ReviewPaul RobertsOctober 22, 2025Maxi Geek Review, Switch 2, Persona 3, Sega, AtlusComment

Persona 3 Reload - Nintendo Switch 2 - Review

ReviewPaul RobertsOctober 22, 2025Maxi Geek Review, Switch 2, Persona 3, Sega, AtlusComment

I have played Persona 4 and 5 including the varied spin offs (please bring the Dancing All Night games to Switch), but Persona 3 I’ve had less time with. Sure, Persona 3 characters and content show up in some of the spin offs, but I never got around to more than a few hours of Persona 3 Portable on the Vita (backward compatible from the PSP) and then got it again on the Switch. With Persona 3 Reload giving this near 20 year old game the remake treatment and making its way to the Switch 2 I am finally tackling the Tartarus.

As with Persona 3 and other Persona games, your protagonist has moved from out of town and has unwittingly become entangled with a dark, dangerous world lurking under the surface. As is Persona tradition, your character is a special Persona user, one who can wield multiple Persona, and you’re joined by a team of Persona wielders. In Persona 3 the Dark Hour occurs at midnight, an additional hour that few can perceive. During this extra hour a labyrinth called Tartarus emerges. You are quickly recruited by the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad, or S.E.E.S., responsible for defeating the Shadow creatures within Tartarus and finding out the secrets of the Dark Hour. Throughout the many hours of Persona 3 you get to know more about your new friends, make more friends, and as part of the Persona journey you help them to confront or embrace the more complicated parts of themselves.

As with other Persona games the story takes place over a year, meaning that you have a limited time to have to make important decisions on how you want to spend it, whether it’s improving stats, improving your friendships/relationships and taking on Tartarus. It serves as a great way to keep the momentum of the story going, but also gives you some agency to experience the year as you want. Otherwise you can always check out a guide to maximise every opportunity, or you can connect online to see what the most popular choices were for inspiration to take the road well travelled or to forge your own path.

While P3R gives the original title an overhaul more inline with the modern sequels, it feels Persona 3 is definitely a darker game. It strikes a more serious tone compared to where the series has been since then. This is kind of a hard to say when the titles proceeding it are about quite dark and personal topics too, but those games didn’t have the main characters having to shoot themselves in the head (with a gun-like “Evoker”) to summon their persona, on top of the main theme being around death. Maybe the additions to the series or more mascot-like Teddy and Morgana helped add some levity, even when those characters were more than looking cute. While P3 still has style, Persona 5 makes anything less snazzy feel a bit more subdued, but then it could be what some fans are after too. In the end it would also feel like a disservice to make Persona 3 fit into a style that would take away from the tone the game strikes.

Being a remake, following on from well over a decade worth of sequels, P3R benefits from some of the improvements the series has seen over that time. While many of the mainstays return such as the Velvet Room and Social Links, more of the modern combat mechanics are here also. There’s been plenty of streamlining, removing some of that PS2-era clunkiness - which is not a judgement, games have come a long way! Combat and exploring Tartarus feels like they benefit most immediately, whether it’s the removal of the fatigue system, added powerful “Theurgy skills”, and switching party members in combat for best exploiting enemy weaknesses. The day to day section of the game is touted to have more social link interactions to help give your team more personality than they were previously afforded, on top of making it easier to know what activities are available to choose from.

Up until P3R, the most available option to play P3 was the Persona 3 Portable edition. This was a somewhat reduced version of the original game and its extended edition Persona 3 FES. The portable version had compacted the non-Tartarus sections of the game down to menus and simplified exploration, leaving the city of Tatsumi Port Island a shadow of itself. It was actually the reason that killed my motivation to play through too much of P3P.

Now the entire game is overhauled. While locations are similar, they now have modern technology making them look better than ever. In a way there’s also enough that didn’t need a big change, just updating. It never stops feeling like Persona 3.

I was initially surprised by some of the general performance of Persona 3 Reload. There is something a little off when characters are moving in handheld mode. It was hard to pinpoint what it was, it felt like some form of motion blur or maybe reduced resolution on the handheld screen. Really it never actually impacts the game, and without having this game on another platform it’s hard to know if this is across other versions or is port-specific. When connected to the TV the resolution is of course nicer when not on a small LED screen, I am pretty sure it runs mostly at 30 FPS. Once again it is not an issue with playing the game, nor would I expect it to be at the same performance level as a Series X or PS5. They’ve also managed to make all this game fit in under 30gb, which is also a godsend for the Switch 2’s fast evaporating storage space.

Regardless, the remake’s visual overhaul is still a great upgrade for Persona 3, and the dev team did a good job of updating the look of the game while still retaining that Persona feel.

If you’re a fan of Persona’s soundtracks then you won’t be disappointed here. As usual it sounds great, and no matter how many times you hear some of the music I’ve never found myself minding. On top of that you get to hear more of the voice acting. Without the restrictions of P3P, there are more spoken conversations. The English voice cast is all new (with some previous cast in different roles), however the original Japanese voice cast remains. Listening to the old and new English cast, the new actors are fine, it will really depend on how attached you are to the original cast.

There is also Persona 3 Reload’s story DLC called “Episode Aigis -The Answer-”, which is meant to be available at launch, purchasable separately. With the original release of P3R being well over a year ago now, the DLC is over a year old now also. It feels like it would’ve been a good opportunity to bundle it together as a complete package. However with the main title easily 60+ hours, you’re still getting more than your value.

Persona 3 Reload does a great job of bringing Persona 3 out of its Persona 3 Portable prison. While not everything from the originals made the transition over, and story DLC not being bundled in is a shame, Persona 3 Reload is still a great Persona game. It would be hard to imagine a world where Persona fans would be unhappy with more ways to play this title. While there will be more Persona for a while to come, P3R on the Switch 2 is a good sign we will continue to see them on the platform in the future.