How Persona 3 Lost Its Identity | Original VS Reload

Review code provided by Sega & Atlus. Special thanks to these lovely people for lending their voices to this project! Tony4You: youtube.com/@Tony4You Bubbletea: youtube.com/@bubbletea_ A Cursed Jessie: youtube.com/@ACursedJessie

The long and short of this is “The remake was made in a post P5 world” Which is both fortunate and unfortunate at the same time.

"everything is so fucking green you'd swear it's persona 6" what an epic line

I don't have anything against the in game 3D cutscenes but I think it's really funny how the protagonist's awakening and Shinji's death don't get a 2D animated cutscene but the scene where the team gets new drip does lol

Once we all just agree that Persona 3 Dancing is the definitive way to play, we can all be happy.

This comment section is more full of people saying there "will be a war" than an actual war 😂

on one hand, I do agree with your criticisms over the art direction, cutscene direction, storytelling, and gameplay, and I do prefer FES over Reload when it comes to them on the other hand, Shinjiro says fuck in Reload

Time for the comment section to become a minefield!

While I did enjoy reload it did feel like it existed in a weird limbo. It’s not a completely faithful remake, but it’s also not that different to be it’s own thing. It feels like reload was more of a testing ground for what they want to do with persona 6 first and a faithful remake second. It also deeply bothers me how many versions of persona 3 exist but none of them encapsulate a “complete” experience, so you have play the other versions to truly experience everything (FEMC, og mechanics, and now linked episodes/theurgies/rest of the reload additions).

Yeah, I'm a veteran of the war in 'Nam The war in Nam's comment section

Persona 3R is a interesting case example of how a lot of iconic media with distinct atomspheres and tones work because of the tech limitations of the time they were made, not in spite of them. It's a shame that the dark, gritty, and melancholic atomsphere of 3 was lost in translation, as that tone was very distinct from both 4 and 5. Also glad you mentioned the usage of the Portable script. One casualty of doing this is how Junpei's father is not mentioned in 3R, which is such a shame as Junpei's father and how he views him is pivotal to understanding Junpei as a character.

What I love about the fatigue system is if you go back to the first floor and nobodies tired you get your hp and sp refilled for free.

While I generally think the points of this video are well formed, especially in regards to Reload's presentation, I cannot in good conscience agree with the ending of it, because of one thing; there isn't status quo of Persona 3. P3 as a story is in unique situation, because every adaptation of it, even FES, handles many of its aspects differently. The main core of the story is still the same, but the way of getting through it is always different depending on how you get into Persona 3. Before we even had Reload you already had stuff like the FeMC route in P3P, which gave a completely different perspective on events and characters simply out of the idea that the protag was a woman this time around or the pretty contentious manga which by the end just straight up brings the guy back, but the biggest one is obviously the P3 movies quadrilogy. There are some aspects of it that feel handled weirdly and worse than the original due to obvious limitations of the run time (Strega's presence is even more limited than it was in the original game and second awakenings aside from Junpei being relegated to the last minute power ups isn't really the best either), but on the other hand we have pretty much entire Winter of Rebirth, where tying Elizabeth's dates into the "main" story, while also showcasing S.E.E.S regaining their hope back is a very gorgeous way of handling that portion of the story and Door-kun's solo fight against Ryoji was also a major highlight of the movie. The point is, P4 and P5 don't have this issue (if you can even call it that), because it's generally agreed upon that Golden and Royal are good ways to experience these stories, but with P3, every adaptation of it handles things differently and so does Reload. I cannot call it a replacement of the original, because that's not what it is, it's just yet interpretation of P3 that handles some things worse and better. An interpretation which you can dislike more than FES, which is all fair, but Reload is not the first one to do that. There are people who think the movies are terrible, people who think the FeMC route is THE way to experience P3, people who think that Reload is the best and they cannot look at FES any more, hell, there are probably people who love the manga. I'm 100% certain that if FeMC was included in Reload there would be issues that would arise from it too, people feeling unhappy about how she was handled in here and all of this is making me think that ultimately, there isn't a definitive way of Persona 3 and that's not how Reload, or any adaptation of it, should be viewed as. And as for the future of the series, this team for me personally had already proven that they are great at creating original material, like P5's third semester or in this case, the entire Shinji linked episode, so I'm not really worried about P6, because that's gonna be their first full shot at something from the ground up.

People wanted a persona 3 remake in the first place because it has so many releases with different content. People want the FEMC from Portable, they want the answer from Fes, and they want the cutscenes and over-world from the original. Its really weird how Atlus didn’t get that, they even had to be pushed to make the answer. I liked reload, but I definitely agree it doesn’t really strike that same cord as the original did, I think of it more as a fun little new way to experience the old story. I think some scenes hit harder personally, like October 4th and the very last scene and credits, even the last month at the dorm felt a lot stronger because of the grey lighting, but it definitely feels like they don’t understand the subtle ways the original felt so special. I did enjoy reload for what it was, and I like the fresh take on the original story, but I wish it was more of a complete version. Persona 3 always has this problem of cutting content into every release like portable has the femc and controllable party but loses the 3D overworld and cutscenes, and its the same for reload. I think if anything, im glad Reload will give people a chance to experience these characters and this story when otherwise they never would’ve. I know people personally who never considered playing the original but gave reload a try and loved it, which is kinda sad, but if they can experience this story in some way, rather than never at all, I think thats a good thing.

While I really enjoyed Reload for what it is, I totally understand your perspective here. Thanks for providing your honest thoughts!

"God forbid they remake Persona 1 or 2 next" ... About that

I mostly enjoyed my time with Reload as someone who's favorite Persona game is the original P3. But it was the little things that rubbed me the wrong way, For one the atmosphere of the game just isn't as eerie or disturbing as it was in the OG, this is immediately apparent in the first cutscene, there's also things like the gunshot for the evokers not sounding nearly as hard-hitting as the original, the lighting of the dorm and some of the scene changes, one that really stuck out to me which bothers me that more people don't talk about is the scene in the boat when they're heading to Yakushima, in the original it's somber and depressing and it felt so real, that kind of stuff made it stand out from P4 and P5 especially for newer players but in the remake they just make it so they're suddenly all normal and happy despite not much time passing.

Something I really appreciate here is how you connect your thoughts to other franchises. It’s too easy to just compare P3R to FES and Portable, but adding allusions to series like DMC and Ratchet and Clank go to show you’re looking at this from more than one angle, which helps your points stand even taller than they would otherwise.

Ken Amada og: waste of disk space because of only instakill moves Ken Amada remake: I'M THE HEALING GOD AND NO ONE SHALL DIE ON MY WATCH lmao

"so green that you thought this was Persona 6." 😂