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There won’t be a Persona 5 Royal-style expanded edition for Persona 3 Reload, Atlus promiseDevs consider Reload “a complete experience”, despite missing parts of FES and Portable
Devs consider Reload “a complete experience”, despite missing parts of FES and Portable
Image credit:Sega
Image credit:Sega
Persona developers Atlus have promised there are no plans to follow upPersona 3remake Reload with an expanded re-releaselike Persona 5 Royal, giving us all a welcome break from the tyranny of the letter R.
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Persona 3 Reloadis out today, overhauling the 2006 PlayStation 2 game with a style much closer toPersona 5’s flashy visuals, along with changes to the original game’s story and dialogue. There are a number of general quality-of-life improvements too, alongside new gameplay aspects such as additional social activities away from your dungeon-crawling in Tartarus.
While Reload is in many respects an expansion of the original Persona 3, it leaves out some of the previous additions seen in expanded PS2 release Persona 3 FES and most notably past PSP remasterPersona 3 Portable- the first version of the game tocome to PC- which introduced a second, female protagonist absent from Reload.
That means there’s more than a bit on the cutting floor that Atlus could conceivably bundle up and reintroduce in a hypothetical future Reload: Reloaded or such, similar to Persona 5 Royal’s mixing and expansion of the series’ most recent mainline game. But it seems that Atlus aren’t interested, at least for now.
“We are not considering a revision like with Persona 5 to Persona 5 Royal, which involved significant changes and additions to the original title,” production manager Kazuhisa Wada toldGamerwk(viaPersona Central). “Fans can rest assured knowing that Persona 3 Reload offers a complete experience.”
Image credit:Sega
Part of that reason may also be down to Persona 3 Reload’s development, which took over four years and apparently cost more than Wada was expecting, partly due to releasing on multiple platforms this time around. That then fed into decisions around what to keep and what to cut, with the team seemingly very sensitive to changing thebeloved original.
“It’s very difficult to try to improve a game without having to change elements of the original and elements that have been very well received,” Wada said. “There were certain parts that were a bit contentious at the time regarding this series, but [with] this one there was more of an effort to deal with the uncertainty and push the game in an appropriate way.”