YMMV / Persona 3 Reload

As a remake, all spoilers for the original game are unmarked! You have been warned.

For YMMV tropes specifically pertaining to the original, click here.

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• Awesome Music:
  • "It's Going Down Now", the "SEES Advantage" battle theme, contrasts sharply with "Mass Destruction", being a fast-paced rock/jazz fusion theme with Lotus Juice's signature freestyle rap. If "Mass Destruction" were to illustrate the heroes' grim determination, "It's Going Down Now" illustrates their passion and drive to succeed.
  • "Color Your Night", the new nighttime city theme, is an uplifting and romantic tune that definitely lives up to its name.
  • "Full Moon Full Life" sets the attitude of Reload, reinforcing the core message of making the best with the limited time one has, and simultaneously acts as a very welcoming tune to both the fans of the original Persona 3 and newcomers as well.
• Breather Boss:
  • Surprisingly, Hierophant is now a pushover and defending Yukari from getting hit by her weakness element is no longer an issue here, since he has Makouga instead of Mazio or (Ma)Zionga. However, him being this is just a warm-up for the Lovers boss fight.
  • While Chidori is no longer a Zero-Effort Boss due to having more HP, adding Neuron Slash as part of her skillset and her Spring of Life skill being reworked into her own version of Diarahan, the boss fight immediately ends after five turns have passed.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Ken's plan to get revenge on Shinjiro and then kill himself after. In previous versions of the game, there were hints towards it happening, but it was a subtle build up that required careful observations about the characters' actions and comments. Reload makes the foreshadowing much more explicit compared to the original, and almost anyone playing blind for the first time is likely to figure it out as soon as Ken's first Linked Episode. Though, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing; the added scenes give a much better look at Ken’s perspective and his motives, making his actions more understandable, when the original situation fell into Fourth Wall Myopia since players spent more time with Shinjiro.
• Character Rerailment: After years of getting reduced to an unintelligent protein-obsessed Blood Knight shell of his former self across Persona 3's spinoffs and supplementary material, Akihiko is finally brought back to being the level-headed and wise Big Brother Mentor he was in the original games. In the new content, many mentions of protein are mixed in with a general watchfulness towards his diet and health, and overall the number of times he himself brings it up can once again be counted on one hand.
• Cheese Strategy: The "Reaper Reaped" achievement can be unlocked on any difficulty level. In practice, this means it can be earned without too much effort on Peaceful, but it will take a very long time if you're underleveled.
• Complete Monster: Two examples are overall unchanged from the original releases, and remain as vile here as they were then.
  • Kouetsu Kirijo is the man behind the terrible events of the game. Ten years prior to the events of the game, Kirijo tried to harness the power of Shadows after stumbling upon them as a source of energy. During this, he discovered the Fall, an apocalyptic event where Nyx would be summoned to bring death to humanity, and became so entranced by it that he resorted to numerous unethical actions to make this happen. These include experimenting on children; giving machines sapient life, and treating them as weapons, which killed many of them. He also corrupted many of the scientists under him to embrace death, and they nearly succeeded in calling out Nyx.
  • Shuji Ikutsuki, the Chairman of the S.E.E.S., is in actuality a psychotic dedicant of the god Nyx, with a fervor to match his predecessor Koutetsu Kirijo. Playing the part of the Protagonist's quirky ally, Ikutsuki took part in the catastrophic attempt to revive Nyx in the past and used his own adopted son Sho in the experiment. The subsequent explosion killed hundreds, very nearly killed Sho himself, and brought about the Shadow-infested Dark Hour upon the city. Ikutsuki tricks S.E.E.S. into slaying the Shadows under the pretext of undoing the Dark Hour, all in preparation to secretly restart his attempt to bring Nyx to Earth. Ikutsuki tries to sacrifice all his pawns and manages to kill Mitsuru's father before he's sent plunging off a building, laughing to the end with the belief he's managed to doom humanity to Nyx.
• Continuity Lockout: A lot of the humor in Maya's Social Link will be lost if you haven't played any of the older games in the series or aren't familiar with Shin Megami Tensei. Likewise, side details such as the in-universe TV show "Trish's Who's Who" and Mitsuru's father mentioning the Nanjo Group will also be left in the dark as to what exactly is being discussed.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Yuko Nishiwaki, the Strength Social Link, gained newfound popularity among old and new players alike due to Shelby Young's endearing performance.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • After it was announced that Tara Platt would be reprising her role as Elizabeth despite the rest of the main cast being voiced by newer talent, many fans began theorizing that Reload would be a sort of Stealth Sequel to the original game similar to Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebuild of Evangelion, and that this Elizabeth is actually the same one from the original game manipulating events from behind the scenes to rewrite the timeline as one final gambit to save the Protagonist from his fate as the Great Seal. It's since been jossed, as the events in Reload play out the same as the original bar some minor changes (like the Protagonist knowing more about the members of Strega).
  • Reload introduces numbered armbands for each S.E.E.S. member, something that Yukari even discusses in-game with the protagonist and speculates that they likely represent the order of when a member officially joined the squad, alongside other questions. The list goes from Mitsuru (0), Akihiko (1), Shinjiro (2), Protagonist (3), Yukari (4), Junpei (5), Fuuka (6), Aigis (7), Koromaru (8), and Ken (9), so her theory does have credence. As seen in this video's comments, some Persona 3 fans also pointed out things about the order such as the implication that Yukari awakened her Persona off-screen sometime after the Protagonist did (hence why she's number 4 while he's number 3). As for a reason why the numbering had to start with 0 (instead of 1), it's jokingly suggested that it might simply be Atlus finding a way to assign the number 3 for the Persona 3 protagonist as a meta Arc Number whilst avoiding Four Is Death.
  • Koromaru has two Theurgies to start with on account of the fact that, Shinjiro aside, his Persona doesn't evolve, which is indicative of major Character Development. It's suggested in-game then that Koromaru must have undergone his development off-screen before he joined the group, making Cerberus already a second-tier Persona. It then raises the question: what was his first Persona?
• Fan Nickname: The "Shadow of the Abyss" miniboss in the Scripted Battle of August 14 and the "Shadow of the Void" miniboss in a late-game Monad are simply called "Abaddon" by veteran Shin Megami Tensei and Persona fans because these Shadows suspiciously resemble the series-recurring Abaddon demon/Persona, who is a summonable Persona in Reload.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth since both games are published by Sega as well as being released near one another.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Offensive Theurgies deal large amounts of damage as expected for a Limit Break, but unlike the Showtimes in Persona 5 Royal, it's very easy to buff the Theurgies to absurd damage levels with Boost/Amp skills and Charge/Concentrate. Best of all, they ignore resistances so the one-shot potential can be used on any enemy.
    • The Protagonist's Theurgy uses the stats of his equipped Personas, so it's possible to ramp up the damage and effectiveness of certain Theurgy skills even further by equipping a Persona that complements the Theurgy skill in question. Scarlet Havoc, in particular, has a high crit rate and power, so combining it with Charge and Slash/Crit boosters can result in a move capable of out-damaging Armageddon.
  • Fuuka's Oracle Theurgy states that its effects are random, but the player can control them to an extent. If the party is wounded, she will cast a full heal, but if the party is healthy, she will cast a party-wide Heat Riser. Once her Persona evolves and she learns Revelation, two even more powerful effects get added: if the party is already buffed, she will cast a party-wide Charge/Concentrate, and if a member of the party is low on SP, she'll refill the party's SP making exploring Tartarus for long stretches a time a breeze.
  • Yukari's "Healing Master" Combat Characteristic reduces the cost of her healing magic by half, whilst the maxed out "Healing Apex" reduces the cost to just a quarter of the original. On top of that, using healing magic is the most efficient way to charge her Theurgy. Not only is the optimal use of Yukari arguably to just heal whatever damage was taken every turn with low cost healing magic to charge her Theurgy, but it also means that putting her in the same team as Aigis — who charges her Theurgy through the use of her Persona's physical attack skills, which are Cast from Hit Points — is an incredibly efficient combat party.
  • Akihiko's Theurgy is charged by having a status buff in effect; equip him with equipment that gives him an Auto-buff at the start of the battle, and he gains Theurgy charge the moment that it's his turn in combat — and his agility is high enough that he will usually be the first one to act in battle. Further considering that Akihiko's first Theurgy is an AoE attack and that Theurgy attacks ignore damage resistances, it's a very real possibility for him to end battles in the first turn of combat without expending any SP. The icing on the cake? His "Buff Amp" Characteristic increases the effect of said buffs, meaning you can watch as Akihiko's damage output flies to the moon.
  • Buying the Security Site Note from The Informant in Club Escapade and using it from the dorm's shared computer grants you the ability to perform a running slash move for a guaranteed surprise attack in Tartarus. While this is very helpful (and extremely cool-looking), it's not exactly game-breaking — the broken part is the Assassin and History Site Notes you can buy later from the same place to enhance it. The former causes the move to inflict the distress ailment when you strike from behind, leaving the enemy wide open to critical hits, and the latter causes it to boost your Theurgy gauge, which can be a Game-Breaker in its own right. All of these perks together allow you to effortlessly mow down regular encounters without spending your SP.
  • The Persona 5 Royal Persona Set 1, which features the initial Personas of the Phantom Thieves, gives the included Personas "[Element] Driver" skills that strengthen attacks of a specific element by 75%, and can stack with the more common Boost (Single/Multi-Target Boost included), Amp, and Magic Ability skills for a base damage buff of 150-190%. Once properly customized and beefed up to at least around Level 90s, including slapping Incense Cards on them and covering their innate weaknesses with Resist Skill Cards, they can be great alternatives against Elizabeth if you don't want to spend time finding, fusing, and/or beefing up Resist-only Personas, since they can only resist a specific element instead of being immune to one of them.
  • The Reaper drops up to 600,000 XP depending on where you fight it, and there is a Cheese Strategy for it. Do you like being over-levelled?
• Goddamned Boss:
  • The Swift Axle is basically a (slightly) weaker stand-in for the Rampage Drive from the previous versions, since it doesn't block/deflect physical attacks and is weak to Elec skills. The problem? While it thankfully doesn't have Mazio, it resists physical attacks and does have Magaru instead, meaning that it would get One Mores by throwing that skill on Junpei.
  • For a Warm-Up Boss, Priestess is still this like her previous versions except this time, you have thirty minutes to kill her at the start of the boss fight as opposed to eight or less. That said, her new Signature Move, Ice Storm, packs a punch and she'll just cast Invitation to Chaos to shorten the time limit anyway.
  • While the Change Relic is already a pain to deal with due to having (Ma)Garula and Poison Mist, its Reload counterpart, the Clairvoyant Relic is an even bigger one to the point of reaching That One Boss levels if you're not careful. For starters, it doesn't have any weaknesses, can cast multiple elemental skills (Light and Dark excluded), would happily exploit your party's respective weakness element to get One Mores, and cast Marakunda if its health is halved. Thankfully though, it's still vulnerable to Physical attacks (meaning that one Critical hit would lead to an All-Out attack), doesn't have Poison Mist, and would waste its first turn by "identifying the party's weaknesses".
  • As if Empress and Emperor were already annoying enough due to their Paradigm Shift in the previous versions, they're even more so here: Empress has more elemental skills instead of just Wind. Emperor on the other hand, utilizes decently powerful Slash skills like Getsu-Ei and Tempest Slash.
  • Hermit is still not a particularly hard boss to beat, but he's no longer a Breather Boss here: he's initially weak and would usually cast (Ma)Zio at the start of the boss fight, but later becomes an Increasingly Lethal Enemy once he casts Initiate Charging, and then Charging Complete after three turns have passed, giving him access to the heavy-hitting Mega Spark. When low on health, he would instead cast Accelerated Charging for the more powerful Tera Spark. Despite the significant buff Hermit recieved, his Initate/Accelerated Charging could still be interrupted if you deal enough damage to him, though he can't be knocked down for an All-Out Attack, even if you landed a Critical hit on him.
  • The Terminal Table may be less challenging to fight than the infamously tough Sleeping Table from the original, but underestimating it is still not advised. While it lacks the Sleeping Table's resistances and immunities, it can block Strike, absorb Light, and would frequently spam the One-Hit Kill Mahama and Hamaon like there's no tomorrow, forcing you to waste several Homunculi or bring Null Light, (Sama)Recarm, and revival items to keep your party alive.
  • Nyx Avatar isn't very hard to beat if your party's level is at Level 85 or above, but it is also a Sequential Boss. You'll have to beat the first twelve phases (one for each of the first twelve Arcanas) before the real fight begins on the last one. During its last two phases (Hanged Man and Death), it can cast the Hanged Man Shadow's dreaded Grim Transcendence to give it extra turns. This, coupled with Nyx Avatar's high damage output, can allow it to wipe players out if they aren't careful.
• Ho Yay:
  • In contrast to the original game, Takaya and the Protagonist's relationship is given a spotlight, with Takaya having multiple solo scenes with the protagonist in which he tries to sway him over to Strega. Eventually, Takaya will muse on what caused him to become "attached" to someone after living in such nihilism for so long.
  • Ryoji's Linked Episodes start off simple enough... and then Ryoji plays piano to try and break the ice between them. The third has Ryoji ask the Protagonist to meet him at the riverbank in Kyoto — an area filled with couples — and jokes about how it sounds like he's confessing his love for Makoto. The final Linked Episode features Ryoji playing a beautiful piano piece for the Protagonist, almost as if he's serenading him, and both it and the scene on December 31st imply that Ryoji may have feelings for him.
    Ryoji: I know I said I wanted us to be friends but... I actually want to be something more.
• Improved Second Attempt:
  • The Operation Babe Hunt cutscene in the original game was criticized for containing transphobia, due to the boys immediately being turned off by the reveal that the woman they were talking to was a trans woman. Here, it's changed so that the turnoff was her promoting conspiracy theories, and said change is consistent throughout all versions of the game.
  • While the Wham Episode that takes place on October 4th was praised in the original game, many players disdained Ken for trying to kill the more popular Shinjiro and inadvertently causing his death, and blamed him for it even though it was a Heroic Sacrifice on the latter's part. Here in Reload, Ken is given much more opportunity to have his character fleshed out, compared to him being Out of Focus in the original, making him much more sympathetic and understandable, and thus heightening the impact of October 4th.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Upon the reveal that Reload would feature an entirely new English cast led by Aleks Le as the Protagonist, memes were immediately drawn up depicting him as Luke, who had developed a reputation as being a Fountain of Memes thanks to their shared VA's shitposting prior to the release of Street Fighter 6.
    • "Milkshakes at midnight in Tartarus (GONE WRONG) (HELP!!!)"^ExplanationA meme video from Aleks Le featuring him and Zeno Robinson (Junpei's new VA) conversing over milkshakes before being forcefully thrust into the Dark Hour while screaming at the top of their lungs.
  • The lack of a full official version of Reload's original player advantage theme, "It's Going Down Now," led fans to try and stitch the "full" version together themselves using snippets from various promo material, even live events, resulting in a slew of videos of the video's cleanest version as of a certain date, and accordingly a number of jokes poking fun at the newest version by giving it a number of adjectives about how good its quality was.
  • The new rendition of "Mass Destruction" being sung by frogs, similar to the "dying cats" meme from Sonic the Hedgehog 4, where Reload's version of the song uses a synth sound that sounds very similar to a frog croaking.^note The original had a similar sounding synth, however it was very subtle compared to Reload's rendition.
  • Many, many jokes have been made about Keisuke Hiraga resembling Scott The Woz, taking moments and inserting either Wii U jokes or Scott's catchphrases, a carryover from an earlier Persona 3 joke prior to the announcement of Reload.
  • Steam reviewers calling S.E.E.S. the "Suicide Squad", in reference to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League coming out on Steam the same day as Reload.
  • "Shinji is such a badass, can't wait to use him on the final boss."^{Explanation (Unmarked Spoilers!)}A gameplay clip of Reload became viral when it had the "Mass Destruction" beat drop perfectly syncing with Shinjiro shooting his Evoker. While he is indeed a badass powerhouse, the video's top comment and its similar variants were meant to jokingly hide spoilers regarding his death, especially for gamers who have Reload as their first Persona 3 experience. The meme then circulated to other clips featuring him. Other gamers would play along by feigning their ignorance about his circumstances.
  • "Here's a special treat, just for you!"/"Think fast, chucklenuts!"^ExplanationUnlike in the original games, Jin in Reload will respond to players who covered their weaknesses and circumvented his targeting elemental weakness gimmick by spamming Almighty-element flash bang grenades, alongside a one-liner that he'd repeat every time he used it. Naturally, fans began associating Jin with said one-liner, or jokingly attributing the existing Team Fortress 2 meme and Scout quote "Think fast, chucklenuts" with him.
  • BABY BABY BABY BABY BA-BABY BABY BABY BABY BABY (yeaaaaaah)^ExplanationCompared to the original version of "Mass Destruction", where Yumi Kawamura's vocals were bombastic, many were quick to point out how Azumi Takahashi's vocals seem much flatter by comparison, leading to comment threads of "Mass Destruction –Reload–" to type out Takahashi's vocals in lowercase to denote the difference.
• Mis-blamed:
  • Fans were quick to blame Atlus for showing off the extended commercial clip and nothing else to represent the August 2023 news for Reload, accusing Atlus of reusing a previous clip or having absolutely nothing to announce despite their attempt at Meaningful Release Date for Reload news. This would be understandable if not for the leaks that caused said clip to be revealed long before this.
  • The infamous scene involving the trans woman being changed to a woman promoting conspiracy theories was accused by anti-localizer fans of being censorship forced into the game by the localization team, not realizing that the change was implemented to all versions of the game, including the Japanese version. Though there are some who do know this and still don't like the change, with the discussion being a can of worms all to itself.
• Narm: On January 22, 2024, a new commercial was released featuring Aidan Gallagher of The Umbrella Academy (2019) fame, running alongside backdrops and scenes of the game until he becomes a non-descript though somewhat Tatsuya-looking model to fight a Shadow. While it wasn't intended to be funny, many fans laughed at how corny it looked, and just as many were confused, wondering who it was even for, harkening back to the weird late-90s/early-2000s live action commercials for video games.
• Newer Than They Think:
  • One of the criticisms of the Linked Episodes from FeMC fans is that the content is just recycled from her exclusive Social Links from Persona 3 Portable. This is not true of the Linked Episodes focusing on the male party members, all of which touch on elements of those characters that weren't explored in the Social Links. Ryoji's Linked Episodes recycle some of the mandatory events from his Social Link, but this is understandable due to the limited time frame^note Ryoji is only present at Gekkoukan for just over three weeks, two of which are largely occupied by mandatory story events available to develop his character.
  • Aigis officially being one of the romance options is new to this version. As the Common Knowledge entry in the Persona 3 YMMV page states, Aigis' Social Link was never coded as romantic. This was easier to see in the remastered Portable version, where the achievement "That Special Someone" can not be obtained from her SL, and in FES she can not be reversed/broken whatsoever (thus has no jealousy mechanic applicable to all other romance options there).
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Shinjiro's Theurgy, Bleeding Fury, as awesome as it is, can be very unsettling to players due to its cinematic. In between Shinjiro smashing the enemy with his weapon, he calls to Castor... only for his Persona to start gushing out blood from where the spearhead is impaling its chest, leading to Shinjiro to start crying Tears of Blood before going for that second hit.
  • Remember how one of the people who believed in the apocalyptic rumors randomly exploded into a Shadow upon seeing Nyx's true form? Well, that's still here, with additions of it happening to even more people and those shadows consuming anyone nearby — and it's not limited to just people outwardly welcoming the arrival of Nyx either. The second person to become a Shadow is a relatively normal looking woman, who consumes the man next to her.
• Older Than They Think:
  • When the game was officially revealed, an IGN article mistranslated an interview and stated that Reload was simply a remake of the base game and includes no content from either FES or Portable. While the misunderstanding was quickly cleared and that only The Answer and the Female Protagonist were being excluded, it did spark debates about what was and wasn't in the vanilla version. For example; the Nihil Weapons and Fusion Weapon mechanics aren't in the original game, but in FES, while Tartarus rescue missions and Skill Cards debuted in Portable.
  • The Kirijo Group providing S.E.E.S. with equipment beyond the Evokers isn't a new idea introduced in Reload, as this was the explanation provided for their weapons in the anime adaptation.
  • Natsuki wandering into Tartarus to apologize to Fuuka instead of being lured there by the Shadows was a change originally made in the anime adaptation, before being recreated in Reload's version of the Emperor and Empress full moon Shadow boss fight.
  • Shinjiro's death scene in Reload is an almost shot-for-shot recreation of how it was portrayed in the movie adaptation.
  • Fans immediately began gushing over the sight of Mitsuru wearing her hair in a ponytail. The design actually predates Reload, and was actually done first in the original version of the game during the Hot Spring and New Year's shrine visit scenes — however, based off the reaction of the fandom, you would think that the design originated in this game.
  • The live-action commercial isn't the first time Persona series having this kind of advertisement. The very first Persona game had their own live-action trailer with live actors acting as the protagonist and Maki and shoddily composed costumed actors acting as their respective personas, but they were shown exclusively in Japan.
  • As the game's script is based off the Male Protagonist route from Persona 3 Portable rather than FES, a number of scenes that are assumed to have originated in Reload are actually from P3P, but Reload marks the first time these scenes have been animated. Examples of this include:
    • Yukari talking herself through using her Evoker during her appearance in the game's opening cutscene, rather than doing so in silence.
    • The infamous scene in Yukari's Social Link where it could reverse if the player chose to hug her at an inappropriate time being changed to the Protagonist making a sexist comment.
    • The scene showing S.E.E.S. celebrating the Protagonist's return after defeating Nyx before showing the Time Skip.
  • While Yukari's Adaptational Nice Guy treatment has received a mixed reception, particularly from old-time players who played the original release, her softer portrayal version is actually more in line with how she was portrayed in the Japanese version. Her confrontational and sassy personality that many players were familiar with being a product of the original localization as well as Michelle Ruff's voice direction.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • At least from a gameplay perspective, Ken is seen as a more viable character here. The re-introduction of damage bless skills makes his niche more viable, and his Theurgy charging faster at lower SP encourages skill usage, overall making him out as more of a Combat Medic as opposed to his previous Master of None reputation. Being a better character to use also somewhat lends to a warmer reception, given that part of Ken's initial negative reception was a much more useful character like Shijiro dying for a character barely anyone used. His Linked Episodes also helped address how he's Out of Focus compared to the rest of the cast; while Portable did that with his Social Link, that was largely soured by the presence of the romance option, making the Linked Episodes a good alternative to it. Having a far better English dub than the original game also makes him way more palatable to western audiences.
  • Koromaru's gameplay is also more well-received in this game than in the original game, thanks to him learning damage curse skills, and the fact he learns Debilitate in time for the end makes more useful for endgame bosses.
  • Shinjiro in the original games was considered a good party member, but not worth using at all due to dying a month after he joins. In Reload, Shinjiro is buffed to Purposely Overpowered levels, boasting the new Bloody Charge (a version of Charge which is Cast from Hit Points that greatly boosts his Critical rate) that chains well into his Theurgy (which regenerates faster if his HP is below 50%), a Characteristic that gives him Auto-Heat Riser, and his hangout events to get it provides you with incredible healing items. He may still die in a month, but between this and the Clocks in Tartarus than can catch up underleveled party members, players generally consider Shinjiro worth using for what little time they have him.
  • Strega in the original games, as well as FES and Portable were generally considered underwhelming villainous Persona-users due to them being largely Out of Focus outside of killing Shinjiro and (almost) Junpei, and how their battles all bordered on Zero-Effort Boss fights. Reload gives them many additional scenes that give additional backstory elements, more well-defined motives and ideological conflicts with the Protagonist, all of which made them shine better as a villain team despite them still being a Big Bad Wannabe group at the end of the day. Also, all of their fights are much, much harder, with them being willing to use tricks such as Shifting and even Theurgy against you, which impressed players who expected them to each die to one lucky All-Out Attack like before.
  • Natsuki Moriyama is the catalyst of Fuuka's Persona awakening, but her stereotypical Alpha Bitch voice, even after her Heel Realization, made her Unintentionally Unsympathetic to many in the original games. Her new performance by Kayli Mills is far more emotional, making her sound genuinely horrified and apologetic at what she did to Fuuka, which earned her far more sympathy.
  • Fuuka's uncredited voice actress in the dub of the original game suffered from a severe case of Dull Surprise and made her sound like a middle aged woman, which made her grating for players to listen to when she acted as Mission Control. In this game, she's given a new voice actress, and she not only uses a more fitting and much better voice for her design, but shows a lot more emotion too.
• Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic:
  • Shuffle Time becomes similar to the one found in Persona 4 Golden: the cards are not face-down while you're picking them, and the Sword cards contain Skill Cards instead of weapons, meaning you can turn any deadweight Persona (e.g. Orpheus, who can resist Fire in this game, unlike in previous versions) into decently powerful ones.
  • For players who are against romancing every potential romanceable character, you can choose whether to pursue a romantic relationship with certain female Social Link characters instead of automatically being in a relationship at certain ranks.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The Linked Episodes in general were a much-touted addition to Reload, side stories giving the protagonist more interactions with his male party members, who didn't have Social Links in the original. However, much like the Elizabeth Dates, these have deadlines. Unlike those, however, the game makes no mention of this fact. And missing one Linked Episode locks you out of the rest until New Game Plus. That would be annoying on its own, but what makes it frustrating is that certain Personas are tied to completing these side stories (for instance, failure to complete Shinjiro’s events before he bites it prevents you from obtaining Hell Biker). Junpei's Linked Episodes in particular exacerbate the problem due to the decision to tie completing them into whether or not Chidori survives. Fail to complete even one of these, and she dies like normal. Considering that FES and Portable both merely require you to speak to him on certain evenings and give the correct dialogue responses (something which Reload simplifies, but doesn't outright remove), this can end up being a massive Guide Dang It! for old and new players alike.
  • Tartarus rescue missions were brought in from Portable. And while Elizabeth will warn the player when people wander in, this tends to happen very close to a Full Moon, and occasionally happens multiple times within a lunar cycle. In practice, this encourages putting off going to Tartarus until as late as possible, as that allows you to knock out all rescues at once for maximum efficiency. Conversely, players who go to Tartarus early are essentially punished: forced to go back later in the month if they want to avoid the Player Punch of NPCs dying.
  • Greedy Shadows can be viewed as this, mostly because whether or not they go left or right is completely random. While you can use Tartarus Search to find out where exactly they went, Fuuka doesn't learn that skill until Level 64, and it costs a hefty 50 SP.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • Fans have been fighting some of the final bosses by themselves instead of with a full party. This is especially prevalent with the Nyx Avatar, replicating the climactic Duel Boss scenario from the movies.
  • Spurred on by a comment made by Akihiko in response to Ken on the higher floors where the latter claims he could climb up to one of the higher blocks without using a teleporter, fans have gone and done the full Tartarus climb (in New Game Plus mind) on the final day, with some even doing it solo without any help from any other party member.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop:
  • The majority of the Tartarus Guardians from the previous versions are replaced with new ones, who proved themselves to be more problematic than difficult. Conserving SP is still an issue, though.
  • Mitsuru's Social Link is much easier to complete than in FES or Portable. Whilst it remains locked until after the Kyoto trip and still requires a maxed out Academics, her availability is much more lenient in Reload than in FES and Portable. In earlier versions of the game, Mitsuru is only available on the days when she isn't attending student council meetings, and is locked for most of December for various narrative reasons, which would usually result in her SL carrying over to January, where you only have a limited timeframe to complete her and Aigis' SL; here, she's available every school day and isn't locked for narrative reasons — in fact, the week before exams, Mitsuru is the only Gekkoukan based Social Link actually available.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: To balance out some of the Anti-Frustration Features, Reload makes some other alterations to the game that make things harder. It also serves as one to Persona 5 Royal, which some fans criticized for making things too easy with its numerous Anti-Frustration Features.
  • Unlike almost every other Eastern RPG, battles don't give you money; you have to get Shuffle Time and choose a Coin minor arcana card to get any money at all. There's still a lot of Shop Fodder that you can sell for cash, though. This is, however, true to the previous versions of Persona 3.
  • To counteract the removed Fatigue system, returning to Tartarus' entrance no longer automatically refills your HP and SP and you can't just throw money at it (as in Portable), as the clock you use to recharge the two now needs Twilight Fragments (which can be either found anywhere around the city, inside Tartarus, or gained from Elizabeth as rewards) to activate per use, and said Twilight Fragments are also used to open up locked chests which means one is forced to decide between whether to use their fragments for recovery or to open up potentially powerful loot. As is typical of the series, Magic Is Rare, Health Is Cheap is in effect here, meaning that SP is primarily what limits how much you can explore Tartarus in one night. On the bright side, the game has Peaceful and Easy modes (which have infinite "Plume of Dusk" continues if the MC is KO'ed), saving you from the trouble of managing your party's SP.
• She Really Can Act: On the last playable day, you can talk to anyone whose Social Links you've maxed. Some of them have moved away, and in Akinari's case, he passed away, so you talk to his mom instead. While the dialogue is the same as the original, it is fully voiced in this game, and it is utterly heartbreaking to listen to, courtesy of Cindy Robinson. Even for doing a pretty much unnamed role, she gives her all into her performance. She really sounds like she's in pain, at a loss when grieving for her son, and is fighting back tears as she voices all the dialogue. Not quite what you'd expect if you're used to hearing her voice sweet, plucky, or tomboy-ish girls like Amy Rose, Hinoka, or Labrys.
• Shocking Moments: When Takaya's health gets low during the final battle, he'll use his Theurgy. On top of dealing damage, it has a chance of inflicting Fear on the party and reduces everyone's SP to 1.
• Tainted by the Preview: Fans had been begging for a remake of the original game for years, so naturally the existence of Reload was cause for excitement until more information about the game came out.
  • While fans were mixed about The Answer being excluded on account of it being a contentious extra mode, Portable fans voiced their immense disapproval that the Female Protagonist will not be featured in the game, reigniting the old debate about whether FES or Portable is the superior version. It was then announced that The Answer is coming after all, as a DLC campaign, meaning fans of the female protagonist are, once again, completely out of luck, especially with the leaked information◊ confirming that the reason the remastered Portable port was published was to make her story accessible outside the long-obsolete PlayStation Portable and thus she was never planned to be in Reload to begin with.
  • Another point of contention is the change of the English cast. While the Japanese voice actors are more or less the same, virtually everyone in English has been replaced with new voice actors, some of which are lesser-known compared to other high-profile voice actors like Yuri Lowenthal, Liam O'Brien, Tara Platt and Karen Strassman, who voiced the Male Protagonist, Akihiko, Mitsuru and Aigis respectively. Although some VA changes were necessary (like Junpei's change of VA being understandable in regards to his original VA, Vic Mignogna, being the source of a great deal of controversy and sexual harassment allegations), many people feel that even if the new voice cast is good, it just wouldn't be the same as the now-iconic roles for the original dub cast. The July trailer seemed to ease some of the worried fanbase due to the English VAs sounding a lot like like the old cast, but nevertheless remained divisive, especially with Akihiko's new voice which stood out as sounding way too deep for his character. It did not help that one of the new voice actors stated that the new cast's goal was to voice the characters as what they think they would sound like, and any similarity to the older cast was just a coincidence. To rub further salt in the wound, the September 2023 news revealed that Tara Platt still reprised her role as Elizabeth despite no longer voicing Mitsuru, which only raised more questions from the more jaded side of the fandom. Sure enough, it was later confirmed by one of the original cast members that this was an executive decision from Atlus' parent company Sega, who specifically requested a "younger/fresher" English cast for the remake, which many found to be a baffling reason seeing as the original English cast is around the same age bracket as the Japanese cast, who were brought back for the most part.
  • While the visuals of Reload are considered a massive step up in regards to the original, with the Main Menu unanimously considered to be the best-looking, many consider the UI to be rather bland. Iwatodai Dorm also received some criticism, with many noting how unpolished it looks when compared to the high-quality character models. This is not helped by how much of this perception is echoed from A Mudkip/MadMax1960, a prominent member of the Persona modding community, who mocked the graphics of Reload. The Bilibili trailer showcasing the battle sequence only served to shatter the fanbase further, with some praising the visuals (with the victory animation being the main highlight) and some feeling that it looked off, sterile, or less impactful, with special attention given to a possibly bowdlerised summoning sound effect like in Portable and how stiff the animations looked.
  • The addition of the new side stories to the main cast, with one reason brought up from the development team being to make up for the inability to Social Link with the male teammates. While most fans were intrigued, though still annoyed by the fact that they still have to deal with the more divisive and even widely disliked characters (Nozomi says hi), once again the FeMC fans were livid at the implication that the remade (male MC's) journey had pretty much stolen the female main character's Social Links and it further justified her exclusion.
  • After Nintendo Switch owners were happy to get the port of the modern mainline Persona games, they became displeased by the fact that Reload has no plans to be released on that console according to insider findings. Most of these complaints were alleviated when an interview with the game's director, Takuya Yamaguchi, said that a Switch port isn't totally out of the question.
  • The official reveal that Reload was priced at $70 USD only served to break the already-shattered fanbase further. Those critical of this standard became more pessimistic about the remake considering that the game is more or less FES without The Answer (until that got added as DLC). This made them question if the remake's overall value (even with the newer exclusive content, at the expense of the Playable Epilogue and the female route) can justify the new pricing standard, despite there being other triple-A games still being sold with a $60 USD price tag. It only got even more contentious when the Expansion Pass got announced and added on an extra $35 for three waves of downloadable content, the third one in particular being Episode Aigis: The Answer, but the other two are simple cosmetic and background music updates, and there's no way to buy Episode Aigis: The Answer separately for a lower price, meaning one has to spend $105 USD in total to properly own the full experience of Reload. That's also not accounting for non-US players with no regional pricing. That said, this criticism also ignores that Reload includes far more new content than either FES or Portable did, nor was this game just a simple remaster, but a fully remade game built from the ground up (with the developers noting that the development of Reload was far more expensive than that of the original game).
• That One Achievement: "A Legacy of Friendships" requires all Social Links to be maxed out, which requires careful planning with a tight deadline. As in FES and Portable, Aigis' Social Link only becomes available in the last month of the game, and even if you do everything right, you will only have days to spare before the end of the game. More manageable on a second New Game Plus playthrough, but hard to do on a first run.
• That One Boss: As expected of an Atlus game, Reload turns the already tough bosses into bigger threats, even with many changes done in the game to make the gameplay significantly easier, as those listed below can attest to:
  • While Lovers is easy peasy in the previous versions, it's both this and Wake-Up Call Boss here. Its moveset remains mostly the same but it has bigger HP, resistances to Pierce and Elec, is immune to Fire, has Diarama to prolong the boss fight (though it would only cast that skill once, thankfully), switches Maragion for Agidyne, and gains Seductive Mist, which is basically Stagnant Air but permanent, putting the party at risk of getting hit with the Charm and Heartbreaker combo more often. Bringing Rakunda and Me Patra is a good way to make the fight more managable and counter its Charm skills but Mitsuru (who has Rakunda) and Leanan Sidhe (who has Me Patra) are weak to Fire, meaning that it can get One More(s) by hitting her and the MC (if Leanan Sidhe is equipped) with its Agidyne attacks.
  • Chariot and Justice are definitely no pushovers in the previous versions, but they're far more dangerous here. The start of the boss fight is just that tough, with their combined form having new Signature Moves that hit like a truck and resisting all elements (both physical and elemental), forcing you to cast Theurgy or Break skills to deal any meaningful damage to them. Individually, Chariot and Justice are no less difficult either, since the former resists all physical attacks and has high HP, and the latter resists elemental attacks and has more Light skills, including the One-Hit Kill Mahama and Hamaon. The only saving graces here are Chariot doesn't have ailment skills this time and the duo's Samarecarm is instead replaced with Restore, which becomes less effective with each use.
  • Fortune and Strength one-up their previous versions in terms of difficulty. First off, Strength can resist Slash and Pierce, reflects Strike, and her new Signature Move, Mobius Rondo, deals six hits worth of Strike damage to the party. Fortune on the other hand, absorbs four elements (Fire, Ice, Wind, and Light) and its Wheel of Fortune skill receives a major overhaul: it would either (de)buff or deal fixed 300 damage on everyone (basically a One-Hit Kill for those whose HP is currently less than 300). And the worst part is, the wheel's effect is semi-scripted, lacks the status ailment effect (meaning that you can't just finish them off in one shot with Ghastly Wail if they're inflicted with Fear by the wheel's effect), and you can't control where the wheel stops. At least Strength doesn't have Eerie Sound and Vile Assault (since getting hit by the latter while knocked down is a guaranteed death sentence), and if you deplete her HP, Fortune goes down easily (since it's now weak to Strike and Elec attacks) and would just cast a Wheel of Fortune that thankfully doesn't have any effect when low on health.
  • As the last Full Moon Shadow, Hanged Man went from a Goddamned Boss to this. He has Maeigaon, Heat Riser, Revolution, Marakunda, and Concentrate as part of his skillset, and trades the Devious Maya summon and Armed & Ready skills from the original games for Megidola(on). His Statues are also beefed up, as they can resist all but one or two elements, and he can't be knocked down for an All-Out Attack if you managed to kill all of them (though you can still knock him down with Critical hits). And if that wasn't bad enough, he can also gain three more turns by casting Grim Transcendence in an attempt to finish off the party in a few hits, and it is even possible for him to use the final turn to cast Grim Transcendance again, eerily similar to the notorious Beast Eye spam from Mot. As someone as aggressive and heavy-hitting as Hanged Man, you better have Tetrakarn, Null Phys, and/or (de)buff Support skills ready before confronting him.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The overall brighter lighting and more crowded environments of the overworld are seen by some as detracting from the original Persona 3's gloomy, foreboding atmosphere. Even the final boss fight is hit with this with it now being dominated by a fairly vibrant green hue rather than the moody grey and white it used to have.
  • The lack of 2D animated cutscenes in certain areas where they were present in FES was also a sore point, with many feeling that the in-engine 3D cutscenes fail to do the scenes justice. The scene featuring a random student finding himself in the Dark Hour and getting attacked by a Shadow in particular was said to have less of a punch to it due to it cutting away from him before it happens, whereas in the original, it's actually shown in full.
  • Yukari speaking during her initial scene instead of not doing so like in the PlayStation 2 versions. Whilst this take on her initial scene originates in Persona 3 Portable to compensate for the scene using still images there, which makes sense in Portable's Visual Novel format, fans felt it was jarring when it was retained for Reload.
  • Yukari's Adaptational Nice Guy treatment was criticized by fans of the character as missing the point, with them arguing that making her openly friendly from the outset effectively neuters the impact of her Character Development. One scene in particular that was singled out happens the day of the first trip to Tartarus, where Mitsuru tells the second years to come to the lounge when they return to the dorm for the evening without elaborating further. Whereas in the original, Yukari made a pointed, sarcastic comment about Mitsuru being busy with the Student Council, the remake has her sound more timid and apologetic, which doesn't line up with the initial tension between the two over how secretive her and Akihiko are being and her suspicions that they're using the junior members of S.E.E.S. for their own ends (not helping is that Junpei still comments on the hostility in her voice when said hostility is absent). Seeing as Yukari was a notoriously Base-Breaking Character in the original, this change was likely done to address complaints from her detractors and make her more likable, but her fans argue that in doing so, they robbed her of much of the characteristics that made her stand out in favor of "fixing" something that they never considered broken to begin with. That being said, a lot of people point out that Yukari was way nicer in the original Japanese version, and lot of her "meaner" characteristics can be attributed to the original localization of the previous P3 games, Michelle Ruff's voice direction for Yukari in the original dub making her more snooty, and her depiction in the animated movie adaptations, which either solved the debate or only fueled it even further, depending on the social group.
  • Minor example: the removal of the Kendo and Swim Teams and Music and Photography Clubs in favor of sticking strictly with Track for the Athletic Team and Art for the Culture Club. While the removal of these options was understandable from a game design perspective (not wanting to record and animate three different sets of sequences for Kazushi, Keisuke, and by extension Yuko's Social Links), the decision was still lamented as taking away from the high school sim aspect of the original. In particular, some fans have noted than Kendo would've fit better as a sports team as many members of the party already use weapons based on their interests/clubs (e.g. Yukari for archery or Junpei and baseball), so Kendo would fit the protagonist's sword style, as the protagonist joined the Kendo club in the animated movies too. The Photography club also would have been in line with the FeMC route and Drama CDs of Portable, where Keisuke is part of the photography club specifically.
  • Some fans have noticed that some scenes are now narrated when they were silent compared to the original, with those people finding that it takes away from the Show, Don't Tell aspect of said scenes.
  • A small one but fans noticed that this version of the game removed most of the smaller one-shot animations from the original, and has the characters Going Through the Motions where they used to be, making it feel like the game is cutting corners compared to the almost two decade older original.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • After Ikutsuki gives SEES their new combat uniforms and the equipment that allows them to use Theurgy, there are several hints that the ability could be harmful towards Persona-users, such as the Progress Report that can be found in Tartarus, the fact the Shadow of the Abyss fought by Takaya and the Protagonist leaves behind a glowing red Evoker — similar to how SEES' look when they trigger Theurgy — and is heavily implied to not only be a Persona-user who had lost control, but one of the Kirijo Group's test subjects. Regardless, SEES face no difficulties controlling their Personas, and even Takaya, whose Persona isn't stable to begin with, uses this seemingly unstable Evoker to trigger his own Theurgy in his final boss battle to no detriment.
  • Despite Strega getting more scenes focused on them, especially with Takaya actually interacting with the protagonist a few more times that has him wax philosophical on their ideologies, Jin and Chidori don't get as many scenes that aren't focused on either Takaya for Jin, or Chidori for Junpei (she has the same amount of focus as in the original releases), making them still feel a bit like Satellite Characters in the long-run.
• WTH, Costuming Department?:
  • The Phantom Thief DLC costume set gives Ken Yusuke's outfit. Besides him being regarded as weird looking, most fans expected him to get one of Akechi's outfits due to the shared traits fans see between them (being the Justice arcana representative, specializing in Bless skills and having hidden darker personality traits involving a desire for revenge). Instead, Akihiko gets Akechi's Crow costume, while Shinjiro gets the "Black Mask" outfit.
  • The Yasogami High and Shujin Academy sets give Shinjiro a standard uniform. Some felt it would have made more sense for his character if he wore Kanji and Ryuji's non-standard uniform instead. It should be noted, however, that these costume packs don’t dress S.E.E.S. as specific characters from those games, but rather are simply the interpretation of how the characters would wear those uniforms.

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