Would you believe me if I told you there were more than 25 hours in a day?
I recently finished Persona 3 Reload, the remake of 2006's Persona 3, the third entry in the critically acclaimed JRPG franchise that combines traditional turn-based combat with social sim aspects. P3R is a game that, overall, I enjoyed my time with. With nearly 100 hours logged, my first playthrough was filled with joy and anger, euphoria and disapointment. If I had to boil down my complex feelings into a droll number score, I'd probably say I give the game a high 6 to a low 7. That might sound harsh, but this score places it above average but with room for improvement. While the game is a much-needed facelift to a PS2 classic, it sure as hell ain't perfect.
This review will be in two parts, the first being about the story, and second being about gameplay.
Here's a brief overview of the plot (spoilers): You play as a high school transfer student at Gekkokuan High. On your first day, which happens to be a full moon, you take the train to your dorm but get caught in the Dark Hour, the 25th hour of the day, in which regular folk are turned in coffins and monsters called Shadows come out of the dark. People with the Potential, however, summon their Personas to fight them. A shadow attacks your dorm, leading you to summon your own Persona with an Evoker, a gun-like device that requires one to fire it into their own head. Once you become a Persona-user, you join others like you to scale Tartarus, a shifting structure that stems from the school. Every full moon, you fight larger shadows that you later find out are parts of a whole, a deity called Nyx. Nyx lives at the top of Tartatus, and its goal is to bring death to the entire world. The Protgaonist defeats Nyx, but to seal it away forever, he gives his own life.
The game's first third is great. I was hooked thanks to the mysterious atmosphere, beautiful visuals and narrative momentum. The Dark Hour is a grim, apocalyptic event when you first encounter it. The green of the sky and moon, the sticky patches of blood on the floor and the ominous coffins are enough to sell the horror of the Dark Hour, but the fact that shadows are an omnipresent enemy sells the threat. Not to mention that one of your strongest party members is introduced by being absolutely clobbered by one. Personas, Shadows, the Dark Hour and Evokers are thrown at you, but the audience can easily put see how they go together. The threat, the solution, and the theme is all established in one beautifully chaotic introduction sequence. The visual of every party member firing the evoker through their head is effective until the final hours. To summon the Persona, the mask one uses to cope with tragedy, one must face death. Immaculate. The entire game's thesis is summed up in one action.
When I got into the swing of the game, I realized how well its sells its fantasy. Quickly, you are recruited into S.E.E.S, the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad, a group of persona users who live in the dorm. Like Harry Potter or X-Men, the game uses the youthful fantasy of a magical school to rope the viewer in. Every Persona game has its own fantasy. Persona 4 asks "What if there was a mystery only you and your friends could solve?" Persona 5 asks "What if you and your friends knew better than the adults?" I have a harder time nailing down Persona 3's fantasy. In some ways, its more mature than the games that would come after it. It evolves beyond the fantasy that is so present in the beginning of the game. Living in a dorm with your friends, who also have the same special powers you do, so you can all stay up late and fight monsters, all appeals the child in us all. Being able to converse with your party members after school, use the dorm's computer, and later on, hang out with your friends 1-on-1, sells the social aspect of the fantasy as well. At the beginning, the characters even find fun in exploring Tartarus, and fighting shadows, but this only serves to create a false of security before things get heavier later on.
The first few months do a great job of building momentum. After you get into a groove of pursuing a student life by day and scaling Tartarus by night, the story takes more interesting turns. Tension between the main cast is well done. From the beginning, Yukari is distrustful of Mitsuru, Junpei is jealous of the Protagonist, and later, Ken is hellbent on killing Shinjiro to avenge his mother. This results in moments of explosive tumult between group members. Smaller moments are typically played for jokes, but ultimately, the game takes these characters and their relationships seriously. The fact that the characters are allowed to act in ways that are petty, childish, or even blatantly wrong, allows them to feel real and learn from those mistakes more authentically. Unlike later Persona games, the cast doesn't revolve around the player so closely, and thereby feel more distinct. The Protag makes an impact on the characters, but they are not so slavishly devoted to him.
If there's one weak link in S.E.E.S, its Fuuka. I loved Fuuka's intoduction. Her entrapment in Tartarus is. scary situation that galvanizes the team to act. Tensions run high, but in the end, they save Fuuka and add a new member to the team. But going forward, she has little and less involvment in the plot in any meaningful way. Fuuka's social link is an utter failure. As a support character, Fuuka has hangups about being more useful to the team, which leads her to try and be better at cooking for the dorm. Its clear that she still loves tech, but is ashamed of it since its "unladylike,' (something she's never really cared about before), so she tries to replace it with cooking. Not a bad start, but the problem is that it doesn't really go anywhere. Yes, we learn more about her home life, how she got interested in tech, and why she has confidence issues, but the storyline is still mostly concerned with Fukka's cooking. Around the midway point, Fuuka should realize that she doesn't have to be good at cooking because she's already useful, and would be even more useful if she focussed on her tech hobbies, but that never happens. There's an obvious arc that is simply not happening. I liked that she gives the Protag a new set of headphones that she made herself, since it taps back into the tech aspect of her character, but that beyond that, its hardly present. They failed you Fuuka, and I won't forgive them for it.
Yukari and Aigis' have the best S.E.E.S social links, since you learn a lot about Yukari's relationship with her mother, and with Aigis, you ponder what it means to be alive, be human, and be happy. Mitsuru's is better than Fuuka's, but not amazing. I liked seeing Mitsuru come out of her shell more, but she's still a pretty shallow character by the end. She might be my least favorite S.E.E.S member since she so rigid for so much of the story. Beyond the uptight heiress archetype, Mitsuru simply doesn't have a lot going on, and is especially weak compared to her teammates.
The male characters don't have social links, per se, but have isolated scenes called "Linked Episodes." For the most part, these are good, but I would have much preferred regular social link like later Persona games. That being said, the Linked Episodes occur after specific story moments, which a regular social link can't account for, so its give-and-take. The development that happens in the story more than suffices for these guys, so the Linked Episodes are designed to supplement that. Junpei's arc is the game's greatest achievement, and Akihiko is so good its like he's a character from a different game. Aki proves to be funny, insightful, tragic and inspiring while never acting out of character, even while falling victim to the franchise's failed attempts at cringe humor. Ken occupies an interesting space, since he younger than the main cast, but provides interesting insights on the traumatic events of the game. His arc takes him from being on a suicidal quest for vengeance to being inspired to live on by the very man he meant to kill. Speaking of, Shinjiro is on the team for a short time, but has a major impact. Having a party member permanently die is the kind of story/gameplay integration I wish more games had. His death marks a shift in the tone of the story in its second half. While I feel that it wasn't set up as effectively as it could have been, it still hits. Shinji's death sobers up the entire team and helps Ken and Akihiko resolve their arcs.
One of my favorite things about the story is that it actually kills characters. Shinjiro, Mitsuru's dad, Ikutski, and Chidori are all killed and (besides one) are left dead by the end of the story. In a perfect world, Chidori would remain dead, but, technically, her revival is an optional story event urged on by choices the player has the freedom to make, so it gets a pass. Shinjiro's death hits the hardest since he was a party member, and strong one at that, so his absence is felt more than the others. He brought a sense of unity when he joined, as he reunited ed the original three S.E.E.S members, but this fleeting feeling is what the game is about. Ikutski's death comes second, as losing an ally hurts, but knowing that he was really exploiting S.E.E.S the whole time under the guise of a friendly mentor figure hurts even worse.
Excellent characters can be counted among the game's antagonists as well. Before the introduction of Strega, you're mostly fighting toughened up shadows, the Dark Hour itself. Strega offers a philosophical foil to S.E.E.S, and makes for a more compelling antagonistic force. Takaya is asking some hard questions, making the player question why we're doing what we're doing, and since S.E.E.S' motivation is primarily out of obligation more than anything else, its genuinely effective. I wished Strega was in more of the game. I'm mostly bored with the whole Kirijo Group element of the story, but Strega's relationship to it is immensely interesting. As failed lab rats, they are a dark version of S.E.E.S., one entirely untethered by morals or self-preservation. S.E.E.S is too morally rigid to really entertain any of Strega's questions, but Takaya really made me think about them differently. I only wish Strega had more prominence as bad guys. They're mostly background elements that rear their heads during key moments. We never get to see Takaya's Nyx cult, which it s areal shame, because it could have made good on Takaya's well earned malice.
Ultimately, Strega get sidelined in favor of Nyx, who might be the series' best implementation of the whole "God who embodies the theme of the story" end boss trope. Nyx being Ryoji transformed allowed me to connect with it as an antagonist. When you fight Nyx, you have a dialogue choice in which you can address it as Ryoji, which really hit me. Underneath the embodiment of death was someone you once called your friend. Its simple, but effective.
I've spent so long praising the game's story because while my criticisms are few, they're more wide-sweeping. For example, I like a lot of the game's social links, (Akinari, Yukari and Hayase especially), but most of them being simply classmates or club leaders is really boring. Bebe and Yuko are exceptions, but I couldn't bring myself to hang out with Kenji, Kaz, or Hiraga even when I had no other links to progress. And sometimes, you're not even given the choice, since on Summer and Winter break, if you've completed all non-school links, you simply have nothing to do during the day. Even the nighttime social links, Murata and Tanaka, didn't hold my attention.
While not connected to the story exactly, I wanted to touch on social stats. They're too easy to complete. I had my Courage and Charm maxed out less than halfway through the game, which is helpful, but now I've made half the game's activities useless to me. A lack of compelling activities beyond social stats and social links is a major leg up future titles have over P3. I can't buy books or DVDs, visit anywhere with my social links, or even do a fishing minigame. There's no new areas to unlock on the map, nothing new to buy, and less and less social link to rank up as the game goes on. Yes, you can hang out with S.E.E.S. at night, but after you unlock their characterics, its not really worth it. By the end, I wanted to game to be over so I wasn't bored when I wasn't in Tartarus. Elizabeth's requests are fun to complete, but are no replacement for Persona 5 showed can be accomplished with in-game activities.
Finally, I have to mention the big one: the pacing. I made sure to properly praise the first third of the game because afterward, the middle suffers greatly. This period between post-Yakushima trip and pre-Nyx reveal, which is nearly 6 months in-game, is quite sluggish. Since the characters have concluded that they just have to defeat each big shadow every full moon to vanquish the Dark Hour, you basically sit around and wait for the plot to happen. Despite major plot events still occurring, the narrative momentum slows down dramatically since S.E.E.S is acting reactively now instaed of proactively. Shinjiro's death and Ikutski's betrayal still have their impact, but they feel like islands, alone in a slow stream. The arrival of Nyx is the shot in the arm that the pace needed. A deadline that engages the characters to act revitalized the story when I was at my most disinterested. Ultimately, the narrative starts strong and finishes strong, so I can forgive a slow middle, even though it can be particularly painful at times.
I yapped a lot about the story, since it holds a lot of the game's focus, so now I'll move onto gameplay.
Hoo boy.
Tartarus has a learning curve, but in time, I learned to...appreciate it. The randomly generated, rogue-like structure of Tartarus will never appeal to me like P5 hand-designed Palaces will, but the Tower of Demise manages to vary itself by having aesthetically distinct sections and changing layouts floor to floor. Palaces will always be the series' benchmark for level design because they actually have level design. Thematically appropriate settings, scenery and puzzles will always blow Tartarus out of the water. Random floor generation is a game dev trick from 20 years ago that saved the original team time, effort and disk space, but in the modern day, its more than a little disappointing. I'm not suggesting they made Tartarus into a huge P5 Palace, but lifting some design cues would have made the dungeon crawling less tedious. Putting puzzles on some of the floors or even some more traversal capabilities would have went a long way in breaking the boredom that arrises when scaling Tartarus.
While tackling whole blocks in one night is best from a time management perspective, it can be fatiguing to the player as much as the characters. The scenery of each block can get tiring, as well as running into the same enemies and floor layouts time after time, but floors with bosses, greedy shadows and even appearances by the Reaper keep things interesting. Monad doors are my favorite innovation, since they present a risk-vs-reward decision on the player. Is the possibility of a tough battle worth potentially nabbing a useful card during Shuffle Time? While I miss demon negotiation from P5, Shuffle Time can be a nice reward for a hard fought battle. On the other hand, you can absolutely abuse it to juice your party members and Personas to a ridiculous degree. I don't mind the imbalance, but a Tartarus run with the wrong cards can be a bore.
The imbalance I can't ignore is in the party members. While every one of them has their own uses and perks, some are better than others. I love you Koromaru, but you're not coming with me to the final battle. By giving each character an unlockable characteristic, they are able to fly well over the bar and become vastly overpwoered. For the record, I like characteristics. Having to put in the time with your party to unlock them is a great marriage of story and gameplay. Yukari's ability to reduce the cost of healing spells makes her an irreplaceable member of your boss killing team. Junpei, with his characteristic, is a critical hit machine. But the ceiling of power so high, middling members like Koromaru and Aigis, who are no slouches themselves, feel even weaker by comparison. An all-rounder like Akihiko will never be a strong as Junpei, heal like Yukari or buff like Aigis, but he at least has a place as a member of the dungeon crawling team. Shinjiro, for the short while you have him, is simply too powerful to stick around. Even little Ken is an absolute monster. With offense magic, buffs and healing, he's an amazing support member for any team, but I had a hard time picking him over Yukari.
The real problem is that the game can't keep up with how powerful you can become. I played on Normal difficulty, and there were times that I died to bosses or regular enemies in Tartarus, but these were few and far between. Once you get Theurgy, the game is fundamentally changed. I like these better than P5's showtime attacks, since you can reliably charge them, but Theurgy can make some encounters trivial. I never found it advantageous to go for support Theurgys over ones that offered pure damage (although Ken's 2nd Theurgy is nuts). Fusing specific personas can net you a new Theurgy for the Protag. A neat touch, but its more a background mechanic than something I actively pursued. While flashy and fun, Theurgys can seriously take the wind out of more intimidating encounters, like full moon shadows or the Reaper.
Did you know that the members of the Velvet Room are always named after characters from Frankenstein? Igor and his blue freakazoids are one of my favorite parts of these games, and it pains me to say that P3R's Velvet room is disappointing. Persona 5's Velvet Room truly spoiled me. I expected Reload to include some of its innovations, such as being able to sacrifice some Personas in your stock to level one up, or even itemization, but all of that would invalidate the heart item system. I like the heart item system, since it encourages you to fuse Personas you may not have otherwise, but having to grind levels was truly mind-numbing. A way to combine elements of P5 Velvet Room with the heart item system is reining in the strengthening mechanic. I frequently found myself in a situation where I had too many Personas and had no viable options for fusion, so sacrificing them to give a better Persona a level or even half a level, would be better than having it remain in my stock or simply deleting it. As the game stretched on, I expected Igor to come visit me in a dream and give me something new to do in his creepy elevator, but that never happened.
And we have to talk about Ambush. Ambush allows you to dash attack into an enemy, which results in an increased chance for the enemy to begin combat with an ailment, and later additions give you outright buffs. Now, you never have to try to get the jump on a shadow. Every encounter now begins the same way. It doesn't help that after the first block of Tartarus, the level design doesn't afford you ways to creatively use the environment to escape or get the jump on shadows. Compared to P5, which, yes, stacks the deck heavily in the player's favor, Reload somehow flattens the combat even further. A similar mechanic was Joker's grappling hook, which allowed him to engage an enemy from afar and possibly inflict an ailment. Both mechanics are similarly overpowered, but in P5, the player is at least encouraged to sneak around and avoid combat when necessary, but in Reload, Shuffle Time is an incentive to take on every shadow you see. Pre-Ambush, you might avoid a shadow simply by running away because you're low on health or SP, but post-Ambush, you're emboldened to take on every shadow because you'll be at an advantage at the start of combat. You can snowball your progression by taking on every shadow you see, abusing Shuffle Time to rack up more experience and Personas, allowing you to fuse more Personas of higher levels. If I clocked this on a first playthrough, imagine what a more experience player could do.
And don't even get me started on Fuuka's scan ability. Its busted.
So is there anything I do like about the combat? Well, yes. Characteristics and Theurgys are great additions that simply need to be balanced if they were to return in future games. Oh...I guess that's it.
Before we're out of here, I would like to comment on the music. Being more rock inspired, I would say that the music, broadly, is not to my specific tastes, not in the ways that P4 and P5 seem to press the right buttons, but the game's music is serviceable, and sometimes great. I know that's heresy to say that about a Persona game, but I genuinely dislike the Tartarus field themes, I'm bored by the standard battle track, and find that that the best tracks are the ones that play while traversing the overworld. If this game really wanted to take a page of P5's book, each block of Tartarus would have its own unique field theme. The best I can say is that Reload's new mix of "Mass Destruction" has turned me around on the song. I used to hate it before, but not that its been cleaned up, I can finally enjoy it. Hate to end on a downer, but outside of a few tracks ("Changing Seasons," "When the Moon's Reaching Out Stars," "Master of Shadows"), I can't say the music impressed me.
As you can see, I have some very conflicted feelings about this game. A lot of good, a lot of bad. I responded best to the story and characters, but even then, these aspects have their flaws. The gameplay, while always fun, has too little room for interesting choices and way too many way to break the game. As a narritive experience, its deeply emotional, but as a mechanical experience, its deeply flawed. S.E.E.S are characters that I'll bring with me in my heart, and I'll reflect upon the time I spent with them fondly, but Tartarus is something best left in the past.
