Persona has been a cornerstone of the JRPG genre alongside industry titans such as Final Fantasy. The Persona series provides an interesting blend on dungeon crawling and life sim elements that makes for an engaging narrative and gameplay loop.
Reload is my first experience with Persona 3 as a whole and I only have P5 and P4 Golden to compare it to and what a wild ride this game was. This game had the highest stakes for our cast out of all three games and puts forward an emotional and gut wrenching plot that left me glued to my monitor until the bitter end and was one of the few games to get me to tear up at the conclusion. I found a majority of the characters to be likable and well developed, with some notable characters being Yukari and Akihiko, while others such as some of the social links you can find scattered around the game world fell flat for me. Persona 3 Reload however did have some of the weakest dungeon crawling of the modern series and upon my second and third runs I found myself rushing through Tartarus as fast as possible to push the story forward. The floors of Tartarus do not offer much variety apart from an aesthetic change every so often and is just 200+ floors of rush to the exit and felt like a worse version of P5’s Mementos. The soundtrack of this game was bombastic and emotional at times, especially during the final confrontation and cutscene sequence (if you finished the game you know what I’m talking about). After I finished my first run of the game and seeing the main menu change the background and music was a very powerful moment that left me just staring at my screen for several minutes reflecting on what I just experienced. All in all I did find this game to be an absolute gem and is my game of the year for 2024!
Achievement Review Section
The achievements for Persona 3 Reload are not overly taxing on the players skill, but some do require a guide if you want to achieve them in your first run. A notable achievement is maxing all social links which took me a third entire run to achieve out of a complete stubborn desire to try and do the entire game without using guides. Most achievements you will manage to get just through natural progression and exploration however. Unlike Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden, you are NOT required to complete the persona compendium which is a huge time saver. Another notable achievement that has been a mainstay for the modern entries is to defeat the Reaper, which is classed as a hidden super boss. The Reaper, whilst not overly difficult to overcome at higher player levels, will test your knowledge of weaknesses and debuffs.
With a guide I would give the achievement list around a 4/10 and without a guide just for the social links alone I would class it closer to a 6/10.
Pros
+Amazing Soundtrack.
+Great cast of characters.
+Engaging plot.
+Only game to make my cry other than season 1 of the Walking Dead.
+Visually stunning.
+Great performance on PC.
Cons
-Tartarus is very boring after a first run.
-Some of the villain characters I wasn’t a fan of.
-A few sections where I found myself skipping through entire days to get to the next plot point.
Summary: Persona 3 Reload is easily the most gripping story I have played this year and takes the 2024 game of the year spot for me without much contest so far.
Soundtrack (9/10)
Gameplay (7/10)
Story (8/10)
Achievement Difficulty With A Guide (4/10) Without A Guide (6/10)
