persona 3 reload gameplay Secrets
While the difficulty isn’t as challenging as the original Persona 3, that didn’t stop me from having a blast playing this game.
My investment in the plot is further enhanced thanks to its characters, especially your party members. Nearly everyone in the cast is a likable yet flawed individual who goes through captivating character arcs that will have you rooting for them to overcome their internal struggles and help them find the reason for the Dark Hour.
So, before a full moon arrives, you must prepare for each major boss Shadow encounter by training your party in Tartarus, keeping their gear updated, and creating new Personas for you to use.
This is where building Social Links becomes a crucial part of the gameplay loop. Social Links can provide bonuses allowing you to instantly level up Personas when fusing them in the Velvet Room or unlock new recipes to create powerful Personas you won’t find from destroying Shadows.
New Personas can be obtained as a reward for defeating Shadows or visiting a special location called the Velvet Room, allowing you to fuse Personas to create new ones.
You can take your party members on individual activities, too, like gardening or cooking together to get new health items, which also lets them open up to you in ways they hadn't before. Watching a scary movie with my cheerful bestie Yukari or reviewing boxing matches with my gym bro Akihiko don’t just offer social stat points, they give a bit of insight into their personalities.
Persona 3 was the first game in the Persona series to adopt this unorthodox gameplay formula, and sadly, some of it hasn’t aged well compared to its sequels or its PlayStation Portable counterpart, Persona 3 Portable.
The graphics have been upgraded to next-gen standards and it features many of Persona 5 Royal’s quality-of-life improvements.
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.
: This review was made possible thanks to a review code provided by Atlus. The company did not see the contents of this review before it was published.
Something as simple as study sessions at the dorm help you upgrade your academic stat quickly, but more importantly, come with endearing scenes of the crew interacting with each other in believable ways, helping out with math formulas or just venting about the mundane.
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.
As is tradition for Shin Megami Tensei games, the turn-based RPG combat revolves around accounting for elemental affinities, knocking down enemies to earn extra turns, and setting up those iconic All-Out Attacks. Persona 3 Reload uses the same foundation as the original but builds upon it in ways that mitigate the monotony of churning through battle after battle. The aforementioned Theurgy attacks are relegated to a meter that fills during fights, each serving a strategic purpose given their limited use and character-specific effects, be that massive damage or major stat buffs – and they all come with some fantastic animations, too.
Dive into the Dark Hour and awaken the depths of persona 3 reload gameplay your heart. Persona 3 Reload is a captivating reimagining of the genre-defining RPG, reborn for the modern era with cutting-edge graphics and gameplay.