There are few game series that capture the life of a teenager quite as beautifully as the Persona franchise. First and foremost, these are games about going to school and building a social life. You start the (Japanese) school year in April with no friends and no social skills, and emerge as a courageous, charming badass with more besties than a millionaire could shake a gilded stick at. At the same time, you’re also building a crack team of guerrilla teens with unshakable resolve, occult powers and the ability to reshape society. Persona 3 Reload remakes one of these classics for modern consoles.
Persona 3 is undeniably the darkest version of this fantasy life. Where Persona 5 was a jazzy exploration of freedom, centred around the protagonist’s feeling of being trapped, and Persona 4 is a full-throated pursuit of the truth, dealing with everything from self-denial to exposing corrupt cops, Persona 3 is about death.
Death, self-sacrifice and the cost of victory. Persona 5 had you rip off your mask to summon your Persona. Persona 4 had you face your dark side and accept the truth of your flawed personality if you want to live up to your true potential.
Persona 3 Reload makes you shoot yourself in the head.
Faced with the mortal peril that comes with pulling the trigger of the gun against your temple, your resolve to live and fight crystallises into your Persona — your ‘other self’ that is capable of wielding arcane power, casting magic and otherwise living out the power fantasy that we all share. Yep, that’s about as poetically bleak as they come.
If you can look past this dark theme this is definitely a must-play Persona game. Persona 3 Reload is not perfect, especially in cold light of February 2024, and somehow it’s not even the definitive edition of the game, but it’s as close to perfect as this title has ever got.
Without going into too much detail of a plot dating back to 2006, Persona 3 Reload sees the SEES (the Special Extracurricular Execution Squad, and your group of friends) infiltrate and seek to destroy the Dark Hour. This is the hidden time that exists between one day and the next, that only those who have awakened to the potential are aware of. It is a land of Shadows and endless possibility, but also a twisted reality of existential threat.
The world will end with the Dark Hour, unless you stop it.
But, of course, it’s a Persona game, so you also need to juggle all of this saving the world malarky with going to school, passing your exams and making friends. Oh, and don’t forget to walk the dog, cook meals for your friends at the dorm and have a part-time job. Being a teenager is hard…
In keeping with the Persona franchise having multiple games per game (there are five different Persona 5 games), this is the third Persona 3 rerelease, after FES and Portable. Sadly the choice of male or female protagonist from P3P has been cut from this remake, so Reload can’t quite be considered the definitive edition. It is, however, the best possible version of the game to date, thanks to a deluge of quality-of-life and modernising updates.
Persona 3 Reload takes everything we love about Persona 5 and applies it to Persona 3. The results are nothing short of spectacular.
On top of the modernised graphics, rerecorded dialogue and soundtrack (which are all top-notch) come changes to what you can do on certain dates and other tweaks like new classroom lectures and test answers. The game also sports a completely revamped battle system. Combat now works like it does in Persona 5, giving you buttery smooth action, and you now have the ability to sprint around the world and quickly shift between party members after exploiting an enemy weakness. The UI has also been overhauled in kind.
On top of this are brand new combat additions, such as Theurgy. Similar to the Showtime moves from Persona 5, Theurgy are individual special moves you can unleash in battle, that grow in power as you help your friends strengthen their resolve and grow as humans (or robot or dog, depending). They’re executed very well and since charges carry between battles, can truly turn the tide of a boss fight if used tactically.
There’s also new Monad Doors and Passages in Tartarus, which feature extra-powerful Shadows and rare loot; an updated Fusion system in the Velvet Room (to match Persona 5’s); network functionality (so you can see what other people did on the same day); and additional scenes fleshing out the story of certain characters, including your nemeses, the Persona-wielding Strega gang that want to preserve the Dark Hour and the power it gives them…
Unfortunately there’s also areas that couldn’t or haven’t been improved or changed. It lacks the Dungeon and Palace aspects of later games, for example, though Tartarus can still be engaging at the end of a four-hour run. The biggest issue surrounds the creepier, more lecherous characters, who only think about sex and nothing else. Many a time you want to slap and tell them to grow the hell up, but that’s never a dialogue option. Sure, you can say that this game is a product of a different time and culture, but that doesn’t make you feel any less uncomfortable when Junpei is loudly comparing boob sizes of the high schoolers you’re at the beach with. Remember, you shouldn’t let friends creep on other friends.
