Persona 3 Reload is the Gateway JRPG Everyone Needs to Play

The Persona series, admittedly, is one of the most daunting and overwhelming RPG series to wrap your head around. But, with that said, it’s also worth every moment of doing so, because beneath the colourful art style and varied mechanics, is a franchise that delivers an incredibly entertaining story and a fun, unrelenting gameplay loop. And even though it’s a remake of the beloved third entry, Persona 3 Reload is the perfect jumping-on-point for anyone even slightly interested in this series.

Persona 3 Reload retells the story of the original game, following a young boy who discovers the Dark Hour, a period every night where nightmarish creatures appear around the city. It’s up to him and his Personas (essentially powerful characters that he can conjure), along with some fellow students, to get to the bottom of these monstrous manifestations and save the city. The story has a whole wealth of twists and turns and is fittingly bonkers Japanese anime-esque fiction, so if you’re into that genre, Persona 3 is right up your alley.

The original visuals of Persona 3 hold up quite well to this day thanks to a timeless art style, but Reload goes with Unreal Engine 4 to deliver some new shine to the visuals. The game is stunning in motion and the cell-shaded look and feel gives everything an authentic manga-inspired aesthetic.

The game’s turn-based combat will be familiar to anyone who played Final Fantasy games or other Japanese RPGs of yesteryear, offering a risk/reward system that emphasises strategic decisions and utilising special abilities to defeat enemies. Persona 3 Reload has a lot of depth in this department, but thankfully, the game’s presentation and clean menu system help newcomers understand the combat system after a bit of playtime.

There’s a lot to unpack with Persona 3 Reload, but at the core of it is an incredibly unique, stylish, and long RPG experience that fans who fell in love with the series later down the line should be ecstatic to have the chance to replay, in a gloriously re-invisioned form to boot.

Persona 3 Reload is on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.