Persona 3 Reload: The Answer Review – Ruthless Emotion

Earlier in the year, Atlus released Persona 3: Reload to the world and was a runaway success amongst critics and gamers alike. Reload was a faithful remake right down to its gameplay and story, but with modern advancements, and improvements made on the game’s soundtrack. It was the definitive edition of Persona 3 on modern platforms considering Persona 3: Portable is very dated. Speaking from experience, it is not a good way to experience the title for the first time. Making this version of the game highly recommendable. But it did lack in some bits of content from Portable and the re-released version on the PlayStation 2 called FES.

Developer & Publisher // Atlus, Sega
Platforms // Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4|5, PC
MSRP & Release Date // $34.99, September 10th, 2024
Reviewed On // Xbox Series X

For starters, Portable had the inclusion of the optional female protagonist named Kotone which had significant changes to the overall experience, and the challenge doors hosted by Margaret from Persona 4, a character who made a surprise appearance. But the big-ticket item missing from Reload that was included in FES that would have made it more complete was The Answer. An epilogue that deals with the aftermath of the story in Persona 3 and was recently given the Reload treatment nearly two weeks ago.

As someone who only played the Portable version before Reload, The Answer was a wholly new experience for me. One that is easily recommendable at its price, as it is a nearly 30-hour experience with some bad that is more than outweighed by the good. Considering how spoiler-filled the story details will be, those will be saved for the very end of this review.

Running and Gunning

In The Answer, you play as Aigis, the android from the original game as you descend into a series of new procedurally generated levels and fight endless shadows and bosses with almost no stops in-between. Aigis plays differently to the original protagonist. She can shoot enemies to initiate battle instead of having to sneak up on them and slash them with a sword. The only problem with this approach is how unreliable her finger guns are. There is an auto-target that takes about a second to lock onto an enemy. Considering how every level has tight corners, this can lead to you being ambushed often and giving the first turn to the enemies.

You can, however, unlock an ambush ability that makes sneaking up on enemies easier. But in this case, it feels more like a band-aid instead of a boon. When navigating in each floor, there are a ton of similarities to exploring Tartarus in the original game. Breakable objects for stuff to sell, Twilight Fragments to open unique chests, and even the golden hand that adds a whole mini-game to get a lot of useful items and loads of experience points. Couple this with each new level being very beautiful to look at in motion, and it becomes a joy to explore. However, unlike the original game where Tartarus was only one big aspect of the game, the new areas you explore and hitting the shops in between are the only things on offer.

You do get items to give to teammates like Junpei, Koromaru, or even the newest addition, Metis, to give a small bonding episode to enjoy. But outside of that and one cutscene at the end of each area you have to explore, it is just mindlessly fighting numerous enemies, and tons of challenging bosses. This may turn off many who give The Answer a try due to not having enough to break up the monotony. Such as the Social Links and school visits. But the challenges that The Answer was worth putting up with was the lack of variety.

Brutal Bosses and Improved Challenge Rooms

Each section in The Answer can have anywhere from 9 to 25 floors to explore. After a set number of floors, you are given a unique boss encounter to take on. Some sections will have one or two, and many will have three different boss encounters. Some are rehashes of bosses from the original game, and others offer a very unique challenge to take on.

One that sticks out to me is a trio of samurais with specific weaknesses and resistances that you have to work around. You are discouraged from using multi-targeted abilities as they can either absorb to gain health, deflect attacks, or counter your attacks. This fight took multiple tries as I used trial and error to find the right team members and discover what weaknesses each samurai had. It was frustrating, but it felt satisfying when they were finally dead.

One big improvement in The Answer was a small rework for the Monad doors. The Monad doors would usually spawn on random floors and usually came in instances of one and had a single boss to defeat inside. In The Answer they still randomly spawn but come in groups of three. If you select a door with one torch lit you will have one boss to fight, but if you choose with three you will have bosses to fight back-to-back. You do not only gain more experience points for leveling up, but more rewards like better equipment, and crafting materials. It made going for the extra bosses feel necessary and not optional unless I was low health and could not use abilities too often.

Changes to Aigis, and a New Character

In Persona 3: Reload, Aigis originally had two unique Theurgy abilities. Theurgies are new to Reload and act as ultimate abilities for every character. Aigis’s first was an ability that would let her go berserk and render her unable to be commanded for a few turns, but she dealt more damage with what random abilities she uses. The drawback to this is that while she can deal more damage thanks to this Theurgy, she also burns out and cannot act for a few turns entirely afterward.

In The Answer, she has the Theurgy abilities that the original main character used instead. These Theurgies can either be duos of Personas that either deal massive ice damage to foes. Or ones that are almost guaranteed to deal critical blows to allow you to all-out attack or give an extra turn to her. While this change does rob her of character-specific Theurgies, those are passed onto Metis, the newest character to be added to the cast in The Answer.

Metis fills in a specific niche that made me keep her in the party throughout my entire playthrough. Her strong physical abilities coupled with wind and ice abilities helped not only in the early game but made quite the difference in the endgame. Coupling both Aigis’s original Theurgy with her persona ability to nearly triple her damage output made taking down certain bosses much easier.

When it comes to how The Answer plays out in the moment-to-moment gameplay, it is very hard in the beginning and becomes slightly easier over time. But the repetition sets in very quickly and makes the challenging parts of the entire DLC more stressful and unenjoyable at times. Not having much to break up constant battles that are at times brutal can be very disheartening.

Phenomenal Music and UI

There are two areas that Atlus never fails to impress on. That being the music in their games and the user interface and menus. In The Answer, there is a whole new main menu that reprises the menu music used in Portable, and the new opening animation features a brand-new track called “Disconnected” which is heavy-hitting and very well-written. However, some of the mixing for the vocals feels muted. In the verses, and chorus it all sounds great, but in the bridge, specifically for Lotus Juice, the male rapper, his voice feels overpowered by the Azumi Takahashi, the female singer. It makes the song miss the mark in important ways, even for the solo verse near the end.

Outside of Disconnected, the new song “Don’t” that plays during battles where you successfully ambush, and the new version of “Mass Destruction” are very well made. The lyrics keep you pumped throughout every single battle where you hear them.

The new pause menu also borrows heavily from the one in Reload, where Aigis takes center stage in every menu in a similar manner. As though she’s drowning in despair and trying to fill the shoes of the leader role. Even little touches were made, such as one with a vending machine where Aigis looks confused in the illustration, every new or reworked menu screen is bursting with a style that goes hand-in-hand with the main themes of Reload.

Flawless Technical and Vocal Performances

When playing through The Answer, I experienced no bugs, crashes, stutters, or freezes of any kind. The game also looked beautiful and ran at a very smooth framerate throughout. Transitions through each floor and leaving to hit up the shops had very minimal loading and no in-between clunkiness. It was a very smooth experience throughout.

As for the vocal performances, everyone in the cast gave it their all. In all of the cutscenes, you could hear the raw emotion from sad scenes, and fun scenes throughout. Metis’s voice actress did a believable job selling the kid-like attitude, and Yukari’s voice actress especially shined in scenes near the end of the DLC. The scenes are hard to describe without talking about the story, and when it comes to how the story lands? That can only be explained with a lot of major plot details that if you have not experienced the story Persona 3, do not read beyond this point.

(Warning, Spoilers for Persona 3’s story and ending below.)

The Stages of Grief

The story of The Answer starts more than three weeks after the ending of Reload. The entire main cast is still processing the loss of the main character, and you can tell just how much his death impacted everyone. After handing in their evokers that summon their personas including the evoker of the main protagonist, they all eat one final dinner together as a going away party.

But as the clock strikes midnight, the day resets, and Aigis and Fuuka go to investigate upstairs and upon returning downstairs they see a mysterious new character named Metis that has beaten everyone and starts a fight against Aigis. Aigis, upon winning the fight, awakens to the main character’s original persona, and in her unconscious state, she awakens to Igor and Elizabeth in the Velvet Room.

It is explained here that she obtained the power of the “Wildcard”, a unique ability that allowed the original protagonist to control multiple personas. After Aigis regains consciousness, she joins the rest of her team and talks with Metis, who leads them to the “Abyss of Time” that appeared under the dorm. When they descend into the Abyss, they are met with a sea of doors that as they explore the labyrinths within them, they begin to discover the reason behind the loop. But not all is at seems, as they get more than they bargained for, and the outcome is equally soul-crushing as the story of Reload.

Everyone from SEES is tired of fighting. Some were beginning to move on, like Yukari, and some were stuck in place unable to move on like Aigis who kept dreaming of the main character every day since he passed away. When it felt like all was returning to normal, everyone dragged their feet to pick up their evokers and weapons to take down shadows and explore the Abyss. The reluctance of Yukari is relatable and Aigis not being able to let go of the main character in her mind is something anyone who has lost someone before can understand. It all feels real, and the story does not pull punches, as every door reveals a bit of everyone’s past as they reach the end.

Memory Lane

After pushing themselves through numerous enemies, and bosses in each door, a cutscene plays for a specific character that reveals the reason as to why they either began fighting or joined SEES. Considering Ken’s tragic past, it shows him arguing with the police over the real reason for his mother dying, and when the scene ends Mitsuru actually admits that her family covered it up to try and protect him. Junpei on the other hand only showed him sitting in Paulownia mall, avoiding his abusive father. In the story of Reload, him being at that mall until midnight got him stuck in the Dark hour and Akihiko recruited him after saving him from shadows.

Each door slowly builds up to the grand reveal of what is causing the loop and gives everyone a piece of a special key that can break it. However, the key when combined can be used to fulfill the beliefs of anyone who holds the key. This in turn leads everyone to fight each other over how they use the key. Yukari believes they can go back in time and change how things play out, potentially saving the main character. While Junpei goes against that idea entirely as his death was crucial for saving the world.

This leads to a series of fights between both Aigis, and Metis challenging the members of SEES to take their pieces of the keys. Creating emotional scenarios as the story of Reload makes you care for them and being forced to fight tears apart so many beloved character dynamics and it was hard to watch at times. How far the storytelling went in this part was gripping. Every character’s belief felt genuine and resonated with me. The cutscenes at the end of each door felt like a perfect build-up to an emotionally charged finale. It made pushing through all of the challenging fights in-between worth it.

Final Thoughts on The Answer

To look back on how The Answer not only expands on the story Reload, but also pushes its messages further, the best way to describe it is that it shows the ugly side of life itself. You’re going to lose people, and you’re going to process it differently from others. All the while you’re going to be forced to go through more of the dull, and repetitive parts of your life that you grow numb to. But through it all, you will always reflect on what got you started and what keeps you going. The final shot of the story is closing the dorm door and leaving, ending a series of memories and moving on. You don’t want it to end, and you can never experience it all again for the first time no matter how much you wish you could.

Final Score: 7.5/10

Pros

• Emotionally Charged Story
• Improvements on Challenge Rooms
• Great New Character
• Stylish Menu and UI
• Phenomenal Music
• Flawless Performance

Cons

• Very Repetitive
• Aigis’s Guns Do Not Work Very Well
• Bosses Can be Too Challenging