Persona 3 Reload

Steam Reviews

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• Recommended Posted March 15, 2026 on Steam what a great anti-suicide game. 10/10, will make you want to live again
• Recommended Posted June 17, 2025 on Steam nothing will ever compare to my experience with this game not to be corny but it unironically changed my outlook on life. i am grateful to have played it
• Recommended Posted August 9, 2025 on Steam It's currently seven in the morning. The game ended after seventy hours. I think I've been playing this game almost every day for two weeks. It's fair to say that I've lost track of time. It may be the best game I've ever played. It's a masterpiece that makes you experience every emotion and question yourself at the end of the game. Even after getting a spoiler about the game's ending, I kept playing, and that spoiler still caught me off guard , that's how impactful this game is. I've never watched anime in my life, and I don't even like it, nor do I have any interest in Japanese culture. But this game is something else; I think I'll be under its spell for a while. Let's just say Atlus has gained a new Persona fan.
• Recommended Posted March 2, 2026 on Steam “You don't have to save the world to find meaning in life. Sometimes, all you need is something simple, like someone to take care of” I love video games as a medium. I am a firm believer that the stories, art, music, and experiences they provide can genuinely influence you as a person, so long as you let them. Persona 3 is an exceptional example of this. I came into this game as a fan who started with Persona 5 and worked my way backwards. With a background of how well the P4 and P5 casts mesh together in those games, I was offput by how little the SEES members seemed to want to interact beyond just fighting in Tartarus. I had initially thought this to just be a lack of chemistry, and was worried that I wouldn’t care as much about this cast as the other games. I am so glad that I was wrong. These characters start out so distant and isolative by design. This is a cast of people who are hurt, grieving in some form over loss they have experienced in their lives, and due to this, they struggle to bond with others in meaningful ways. It’s not until they begin to open up to each other in response to major events in the story that they really start to grow together, and come to realize what they are fighting for in their lives. These changes do not happen for awhile in the story, and when they do happen, it takes time. It’s a slow burn, but through fragments of these shared experiences they have, it eventually culminates in a cast that feels strongly bound together through meaningful, emotional connections. At its core, this story tackles nihilism, and struggling with the answer to finding meaning in life in the face of an inevitable end. In a world where “a meaningful life” is subjective, why should you bother? If there is pain, and grief, and suffering, then what’s the point? Because life can be beautiful. Acting as a direct antithesis to nihilism, this game takes place in a world that floods you with a constant stream of colorful scenery, fantastic music, and a roster of characters that all feel exciting to interact with. Having the benefit of being a Persona game, being able to live out the calendar year lets you fully engulf into this setting, and grow attached to the daily life of Makoto, and the people you can spend time with. By being an active, positive force to those around him, you get to see how genuine human connection and love brings meaning and understanding to their lives, lifting them out of their respective sorrows. The experiences throughout the “Daily Life” portions of the game act as the perfect motivation to eliminate the Dark Hour and Tartarus. By the end of this game, SEES isn’t just fighting shadows for some vague notion of righteousness, they are actively declaring war on nihilism, imbuing the personal meaning they have come to find in the value of their lives into their fight for humanity in the face of an impending death. Although I won’t ever need to justify the value of my life to an apocalypse-harboring god, I will need to justify it to myself. Because I will die one day. At its core, I think the beauty of this game is its ability to pull the bleeding heart of the human condition to the surface; Mortality. We are granted an indeterminate amount of time to live out our lives, and fill them with meaningful experiences and connections. That time can be used to grovel and sulk, but it can also be used to uplift others and appreciate the paths we choose to take until we reach the end. I’d like to think that I have surrounded myself with people I deeply care about, and use my time to be a positive force in their lives. Although I don’t always get the opportunity to tell them, I hope they know how much meaning they bring to my life. What Persona 3’s story has been for me is a beautiful, sapphire hued reflection pool. One that was fun to play, filled my playlists with fantastic music, and told a story that bolsters and encourages an appreciation for life. For the last hour of this game, I just wept, not out of sadness, but out of sheer awe at how meaningful this story became for me, and how much I had come to the love the bonds shared by Makoto, Junpei, Yukari, Mitsuru, Akihiko, Amada, Fuuka, Koromaru, and Aigis. I don’t think I could begin to unpack all my feelings for this game in one review, so I mostly just tried to cover the overarching themes that felt valuable to me. But it is the theme and message of this game that really puts Persona 3 in a class of its own. It’s so personal, yet universal at the same time. I have so much love for video games that add such substantial value and perspective to my life, and this game goes above and beyond in that aspect. Although I am yet to decide if this is the “best” way to experience this as an RPG (I intend to play FES and P3P to see how they feel eventually), I would strongly encourage playing any rendition of this game for its narrative alone.
• Recommended Posted January 27, 2026 on Steam "When a friend recommends you persona 3 in future, you kiss that homie and immediately start playing it" Persona 3 Reload is a game that I know I'm gonna love it when I play it yet I have been backlogging it cause of my val addiction but just like any addiction when it wore off I wanted to play something good, something fun. That's when I started p3r. I thought I was in a run for an edgy anime school role playing game. Ohh boyy I have never been so wrong. Like all persona games, p3r is still a dungeon crawler and social sim, time management sim at its heart. My first experience with persona games is p5 so I have pretty good idea from what I expect from the game. For some who don't know the persona gamea has a calendar system and each day is divided into certain time zones like early morning, afternoon,after school, night and dark hour. The day part and night is where you find the social sim elements and in dark hours you get to play the dungeon crawling. Persona 3 just like p5r has lots of game systems going on and lots of tutorials in the start, which can put someone off. It takes a while to get going, once it does y'all in a rollercoaster ride. The social sim part of the game is spending time with your social links. Social links are these NPCs that u can spend time with to get to know them, they give u experience which in turn helps u in dungeon crawling which I will get to in a bit. Unlike persona 5 palace design, p3r has procedurally generated dungeon called Tatarus 🤢🤢🤢🤢. In tatarus there are floors filled with shadows and collectible for loots. There is where your rpg elements come into play. You defeat enemies you level up, you get items, collects treasure chests buy gear get powerful yada yada yada. Persona 3 Reload combat is much closer to persona 5. It's a turn based, you need to find the weakness of the enemy and spam it while managing your hp n sp. You have ur persona swap to hit weakness or you could just brute force ur way with physical damage. Its upto you. Game gives ur different options to try and the it has great charcter that changes ur playstyle depending on how you want. You have these special attacks called theurgy like limit break in jrpgs when certain condition triggers you can activate them. These are broken and can almost one shot bosses if u build ur charcters correctly. Whjle these all systems sounds nice but tatarus itself is super boring, it's being procedurally generated makes it no life, and no sense of achievement for exploration and rewards are just questionable depending on the area. The saving grace of tatarus is just goated song " ITS going down now". Lotus juice and azumi takahasi put out something so good even when ur hear for straight 60 hours u still wanna listen to it again. I will talk about music in the later section. The charcter Chatter during crawling makes it more lively. I'm talking about you aigis, junpei. I always felt the dungeon crawling as a step to complete to get to the better part of the game. Talking about better part of the game. The social links. Where do I even start with this. Social links a re npc that you interact with and spend time to move calendar. There are 22 social links and linked episodes ( for male charcters in your party ) each representing an arcana ( arcana is like tarot cards which are used to predict the future or so ppl say ). In persona 5 the social links felt fine but in here they are much more than NPCs, they have their own ideals, their own problems, their own weakness. Whether you like em or hate em they are part of your journey. Trying not to spoil too much there are few social links that made me think, made me introspect myself, made me cry, made me laugh and the most made me fulfilled made me thank myself for picking up this game and experience their journey Now coming about story, the story is about a boy named makato yuki or you, transferred to a new school ( how convenient) ends up in a new dorm. But something weird exactly at 12o clock everyone in the city turns into coffin except you and some of your dorm mates ( again how convenient).it's called dark hour. Now you join the group ur friends to find about the truth of the dark hour. The first 2 months in the game's calander is super slog and it does lots of world building and slowly introduce you to game mechanics. But trust me survive till August and it gets better and pacing becomes a lot faster, so many lore drops, plot twists and one of the the perfect end for a video game ( well ofc still after than ff14 endwalker ). The cast or ur dorm mates comes of as a set of generic anime charcters but they slowly grow and by the end they are just NPCs they become something more that u will remember for a very long time. Each of the cast have their own personalities , their own way of doing good, their own way of living, and it's always super fun to see these personalities clashing. Unlike persona 5 the cast has its troubles with other members and seeing them over come their clashes and seeing them grow up is such a joy to see. Like some other jrps who comes off as a yes persons to the mc they have their own individuality Music ohh gawdd, I'm not qualified enough to review this game's music. Music is this game is always saying something. It's not a placeholder to engage the player. It has it own charcter it always foreshadows something. The game does a really good bait and switch with its songs. Since it's catered towards japanese people all the songs during game are english, so the jp would just enjoy the new music something different without actually finding the meaning of the song but in the end they put the song in Japanese for that beautiful ending to sink in more. The same is done in final fantasy 16 too. Each music has its own intention or motif. The music themselves tells a story whether it can be about mc or social links or current situation of the game and I think it's masterfully done. Props to atlus sound team for putting out bangers n banger in each game which is almost impossible to do and I still think " memories of you and it's going down " are their magnum opus. I might be lying if I say persona 3 fundamentally changed me as a person but it gave me a new perspective on life and appreciate what I have and that it's okay to not chase for somethings that you can't reach and be ok with. Not everything in life happens according to our taste and its fine to accept them and move on. Tldr: persona 3 is a great game that everyone should even though its turn based has a boring dungeon crawling, it should be played for its great story, music and especially social links Rating 9/10 ( I only give 1 game a 10/10 and it's ff14 and this is as high any other game can get) If anyone asks me for a tip please read the chat bubbles atleast for ur party, they add so much I mean sooooo much to the charcter tidbits
• Recommended Posted February 6, 2026 on Steam Disturbed my peace to the very end and made me realize the value of friendships and relationships. 10/10 game.