Persona 3 FES is the best game I've played this year and one of my favorite games of all time.

I've always been familiar with the existence of the Persona franchise, from a really young age. For some reason I never really got into it. This all changed with Persona 3 FES. I was finally conviced to try it after watching a friend of mine stream Reload on Discord. I knew it was finally time.

Persona 3 FES had an incredible story that made me feel indescribable feelings, a cast of characters that I absolutely adored discounting you, Ken a soundtrack that I'd soon start listening to non-stop, daily and gameplay that I always thought I would never enjoy and ended up loving. It was my introduction to the Persona series and traditional JRPGs as a whole. To top it off, it had one of the most impactful endings I've ever witnessed from a videogame. It was an absolute joy to play through, from beginning to end.

Word simply cannot describe how much I enjoyed my time with Persona 3 FES. I don't know if this is just recency bias, but it may come close to being my all time favorite game ever made. But why am I just praising Persona 3 FES when I'm actually reviewing its remake, Persona 3 Reload?

Well, to put it simply, I adore what Atlus have done in remaking this game. It's so hard to try to find even 1 flaw in all of what I've seen so far. Everything from the original experience has been kept almost identical, whilst also completely revamping most of the core gameplay systems to make them just that much better. Nothing could ever overwrite the existence of Persona 3 FES for me but I simply can't ignore the fact that Persona 3 Reload is coming very damn close. Every slight annoyance from FES' clunky moments and long, tedious animations has also been completely wiped as well. The visuals have received such a monumental upgrade that it's simply pleasure for the eyes. The OST, while divise, in my opinion also has had an immense upgrade. There is simply too much to love here,.

So, to sum it all up, I'm completely in love with Persona 3 Reload. I still haven't fully finished it, but I will continue to play it in my leisure and I can already easily conclude that Atlus have done an amazing job. Additionally, I cannot wait to play the Answer in September.

Thank you for this gift of an experience Atlus.

What an amazing visual upgrade of Persona 3! I love how it had a mixture of the OG and FES content, Awesome music (I miss Yumi though...) and easier ways of uping stats and social stats!
Also loved how the models are basically improved versions of the Persona 3 Dancing in the Moonlight models. Those were good looking!

Still, saaad:
RIP 90%+ Old voice actors gone
RIP Attractive Trans character from the beach :C
RIP Shinjiro traumatized old man face expression/druggy voice
RIP Yumi as the singer. aaaa no Burn my Dread optional OP for not pressing start.
RIP, still can't have MC use numerous different weapon types...

I do recommend though!

I've been looking forward to Reload because P3FES is my fav in the series and I just hoped that Atlus will iron out some gameplay problems that the original game had. I don't care about the difficulty side of things much but the balance in Reload is definitely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ because of theurgies, I just feel like there's not much reason to strategize and that's the worst you can do with the battle system in JRPG. It takes some dedication to make Reload even easier than vanilla Persona 5 honestly. What really disappoints me in Reload though...
While the cutscenes certainly look prettier, they definitely lost that Evangelion-ish vibe to them, you can see that even in the game's opening. And the sound design got worse across the board too.
While original Reload tracks like "It's Going Down" and "Color Your Night" are good, most of the rearrangements sound like YouTube covers. "Unavoidable Battle" , "Master of Tartarus", "The Battle for Everyone's Souls", are very illustrative examples of the changes to the soundtrack, the drums in some tracks just have less punch to them, the tracks with emphasis on guitar have less distortion. I ultimately have mixed feelings about this iteration of P3. Reload feels like a safer, blander version of the game. I wish there was a neutral recommendation button for cases like these, but I feel that Reload is overall a lazy effort.
I just hope that Persona 6 will be worth looking forward to.