Persona 3is a beloved part of the Persona series, but being as old as it is, it’s outdated in certain aspects. Now that Persona 3 Reload has been announced, there’s a chance to change that. Its story and main cast hold up very well for the most part, but they still have their own (very fixable) issues.
Related:Changes To Make Persona 3 Portable Go From Good To Great
There are also a lot of QOL aspects Persona 3 is missing that have become pretty standard for the other mainlinePersonagames.It’s already been stated that Reload won’t have content from FES and Portable, but there are still some improvements, big and small, that we hope Atlus puts in the remake.
10Better Story Pacing
Persona 3’s story delivers its themes in such a hard-hitting way that it could stay with you forever… when things are actually going on. One common complaint about the plot is how there’s not much happening for long stretches of time, especially at the beginning. This could be a side effect of most of the full moon bosses not being very personal, so there’s no real lead up to them.
Adding a couple of story beats that raise the stakes and push things forward could help immensely with this. There are also times when major plot developments seem to happen suddenly but subsequently get brushed off moving forward, so making their impact bigger would help a lot.
9More Impactful Antagonists
Even though Persona 3 has three seemingly major antagonists in the form of Strega, Ikutsuki, and Nyx, all but one aren’t very memorable. Except for Nyx, you probably look back on the game, remember them, and think “oh yeah, they were a thing I guess.”
Ikutsuki’s betrayal and death in the span of 15 minutes doesn’t really do much in the grand scheme of things, and Strega has a lot of potential but overall, they are more bark than bite. Giving Strega a bigger role than “people who randomly show up every once in a while” would make encountering them more intense. As for Ikutsuki, doing away with him entirely and finding another way to reveal the Kirijo Group’s evils would be just fine.
8Social Links With All Party Members
This sounds like a given, but for some reason, you weren’t allowed to befriend your male colleagues as the male protagonist. Social Links are a way of seeing different sides of a character and getting to know them on a deeper level. Being able to do that with your own party members is most important, especially in a game that emphasizes the power of your connections with people.
Even Aigis wasn’t included as a Social Link until FES and Portable, even though her connection with the protagonist is quite significant. One of Reload’s features mentions new dialogue and character side episodes, so we can only hope this includes the missing Social Links.
7A Personality Change And Social Link With Ryoji
Ryoji shows up pretty late in the game, and he isn’t there for long, but he’s technically one of the most crucial characters in the story. He’s the part of Nyx that has any humanity at all, after all. But in the original games, he’s reduced to a flirty womanizer who joins Junpei in harassing women, which doesn’t make much sense at all. There isn’t really a connection between him and the protagonist, either.
Related:Persona 3 Portable: Relatable Things Every Player Does
You can start a Social Link with him in Portable if you’re the female protagonist, but that should also extend to the male protagonist. In the Persona 3 movies, Ryoji isn’t as much of a creep anddoeshave an actual bond with the protagonist, which elevated that entire part of the plot tenfold. Hopefully, Atlus takes a page from the movies' book.
6Higher Quality NPC Social Links
One benefit of playing as the female protagonist in Portable is experiencing her exclusive Social Links, which are generally written better than the male protagonist’s. You don’t have to suffer through the story of your classmate who hits on teachers, or the “gourmet king” whose entire existence revolves around being an unfunny punchline for fat jokes.
Completely changing the characters and their stories for Reload would have been welcome, but that might not be the case, seeing as how Kenji was shown in Reload’s announcement trailer. If every NPC retains their Social Link in Reload, the hope is that they’re rewritten to fit or surpassPersona 4andPersona 5’s in quality. The only exception isthe Sun Social Link. Akinari’s could stay just as it is and it would still be great.
5No Forced Romance
A bizarre aspect of the older Persona 3 games is that, when you’re doing almost any girl’s Social Link as the male protagonist, you automatically enter a romantic relationship with her around the fifth rank. To make things worse, you also get punished for spending time with other girls if you haven’t finished that girl’s Social Link yet.
Her Social Link will reverse, and you won’t be able to move forward with it until you mend the relationship. It’s a strange decision that was thankfully mended in Persona 4 and 5, and now it’s Reload’s turn to let you decide who you want to date (or if you want to date at all).
4More Free Time Activities
In Persona 4 and Persona 5, the things you can do in your free time are a fun way to become stronger for battle or raise your Social Stats. But when you’re not doing Social Links in Persona 3, there isn’t much to do after a while; you’re most likely going to find yourself going to bed early all the time.
Related:The Best Side Quests In Persona 3 Portable
One reason for this may be the protagonist only havingthree Social Stats to raise, which you may max out relatively early on. But Persona 4 and 5 have things you can do to gain things besides Social Stat points, like darts, requests, and gardening. Adding similar activities to Reload would eliminate a lot of the boredom and sluggishness of its latter half.
3Better Navigation Skills For Fuuka
Fuuka is sweet, but she can become annoying very quickly in battle because she doesn’t contribute much. Rise and Futaba are excellent navigators thanks to their contributions in fights, like giving the team random buffs and protecting them from an otherwise fatal attack once per battle. Fuuka only really has Oracle, which she learns pretty late and can screw you over as much as it can help you.
Keeping Oracle would be fine, as the unpredictability of something bad happening could be fun, but she needs more skills if she’s going to be a navigator who’s at least on par with Rise and Futaba.
2Touched Up Tartarus
People generally don’t seem to be fans of randomly generated dungeons. But even if you didn’t mind it in the original games, there’s something to be said about how empty and tedious Tartarus ends up feeling. You have to climb over 200 floors of it throughout the game, and the slightly different skins and music can only do so much to quell the monotony.
Something like Persona 5’s Palaces may be asking for too much, but Atlus can still give Tartarus a little more pizzazz in both looks and mechanics in Reload. Having different types of field mechanics or puzzles for different blocks could make the trek more interesting, for example.
1More Interactions Between SEES
Something that even Persona 4 and Persona 5 haven’t gotten quite right is letting the main characters interact without the protagonist having to be there. Persona 3 had scenes like those, and they did wonders for making relationships like Mitsuru and Yukari or Ken and Akihiko feel authentic. Having more of those would enhance the characters even further.
Shinjiro especially needs more time before his death. Being standoffish is part of his personality, but he and the protagonist have a lot in common, and there’s a quiet respect between the two of them. Having them interact more would develop him and make his death that much more impactful.
