Updated on February 5, 12:55 p.m. (GMT+8): Improved relevancy.
Nearly 18 years after its original release, Persona 3 Reload promises a modern readaptation of a story that has stricken so many with boundless emotions.
Persona 3 Reload (P3R) is Atlus’ latest offering in its mainline Persona series, following our Protagonist — Gekkoukan High School’s newest transfer student.
ONE Esports had the opportunity to preview the game for about 15 hours — and here’s what to look out for when you pick up P3R.
Persona 3 Reload is nostalgia with a modern touch
Persona fans old and new will immediately find themselves right at home.
Transfer student? Check.
A strange lack of parental figures? Check.
Supernatural proceedings that the protagonist has a natural flair for? Check it as many times as you want.
It’s a familiar gameplay loop for Persona fans. The calendar waits for no man, and certainly not the player. While there are plenty of battles, the social simulation is arguably the most defining part of the series — and Reload is no different.
Get a reminder of who exactly you are fighting for every time you establish a new social link, be it with the kindly old elderly couple in the Iwatodai Strip Mall, or the gung-ho senior in the athletics club.
It’s a remastered edition, and the same goes for Persona’s legendary music. P3R’s tracks continue to sound fresh almost two decades later.
Astute listeners will hear the differences between the current tracks and its old ones, but they sound amazing — especially the Iwatodai Dorm bop that makes you want to lounge around all day doing nothing just to hear more of it.
Persona 3 Reload knows what it’s going for
Each Persona game has always had its distinct sense of style, and blue is very firmly the color for Persona 3 Reload. Everything is caked in some shade of blue, from the menus to the ground you walk on.
As somebody whose experience with Persona starts and ends with Persona 5 Royal, there’s something very nostalgic about the way Reload plays. In P5R, where your protagonist zooms, hides, and assaults Shadows all at the press of a button, Reload makes you walk up to them and manually slash your way into battle with an awkward lunge.
Is it bad? Not at all — it’s different.
If Persona 5 is effortlessly cool, P3R is brutally efficient. There’s no need for a jazzy, pop-art splash when a circle will do. The all-out attacks for different characters are functionally the same, save for a different finishing image. The familiar style is still there, and amped up from its older versions — just touched up slightly with a modern brush.
Reload your save file? No, just Rewind
One of the best new features in Persona 3 Reload — and perhaps the whole Persona series, period — is Rewind.
Every time you save, the game takes a snapshot and holds five of your previous periods when you could still roam freely. Generally, this means you can go back about two and a half days from your new save.
For a series with strict time sensitivity and blocked-off periods, this helps a lot in fixing those small mistakes. Missed an important deadline for Elizabeth’s requests or want to quickly try another social link? Rewind is there for you.
This is helpful for those who forget to save regularly as well. If you need to go back and change something and find that your last save file was hours ago, try saving immediately and checking the Rewind feature.
While an undoubtedly useful feature, remember to continue saving your game! This function only works after you save, and keep in mind that this means if you spend a lot of time in one evening — like say, Tartarus — all that progress is gone if you want to Rewind.
Persona 3 Reload’s release date is on February 2.
You can go to the official website of ATLUS or SEGA for more information about Persona 3 Reload.
READ MORE: Persona 3 Reload: Release date, story, price, characters, platforms, trailer
