Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsAtlus misses the mark here
Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2024
Atlus has tried to recreate the Persona 3 experience here, but it leaves much to be desired due to some peculiar choices on their part.
To start off, this only covers the original P3 release and nothing from FES or P3P, most notably the lack of The Answer epilogue, (which they have now announced as a $35 DLC add on), and no female protagonist route with confirmation by the developers now that they will not include her.
It does include some of the more modern Persona mechanics, like full party control which was not present in the original, and even some new ones like the Theurgy system and even a rewind option to go back in time without having to reload a save albeit it is a bit limited in how far back you can go.
The entire cast of characters was redubbed with no VA's reprising their original roles, for better or worse, with the exception of Elizabeth and bizarrely a human VA for Koromaru which just sounds off and is mixed very poorly with his audio being very loud in comparison to other characters.
The scene during the summer beach trip was changed which falls flat on its face and is much worse than the original.
The entire OST was redone, along with a few new songs, with a new female vocalist who while she has a great voice just doesn't match the mood of the game. This can be heard most notably in "Mass Destruction" where her performance pales in comparison to the original female vocalist and is very off putting if you are familiar with the original version.
Overall this game does deliver in that you can get the original Persona 3 story with updated and modern Persona mechanics, but it fails to achieve becoming the "definitive" way to experience everything that 3 has had to offer in past releases.
Edit: forgot to include this originally, but I along with many others after doing some searching online have gotten scammed out of the preorder bonus Persona 4 battle songs that were included in early copies of the game as a code inside the case. When I opened my brand new copy I got on launch day and tried to redeem the code, I was met with an error message saying the code had already been redeemed which would not be possible unless they messed up and printed the same code multiple times and someone else got to it first before me and no this was not a mistake on my behalf as I tried multiple times to redeem the code via console, mobile app and website all yielding the same result and the content was nowhere to be found on my account. I now have to wait for them to eventually add the songs for purchase, likely months from now, if I ever want those songs.
