As its own experience Persona 3 Reload is a great game. A solid art direction, spectacular story and characters, wonderful music and slick gameplay. Yet I am very conflicted feelings about this game. It's still a incredible experience and a remake of one of my favorite games of all time and yet I can't help but feel like it falls a bit short of what I really hoped for with a remake of Persona 3. It's a sort of death by a thousand cuts scenario where there's just so many little things that ultimately worsen the experience for me.

I think a lot of the abrasiveness that the original games design philosophy was sort of lost with Reload. Generally the party members are a lot more relaxed for the most part and don't feel as cold to you initially which I personally thought was a strength of the initial game's script. The gameplay feels a bit more like Persona 5 for better and for worse. While I definitely think there were plenty of frustrations to be had with the AI party members, it was a pretty unique experience to be had and the rationale really helps hone in on the major ideas of the game and helped make your party members feel like they have their own agency in some way. The soundtrack is a mixed bag where certain tracks are quite a bit better than the original (and I think all of the new tracks are great), but certain tracks feel like they were changed just for the sake of it rather than to build on and improve what was already there (namely the dorm's theme).

I will mention that I do think Atlus sort of missed the mark on why people truly wanted a remake of Persona 3. I understand Atlus wanting to focus on remaking just the initial version of Persona 3. For myself, an ideal remake of Persona 3 combined the best aspects of FES and Portable. While not integral to the experience of the game, the female protagonist route from Persona 3 Portable was something many fans, myself included, would've loved to see in some capacity. Releasing the Episode Aigis epilogue (which I personally am not really a fan of in the first place) as DLC also just simply rubs me the wrong way especially at the price of $35 USD.

For every good thing this remake does, there's a bad change to go with it. While this is technically the best way to play the game, I still have plenty of grievances. I still would recommend it but it is just very sad to not love this game as much as I sincerely want to.

tl;dr flawed version of the game that is probably the best and most accessible experience.

I would rather watch my entire family get tortured than ever play this game again

Ultrakill is like if the Rule of Cool was an entire video game. The music is absolutely incredible and makes you feel all the more awesome finding different ways to rip apart the variety of enemies you'll find. Ultrakill has some of the most unique weapons I have ever seen in a FPS and the amount of different ways the huge arsenal can be utilized is absurd. Ignore many of the fans its perfectly okay to play the game at a pace you find more comfortable (I actually encourage you to play slower your first time as there's plenty of secrets to be found too!)

Atlus did such a ♥♥♥♥ job of porting this. Low quality audio files, poorly upscaled assets and the lack of skill selection during fusion inheritance all make this a very lazy port of the game but I would be lying to you if I said I didn't recommend it still because Persona 3 is my favorite game not only in the Persona series but my favorite experience in gaming. 1 million years could pass and I would never forget the way Persona 3 makes me feel and I would give anything to experience this for the first time again. I absolutely adore this game, I'd say wait until Persona 3 Reload is released and if you enjoy it then I'd recommend coming back after some time and revisiting the game as the female protagonist that is currently only in Persona 3 Portable.

why yes, I do in fact love gaslighting my friends

faust is literally me irl