Persona 3 Reload: Remaking The Apathy

Persona 3 Reload is an odd game at first glance. Both from an artistic and a commercial perspective. Artistically in that it doesn’t do anything in a particularly different way to either modernize or re-contextualize its gameplay/narrative events. Commercially in that of the previous and multiple version of the game’s release, from the original Persona 3, the extended Persona 3 FES on the PlayStation 2, that includes a uniquely resonant and equally beloved epilogue, and the later release of Persona 3 Portable and the PlayStation Portable, which included the option to play as a female protagonist for the first time in series history as well as other minor gameplay adjustments not only for accessibility but as well as adapting to a handheld screen. Reload is not the “definitive edition” of the game opting to remain faithful more to the original release of the game than any other elements. 

The elements that are there are still as rock solid as ever. It is not an exaggeration to say that Persona 3 is a landmark moment in the history of the Japanese role-playing game genre. Its introduction of social levels, allowing for a mechanical and numeric representation of your closeness with certain characters, it’s procedurally generated 300 floor main dungeon of Tartarus shifting and changing in environmental detail with each successive revisit, and it’s setting, tone, and narrative which set a precedent for not only the series moving forward but how narratives in video games are structured. It’s a recreation lovingly crafted down to the smallest percentage. Both for the betterment of what came before and leaving a player of the originals wanting more in the smart ways only the team at Atlus and P-Studio could conceive.

Narratively it remains on the same path original players will know. Arriving in Iwatodai for the start of the spring semester, the main character is caught in the middle of time between midnight and the next day, known as the dark hour. Which transmogrifies the majority of the population into coffins, spawns the sprawling Tartarus tower where Gekkoukan High School would normally be, and drenches the outside world in an otherworldly, apocalyptic green. Forced to be quick on your feet upon meeting your fellow dorm mates, you learn that you are a Persona-user with the ability to call the spirits of history thanks to an evoker, a crude device taking the form of a handgun. You then learn after the emergency that in order to make the dark hour disappear for good and to topple Tartarus while you’re at it, that you must defeat 12 “shadows” or gatekeepers of specific tarot arcana. After the dark hour more and more of the populace begins to succumb to "Apathy Syndrome" a state of being in which they are effectively comatose, moaning corpses.

My biggest worry when starting Persona 3 Reload was that the team of “SEES,” the Special Extracurricular Execution Squad, would more quickly meld together than in the original, not just as a collective unit but individually as well, more closely to the way that you and your friends form your alliances in successive entries. Fortunately that worry was completely unfounded, as you learn each individuals personal plights, traumas, and journeys up to this point in their lives you learn of a broken past of unfulfilled expectations of themselves, loss of familial continuity through death and/or estrangement. The kind of people, especially adolescents, who would logically be harder to form these sorts of deeper connections with without first establishing a trust built through a longer period of shared experiences together. So the slower pace of that connection is parallel to its story’s themes and believable in how it plays itself out.

However, in a truly confusing move, the only members of SEES that you can befriend (and if you’d like, eventually romance) are the female main characters or Yukari, Fuuka, Mitsuru, and Aigis (yes you can romance the robot). Junpei, Akihiko, Shinjiro, Ken, and Koromaru do not receive their separate social link quests. If we are to believe that the social link levels are a uniquely medium-specific representation of closeness that cannot be conveyed through any other artistic medium, I was never able to “feel close” to the boys of the squad because, even though they have their specific quests and narrative arcs, it didn’t feel like there was as tangible of a difference in our relationships between the beginning and end of each respective males story. The social link stories’ quality overall for each main and side character vary. Some are exceptional whereas some show the age of the game a bit more, another sign that this was a brand new space for the original team.

Then comes to the topic of Tartarus, which in and of itself has always been the most polarizing aspect of Persona 3 and its many releases. The pros and cons are Tartarus are still evident in Reload, even with the attempts to tweak the formula and actually make Fuuka and her Persona useful in battle and in the field. (Disclaimer: Fuuka rocks and was done dirty in her gameplay functions in the original). The shifting mechanic from modern Persona games adds that level of dynamism to encounters previously static in the original releases. There are ways to skip floors via Monad Doors, a singular “boss rush” door in the original available to you at the end of the game, now available randomly on later floors that, if you beat the door’s guardian, you gain access to the layout of the current and subsequent floor. Treasure demons can sometimes steal the treasure chests on an entire floor and if guided correctly, you can steal them all back as well as some extra should you defeat them in battle after finding them. 

Are these changes enough to make Tartarus better for those who despised it before? Probably not. I personally enjoyed the grind and thematic/symbolic representation of what Tartarus was and why it existed as it did. Though I can absolutely appreciate those who do not and will never like Tartarus. It functions similarly to the way Mementos does in Persona 5, though this time ascending instead of descending, a very important detail.

Shoji Meguro’s original compositions are some of the finest in the history of the medium of gaming. And the new arrangements here as well as some new songs are done brilliantly and perfectly with the instrumentation synonymous with the modern identity of Persona as a series.

Persona 3 has always been a deeply subtextual experience beyond its most notable thematic intentions. At its heart it is a game about finding the time and space, both physically and more importantly, emotionally, to be able to live life on your own terms, at your own speed, and maybe most importantly, to overcome the fear that comes with our experiences. To create worthwhile experiences, forge important connections and that not even death will be able to remove us from the collective consciousness of those in the material world who love us and would do anything for us and will keep us alive even if we are not.

Sometimes we make the wrong choices, sometimes our choices hurt others, sometimes others choices hurt us, and sometimes we isolate ourselves as a result, even as we’ve worked so hard to prevent the pain. 

You don’t get to choose the way you die, but you get to choose the way you live. And it is in the strength of resolve that we all carry with us, that allows us to choose to live through it all, even without the promise of permanence that when and how we are able to make that choice are not important, only that we eventually find a way within ourselves make it and keep making it for as long as we are able to.

In Persona 3 Reload there exists an undeniably great game, sanding down the rougher edges of Persona 3’s gameplay, while remaining faithful of its original vision. It’s narrative richness, isolating, despairing tone, character depth, and thematic strength are what endure the best about Persona 3 across all of its releases. Katsura Hashino, Shigenori Soejima and the rest of the original developers must have been so proud to see the game that gave them their creative identities made so well in their image. If you have never experienced Persona 3 in any of its forms or ANY Persona games at all, Reload is an outstanding place to start.