[h1] Decisively indecisive remake. [/h1]
As a massive fan of the original PS2 SMT and Persona games, this is easily a 5/10 for me. I would recommend playing P3FES or Portable over this if you don't mind old games, or playing Metaphor: ReFantazio if you want to scratch the Persona itch that this game might not scratch. It's not a bad game (I stuck around for 154hours lmao), but it's extremely underwhelming if you've played the originals.
[h2] Cons [/h2]
- New remixes are terrible.
The new vocalist, Azumi Takahashi, sounds like she's constantly holding back from putting her voice out. It feels like she's trying to imitate the original vocalist, Yumi Kawamura, instead of doing her own take of the songs. Because in the Reload original tracks like in the new opening and ambush track, she sounds amazing. Burn My Dread -Last Battle- is the worst offender imo. Lotus Juice is good though, he's always good alongside all the new original tracks. Issue is that the new tracks are like 20% of the whole soundtrack that's filled with diet coke remixes, which is especially frustrating given Atlus never misses with their soundtracks.
- feels too polished and lacks the 'edge' of the original game visually.
- the Dark Hour is so GREEN you could mistake this game for Yakuza Kiwami 2.
- New anime cutscenes are very pretty and on model but lack the edge and sauce of the originals.
- the UI, while gorgeous, I feel makes some of the game feel a little sluggish. Especially with the AoA, making Tartarus run especially slow despite it not really being slow.
- a lot of the dialogue/script in this game feels very descriptive.
It's like they took the script they made for P3P that was specifically tailored to fit the new visual novel-esque format and slapped it onto this game. The results end up making every character basically point and describe everything that's going on in whatever scene they're in while the actual scene is happening, leaving zero room for subtlety or personal interpretation.
- has kept the terrible story execution of the original p3, they should've taken way more creative liberties given this opportunity to do a remake from the ground up.
- Too faithful of a remake to add anything meaningful, too unfaithful to keep the things that made 3 unique. Be it story-wise or gameplay-wise.
- Game too easy, yet somehow a complete slog to go through.
- I really wish that some of the social links lengths were cut down because some of them just feel like a single conversation spread out to ten installments. Metaphor proved that this could be done and Atlus had the opportunity to revamp this to accomodate.
- I also really wish that they added incentives to do these social links aside from achievements and fusion EXP like they did with P5/R. they sorta did this with the party member hangouts, but they NEEDED to do this to encourage me doing some of the social links because they're genuinely either boring or would make me ask why the hell would anyone hang out with these losers (Nozomi and Kenji comes to mind).
- Theurgy breaks the game. The Mithras/Siegfried and Ken's second theurgy will destroy anything in whatever difficulty, not to mention Satan/Helel.
- The AI tactics system isn't really good (this is a nitpick since idt anyone uses this anymore these days, but since this is a remake, i'm putting this in)
- They kept P3P's decision of gutting the MC's weapon selection. now he's stuck with his sword. This is kinda nitpicky, but at least it makes you excited to hop onto tartarus with your new toy.
- I wish Tartarus was wayyyyy more changed up and had like some floors where they're more handcrafted and gimmicked like P5 palaces or even some of the old SMT nocturne dungeons if they wanted to keep with the asset reuse. This would be so nice to breakup the monotony of the tartarus climb. They had the opportunity to completely revamp this exhausting slog of a gauntlet that was originally born from Atlus' way to stretch the small budget they were given when making the original, but no they just kept this turd of a dungeon. The monad door/passage restructuring was nice, but they just feel tacked on as a bonus thing you can do.
(I will add, despite my grievances with the combat, it's probably the best part of the game. it's just that everything surrounding it makes it a mega slog. It's not the best of any persona games' combat, I still think P5R holds that title, but it's fun enough)
[h2] Pros [/h2]
+ Persona 3 story
+ The new music tracks are good, though they feel a tad too safe and doesn't evoke the same feeling/vibe of the original p3 tracks (subjective yeah ik)
+ Gorgeous 3d models
+ Gorgeous UI as expected from Atlus
+ The combat when isolated from everything else is really fun. I like how the monad doors are just everywhere now and most of the fights in them and the Monad Passages are less of a DPS check and more of a puzzle fight.
+ New English VAs are phenomenal. Shout out to Junpei's new VA Zeno Robinson and Yuko's new VA Shelby Young as my favorites. I only didn't like Yukari's, but that's because I just really like Michelle Ruff's portrayal of her.
+ The new scenes with Shinji are really nice. [spoiler] His death [/spoiler] was really well done and didn't have the issue of the script being very descriptive as is with all of his Linked Episodes. Wish you could've saved him like you could in femP3P.
+ Still got a few tears out of me.
+ 100% achievement is very doable on a first run as long as you don't autopilot.
+ Ryota Kozuka (the goat behind the SMT4/a/V/Vengeance soundtrack) made two banger tracks for Episode Aigis, Disconnected and Don't, and are heads and shoulders leagues above all of the new music in the base game. He's also the new music director for P4Revival.
All in all, this just feels like if you haphazardly transplant the contents of the original P3 onto the body of P5R and hope that the new jangly keys would distract people from how messy and sloppy this remake feels. crossing my fingers that P4Revival handles it way better (though on the time of this review, the trailers have looked way better than any of the trailers for P3R, don't fumble this atlus pls). I would argue that I'd like to see another remake of this game lmao.
Get it on a heavy discount imo or on the switch 2/steam deck/any handheld so the slog of being caged in Tatsumi Port Island and 270 floors of Tartarus for 70-90hrs mildly bearable. Hell, just go watch the p3 movies if you want to experience the story.
As a remake 4/10, as a video game 6/10 at best.
