Final Thoughts on Persona 3 Reload?

[Bruhman800]

Since the game has been out for a month i would like to hear everyone's thoughts on Atlus's first remake. I personally like reload since it's a remake of one of my favorite games of all time but i have some issues, like the fact Makoto can't use multiple weapon types, half of the fusion spells were removed, All the characters are toned down INCLUDING Makoto (e.x you can't call Mitsuru useless anymore and you can't be a prick to Shinji when he saves you) apparently the characters are toned down in the Japanese version too so it's not just an localization issue, also reload is laughable easy which makes me kind of worried about Persona 6, like this game is even easier than Persona 5 Royal which is already a stupidly easy game. I also think the new remakes of the old songs are god awful (Especially when moons reaching the stars, i had to download a mod to remove it from the game). Other than those complaints i'd probably rate Reload a 9/10 remake, might bump it up when The Answer comes out, The new voice cast is alright IMO but i still vastly prefer the old voice cast, i don't even know why Atlus west replaced them.

[fender178]

I have a few theories why Atlus West replaced the OG VAs. Some of them had controversies like with Junpei and Aigis. Junpei's OG VA was caught in a controversy that involved being way too friendly with his fans and peers. And Aigis' OG VA turned out to be an anti-vaxxor. Then with F u u k a's OG VA she didn't do a very good job due to multiple reasons from poor directions from the director. Then F u u k a's 2nd VA from P4 Arena and Ultimax she was involved with being unprofessional because she lost a part to another VA in an Anime but she got her part back in the end. With Mitsuru and the P3 Protag and Ryoji both of them were busy doing the Spiderman game on PS4 that was remastered and brought to PS5 and PC. However with Akihiko and Yukari it is very possible due to the them being veteran VAs it would cost Atlus more money to get them. But Yukari's VA worked on P5 Royal so who knows.

[Chopsteak]

A couple of things I would have liked to have seen been done:

1. Have the ability to side with Strega at muliple points in the game. With the link episodes you have with Takaya being in the game I think it would have been interesting to have the opportunity to side with Strega before all 12 shadows were hunted down or after the fact and decide to join the Nyx cult. Persona 4 Golden let you side with Adachi to see that scenario, I would have liked to have seen a scenario where you could side with your enemy in this game as well just to see how it pan out.

2. I wish they would have incorporated both Makoto and Kotone, but not like portable where you choose one as a protagonist and the other is either dead before story events or just does not exist in that timeline. I would have liked to have seen the player be given the option to choose one as a protagonist while the other was able to join as a member of SEES to help with the journey. This way people who want both characters or one of them over the other would be happy as both are there and people who want the protagonist to survive the ending would now be able to have one of them do so, while also maintaining the story of the original by having one of them sacrifice themselves to stop the fall. I realize it would be extra effort on Atlus to do so, but I think they could have done it and should have being that this is the definitive version of Persona 3. I see little reason why we should just abandon one character or pick and choose at this point. Both characters are great and it would be amazing to see the whole SEES team in action.

I still had a lot of fun with the game, made The Ultimate Hee-Ho Jack Frost and feel that overall it was a worthwhile journey to go on again. I just really would have loved to see those two things I listed incorporated though, but this is just one Hee-Ho's opinion.

[neo_child]

1. The brutality of the PC's responses back in the day was because they introduced the option to reverse a lot of the social links if you so choose to be an absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. AFAIK, its not possible to do so anymore because, lets be real, its a stupid mechanic considering people will just reload their saves regardless. Even if they didn't, there is no benefit or any extra content when reversing their social links.

2. Sad about the weapon types but main reason was because you couldn't control your party members, the damage coverage back in the day was really weak considering the amount of phys skills weren't available in such a broad range til endgame.

3. Yeah I miss the few fusions but its not a deal breaker considering the vast majority of them felt weak or reused. Like having a Severe Slash theurgy alongside Severe Strike and having RNG effects like Frolic or Summer Dream would make them dead on arrival and clutter for your "Ultimate" spell list.

4. The difficulty is still there, its just easier because you aren't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ around with the AI. People thought P3FES was hard because of how difficult the enemies were but 90% of the time it was wrestling with the unpredictability of the AI, whether they will heal or attack even if you're in lethal range from an enemy attack, which also forced the MC to be primarily a healer/buff/debuffer because your AI companions wouldn't reliably refresh buffs/debuffs or heal constantly.

Nyx was toned down and I'm sad about that but I wouldn't look at an hour long endurance fight being "tough". You just slap in Yukari or Ken and spam their healing. Nothing SHOULD 1 shot you because if it did, you're either underleveled or the boss is not being debuff'd or your team isn't buffed. And this is from me playing on Merciless. I do miss the double turns and the crit gauntlet but that phase of the fight felt pure rng ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, no tactic other than debuff and pray since its just a pseudo Megidolaon spam that can crit that's typical in old SMT games.

Speaking of difficulty, you also have to understand that with fusions becoming easier, you were able to create your ultimate persona and curate your ultimate persona rather than reset spamming and praying the right skills get inherited out of the 8.

[Dubious Disk]

Originally posted by neo_child:

1. The brutality of the PC's responses back in the day was because they introduced the option to reverse a lot of the social links if you so choose to be an absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. AFAIK, its not possible to do so anymore because, lets be real, its a stupid mechanic considering people will just reload their saves regardless. Even if they didn't, there is no benefit or any extra content when reversing their social links.

It's only possible with Chihiro, and Yukari. And funnily enough, for it to happen for either one of them, you essentially have to pick an obvious wrong choice, like straight up no human being would do it in a real world setting.

[Koopa]

it's alr, I miss yukari va tho fr

[Haruspex]

I don't think there's any difficulty present here. Like not saying P3 was the paragon of difficulty before but it's noticeably gotten a lot easier because of Theurgies and Shift. I never had a problem with bosses until Elizabeth I at least remember in Portable getting stuck for a bit on floor bosses.

Ultimately I think I prefer the new voice actors, They have better direction. In the original they felt like they hated each other's guts at times like Yukari was straight up a B here and there. You could argue that was the point but eh I digress I think it just ultimately just made everyone angsty.
I still prefer Karen Strassman's performance as Aigis in the ending though but in general I think the new VA is a lot better.

As for the music I'm mixed about it on one hand I really love Full moon full life, Changing seaons, It's going down now and Color your night but they kinda butchered some of the original soundtracks.
Burn my bread final was atrocious lol Lotus dropped the ball on that one.

[Lynfinity]

Originally posted by Jester:

Burn my bread

God I hate when they do that.

[hairo]

Originally posted by Bruhman800:

Since the game has been out for a month i would like to hear everyone's thoughts on Atlus's first remake. I personally like reload since it's a remake of one of my favorite games of all time but i have some issues, like the fact Makoto can't use multiple weapon types, half of the fusion spells were removed, All the characters are toned down INCLUDING Makoto (e.x you can't call Mitsuru useless anymore and you can't be a prick to Shinji when he saves you) apparently the characters are toned down in the Japanese version too so it's not just an localization issue, also reload is laughable easy which makes me kind of worried about Persona 6, like this game is even easier than Persona 5 Royal which is already a stupidly easy game. I also think the new remakes of the old songs are god awful (Especially when moons reaching the stars, i had to download a mod to remove it from the game). Other than those complaints i'd probably rate Reload a 9/10 remake, might bump it up when The Answer comes out, The new voice cast is alright IMO but i still vastly prefer the old voice cast, i don't even know why Atlus west replaced them.

I'm a newcomer to the series I have finished the game and enjoyed it through and through. I can understand your frustration coming from old nostalgic feelings toward your favourite game but if you want outside perspective I'll provide. Since I've been playing this game for a month now my youtube algorithym is also showing me both new and old persona 3 content. I can easily tell you new remix of musics in the game are far superior in my opinion. This is a subjective topic because I have been in similar situations we are tend to like what are ears are used to hear more. I'm not saying this is same for your case but this is how I feel like, as a newcomer I appreciate the new remix and the amount of detail and energy the flows have in the new version.

I also see you are unsatisfied by the removed dialogue changes but this is how you make a remake and modernize a game. Like you might not realize but probably developers found it's not resonating it with people anymore maybe it was resonating back then and thus got removed as a development choice. I am saying this because I haven't found any odd bits as a newcomer in the dialogue options. One crisitism if I have about it would be the illusional multiple options which is hidden well between actual branching dialogues. For seasoned players they are easy to notice. But not the things you mentioned.

About the game being easy I'm a casual gamer but I also felt the ease of combat here. But this part is also subjective because I enjoyed the combat why if you ask because it never felt like a chore and just when things got too easy game pushed some tough enemies at the right times which is an enjoyable experience for me. I don't like the idea of challenge where you have to find a very specific route of player growth to beat a highly overpowered enemy rather I like to explore every bit of the game do all the quests and give me a challenging enemy and fight with the tools I've gathered along in my journey which the game delivers for me.

This is how I like as a newcomer to the series. Thing are never the same nor should they stay same from what I've seen in the old gameplay the soul of the persona 3 has been protected except probably the removal of female fc and dialogues unique to that.

[Pyro3000]

Originally posted by Dubious Disk:

Originally posted by neo_child:

1. The brutality of the PC's responses back in the day was because they introduced the option to reverse a lot of the social links if you so choose to be an absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. AFAIK, its not possible to do so anymore because, lets be real, its a stupid mechanic considering people will just reload their saves regardless. Even if they didn't, there is no benefit or any extra content when reversing their social links.

It's only possible with Chihiro, and Yukari. And funnily enough, for it to happen for either one of them, you essentially have to pick an obvious wrong choice, like straight up no human being would do it in a real world setting.

I reversed Chihiro back in thr day, and I would still argue that it was a perfectly fine choice.

[Bruhman800]

Originally posted by neo_child:

1. The brutality of the PC's responses back in the day was because they introduced the option to reverse a lot of the social links if you so choose to be an absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. AFAIK, its not possible to do so anymore because, lets be real, its a stupid mechanic considering people will just reload their saves regardless. Even if they didn't, there is no benefit or any extra content when reversing their social links.

2. Sad about the weapon types but main reason was because you couldn't control your party members, the damage coverage back in the day was really weak considering the amount of phys skills weren't available in such a broad range til endgame.

3. Yeah I miss the few fusions but its not a deal breaker considering the vast majority of them felt weak or reused. Like having a Severe Slash theurgy alongside Severe Strike and having RNG effects like Frolic or Summer Dream would make them dead on arrival and clutter for your "Ultimate" spell list.

4. The difficulty is still there, its just easier because you aren't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ around with the AI. People thought P3FES was hard because of how difficult the enemies were but 90% of the time it was wrestling with the unpredictability of the AI, whether they will heal or attack even if you're in lethal range from an enemy attack, which also forced the MC to be primarily a healer/buff/debuffer because your AI companions wouldn't reliably refresh buffs/debuffs or heal constantly.

Speaking of difficulty, you also have to understand that with fusions becoming easier, you were able to create your ultimate persona and curate your ultimate persona rather than reset spamming and praying the right skills get inherited out of the 8.

It's funny because there's less consequence's to being a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to people in reload since you can't break social links anymore, plus i just miss those dialogue options since they gave the protagonist a lot of personality.

I do miss the multiplie weapon types since they made Makoto more versatile but i guess i can't complain since the game is easy enough as is, Just sad the remake removed content, but i guess Portable did the same thing.

They probably could have added the old Fusion spells back if they didn't make Theurgies so broken, as in they completely ignore defense and resistances.

And i don't know about the difficulty still being there, i played on Merciless with AI controlled party members the entire game it was still pretty easy.

[Bruhman800]

Originally posted by Jester:

I don't think there's any difficulty present here. Like not saying P3 was the paragon of difficulty before but it's noticeably gotten a lot easier because of Theurgies and Shift. I never had a problem with bosses until Elizabeth I at least remember in Portable getting stuck for a bit on floor bosses.

Ultimately I think I prefer the new voice actors, They have better direction. In the original they felt like they hated each other's guts at times like Yukari was straight up a B here and there. You could argue that was the point but eh I digress I think it just ultimately just made everyone angsty.
I still prefer Karen Strassman's performance as Aigis in the ending though but in general I think the new VA is a lot better.

As for the music I'm mixed about it on one hand I really love Full moon full life, Changing seaons, It's going down now and Color your night but they kinda butchered some of the original soundtracks.
Burn my bread final was atrocious lol Lotus dropped the ball on that one.

I agree, But i do think the Old VAs were better, i actually personally think Aigis was one of if not Karen's best role, i also really miss Liam as Akihiko, And i thought it would have been nice to hear Yuri actually voice Makoto since he actually has voice lines in reload, And i actually kinda liked how mean everyone was to each other, i also liked how they didn't "Simp" for the protagonist 24/7 and they actually warm up to each other and you over the course of the game. Other than that i love the new songs in reload just the remasters of the older songs aren't as good IMO. Master of Shadows sounds off to me idk why, Mass Destruction, Memories of you, and Burn my bread don't sound as good as the originals to me, they aren't bad they just sounds like YouTube Covers if that makes any sense.

[Bruhman800]

Originally posted by animolhairo:

Originally posted by Bruhman800:

Since the game has been out for a month i would like to hear everyone's thoughts on Atlus's first remake. I personally like reload since it's a remake of one of my favorite games of all time but i have some issues, like the fact Makoto can't use multiple weapon types, half of the fusion spells were removed, All the characters are toned down INCLUDING Makoto (e.x you can't call Mitsuru useless anymore and you can't be a prick to Shinji when he saves you) apparently the characters are toned down in the Japanese version too so it's not just an localization issue, also reload is laughable easy which makes me kind of worried about Persona 6, like this game is even easier than Persona 5 Royal which is already a stupidly easy game. I also think the new remakes of the old songs are god awful (Especially when moons reaching the stars, i had to download a mod to remove it from the game). Other than those complaints i'd probably rate Reload a 9/10 remake, might bump it up when The Answer comes out, The new voice cast is alright IMO but i still vastly prefer the old voice cast, i don't even know why Atlus west replaced them.

I'm a newcomer to the series I have finished the game and enjoyed it through and through. I can understand your frustration coming from old nostalgic feelings toward your favourite game but if you want outside perspective I'll provide. Since I've been playing this game for a month now my youtube algorithym is also showing me both new and old persona 3 content. I can easily tell you new remix of musics in the game are far superior in my opinion. This is a subjective topic because I have been in similar situations we are tend to like what are ears are used to hear more. I'm not saying this is same for your case but this is how I feel like, as a newcomer I appreciate the new remix and the amount of detail and energy the flows have in the new version.

I also see you are unsatisfied by the removed dialogue changes but this is how you make a remake and modernize a game. Like you might not realize but probably developers found it's not resonating it with people anymore maybe it was resonating back then and thus got removed as a development choice. I am saying this because I haven't found any odd bits as a newcomer in the dialogue options. One crisitism if I have about it would be the illusional multiple options which is hidden well between actual branching dialogues. For seasoned players they are easy to notice. But not the things you mentioned.

About the game being easy I'm a casual gamer but I also felt the ease of combat here. But this part is also subjective because I enjoyed the combat why if you ask because it never felt like a chore and just when things got too easy game pushed some tough enemies at the right times which is an enjoyable experience for me. I don't like the idea of challenge where you have to find a very specific route of player growth to beat a highly overpowered enemy rather I like to explore every bit of the game do all the quests and give me a challenging enemy and fight with the tools I've gathered along in my journey which the game delivers for me.

This is how I like as a newcomer to the series. Thing are never the same nor should they stay same from what I've seen in the old gameplay the soul of the persona 3 has been protected except probably the removal of female fc and dialogues unique to that.

Oh i know most of my complaints don't matter to new players lol. And i don't think the new vocalist is bad, her original songs are good but when she tries to sing Yumi's songs she just falls flat IMO. but i'd rather a newcomer experience Persona 3 Reload for the first time rather than Portable.

[Acidity3188]

I played persona 4 and 5 before 3 reload and damn, I was a sobbing mess during the back half of this game.

[Bruhman800]

Originally posted by Acidity3188:

I played persona 4 and 5 before 3 reload and damn, I was a sobbing mess during the back half of this game.

Persona 3 is the best Persona game IMO

[ZDM]

Just recently finished it, good remake. 120 hours to 100% it. Rewind helped a good amount surprisingly. Didn't really mind the new changes too much as most of it was either reasonable or was minimal. The new VAs were also good, including Akihikos. Only thought Nyx's VA was a bit off compared to the original having a deeper tone. Final battle itself also seemed a bit too bright especially with the "green/blue" hue. Not sure how to explain it. Will be back when they release The Answer.