The video game industry has had a couple of solid years with remastering old classics. Games from the “Resident Evil” series, “Dead Space 1”, and “System Shock” have all had remasters recently and saw great success. “Persona 3 Reload” continues that trend of mainstream remasters that are both good and revitalizes the original game.
The Persona series follows a visual novel style narrative with turn-based combat in a dungeon crawler. During the school days the protagonist will makes friends, work jobs, and do other various things, then at night the game turns into a dungeon crawler with turn-based combat. However, one thing to keep in mind is that the game takes place over a year, so players have to decide what to do and when to do it.
“Persona 3 Reload”, like all the Persona games, follows the story of a high school student in Japan learning about a mystical other world and fighting the “shadows” with friends made along the way. That is way too simple of a synopsis, but that is the general plot of the games. Each Persona game has a different way of introducing the shadows either through their lore or what the other world is. In “Persona 3” the other world is the “dark hour” which is a lost hour in the day where people who are unaffected are shown in coffins around the city sleeping while those affected either get “apathy syndrome” or are able to fight back against the shadows.
The whole plot of the game is to learn more about the “dark hour” and find out how to stop the shadows from ending the world. It may be a simple plot, but there is a lot of depth told throughout interactions in the world and as the story progresses.
The story of the game is a slow burn, like all other Persona games, but the gameplay is where it shines. In “Persona 3 Reload” it follows the same track the other Persona and turn based games have done, with some twists. Players have a party that have varying strengths and weaknesses with the protagonist having the ability to adapt to whatever fight happens. Some key features in combat are if a character hits a weakness of an enemy they get another turn, but they can pass off that extra turn to another character to gain damage and to continue a chain reaction of sorts.
“Nothing’s more satisfying than striking an enemy’s weakness and then using Shift to attack with another party member who has another foe’s weakness,” Andrea Gonzalez of Destructoid said.
The gameplay also adds some things that I noticed in my playthrough, like adding destroyable objects between fights that can drop loot and the pace of combat being a bit quicker than the original. They also made boss encounters different, in the sense that they balanced them so you can’t just overpower some of them.
“Persona 3 Reload” has some good gameplay, but one thing I always love with Persona games is the soundtrack and boy does “Persona 3” have a good one. The soundtrack is overall the same, but it has some differences. Another thing that is touched on is that there is a lot more voice acting in the game even compared to the other games like “Persona 5.”
“Persona 3 Reload uses the same fundamental soundtrack as the original game but key changes have been made to both the music and the voicework,” Robert Ramsey of PushSquare said. “Various tracks have been remixed, while others have been remastered . . . Many more conversations feature full voice acting, including all social link scenes.”
The game overall is a great experience, but there is one key thing that might keep some players away. Overall playtime of the Persona games is long. Personally, in both “Persona 5: Royal” and “Persona 4: Golden” I have saves with over 80 hours in both. It takes a long time to finish the games, but it is also such a satisfying game to finish. Another thing that might turn people away is that the game is pretty dark in its subjects.
Overall, the remaster does what a remaster should and that is making the series more accessible for people who never got to play the original and still get to experience one of the more iconic games of the 2000s. My overall rating of the game is a 9.5/10, mainly because it can be a little too grindy but everything is just so well executed.
