tohya.net
Videogame remakes are stupid. Publishers always have games remade that were already great to begin with and didn't necessarily need the treatment, usually missing the point entirely in the process. Think of how the Resident Evil 4 Remake plays nothing like the original, or how the Final Fantasy VII remake fails to reproduce what made the original stand out. As such I avoid these kind of releases in most cases. The remake of Persona 3 is an exception because this is a game I always wanted to see improved on.
Visually Persona 3 was always somewhat weak, even in comparison to Persona 4 on the same console. The character models almost looked straight out of a PlayStation game. Reload fixes this issue to some extend, giving more detail to models and textures. However this is still an Atlus game. Atlus was never known for providing the best development budgets and it still shows in their HD era games. Something looks noticeably off in some places. Faces are weirdly flat and almost look like masks when viewed from the side, and there is something very stiff about the characters' walking animations. The lighting is off in some places, completely ruining the mood and atmosphere (especially of the dormitory). Most of the animated sequences have been replaced with in-game movie scenes that more often than not fail to hit the mark. And the 2D portraits now feature a clean and mostly generic anime art style that is comparatively boring to look at. Even worse, compare the original's box art to the one used for the remake:
The main cast got a fashion makeover for the dungeons. I ended up having them wear the original costumes a few hours into the game because the new ones look silly and overdesigned. Despite of the newly introduced shortcomings Reload still looks great overall however.
Another issue the remake resolves is the slow pacing of the original. Like in later entries you can now fast travel from anywhere to anywhere with the press of a button, or press R2 to dash like a madman. Gimmicks I wish were restricted to new game plus because they ruin the mood and immersion almost as bad as complete lack of map travel in Persona 3 Portable. Tartarus was made so easy it's barely even worth mentioning anymore. Even playing on the highest difficulty setting I could just dash to the next floor in seconds. Except for the early game, playing Reload on lunatic (merciless in the localization?) barely felt any more difficult than playing the original played on its default difficulty setting. The developers also again failed to scale the final boss' difficulty accordingly. Just completing the Persona compendium will have you completely overleveled for the final boss. And because of the new Arcana Burst mechanic achieving this goal is easier than ever before. The finale was a complete letdown for me with a final boss battle that didn't even last 6 turns.
The original's soundtrack was replaced with high production arrangements. I suppose you can argue that it sounds better. But I thought it sounds flat and empty when compared to the original. Was there an option to let the game play the original's soundtrack instead I would have checked that mark.
Overally I find myself conflicted. I appreciate how the developers tried to improve on the original without changing the game's story. But for me Reload doesn't entirely do it. Playing this often made me wish I would be playing Persona 3 FES instead. Reload looks significantly better than the original and the additional events and ways to level up social links are great additions. However everything else, from the music to the atmosphere, the gameplay and how they handled some of the cut scenes, I wish could have stayed as it was in 2007 when FES was first released in Japan.