Atlus Persona 3 Reload (ex portable thread)

[King Crispy]

Merged.

 

[Silva]

Don't think there is a dedicated codex thread for the remake but you'll soon have the opportunity to give Atlus more money for a more-complete version of the remake.

How is the original The Answer? Is it possible it turns out a more challenging experience than base Reload?

 

[Valestein]

Don't think there is a dedicated codex thread for the remake but you'll soon have the opportunity to give Atlus more money for a more-complete version of the remake.

How is the original The Answer? Is it possible it turns out a more challenging experience than base Reload?

Original Answer could only be played on Hard and didn't have the persona compendium. No idea how they'll handle this version's difficulty in this.

 

[Terra]

Don't think there is a dedicated codex thread for the remake but you'll soon have the opportunity to give Atlus more money for a more-complete version of the remake.

How is the original The Answer? Is it possible it turns out a more challenging experience than base Reload?

Can't recall all the specifics as it's been a good 15+ years since I played it but there were lots of people complaining over the difficulty of the Answer back in the day. I vaguely recall many of the enemy setups in the dungeon were crafted to be strong to most attack types (and dodge their weakness), enemies on the whole had less weaknesses iirc and getting through it proved quite tedious/frustrating for many players who cruised through the base game quite mindlessly.

It was definitely harder than the original game and there were probably other quirks I'm forgetting that made it harder but complaints were a bit overblown imo. No clue about Reloaded-Answer difficulty though as I have not played it, given past complaints about the Answer's difficulty, I wouldn't be surprised if they tone it down relative to the original, especially as it's a paid DLC now I can't imagine them wanting to stonewall the paying casual fanbase.

Then again, it was an endgame dungeon that expected the player to understand the game's systems, so maybe it'll still be challenging in its new incarnation.

 

[Silva]

 

[karoliner]

OMG the greedy Atlus fucks are making people pay extra for every single byte of content.

 

[Ivan]

Rolled credits on Reload. Thoughts from a JRPG casual who only has DQX11, P5R, and P4 Golden under his belt.
-Unlike the previous entries, I didn't hit a point where I felt the enemies were so spongey that I lowered the difficulty
-I feel like this does a much better job of not wasting your time by not advancing the social links. That is, I felt there were much fewer instances of the "you hung out, but maybe next time you'll get some real content"
-the music is excellent, I found a bunch of tracks to add to my library
-UI is excellent and slick. Being able to fast travel not just to maps, but specific rooms per maps is awesome
-as I said previously, I quite enjoyed tartarus. I liked the feeling of ascending it, entering new zones, hearing the music track evolve with ever significant zone, etc
-I do wish there were mechanics in place to force you to mix up your party, like a fatigue system of sorts (firaxis X-com comes to mind)
-I'll be back when the story DLC hits GP

My ranking thus far, keep in mind that I prioritize the following in this order when measuring my overall enjoyment of the games: soundtrack>story/characters>combat/itemization
P4G>P3R>P5R

5 favorites:

 

[Ivan]

OMG the greedy Atlus fucks are making people pay extra for every single byte of content.

I played all 3 titles on GP. didn't spend a penny. just my 2 cents....

 

[HappyDaddyWow!]

Persona was always easy.

I'm late to this, but the real challenge to FES was time management and maxing as many social links as you could on one playthrough. It's nearly impossible to max all of them unless you follow a guide and it made for a fun challenge seeing how many you could complete.

From a gameplay perspective, I don't think any SMT is that hard because you can just brute force everything with grinding. Even Nocturne, supposedly the hardest, is guilty of this.

 

[Abu Antar]

Ivan There was a fatigue system that they removed in Reload.

 

[HappyDaddyWow!]

To be fair, even in portable they added a bunch of QOL changes that made the game significantly easier (I.e. controllable party members) so I'm not surprised by the removal of the fatigue system.

The real problem with reload, from the standpoint of it being a remake, is it completely ignores the extra content from portable and therefore can't really be called a definitive experience, despite it being the third P3 re-release lol.

 

[karoliner]

https://gamebanana.com/mods/499200

 

[MasPingon]

To be fair, even in portable they added a bunch of QOL changes that made the game significantly easier (I.e. controllable party members) so I'm not surprised by the removal of the fatigue system.

The real problem with reload, from the standpoint of it being a remake, is it completely ignores the extra content from portable and therefore can't really be called a definitive experience, despite it being the third P3 re-release lol.

The real problem with Reload is lack of any challenge. They threw away too many important mechanics.

 

[Silva]

To be fair, even in portable they added a bunch of QOL changes that made the game significantly easier (I.e. controllable party members) so I'm not surprised by the removal of the fatigue system.

The real problem with reload, from the standpoint of it being a remake, is it completely ignores the extra content from portable and therefore can't really be called a definitive experience, despite it being the third P3 re-release lol.

The real problem with Reload is lack of any challenge. They threw away too many important mechanics.

It's the contrary no? They added theurgies and full party control meanwhile leaving the enemies the same, thus trivializing the challenge.

Reminds me of Elden Ring where they kept the enemies more or less the same but gave players a bazillion KAMEHAMEHA op powers.

 

[HappyDaddyWow!]

To be fair, even in portable they added a bunch of QOL changes that made the game significantly easier (I.e. controllable party members) so I'm not surprised by the removal of the fatigue system.

The real problem with reload, from the standpoint of it being a remake, is it completely ignores the extra content from portable and therefore can't really be called a definitive experience, despite it being the third P3 re-release lol.

The real problem with Reload is lack of any challenge. They threw away too many important mechanics.

Persona was never that hard unless you play on Merciless, FES is like SMT4 in that it's challenging for the first few bosses then becomes pretty easy once you have access to more demons and buffs/debuffs.

 

[MasPingon]

To be fair, even in portable they added a bunch of QOL changes that made the game significantly easier (I.e. controllable party members) so I'm not surprised by the removal of the fatigue system.

The real problem with reload, from the standpoint of it being a remake, is it completely ignores the extra content from portable and therefore can't really be called a definitive experience, despite it being the third P3 re-release lol.

The real problem with Reload is lack of any challenge. They threw away too many important mechanics.

It's the contrary no? They added theurgies and full party control meanwhile leaving the enemies the same, thus trivializing the challenge.

Reminds me of Elden Ring where they kept the enemies more or less the same but gave players a bazillion KAMEHAMEHA op powers.

Those too, but I've ment removal of fatigue and broken social link systems.

 

[scytheavatar]

To be fair, even in portable they added a bunch of QOL changes that made the game significantly easier (I.e. controllable party members) so I'm not surprised by the removal of the fatigue system.

The real problem with reload, from the standpoint of it being a remake, is it completely ignores the extra content from portable and therefore can't really be called a definitive experience, despite it being the third P3 re-release lol.

The real problem with Reload is lack of any challenge. They threw away too many important mechanics.

It's the contrary no? They added theurgies and full party control meanwhile leaving the enemies the same, thus trivializing the challenge.

Reminds me of Elden Ring where they kept the enemies more or less the same but gave players a bazillion KAMEHAMEHA op powers.

Those too, but I've ment removal of fatigue and broken social link systems.

Fatigue is an annoyance in early game that stops becoming an issue by June. Broken social link system just means more save scumming. OG Persona 3's difficulty comes mostly from the fact that you can't rely on your teammates and have to play the game mostly as a one man machine. P3R would have been reasonably difficult if not for the dumbass Theurgy nonsense they added.

 

[MasPingon]

To be fair, even in portable they added a bunch of QOL changes that made the game significantly easier (I.e. controllable party members) so I'm not surprised by the removal of the fatigue system.

The real problem with reload, from the standpoint of it being a remake, is it completely ignores the extra content from portable and therefore can't really be called a definitive experience, despite it being the third P3 re-release lol.

The real problem with Reload is lack of any challenge. They threw away too many important mechanics.

It's the contrary no? They added theurgies and full party control meanwhile leaving the enemies the same, thus trivializing the challenge.

Reminds me of Elden Ring where they kept the enemies more or less the same but gave players a bazillion KAMEHAMEHA op powers.

Those too, but I've ment removal of fatigue and broken social link systems.

Fatigue is an annoyance in early game that stops becoming an issue by June. Broken social link system just means more save scumming. OG Persona 3's difficulty comes mostly from the fact that you can't rely on your teammates and have to play the game mostly as a one man machine. P3R would have been reasonably difficult if not for the dumbass Theurgy nonsense they added.

I think fatigue and broken links were annoying but crucial mechanics. Without them there is basically no resource(time, group members) management. The game lost it's identity.

 

[Deflowerer]

Broken social links were good. More possibilities for fuck-ups in games, less design choices catered towards OCD 100% autist FOMOists please.

 

[Maxie]

Broken social links were good. More possibilities for fuck-ups in games, less design choices catered towards OCD 100% autist FOMOists please.

the way persona is written as a game precludes having those party members at all time. breaking social links with randos is less important

 

[Silva]

What does broken social links mean? How it differs from unbroken ?

 

[Maxie]

What does broken social links mean? How it differs from unbroken ?

you can't fuse shit from this or that arcana at all

 

[Silva]

Maxie , why advance S-links then? What benefit is there?

 

[Tavar]

I finally finished this after about 70 hours. In total, it was only mediocre. I think that there is a lot of potential in this game, but it gets held back by:

• Lack of variety: Tartarus is a drag and enemy variety is low, so combat becomes boring very quickly. There are also not many activities and most of them become useless over the course of the game. In the late game, I frequently had nothing productive to do at night.
• Lack of interesting loot: Shadows drop mostly trash. Also, you get so little experience for beating regular shadows that there is little point in fighting them. Only the golden hands are actually worth the trouble.
• Lack of good writing: Some social links are well-written while many are somewhere between boring and close to unbearable. Also, the main story is rather bad as it fails to correctly explain the motivations of the antagonists and likes to drag on and on about boring, superfluous shit. I actually fast forwarded through a lot of scenes just to get them over with and I never played Persona 3 before.
• Lack of a conflict between Tartarus and social activities: As you can only visit the dungeon at night, you don't have to choose between advancing social links and progressing in the dungeon as you have to in P4 and P5.
• Lack of a satisfying ending: I really hate the ending of P3. The final scene where Aegis is telling your character that she will protect him forever only for him to die for no apparent reason 30 seconds later is absolutely bizarre. It would've been fine if the protagonist dies during the final boss fight but delaying this like this is just completely retarded. And yes, I'm aware of the theory that he just wanted to make it until graduation day, but this is doesn't satisfy me as he actually dies before his friends have any chance to interact with him.

All in all, this is clearly much worse than P4G and P5R. I feel like this remake didn't go far enough even though the addition of the baton pass helps a lot. I think I'll skip the upcoming "The Answer" DLC as I have no desire at the moment to play more P3.

 

[Spike]

Hello fellow weebgers. I come merely to ask but one thing: is there any reason to play Persona 3 FES for PS2 over Persona 3 Reload? I only ask because it says that it is a "modern" remaster/remake and I do not know if that means quality of life improvements, casualization, or changing the localization.