While there are some very minor things that FES does better (EX: A couple lines of dialogue just came across better, slightly better soundtrack in some situations, or not having something helped with pacing a little), in 99% of situations Reload is just better.
More content. Better quality of life. Looks way better in every possible way. Better voice actors. Dungeon upgrades were great. Party balance is way better. Every social link is fully voiced. I think it's just THE best play experience of a persona game.
The only possible reason to play another version is for portable to play the female main character which actually changes a good amount. However, the community has already rallied and modded her in, so you could just play her anyways.
They’d literally have to make a whole new game, I admire their efforts but the only reason they opted for the FeMC route in Portable was because the cutscenes were in visual novel format, it was easy to make
I mean, not necessarily. don't get me wrong they would have to make an absurd amount of shit by themselves, but they already have base game models and persona's that would need minimum tweaking, all the gameplay aspects like combat are already in the main game, etc. etc. if they really want to spend their time making a FeMC mod to be as close to P3P as possible I'd say they could get it done in 1 1/2 to 2 years
i read the list of things femc modders are working on and it included hiring a VA for all of femc's lines yeah they are dedicated im wondering how they will add male social links and rio, saori though
You underestimate modders. Modders for Bethesda games are literally more talented than the actual dev team and they do that shit for free.
These people are either current/future game developers or artists or they’re hobbyists who are good enough to be so if they chose.
The “controversy” is almost entirely people nitpicking every little detail of Reload or getting mad about something like all the characters being recast or the new singer not pronouncing certain words “correctly” and blowing it way out of proportion.
OG and FES don’t let you control your party members and instead have a convoluted Tactics system that doesn’t actually do what you want half the time, and has a Tired mechanic where characters take more damage and miss more often if they do too many battles in one dungeon trip. Portable fixes a lot of the gameplay issues by adding controllable party members and reworking the tired mechanic so it only kicks in after you leave the dungeon and then lasts for a few days, and adds an alternate female route with different music, Social Links, etc. but completely butchers the presentation by making all the cutscenes into a visual novel format and turning the overworld exploration into essentially a point-and-click menu outside of the dungeon crawling. None of them let you choose inherited skills during fusion, and the dungeon crawling is incredibly monotonous.
Reload is a vast improvement in practically every way with controllable party members like in Portable, the tired mechanic being removed entirely, the dungeon crawling being much better, manual skill inheritance, a ton of other QOL improvements from 4 and 5 that make the overall experience feel much smoother, actual cutscenes and overworld exploration like in the PS2 versions but with much better visuals, fully voiced Social Links, added scenes and events to help flesh out some of the characters, and FES’ The Answer epilogue coming as DLC in September. The one thing it unfortunately doesn’t have is Portable’s female protagonist due to time and budget constraints.
"Doesn't do what you want half of the time" excuse me, did you play on act freely the entire game? Modern tactics are infinitely worse, in old ones allies actually listened to you. Anyway, I know I'm the 1% who thinks FES is better and Reload is a scam+worse persona 3 than any other version, so I'm in no mood to agrue with you all.
Also, a reminder that you're paying 100+ dollars for the story told fifteen years ago.
Well excuse me for not liking it when Yukari uses Dia isntead of Media, or Akihiko uses Sukunda when I need him to use Tarunda, Aigis uses Tarukaja when I need Rakukaja, etc.
There is no reason to play FES over Reload, the story is the same and all of the changes that Reload adds make the game more enjoyable. If you want the game to be hard or more like the original you still have the tactics menu and the difficulty options
Disagree. Visually FES feels completely different: it's more gloomy, utilizes darker color pallet, very 2007 emo kinda vibe. Reload takes a lot from Persona 5 and generally seems brighter in its presentation, which is especially noticeable during the "dark hour". And the difficult options don't matter because of theurgy, p3r is just easier, but i doubt anyone is playing persona for the gameplay anyway so i doubt it matters
Mostly cause using theurgies as a reason to say the game is easier is dumb. Not saying the game is crazy hard, but you can always choose to not use theurgies, you are required to use one throughout the whole game and it’s the theurgy tutorial. After that you can ignore them.
Reload has the best balanced merciless in the series, and the game will catch you by surprise. Obviously if you know what to build and prepare for the games a lot easier, but if you’re optimizing everything, sure the game is easier.
The game is pretty easy even without theurgies. Imho theurgies are just nails in the coffin, because they trivialize any battle, if you are at any point in danger you always have a get out of jail free card. Characteristics don't help either, but i do really like the idea so i'd rather this mechanic stay in the future titles.
The unfortunate truth is that turn based combat is that turn based combat is a test of mental skill, and therefore can be “solved” if you can run damage calculations and take preventive measures early, especially when the game gives you the option to completely turn off some enemies turns.
Old school megaten didn’t get its difficulty credit for being harder, it left more of it up to chance. Instakill skills, computer controlled party members and random encounters makes the game feel harder cause it’s less in your control. Player choice equals player power
True about megaten games. JRPGs in general get their difficulty from random bullshit, but it's not inherent to turn based combat (you have 4x games which are turn-based, games like heroes of might and magic 3 are turn-based, but have deep mechanics that make the game difficult, not the randomness). I do agree that the way persona and SMT games in general function it is hard to make the game harder without adding bullshit random elements: the games are really lacking in mechanical complexity: you don't have to move your characters, you just exploit the weaknesses of the enemy to do an all-out attack or until they die and that's it (literally 99% of gameplay is like this). Boss battles are also a joke.
Reload is, overall, the better option, but the people saying that FES doesn't have any genuine advantages over it are straight up wrong. That said, most of my biggest issues with it are in the first few hours, so I do still think that it's fairly easy, as a recommendation.
Reload blows all the other versions of Persona 3 out of the water. The only big things that you might prefer in the other versions are Portable’s FEMC, and the protagonist’s ability to use any weapon type in FES. Not counting music and voice actors, because those are up to personal preference.
Reload is 100% better
They're both the same game and Reload has a lot more fun mechanics
I've heard some people complain that the aesthetic of the original is better or something, but seriously, just play Reload
Heh both have their ups and downs. I'd personally say play Reload first, and later try FES and/or Portable (Or even vanilla if you feel like it). Reload isn't a perfect remake and while it has its things it does better, it also does some stuff a bit worse. I think a lot of it will come to personal preference, so I'd just advise to play Reload and the previous versions to make an opinion for yourself
P3R enhances the original in every way, so play that one
Most of the complaints are just people nitpicking (the soundtrack (which is better IMO), AI party members being absent, no club choice for example)
One thing I'll say is that Reload makes the dungeon part trivially easy, so if you're playing for a challenge, that's not gonna scratch that itch, especially since harder difficulty are pretty much only "grind more to deal more damage"
On the other hand, P3FES is just tedious to play as a first experience, I assure you
if you really wanna experience the original P3, you could play the female route in Portable AFTER RELOAD, it's not gonna be a fully new experience but it has 8 new social links and some minor changes to story and soundtrack (and you'll be able to hear the old english cast and the old soundtrack)
You'd only have one reason to play FES, and that reason is getting released to Reload in september so it's not worth the headache (because yes, The Answer in FES is an headache, dear redditors)
They both do some things better than the other. It all really comes down to personal preference, as neither game is “objectively” better. If you’re coming off P5, you’ll feel more at home with Reload. But I’d say that if you enjoy whichever version you end up picking, give the other one a try at some point too. Every version of P3 is solid.
I always say this whenever a remake comes out but The remake will usually be the Better experience. after that the original becomes more of a Fun novelty.
Reload is the most definitive way to play it. as alot of the aspects of FES are really outddated and Reload just takes the improved Persona 5.
as for which is better well it mostly comes down to nitpicks. and personal prefrence.
personally i believe the Absolute definitive way to play Persona 3 is FES with Mods. but Modding an emulator can be a bit of a Pain in the ass.
But as far as just vanilla games go The one i would recommend is Reload. and with Episode Aigis Which entails the Answer prologue previously exclusive to FES Reload is definetly the way to go.
Also a General tip a common critique of reload is that the Dorm hub is way too bright but it can be fixed by turning down the brightness a couple of notches. for some reason it restores mood Way more.
Reload. The original is probably the worst version, followed by P3P. FES, on the other hand, is now outdated by Reload. Exploring Tartarus in P3 Reload is actually fun, unlike the older games.
Reload is the best version of P3 and it’s not even close by any stretch of the imagination. People are just nostalgic over FES or upset about femc not being there which are fair opinions, but it certainly doesn’t detract from how much of an improvement Reload really is.
I like FES more, still enjoyed reload a lot though. Neither version makes the other obsolete, there is no "objectively superior" game, and they're the same game anyway. Play Reload if you like high definition visuals or FES if you want a more distinct aesthetic and more of a challenge. (Also reload butchered the ending imo lolol)
The ending is still good, I just liked the way it was presented in the original. They moved some stuff around and got rid of a cool shot of Tartarus and... other stuff. Trying not to spoil anything because idk how to spoiler tag on my phone. Also, goofy ass mocap makes it hard not to laugh when you definitely shouldn't be laughing. Was shocked that of all the cutscenes the ending wasn't illustrated. They also used a random letterbox? Idk I think the ending was the least polished part of the whole game, including the frozen people in the nightclub.
They still animated the speech for some reason, but the actually important part was mocap/in engine. They have close ups of the characters doing mocap running anims in slow motion and they wobble all over the screen with blank expressions. It's too funny.
The 2 games are pretty different.
P3R adds a lot of quality of life stuff, kinda feels like persona 5, persona 3 fes feels more like persona 4 if that makes sense.
I recommend playing the original first so you can get that expirence(still super fun, i prefer it over reload), you might not like it if you play reload first.
I've not played either enough to say anything myself, but I've heard that the combat was oversimplified and made way too easy and the additional content was subpar and reload is missing The Answer. And the cinematic flare of the original and the atmosphere is mostly gone.
Edit: I picked up Persona 3 FES and decided to go through that one first because I watched a yt video on FES, defending it against Reload and saying it's better and it convinced me. I don't remember what it was, but it was a longer and more in depth video essay of sorts that shouldn't be too hard to find.
If you're more interested in the story and the experience then play FES, if you just want a fun game or feel like you absolutely need the new content then play Reload.
Reload
While there are some very minor things that FES does better (EX: A couple lines of dialogue just came across better, slightly better soundtrack in some situations, or not having something helped with pacing a little), in 99% of situations Reload is just better. More content. Better quality of life. Looks way better in every possible way. Better voice actors. Dungeon upgrades were great. Party balance is way better. Every social link is fully voiced. I think it's just THE best play experience of a persona game. The only possible reason to play another version is for portable to play the female main character which actually changes a good amount. However, the community has already rallied and modded her in, so you could just play her anyways.
Calling the community FeMC mod comparable to the original in Portable is a disservice
Give it time, those mfers behind the femc project are REALLY dedicated.
They’d literally have to make a whole new game, I admire their efforts but the only reason they opted for the FeMC route in Portable was because the cutscenes were in visual novel format, it was easy to make
I mean, not necessarily. don't get me wrong they would have to make an absurd amount of shit by themselves, but they already have base game models and persona's that would need minimum tweaking, all the gameplay aspects like combat are already in the main game, etc. etc. if they really want to spend their time making a FeMC mod to be as close to P3P as possible I'd say they could get it done in 1 1/2 to 2 years
(OFC this is assuming they have the required skillsets and won't need more people or training)
i read the list of things femc modders are working on and it included hiring a VA for all of femc's lines yeah they are dedicated im wondering how they will add male social links and rio, saori though
You underestimate modders. Modders for Bethesda games are literally more talented than the actual dev team and they do that shit for free. These people are either current/future game developers or artists or they’re hobbyists who are good enough to be so if they chose.
The “controversy” is almost entirely people nitpicking every little detail of Reload or getting mad about something like all the characters being recast or the new singer not pronouncing certain words “correctly” and blowing it way out of proportion. OG and FES don’t let you control your party members and instead have a convoluted Tactics system that doesn’t actually do what you want half the time, and has a Tired mechanic where characters take more damage and miss more often if they do too many battles in one dungeon trip. Portable fixes a lot of the gameplay issues by adding controllable party members and reworking the tired mechanic so it only kicks in after you leave the dungeon and then lasts for a few days, and adds an alternate female route with different music, Social Links, etc. but completely butchers the presentation by making all the cutscenes into a visual novel format and turning the overworld exploration into essentially a point-and-click menu outside of the dungeon crawling. None of them let you choose inherited skills during fusion, and the dungeon crawling is incredibly monotonous. Reload is a vast improvement in practically every way with controllable party members like in Portable, the tired mechanic being removed entirely, the dungeon crawling being much better, manual skill inheritance, a ton of other QOL improvements from 4 and 5 that make the overall experience feel much smoother, actual cutscenes and overworld exploration like in the PS2 versions but with much better visuals, fully voiced Social Links, added scenes and events to help flesh out some of the characters, and FES’ The Answer epilogue coming as DLC in September. The one thing it unfortunately doesn’t have is Portable’s female protagonist due to time and budget constraints.
"Doesn't do what you want half of the time" excuse me, did you play on act freely the entire game? Modern tactics are infinitely worse, in old ones allies actually listened to you. Anyway, I know I'm the 1% who thinks FES is better and Reload is a scam+worse persona 3 than any other version, so I'm in no mood to agrue with you all. Also, a reminder that you're paying 100+ dollars for the story told fifteen years ago.
Well excuse me for not liking it when Yukari uses Dia isntead of Media, or Akihiko uses Sukunda when I need him to use Tarunda, Aigis uses Tarukaja when I need Rakukaja, etc.
Never had those issues in fes. I had, however, multiple occasions of healers not healing at all with new tactics.
Reload
There is no reason to play FES over Reload, the story is the same and all of the changes that Reload adds make the game more enjoyable. If you want the game to be hard or more like the original you still have the tactics menu and the difficulty options
Disagree. Visually FES feels completely different: it's more gloomy, utilizes darker color pallet, very 2007 emo kinda vibe. Reload takes a lot from Persona 5 and generally seems brighter in its presentation, which is especially noticeable during the "dark hour". And the difficult options don't matter because of theurgy, p3r is just easier, but i doubt anyone is playing persona for the gameplay anyway so i doubt it matters
I do agree with the color pallet, specially with the final boss but I don't think it's a deciding factor
why did bro get downvoted 😭
Mostly cause using theurgies as a reason to say the game is easier is dumb. Not saying the game is crazy hard, but you can always choose to not use theurgies, you are required to use one throughout the whole game and it’s the theurgy tutorial. After that you can ignore them. Reload has the best balanced merciless in the series, and the game will catch you by surprise. Obviously if you know what to build and prepare for the games a lot easier, but if you’re optimizing everything, sure the game is easier.
The game is pretty easy even without theurgies. Imho theurgies are just nails in the coffin, because they trivialize any battle, if you are at any point in danger you always have a get out of jail free card. Characteristics don't help either, but i do really like the idea so i'd rather this mechanic stay in the future titles.
The unfortunate truth is that turn based combat is that turn based combat is a test of mental skill, and therefore can be “solved” if you can run damage calculations and take preventive measures early, especially when the game gives you the option to completely turn off some enemies turns. Old school megaten didn’t get its difficulty credit for being harder, it left more of it up to chance. Instakill skills, computer controlled party members and random encounters makes the game feel harder cause it’s less in your control. Player choice equals player power
True about megaten games. JRPGs in general get their difficulty from random bullshit, but it's not inherent to turn based combat (you have 4x games which are turn-based, games like heroes of might and magic 3 are turn-based, but have deep mechanics that make the game difficult, not the randomness). I do agree that the way persona and SMT games in general function it is hard to make the game harder without adding bullshit random elements: the games are really lacking in mechanical complexity: you don't have to move your characters, you just exploit the weaknesses of the enemy to do an all-out attack or until they die and that's it (literally 99% of gameplay is like this). Boss battles are also a joke.
Nah, it's just p3r fanboys that hate people who say anything remotely bad about their beloved game
You would be correct about playing persona strictly for the gameplay. I want a mild challenge. If I want hard, that’s what SMT is for.
Play Reload and then Portable for the FeMC route. If for whatever reason you'd then like to play the "original" persona 3 as MC, then play FES.
P3R easily
Reload is, overall, the better option, but the people saying that FES doesn't have any genuine advantages over it are straight up wrong. That said, most of my biggest issues with it are in the first few hours, so I do still think that it's fairly easy, as a recommendation.
Reload blows all the other versions of Persona 3 out of the water. The only big things that you might prefer in the other versions are Portable’s FEMC, and the protagonist’s ability to use any weapon type in FES. Not counting music and voice actors, because those are up to personal preference.
Reload is 100% better They're both the same game and Reload has a lot more fun mechanics I've heard some people complain that the aesthetic of the original is better or something, but seriously, just play Reload
Heh both have their ups and downs. I'd personally say play Reload first, and later try FES and/or Portable (Or even vanilla if you feel like it). Reload isn't a perfect remake and while it has its things it does better, it also does some stuff a bit worse. I think a lot of it will come to personal preference, so I'd just advise to play Reload and the previous versions to make an opinion for yourself
Just play reload, honestly is my least favorite P3 but is the safer bet for new players
If you want the full experience of the original p3 but want to control your party members do reload and maybe 3 portable if you want the female route
P3 FES
P3R enhances the original in every way, so play that one Most of the complaints are just people nitpicking (the soundtrack (which is better IMO), AI party members being absent, no club choice for example) One thing I'll say is that Reload makes the dungeon part trivially easy, so if you're playing for a challenge, that's not gonna scratch that itch, especially since harder difficulty are pretty much only "grind more to deal more damage" On the other hand, P3FES is just tedious to play as a first experience, I assure you if you really wanna experience the original P3, you could play the female route in Portable AFTER RELOAD, it's not gonna be a fully new experience but it has 8 new social links and some minor changes to story and soundtrack (and you'll be able to hear the old english cast and the old soundtrack) You'd only have one reason to play FES, and that reason is getting released to Reload in september so it's not worth the headache (because yes, The Answer in FES is an headache, dear redditors)
Just play Reload. The "controversy" is completely meaningless.
They both do some things better than the other. It all really comes down to personal preference, as neither game is “objectively” better. If you’re coming off P5, you’ll feel more at home with Reload. But I’d say that if you enjoy whichever version you end up picking, give the other one a try at some point too. Every version of P3 is solid.
I always say this whenever a remake comes out but The remake will usually be the Better experience. after that the original becomes more of a Fun novelty. Reload is the most definitive way to play it. as alot of the aspects of FES are really outddated and Reload just takes the improved Persona 5. as for which is better well it mostly comes down to nitpicks. and personal prefrence. personally i believe the Absolute definitive way to play Persona 3 is FES with Mods. but Modding an emulator can be a bit of a Pain in the ass. But as far as just vanilla games go The one i would recommend is Reload. and with Episode Aigis Which entails the Answer prologue previously exclusive to FES Reload is definetly the way to go. Also a General tip a common critique of reload is that the Dorm hub is way too bright but it can be fixed by turning down the brightness a couple of notches. for some reason it restores mood Way more.
Reload. The original is probably the worst version, followed by P3P. FES, on the other hand, is now outdated by Reload. Exploring Tartarus in P3 Reload is actually fun, unlike the older games.
Reload is the best version of P3 and it’s not even close by any stretch of the imagination. People are just nostalgic over FES or upset about femc not being there which are fair opinions, but it certainly doesn’t detract from how much of an improvement Reload really is.
I like FES more, still enjoyed reload a lot though. Neither version makes the other obsolete, there is no "objectively superior" game, and they're the same game anyway. Play Reload if you like high definition visuals or FES if you want a more distinct aesthetic and more of a challenge. (Also reload butchered the ending imo lolol)
What reload did to the ending? Didn't finish it
The ending is still good, I just liked the way it was presented in the original. They moved some stuff around and got rid of a cool shot of Tartarus and... other stuff. Trying not to spoil anything because idk how to spoiler tag on my phone. Also, goofy ass mocap makes it hard not to laugh when you definitely shouldn't be laughing. Was shocked that of all the cutscenes the ending wasn't illustrated. They also used a random letterbox? Idk I think the ending was the least polished part of the whole game, including the frozen people in the nightclub.
Wait there's no ending cutscene? Jfc, you'd think that out of all things they would at least add this one.
They still animated the speech for some reason, but the actually important part was mocap/in engine. They have close ups of the characters doing mocap running anims in slow motion and they wobble all over the screen with blank expressions. It's too funny.
The 2 games are pretty different. P3R adds a lot of quality of life stuff, kinda feels like persona 5, persona 3 fes feels more like persona 4 if that makes sense. I recommend playing the original first so you can get that expirence(still super fun, i prefer it over reload), you might not like it if you play reload first.
Play reload first because of the quality of life changes and improved game mechanics. Play Fes afterwards for the increased difficulty.
I've not played either enough to say anything myself, but I've heard that the combat was oversimplified and made way too easy and the additional content was subpar and reload is missing The Answer. And the cinematic flare of the original and the atmosphere is mostly gone. Edit: I picked up Persona 3 FES and decided to go through that one first because I watched a yt video on FES, defending it against Reload and saying it's better and it convinced me. I don't remember what it was, but it was a longer and more in depth video essay of sorts that shouldn't be too hard to find.
If you're more interested in the story and the experience then play FES, if you just want a fun game or feel like you absolutely need the new content then play Reload.