It was an annoying mechanic that broke the original game’s pacing by forcing players to stay away from Tartarus and waste their evenings doing nothing to recover.

Persona games aren’t for everyone as they often feature strange premises that take a long time to get going, cutscenes with hours’ worth of dialogue, and atypical gameplay loops of balancing school life with dungeon crawling.

See your favorite moments beautifully remade from scratch, along with an all-new opening music video.

After completing the game, I am happy to report that this remake has exceeded my expectations and cemented itself as one of my new favorite Persona games of all time and one of Xbox’s best JRPGs.

Persona 3 Reload follows the same gameplay loop as the original Persona 3. You will spend your days attending school and building up your Social Stats to forge friendships (or Social Links, as they’re called in this game) with various NPCs in town during the day.

The video contains spoilers for the opening parts of the game, so it is recommended that those who wish to experience it for the first time in-game refrain from watching.

A stellar visual overhaul and countless small changes and additions beyond it leave a significant impact, making Persona 3 Reload a more fully realized version of a beloved RPG. Although still dated in some respects, quality of life improvements and new features refresh its exciting turn-based combat and add depth to its touching story moments.

Reload even makes a concerted effort to address the fact that none of the male party members previously had Social Link routes. While they're not traditionally structured, distinct opportunities to spend time with them now pop up throughout the story and eventually lead to revelatory moments for those characters. Since these are freshly written for Reload, there's a noticeable contrast in quality compared to the original social sim conversations, making me wish the old dialogue had been punched up to match the heights of these new interactions.

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Fans of the Persona series will already be familiar with the style of gameplay that this title helped pioneer, including time management with your duties in the day, and turn-based combat that is influenced by those day-to-day social interactions.

Some sources suggest that Max Charm gives a 1.51 multiplier to Social Link points. Unfortunately I haven't been able to confirm this, but this mechanic has been confirmed to exist in Portable which makes it likely this mechanic exists in this persona 3 reload gameplay game as well.

Even the side characters you interact with through the game’s Social Link events get this treatment, as every major Social Link event is now fully voiced for the first time in the Persona series.

Tartarus itself has been revamped to give it a sinister new vibe and a more distinct look for each block of floors. From Giger-like biomechanical labyrinths to shapeshifting industrial halls, Tartarus is at least more visually interesting than before, and the floors themselves are generally laid out less like tedious, sprawling mazes. It's not a drastic overhaul that will completely stave off the repetitive nature of ascending Tartarus, but it's just enough to prevent it from feeling like the weak link it could have been.

As is tradition for Shin Megami Tensei games, the turn-based RPG combat revolves around accounting for elemental affinities, knocking down enemies to earn Em excesso turns, and setting up those iconic All-Out Attacks. Persona 3 Reload uses the same foundation as the original but builds upon it in ways that mitigate the monotony of churning through battle after battle. The aforementioned Theurgy attacks are relegated to a meter that fills during fights, each serving a strategic purpose given their limited use and character-specific effects, be that massive damage or major stat buffs – and they all come with some fantastic animations, too.