GamesRPGPersona 3 ReloadPersona 3 Reload retells the RPG’s story but borrows from Persona 5 Royal’s style: “We’ve made lots of smaller tweaks to improve it"When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesRPGPersona 3 ReloadPersona 3 Reload retells the RPG’s story but borrows from Persona 5 Royal’s style: “We’ve made lots of smaller tweaks to improve it"When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Atlus)
Nearly a decade ago, I put around 60 hours into Persona 3 Portable but I never finished it. I certainly enjoyed my time with it (it just so happens that the timestamp on my last save is exactly 10 days before my son was born), but with so many different versions of Persona 3 available today, the thought of returning has always been a little intimidating. Though having several versions is not unique to Persona 3, itisstill a bit of a confusing fact to wrap your head around – from the original Persona 3 to Persona 3 FES, Persona 3 Portable, and now the upcoming remake, Persona 3 Reload. That’s not even counting the various ports over the years.
So what is it that sets Persona 3 Reload apart? Well, first and foremost, it’s a remake of the original Persona 3 story. Functionally, that means everything from the original PS2 game but don’t expect major elements from Persona 3 Portable or Persona 3 FES to make an appearance. For example, P3P’s female protagonist option is nowhere to be seen – and doesn’t appear to be something they’re sitting on quietly.
“Very early on we were thinking what we wanted to do was create a really high quality remake of the original – not FES or not Portable and the other ones,” says Ryota Niitsuma, producer on Persona 3 Reload. “Like our beginning was, for now, Persona 3 the original’s what we want to focus on, so that was kind of the theme of our development here.”
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(Image credit: Atlus)
Big in 2024(Image credit: Future)GamesRadar+ is exploring the most anticipated video games of the year withBig in 2024, with new articles dropping every day throughout January.
Big in 2024
(Image credit: Future)GamesRadar+ is exploring the most anticipated video games of the year withBig in 2024, with new articles dropping every day throughout January.
(Image credit: Future)
GamesRadar+ is exploring the most anticipated video games of the year withBig in 2024, with new articles dropping every day throughout January.
But it’s not all doom, gloom and jettisoned content for Reload. Despite lacking certain bits and pieces from previous alternative versions of Persona 3, it does add quite a bit otherwise. While a retelling of the original Persona 3 story, there are still new events to explore between characters and a significant visual overhaul on top of new combat mechanics and a sophisticated retooling of Tartarus, the mysterious main dungeon area that players can explore at night.
“At the very base, what we wanted to do was keep the core of the original game, like we wanted to respect the original, and that was what kind of defined what we would keep from the original game,” says Takuya Yamaguchi, Persona 3 Reload’s game director. “And that includes both the story and characters and kind of those elements. However, there’s a lot of supporting elements of a game that go in to support these kinds of core themes. And we wanted to focus really heavily on updating those, these kinds of supportive elements, and that’s like additional link episodes and explorations of kind of who Strega is and then also the battle system, Theurgy, which is something that we have added to the game.”
But when it comes to changes in Persona 3 Reload, it would seem that the aforementioned Tartarus is one of the most significant ones. “There’s lots of fan feedback and lots of user feedback on how to change it, and we took a lot of that into consideration,” says Yamaguchi. “We knew that this was a top priority to change. We wanted to make it more interesting and, like always, exciting when you’re exploring it.”
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Thanks to Tartarus being inextricable from the story of Persona 3, though, this proved challenging. “We couldn’t really make any major changes to that without disrupting the kind of flow of the game itself,” he continues. “So instead we made lots and lots of small tweaks. And this kind of accumulation of small tweaks is what allowed us to really improve the experience here.”
(Image credit: Atlus)
“Frankly, I don’t envy Atlus. Remaking a much-beloved entry in a much-beloved franchise full of incredibly dedicated fans sounds like a nightmare.”
“Frankly, I don’t envy Atlus. Remaking a much-beloved entry in a much-beloved franchise full of incredibly dedicated fans sounds like a nightmare.”
While the original Persona 3 (and various other iterations) was a looker in its day, Persona 3 Reload certainly brings it to an entirely new level. P3P, despite being largely the “definitive” version of Persona 3 to this point, made certain compromises thanks to its very nature. The PlayStation Portable, though impressive in its time, does not really stand up to the heights of modern handhelds in terms of visuals and sheer power. Reload feels a bit like if P3P didnothave to make those compromises.
In fact, this is the most obvious change in P3R. According to Yamaguchi, the team took inspiration from P5R to make the characters a lot taller than they were initially. Increasing the size of the game’s characters isn’t as simple as all that, however, as the developers couldn’t just chuck the newly resized versions into the game on their own; it required an entire visual overhaul that ultimately ended up with them changing aspects from “the UI and the background and the environment and everything else to kind of match the same size of these kind of upgraded characters.”
All of my impressions are, admittedly, based on a limited amount of time with Reload. I was able to play close to two hours during a recent preview event, and that was restricted to roughly a week’s worth of in-game time. Anyone who’s familiar with the story of the original Persona 3 or, well, any Persona game at all will tell you that it is a mere teardrop in the ocean that is these games. It’s hard to make any grand proclamations based on that, but what I can say is that those hours and that digital week were enjoyable and, at times, fascinating.
Frankly, I don’t envy Atlus. Remaking a much-beloved entry in a much-beloved franchise full of incredibly dedicated fans sounds like a nightmare. How do you balance adding and updating enough to make it worthwhile yet still respect the fact that there’s a reason you’re bothering to remake the original in the first place and clearly it already resonated and resonates with audiences? The fact thatSquare Enixseems to have threaded this needle entirely differentlyandcompetently with Final Fantasy 7 Remake only makes the potential answers here even more complex, and I’m not sure there’s any one right way to do it. But from my experience so far, Persona 3 Reload certainly seems to be one viable path forward for all of the above.
GamesRadar+ is exploring the most anticipated video games of the year withBig in 2024, with new articles dropping every day throughout January.
GamesRadar+ is exploring the most anticipated video games of the year withBig in 2024, with new articles dropping every day throughout January.
GamesRadar+ is exploring the most anticipated video games of the year withBig in 2024, with new articles dropping every day throughout January.
GamesRadar+ is exploring the most anticipated video games of the year withBig in 2024, with new articles dropping every day throughout January.
GamesRadar+ is exploring the most anticipated video games of the year withBig in 2024, with new articles dropping every day throughout January.
GamesRadar+ is exploring the most anticipated video games of the year withBig in 2024, with new articles dropping every day throughout January.
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2Mufasa: The Lion King review – “It’s no Hakuna Matata but this Disney origin story is a class above the 2019 movie”
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3Kraven the Hunter review: “The insistence on an R-rating helps save this, with a decent helping of bloodthirsty action”
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4The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim review – “An uninspired expansion of the most iconic screen take on Tolkien”
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Nightbitch review: “Amy Adams' disappointing dark comedy is all bark and no bite”
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2Secret Level review: “An uneven experience with serious highlights that ultimately make up for the misses”
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3Skeleton Crew review: “Perfectly captures the vibes of classic Star Wars with a swashbuckling twist”
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5
Cobra Kai season 6, part 2 review: “Returns to the sort of hard-hitting form that made it such a fan favorite in the first place”