The start of this year has been pretty slow, so I finally got around to last year’s Persona 3 Reload. This is a remake of Persona 3, and it’s also my third time experiencing this game. Each time I play it, the more I feel like this game has some weird thoughts about gender.

I first played Persona 3 sometime before I entered high school, and then played Persona 3 Portable on psp a few years later. Last year, nearing 20 years later, they released a ground up remake of Persona 3, Persona 3 Reloaded. 

Now, I liked Persona 3 well enough, but mostly preferred Persona 4, which I bought at the same time. When Persona 3 Portable came out was when I learned to appreciate the story a lot more. This was due in large part to the addition of a female protagonist, the second in franchise history, and the changes in the social link options. 

Persona 3 Reloaded aimed to be a remake of the original Persona 3, and as such, chose not to include the female protagonist as an option, much to my dismay. I would get a new version, based on an older version of a game that I liked less, and so I was happy to leave this game for a sale. 

Finally getting around to it, it’s a solid game! It looks great, I dig the new soundtrack, which remixes old tracks while adding some new ones, and it makes some good combat tweaks. It retains the identity of the original while making it feel modern, at least in look and feel. 

The writing is more of a mixed bag. The pacing has been a bit of a struggle for me, almost 20 hours in. I feel the plot hasn’t gripped me in the same ways as other Persona games. It also has, overall, my least favorite cast, both in terms of party members and social links, which is a major aspect of this game.  

Some of the characters feel slightly tweaked, whether due to a new translation, or a tweaked script I couldn’t say. I like them about the same as their original Persona 3 counterparts though, so I suppose it comes out as a wash. 

Social links, for the uninitiated, are visual novel style segments that serve as a progression system that feeds into the game's combat, or the persona system. By spending time strengthening various relationships, you can receive bonuses when fusing personas to use in battle.

All of the social links are voiced this time around, which is certainly nice, but is also a bit of a double edged sword. In just text, I might skip a little through social links, especially if I’m not their biggest fan. Being voiced however, I’m paying more attention to each interaction, and that’s not always to the game’s benefit. 

On average, the social link options in Persona 3 are probably the weakest in series, and you can tell it was their first time trying out this format. Throughout their social links, you very rarely challenge these characters, and to maximize your results, you also have to encourage their often problematic behaviors. 

In my mind, no one is worse than Kenji Tomochika, the very first social link in the game. 

Kenji Social Link Spoilers: 

Kenji, at 16 years old, has a crush on a teacher at his school. Throughout his social link, he tells you how he likes older women, how cute her face is, how sexy her body is. Upon being offered private lessons by this teacher, he misconstrues it as being asked out. When he sees a bridal magazine in her apartment during a lesson, he begins preparing himself to ask her to marry him once he graduates. 

Throughout this process, you as the player are nudged to encourage this behavior, reassure him he’s doing the right thing, and cheer him on. Eventually, Kenji learns he has wildly misunderstood, and through spreading rumours about the two of them dating, harmed this teacher professionally. 

The next time you meet, Kenji says he thought about whether he really loved his teacher, or just the idea of dating a teacher. His conclusion? He has no clue. He gives you a token of friendship, and his social link is over. There are no consequences for Kenji, he has minimal development, and it sucks from start to finish. 

There’s usually one social link in each Persona game that falls flat, but I can think of no more spectacular of a miss than this one. It’s not that I think all characters need to be good, but Kenji is never framed as a bad guy, or even a misguided one. 

Characters like Tanaka, who is a terrible person, have a pretty interesting social link. However, the game is seemingly aware that he is a bad person, offering questionable advice to a high schooler about how to scam people. How characters are framed makes a huge difference in the impact they have for the audience.  

To pull an example, take Breaking Bad’s protagonist Walter White. Walter, at least in my mind, is not a good person. Due to his ego he would rather engage in a life of crime then accept help and set aside his pride. You see him face the consequences of his actions, and the show feels aware that he is either an anti-hero or even the villain. 

To gesture at a broader pattern here, the classic and consistent “quirk” of being able to date multiple women at once continues, and without any consequences in this game. One of the characters you can form a social link with, your homeroom teacher, admits to having a crush on the protagonist, continuing a weird student/teacher dynamic that crops up both in this game, and Persona 5 where you can date your teacher. 

The original Persona 3 forced you into a romantic relationship with each female character you could form a relationship with a few exceptions, including your teacher, thankfully. This was changed in Persona 3 Portable, and added a friendship option. The infamous trans panic scene from the original was completely rewritten, and that character is now a conspiracy theorist who scares away the protagonist.

You can see there were attempts to sand away some rough edges and make some positive changes, but Persona 3 Reload also shows its age. While trying to keep true to the original, they also preserved both some weak writing, and also some problematic characters and attitudes that are not pushed back on. 

I’m not entirely against “it’s a product of its time” and “cultural differences” arguments, but I think there’s no denying that there are aspects of Persona 3 Reload that stick out like a sore thumb. There are plenty of small things that add up to a pattern of poor views of women and uncritical presentation of problematic men. 

Overall, I still like Persona 3 Reload, but I wish I could say that without so many caveats. I’ll still enjoy the dungeon crawling, and most of the main story, but I can’t say revisiting many of these social links has been terribly pleasant. It’s an odd clash of modern visuals, music, and improvements juxtaposed against writing and characters that have aged like milk. 

It also shows that as much as the Persona series has improved and refined its formula that was created with Persona 3, there are also ways the series hasn’t grown. If I ever choose to revisit Persona 3, I think I’ll go for the Persona 3 Portable version and go for the far superior female protagonist route, because I refuse to indulge Kenji even a moment longer.