That often has to be balanced with managing a slew of devastating status ailments and hard-hitting attacks, so things can spiral out of control if you don't play it smart. The best examples of this come from Monad doors, which are all-new rooms within the Tartarus floors – specifically, the boss gauntlets found at progress checkpoints. These fights throw somewhat unconventional combat scenarios at you that bring out the best of these satisfying turn-based battles whether you line up a sequence of attacks perfectly or barely make it by the skin of your teeth.

To say that this remake’s presentation is an improvement over the original game would be the understatement of the century. Persona 3’s graphics have gone from looking like a PlayStation One game to a polished, next-gen HD anime visual fiesta in Persona 3 Reload.

There are even some quality-of-life improvements, like accessing a shortcut menu that will allow you to fast travel to the next floor of Tartarus once you have located its entrance.

I played the expanded version of the original Persona 3 called Persona 3 FES in 2009 and haven’t replayed it since. So, I was excited about this remake to see if it could improve aspects of the original game that hadn’t aged well or introduce new elements to make it fresh.

Tomohiro Kumagai, a lead UI designer at P-Studio on Persona 4 Arena Ultimax (2013), as well as both Persona 5 and Royal, serves as Reload's art director. Kumagai was among Yamaguchi's earliest hires for the project shortly after he assumed the role as the game's director. Kumagai became attracted to the prospects of working on the game having been captivated by the original Persona 3's art design, and its notion that a user interface could have powerful synergy with the game's themes. He explained that Reload's menu interface drawing on the imagery of being submerged in water, was developed from his initial perception of the original game's heavy usage of blue in the menus, which was further iterated on by the UI design team.

Persona 3 Reload is one of the best remakes of a game I’ve played since Capcom’s Resident Evil remakes and one of the best Xbox games I’ve played thus far in 2024 that both Persona fans and JRPG fans should not miss out on.

Its storytelling largely manages to avoid tired tropes and lets its characters be real people who endure tragedy and contemplate the emptiness they feel in the loss of loved ones. But they find their own way to come to terms with that loss and let it be their strength as they fight to the end, even when the temptation of nihilism stares back at them.

What’s more, you get to choose how you want to impact the world and its characters and they will in turn react to you in ways that reflect these choices. Help them rebuild their houses, heal their wounds or fight their enemies for them. In Where Winds Meet

Persona 3 Reload shows there's still a novelty to balancing normal life and relationships with the duties of defeating shadows in the Dark Hour – a mysterious 25th hour where time stops as monstrous forces come out, humans turn into coffins, and your school transforms into a deranged 250-floor tower.

Along the way, you will need to open treasure chests scattered throughout Tartarus. There are treasure chests that contain loot, which can be sold to give you money to purchase medical supplies and equipment in town, while others can provide you with gear crafting materials or rare weapons and armor you won’t find in stores. Some treasure chests even contain cosmetic items that can change your appearance.

In addition, after opening enough locked treasure chests with rare items called Twilight Fragments, you will sometimes come across a special door leading to an object called the Great Clock.

Also, the Fatigue system from the original game is now completely gone in Persona 3 Reload. Fatigue was a mechanic from the original Persona 3, which inflicted debilitating status effects that severely weakened party members in battle.

However, in an interview with Famitsu, translated by Siliconera, the development team confirmed that the focus will be on the base version of the game. According to Personal 3 Reload producer Ryouta Niizuma, the game “…is a project that prioritized remaking the original Persona 3 for modern consoles.

While attending Gekkoukan High School, the in-class questions from the subject teachers have been redone from scratch, with none being repurposed from the original game. Exploration both around Tatsumi Port Island and within Tartarus is now done from a third-person perspective with the camera now being positioned directly behind the protagonist, and now enables free camera control for the player to get better views of their surroundings. The overworld map is now fully rendered in 3D, and has an additional button prompt for displaying information on the protagonist's current location, or persona 3 reload gameplay other areas they can visit. Expanding on Persona 3 Portable's fast travel function, the player is also able to immediately fast-travel to any specific location within the highlighted area directly from the map itself as opposed to within the location.