Persona 3 Remake Officially Announced: Everything We Know So Far

Although this game was heavily rumored for the past few months, there were many Persona fans who were skeptical about its existence. Video game remake rumors are always prevalent, so this seemed like just another one that you could add to the pile.

Until the official trailer was leaked. By Atlus themselves.

Yep, the official Atlus West Instagram page accidentally revealed Persona 3 Reload to the world and also posted its trailer before it was supposed to. Then, a few days later, the trailer was officially revealed as a part of Microsoft’s 2023 Showcase.

Since then, more info has come out about the game. So, here’s what we know about the Persona 3 Remake so far.

What’s Missing From Persona 3 Reload

A lot of fans’ excitement quickly turned into disappointment when it was announced that the Persona 3 remake would be missing a few key features such as the option to play as the female main character.

In Persona 3 Portable, players were given the option to play as a female character (this character is lovingly referred to as FeMC by Persona fans) rather than the male one. Although there aren’t a ton of differences between the two options, the differences that they do have are pretty notable.

For example, playing as FeMC allows the player to build social links and deepen the relationships of characters (particularly, a lot of the male characters) that you can’t if you’re playing as the main male character.

Although Persona 3 already has a pretty good story, this option allows characters to be even more 3-dimensional.

But there is another feature that is noticeably absent from the remake, and that’s Persona 3’s story expansion.

Titled The Answer, this expansion follows the characters after the events of Persona 3’s story. Not to spoil anything for those who’ve never played the original game, but The Answer is a pretty important chapter in Persona 3’s saga.

Divisive as the expansion may be (some hate it, others love it), it’s somewhat baffling that Atlus would not include it in the remake.

Changes and Improvements to Persona 3

Visual Improvement

But with all that said, the development team has made substantial changes to the game which are very noticeable even in that 1-minute trailer.

The design of the game looks sleek, the menus look modern, and the game really pops with color.

Tartarus

Another aspect that was changed was Tartarus. Tartarus is the dungeon-crawling aspect of Persona 3, where players go through over 250 (mostly) randomly generated levels where they find treasure and kill shadows.

A big change is the fact that your characters no longer become tired. In the original game, characters who were tired took more damage.

But according to an interview that 4Gamer.com did with Persona 3 developers, this will no longer be the case in the remake. This could mean that players could explore Tartarus to their hearts’ content without having to worry about the consequences.

Characters Fleshed Out

Remember how I said that playing as the FeMC was the only way to get insight into some characters and their stories? Well, they took that into consideration when remaking Persona 3.

In that same interview with 4Gamer.com (which was translated to English by Twitter user みどり), the developers stated that although players won’t be able to build social links with certain characters, they’ve added new content that is being referred to as “side stories” that will allow for these characters to be fleshed out.

Although it is disappointing that players won’t be able to build social links with them, these side stories do sound intriguing.

Release Date for the Persona 3 Remake

There is no exact date for when the game is coming out, but we do know that it’s aiming for early 2024.

Persona 3 Reload will be available on Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, PC, and PlayStation 4 and 5.

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