Game profile
Persona 3 Reload
A remake of the classic where students climb Tartarus tower at night to battle Shadow creatures, while daytime school life revolves around friendship and death as its central theme. It's darker and more melancholic in tone than its successors.
Affiliate link. If you buy through it, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
What kind of game this is
At its core this is JRPG / RPG, set in the present day. Visually it is deliberately stylised rather than photorealistic, and the overall tone stays dark throughout. The structure is guided rather than open, so you are moved along instead of dropped into a map. It rewards long uninterrupted stretches more than quick check-ins.
The difficulty is moderate and fair, demanding attention without punishing you for it. The narrative carries the whole thing, and the mechanics serve it. It is a single player experience from start to finish. It is available broadly, on 4 platforms. It is a full price release.
What stands out
- Melancholic core theme of death
- Nightly tower dungeon
- Modernized combat system
This fits you if
- you want to live through a story, not just play a system
- levelling, looting and optimising a build is your kind of loop
- you can sit down for a proper long stretch without interruptions
- the writing matters more to you than the mechanics
- you play alone and want a complete experience without other people
- you prefer a darker, heavier tone
Look elsewhere if
- you skip cutscenes and want to get to the gameplay
- you do not have 75 hours to give a single game
- you only ever get short bursts of play time
- you want something light and easy going
How long is Persona 3 Reload?
About 75 hours in total. At three evenings a week and two hours each, you will be busy for roughly 13 weeks, or 38 sessions.
How the rating ranks
Critics settled on 89 out of 100, which puts it above 82 percent of the 1276 games here and at rank 204 overall. That is a strong score, comfortably above what most releases manage.
For comparison, JRPG averages 85 points across the database, so this one sits 4 points above its own genre. The figure rests on 141 collected ratings.
Released in 2024 and 2 years old. Recent enough to look and run modern, old enough to be patched and often discounted.
The facts
- Release year
- 2024
- Genres
- JRPG, RPG
- Playtime
- approx. 75 hrs.
- Difficulty
- Moderate, fair
- Story weight
- Carries the whole game
- Play with
- Solo
- Setting
- Present day, Fantasy
- Visual style
- Stylised
- Price bracket
- Full price
- Platforms
- PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch
- Critic rating
- 89 / 100
Direct comparison
| Genres | Release year | Playtime | Critic rating | Price bracket |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Persona 3 Reload | 2024 | approx. 75 hrs. | 89 | Full price |
| Persona 5 Royal | 2019 | approx. 100 hrs. | 94 | Mid price |
| Digimon Story: Time Stranger | 2025 | approx. 40 hrs. | 84 | Full price |
| Metaphor: ReFantazio | 2024 | approx. 80 hrs. | 94 | Full price |
If you liked this, try these
- 94/100 Persona 5 Royal Shared: JRPG, RPG, Present day, rated higher
- 84/100 Digimon Story: Time Stranger Shared: JRPG, RPG, Present day, shorter
- 94/100 Metaphor: ReFantazio Shared: JRPG, RPG, Fantasy, rated higher
- 83/100 Granblue Fantasy: Relink Shared: JRPG, RPG, Fantasy, shorter
- 87/100 Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Shared: JRPG, RPG, Fantasy, shorter
- 82/100 NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139... Shared: JRPG, RPG, Fantasy, shorter