Persona 3 Reload: Episode Aigis – The Answer review – Same answer, new problems

Posted on September 9, 2024

Persona 3 Reload was quite a success for Atlus. It broke series sales records when it launched in January, but the biggest question people had went unanswered. What happened to the epilogue? Why remake a game and not include all of the content? I had friends telling me directly they weren’t interested in buying the game until we find out if the epilogue is going to be thrown in a new version of the game in two years. Lucky for them, the DLC is here with the answer – literally. Much like the original, there’s a lot to like here but there are some clear issues that didn’t quite get ironed out. Atlus hooked us up with the Xbox/Windows version of the game and DLC so we can get our thoughts to you. Is “the answer” more satisfying than the journey? Not quite.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably already familiar with Persona 3 Reload and what it does narratively and mechanically. There certainly won’t be a need to break down how everything works because most of those mechanics carry over. The characters, the themes, “1 More”, Theurgies, etc. are all here again with no changes. The main draw of the DLC is the story. This “Reload+DLC experience” feels like the entire “Persona 3 experience” went up two notches. The base game definitely benefited from the dialogue tweaks, improvements for the battling and socializing, and of course the visual improvements, but the main issue people originally had with The Answer was primarily the story and dialogue. The themes were strong but the lack of any socializing made the epilogue feel bloated and what story was there was generally seen as iffy at best.

What you’re getting in the Episode Aigis story is definitely better than the original but it’s still not great. The story takes place about two months after the base game’s ending. (So spoilers, obviously) SEES is disbanding, the friend group is going their separate ways, and Aigis is confused about why she’s been feeling lethargic. The night before they leave, time stops, they can’t leave the dorm, a new robot called Metis nearly kills the party, and a dungeon called the Abyss of Time forms below the dorm. That is a pretty quick summary but this is just the first 40 minutes. From hitting New Game on the main menu and selecting your difficulty level, you are in for almost an hour of zero gameplay. It’s all story and dialogue, which is fine because that’s the norm for RPGs, especially Persona games. But not having any breathing room with at least one save point made it a bit of a slog since that’s almost an hour of the 25 hour run time.

You now spend the next 20-25 hours dungeon crawling and figuring out why the Abyss of Time appeared, who or what is Metis, and why is all of this happening. Most of the time you will be dungeon crawling, and at the end of these different levels, you will get a short cutscene for each character. I don’t want to get too specific because there are certainly spoilers aplenty, but these story scenes are much improved over the original. The themes are more front and center, the dialogue is better balanced, and the length of time spent in dungeons is slimmed down.

Immediately we were struck by how much more nuanced the dialogue feels. Clearly careful attention was paid to make the complex feelings of the characters come across, both in the writing and voice acting. For example, Yukari doesn’t come across as overly mean and confrontational anymore. Instead, she’s trying to put the past year behind her – both good and bad – and while that might be helping her emotional state in the short term, it’s distancing her from her friends. Aigis is a bit of a silent observer this time around, but given the context of everything, it makes more sense that she watches these stories unfold, and it does culminate in a rather sweet story arc.

That’s not even bringing up the new social elements, something sorely missed from the original experience. After reaching the end of some sections in the Abyss of Time, you can open up treasure chests using Twilight Fragments to obtain certain items. These could be a book you can read with Akihiko, a movie to watch with Junpei, whatever. You can then head back to the dorm to hang out with whoever the item is for to watch a short scene of Aigis and someone else hanging out. These are really nice scenes that, on top of giving you a break from the dungeon crawling, flesh out the characters post-Journey and unlock their Personality skills. Honestly, more of these scenes would have been great because you still go long stretches of just combat.

Being able to re-unlock a lot of character skills (which are often very overpowered) is great, and there are even more ways The Answer is smoothed out and more accessible. For one, you can play on any difficulty rather than just Hard, which makes the whole experience palatable for most players. If you’ve finished the main game, you can also import your Persona Compendium, granting Aigis access to any persona you’ve registered so long as you have the cash; the original version in FES lacked the compendium entirely, so this is fantastic. You can return to the deepest floor you’ve explored so far after taking a break, you can duplicate skill cards and heal using clocks at the entrance, we could go on but there’s a lot here to make The Answer more enjoyable to casual players.

That said, this is still The Answer. The biggest gameplay issues are still egregious despite the tweaks. One of the biggest issues with the lack of socializing was not just the lack of character building, it’s the fusion system. Because you can no longer get bonus experience from the Social Links, you can only build up Personas by being smart about what skills they get from fusions, exhaustive use of Skill Cards, or grinding. Three late game boss fights (yes, those ones) are pretty terrible in gameplay execution. They have a lot of health to cut down but they have special attacks that can one shot you, wasting 20 minutes on just one of the fights. I had to back out and grind because I couldn’t get anything super useful from the Velvet Room without also grinding for money to use the added Compendium. The game balance feels a bit off since the Compedium is still expensive and you can’t really use it well without grinding, an issue with the original that wasn’t really fixed. The problem just shifted.

The Windows version has a ton of issues by the way. Audio cutting out when transferring your base game save, DualSense incompatibility, and needing to reset the controller icon type, resolution, and framerate every time you boot the game up. I even had two instances where my computer completely froze, unable to close the game. I’m not sure how much of this has to do with the Xbox App on PC but I didn’t have any of these kinds of issues when covering the base game on the exact same PC. When it works, it works. But it has some bugs that need ironing out.

Katelyn Lawlor

Editor at GamingTrend | [email protected]

Katelyn is a self-titled queen of excitement. Whether for RPGs, gaming history, or stylish action, she's here to get hype and put it all to words.

David Flynn

Editor | [email protected]

David is the kind of person to wear his heart on his sleeve. He can find positives in anything, like this is a person who loved Star Fox Zero to death. You’ll see him playing all kinds of games: AAAs, Indies, game jam games, games of all genres, and writing about them! Here. On this website. When not writing or playing games, you can find David making music, games, or enjoying a good book.
David’s favorite games include NieR: Automata, Mother 3, and Gravity Rush.

70

Good