RPG Review: Persona 3 Reload

	Instead of Makoto Leonhart, Kotone’s route would have been a much better remake.
	it very much put me in a trance

I hate the fact that Mass Destruction is stuck in my head even though Not a Princess is a very good battle song too!! 😂 Anyway this will be short because we played the portable version previously and reviewed the female protagonist route. There’s not much to say so I’ll just keep this quick:

Pros:

• New graphics were great. We actually got to see moving sprites, run around town and hear voices of characters that were not previously voiced (like Bebe!)
• High res cutscenes! Now the ending actually makes sense!
• Some of the remixes of the old songs were pretty good and the soundtrack quality was crisp.
• They updated a few battle mechanics to make things easier in Tartarus.
• Maps are easier to follow so you don’t get lost (as much).
• The male social links while still missing, at least you could do some stuff with them like cooking or reading/watching movies etc.
• Ironically the social links for some of the randos like track yaoi and fatty (okay fine and Maya) gave us more things to do during the days when school was closed.

Cons:

• Kotone’s social links with the team were so much better. The fact that I could only get with the girls and 2 of them very late (Aigis and Mitsuru) was a disappointment. I was aiming for shipping Makoto with Yukari but to get with her you have literally ONE CHANCE in July and if your stats aren’t ready for her (max rank Charm) you will miss her summer festival date. For some reason even though I didn’t have Mitsuru unlocked, it gave me the option to take her instead like ?????? I also found it hilarious how if other girls try to confess their love to you while you are with someone, you get a warning not to cheat. Meanwhile in P3P Kotone had a manharem with every guy she could get with. 🤣
• No seriously why do we need THREE social links about the track team???? Most of the social links themselves in this game were kinda bad since they basically boiled down to “enable people to do stupid things”. Oh yeah Kenji, you should totally lie about how you’re dating a teacher. Def run away from home shrine loli!
• Tartarus still exists. I hate Tartarus. I hate the same elevator music on every floor. They changed the “visuals” to look more interesting but it’s still the same boring ass slog.  Only good thing was that they put a bunch of cats to rescue instead of dumb people which was at least somewhat motivating. That didn’t stop me from doing 40 floors at a time and then ignoring it until the following month.
• There wasn’t really anything new if you had previously played the game aside the fact that they stuck on episode Aigis as a $35 DLC that I refused to pay for and will be watching cut scenes of on Youtube because once again, I hate Tartarus.
• There was a whole lot of nothing to do at night. They had the Monk and Tanaka social links at one point but after that? Nothing. You couldn’t even do shit with your team mates in the dorm every night aside the few cooking/tv things. The game clearly just wanted you to >>GRIND TARTARUS<<. Why aren’t you grinding Tartarus yet?
• “Nothing to do” was even worse this time around because we now had the experience of already playing through the game the first time so we knew about various “traps” like “only level up stats at night” or “there will be long periods when school is closed so save those specific social links for those days.” This made the game even more optimized and finished off events even earlier.
• Sorry but Kotone had the best romance scenes of all time. The ones with Makoto just felt so childish and sad in comparison lol. 🤣 Here’s my Yukari x Makoto video and also my fanart!

So overall, I generally don’t feel like this was really worth it unless you’re a huge persona fan. As a protagonist, Makoto felt like he was basically emo Squall Leonhart because he constantly had options to say things like “Whatever” “Who cares?” and “I don’t care.” It’s like the game basically forced nihilism on the player but as usual I usually picked the normal choices that Kotone would probably choose except when I got social links I couldn’t stand (like the dumb runaway child who wanted to marry Makoto and her dad flipped his shit about the concept….while the game gave me 0 chance to tell the fetus to fuck off 💩.)

I truly wish they had instead done Kotone’s route because the social links were so much more fun and I would have loved to see her with all the updated graphics and models. I bought the game 50% off on Steam  and even then it still feels like it wasn’t really worth it. Honestly the only social link that made the game for me was Toriumi-sensei, the l33t mmo gamer and the conclusion to her social link was comedy gold.😎

I guess the reason they called this “Persona 3 Reload” is to be vague about what exactly the game was going to be. It’s honestly much closer to a remaster than a remake in my eyes. New coat of paint on the graphics, some QOL features that people expect these days, but otherwise not fundamentally changing anything about the base game (much less a complete re-envisioning like FF7R). This of course means that the game doesn’t fix the biggest problems with the original: Tartarus still sucks, the pacing still sucks, and the even matrix still sucks.

Anyway P4R is gonna rule because that game only needed those minor changes like revised graphics and a better interface since the base game was so good.