Eyes on the Clock
I’m no stranger to the Persona series. My first introduction was with Persona 4 Golden on the PS Vita back in college. A few gaming podcasts I was listening to at the time were raving about it, so I had to dive in. I didn’t see it through to completion (I’ve made my history with turn-based RPGs clear by now), but I still enjoyed my time with it especially in that form factor. By the time Persona 5 came out on the PlayStation 3/4 in 2017, I was out of school and trying to find my rhythms as a post-grad. Unfortunately, a game as time consuming as that one didn’t really make its way into my routine despite playing a few hours of it. I then bought the extended version, Persona 5 Royal, for the Nintendo Switch thinking that the lack of portability was the reason Persona 5 didn’t stick around. I’ve yet to boot it up.
So naturally, what do I do when I see people talking about Persona 3: Reload - a Persona 5-style remake of a PS2 game I somehow own but have never played? Well, I buy it with grand dreams of this being the one that clicks with me and seeing it through to the end. Did you even need to ask?
If you’ve never played or heard of a Persona game, to put it simply, it’s sort of a mix between Pokémon, a visual novel, and a dating sim. In Reload, as in the original, you take on the role of a high-school student who has recently moved to the Japanese city of Tatsumi Port Island. Days after your arrival you are recruited by a group of fellow students known as the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad, or SEES for short, after they discover that you are immune to the affects of the Dark Hour, an alternate state of time and place that occurs at midnight every night. You and the group are tasked with exploring Tartarus, a tower that only appears during the Dark Hour, to find out more about the Apathy Syndrome affecting the town’s residents.
When it’s written all out like that, it sounds like a lot to keep track of, but in reality the game gets through that set up fairly quickly. I might even argue a little too quickly, as the why behind everything I’m doing hasn’t really set in after the first handful of hours. When compared to Persona 4’s murder mystery setup or Persona 5’s creepy teacher take down in the opening dungeon there’s more reliance on vibe and the initial party members to get you invested. I’m not too concerned about this, at least right now, as I know I’ve barely scratched the surface of this title. There’s still a lot of game left.
The positive spin on the opening is that I felt like it immediately introduced me to the central mechanics of the game. Within an hour or two I was already establishing social links and exploring Tartarus for the first time. Creating new relationships early in the game keeps the sense of progression consistent making the opening hours easy to get into. I’ve also enjoyed a majority of the characters that I’ve met so far. There are a couple that feel one note right now, but from my experience and understanding these characters have the potential to open up. I find the sense of mystery and anticipation around getting to know each one exciting.
The other side of the gameplay coin is the aforementioned Tartarus. Every day, you have a few options of how to spend your evening. Hanging out with friends, working around town, studying, and more. Tartarus is just one of those options, but it’s the one you need to make progress on. My opinion on this part of the game has flipped multiple times during the opening hours. Sometimes, it feels repetitive. The floors all look the same, so it’s not visually interesting to explore. It can also feel a little tedious since the early battles aren’t too complex. You quickly get an understanding of the enemies weaknesses’ and just spam those attacks. I’ve yet to face a real challenge in Tartarus. But once I treated this part of the game as just another way to spend an in-game evening I started to plan my sessions with the game a little differently. Some days I would just spend an hour building relationships around town, and then other days I’d dedicate the evening to progressing in Tartarus with an podcast on in the background.
This has echoed how Reload itself frames these different elements of the game. Persona 3 was the first entry in the series to introduce a calendar system. Like I mentioned before, each day you have the option to choose how you spend your time. There are a few guardrails in the opening hours as it introduces the mechanics to you, but for the most part you get to decide how and with whom you spend your time. If you don’t like a certain side character, you could choose to mostly ignore them. You don’t have to go to Tartarus every night, you can do it in chunks that make it more palatable and fun for you.
Finding the rhythm that works best for me in my day-to-day is exactly why I feel good about my chances of getting to the late game of Persona 3: Reload. I’m trying not to rush through this one - just going at the pace that feels good in the moment. That idea of choosing how you spend your time wisely is front of mind with Reload. It’s meeting me where I’m at, and I’m all the more grateful for it.