved RPG to modern times.

A remake of 2006's Persona 3, Reload avoids standard remake naming conventions in a fitting way, given the blend of traditional role-playing and social simulator presented that heavily influenced eventual bigger hits in the series like Persona 5 and its spin-offs.

Reload carries massive expectations up to its release date because it is one of the biggest remake requests from gamers in a very long time, simply because the series didn't blow up globally until after Persona 3's release as the series spread to non-PlayStation consoles.

Now that it's here, in order to be successful on a much bigger stage than the first effort, Reload must appease hardcore fans by retaining the spirit of the original while modernizing enough to match the times.

Graphics and Gameplay

The first thing dedicated fans will notice is the facelift Persona 3 has received in the form of new cutscenes, some of them fully animated and 3D. Even for the unfamiliar, the scenes and overall presentation are downright striking with colorful, stylized flair that fits the narrative well.

What seems like carefully handcrafted characters and environments pop off the screen at every turn. And when the environment calls for it, such as within Tartarus, the stylistic choices turn the whole theme on its head to present something sinister in quite an immersive way.

Beyond the fantastic-looking visuals, perhaps the most important development in the presentation department is that the battle UI (user interface) has received a necessary revamp to better match Persona 5's sleek, information-packed screens.

These quality-of-life improvements to the UI are critical to point out and make the experience dramatically better compared to the original. Additional text explaining objectives and tasks required to move the story forward help better explain the complicated narrative structure cycle and the in-game map is bigger, more detailed and can use markers—and enables fast travel.

Even the overarching camera has received a modernizing pass in some parts, such as a third-person look with camera control during exploration of certain areas.

Now, it's important to point out that these are necessary upgrades to a game that debuted in 2006. Compared to other games out in the wild, the map might feel a little difficult to read and the camera clunky, but it's certainly a massive, must-have jump for this remake.

Even those beloved Social Links get an upgrade in the form of fully voice-acted scenes. Those, and the overall story, feature a new cast of English voice actors and both sound great. The soundtrack itself is certainly familiar and comfort food for those who enjoyed the original, too, with tunes that still hold up well today.

The upgrades hardly stop with presentation, as the gameplay itself drips with must-have modernizations that sequels debuted.

The battle system now closely resembles the Persona 5 effort with Shift, the mechanic that lets players pass an active turn to another character in pursuit of enemy knockdowns, which has the potential to unleash the great-feeling All-Out Attack that does big damage and comes with unique animations.

Players can direct party members, which wasn't a feature of the base Persona 3 release but is very much a requirement in modern times, giving players more strategic control than ever.

Also new is a special move dubbed Theurgy via the S.E.E.S. armband that is not unlike Persona 5 Showtime moves. These big moves manage to feel more rewarding, though, because each one asks different requirements to pull off based on the character and rewards in the form of not sapping any other gauge and it can ignore an enemy's resistances.

The One More mechanic returns too, rewarding players for properly exploiting enemy weaknesses. Even post-battle has changed for the better, with the cards no longer shuffling, enabling players to choose how they want to progress.

Upgrades extend to general exploration too. Players can dash while dungeon-crawling and the fatigue mechanic that rightfully didn't make it into sequels has been ripped out here, too. Spending time just exploring the eye-popping environments rewards the players with extra rooms with big challenges for rare drops, as a sort of exclamation point.

Persona 3 had engrossing gameplay for the time, in terms of combat. But the revision pass to implement systems found in sequels is a no-brainer and amazing in one swoop. The gameplay is just fun with lots of depth below the surface and exploration not feeling tedious anymore is great, with it encouraged via rewards a nice bonus.

Story and More

Reload changing little about the Persona 3 story, compared to presentation and gameplay overhauls, is certainly by design and a positive given the gripping tale and memorable characters.

Very long story short, the player's character joins other Persona-capable characters after returning to his hometown and they must confront enemies while figuring out the Dark Hour. Through the main tale, smart environmental storytelling and interactions during side activities, players get a rich, healthy dose of RPG-goodness that stands tall compared to most modern efforts.

Narratively, while the story remains true to the original, experienced players might notice new dialogue, especially during in-class portions of the game. It's a little thing, but there are little additions here and there, in a good way.

Side content gets greatly expanded upon too, by comparison. The aforementioned Social Links boast completely new activities and events for specific characters.

As if being able to talk to every single NPC in the living space wasn't engrossing enough, some of these new side activities can have really important gameplay ramifications. Food can restore health or alter stats, gardening can unlock new moves, etc, and there are deeper systems at play too, with stat bonuses at stake for doing these activities with other party members.

Even without those new additions that feel seamless, the social aspect of Persona 3 was always very ahead of its time. And while other remakes have struggled with things that were once innovative being oversaturated by other games over the years, these hold up incredibly well and help the hours tick by in an almost alarming fashion. Which is good, given the care for characters that players will develop, which the majority of games can't achieve.

As expected of a modernizing effort, Reload packs in little extras like new costumes for characters and the like, letting long-term players experience new things and simply making for a robust overall package for new players.

Beyond the expected gamut of quality options tucked into the menus, Reloaded gets an impressive performance boost, too. The game runs at 60 frames per second (FPS) now, up from the 30FPS of the original to fantastic-feeling results.

Conclusion

At its original time of release, Persona 3 was a stunning, deep game that did some new things well that were later iterated on to really help the series grow. There were some big flaws, too.

With Reload, some of those mentioned flaws, such as the lack of full party control, get fixed. Add some must-have modernizations with maps and other features and this is the closest to a definitive edition fans will ever get.

That also means Reload doubles as the best possible time for a new generation of players to get their hands on the title. It's one of those rare ones that does two things so well (turn-based RPG and social simulator) that players who have no interest in the other half will likely find themselves engrossed in it, anyway.

All that puts Reload right near the top as far as the continuing onslaught of remasters and definitive editions in recent years goes. It's not Persona 5, but the groundwork it laid and the classic status Persona 3 earned deserved this updating pass, as do the players.