Review Code Provided by Atlus
Timestamps
Intro-0:00
Gameplay Overview-4:34
Story/Cutscene Analysis-16:37
Conclusion-28:38
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Footage Sources
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLDs0xCl-7Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIeo4rIW2Hg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fieMaRYyFP4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teeS2mFxkKk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zO7a0c9o0I
https://youtu.be/-JKBbX73HoI?si=0wDJs54irDf5ndeP
https://youtu.be/FQ90l9fSYA4?si=R4cbubRday9baHEk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HkuMK1rHNw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcbKexp0Iow
Persona 3 Reload is a game I have a lot of mixed feelings about. While I would never call it a bad game looking at it in a vacuum, as a remake of Persona 3 I think it fails more often than it succeeds. I’ve had a rough history with the original Persona 3. I got into the series with Persona 5, and then played the games backwards from that point. While persona 4 was easy for me to get into, I had a hard time adjusting to Persona 3’s unique gameplay quirks. The game infamously uses an AI controlled party instead of having direct commands, and while that might seem like a pretty small change on paper, it drastically changes how you need to approach battles and dungeon exploration. Since it was so different from the other two games I had already played, I didn't feel the need to actually learn the new quirks that came with that mechanical shift, which led to a lot of frustration as I got further and further into the game and kept dying to things seemingly out of my control. Eventually I would slowly learn the ins and outs of the tactics system, such as how to change the skill priority and planning a couple steps ahead, and now that I’ve learned to play by the game's rules, I really adore what it sets out to do. While I do prefer direct commands overall, the tactics system offers such a unique way of approaching battles that I think the game overall benefits from their inclusion, and the result in a gameplay experience I’ve rarely found anywhere else.
So when Persona 3 Reload came out earlier this year, I was pretty disappointed to see how much was changed for the worse during the transition to modern hardware. For every new thing I like, such as most of the new English voice cast and the new music, there's just as much about the game that frustrates me to no end. Instead of adapting the original game’s unique mechanics into a modern lens, more often than not those mechanics are outright dropped, and replaced with something that dumbs down the game to a monotonous degree. They didn't even bother to make a competent tactics system for the people who’d prefer to use it, in fact they somehow made it worse than its implementation in previous games, since while being controlled by the AI, party members just straight up won’t use some of the game's mechanics. While the story is pretty much the same as the original, there's a lot of artistic and directorial changes that I think diminish its overall impact. A majority of the changes often times fly in the face or downplay the intentions of the original game, which is really frustrating to see in a remake of a game I adore, and one that’s marketed as the “definitive edition of Persona 3”.
The original version of the answer is pretty infamous among Persona fans. It's a little tedious since it's a bunch of dungeon crawling without any of the social sim stuff to alleviate the monotony. The story is also a little contrived in some places, which turns off some people despite how important it is in the greater context of the series. While this new version does improve on a few aspects, it doesn't really do a whole lot to alleviate any of my issues from the base version of reload. In fact, I’ll argue that this DLC is the perfect encapsulation of all of my issues with the remake in one nice little package. So I’m going to break down my issues with both the gameplay and the story, and hopefully highlight why I think Reload as a whole fails as a remake of Persona 3. Also I know this DLC is pretty new and is likely a lot of people's first experience with this campaign, so consider this your spoiler warning for both Reload and The Answer. With that out of the way, let's discuss why Episode Aigis isn’t The Answer I was Hoping For.