is a 2024 role-playing video game developed and published by Atlus. Reload is a remake of Persona 3 (2006), the fourth main installment of the Persona series, itself part of the larger Megami Tensei franchise. As with the original game, the protagonist is a high school student returning to his home city a decade after his parents were killed in a car crash. He soon gains the potential to summon a Persona, the physical manifestation of his inner spirit, and joins the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad (S.E.E.S.), a group of like-minded Persona users. Together, they are tasked with defeating Shadows and uncovering the mystery of the Dark Hour.
A remake of Persona 3 was often requested by fans following the series' push towards global popularity thanks to the success of Persona 5 (2016), as was officially acknowledged by Atlus themselves. Reload began development in 2019 and was announced in June 2023. Reload remakes the main story of Persona 3, with various graphical and functional updates that bring the game in parity with the series' later installments. Shigenori Soejima oversaw overhauled art direction by Tomohiro Kumagai and updated character designs by Azusa Shimada. The music was written primarily by Atsushi Kitajoh, with additional arrangements by original composer Shoji Meguro, and vocal tracks performed by Azumi Takahashi and Lotus Juice.
Persona 3 Reload was released for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on February 2, 2024. A Nintendo Switch 2 version was released on October 23, 2025. The game received generally positive reviews from critics and sold a million units within its first week of release, making it the fastest-selling game in the series to reach one million units.
Gameplay
Persona 3 Reload retains its core hybrid of traditional role-playing and social simulation gameplay, but is overhauled aesthetically, graphically and mechanically to integrate systems and features that have been introduced to the Persona series since the original Persona 3 release, specifically deriving from quality-of-life improvements first implemented in Persona 5 (2016). In addition to foundational overhauls, Reload refines numerous elements of its graphical user interface to reflect the updated presentation of subsequent entries. For story-sensitive tasks, objective descriptions have been added below the display for the date, time of day and moon phase that list actions that must be performed to progress the narrative, which is functionally similar to Persona 5 heads-up display. The map display has also been improved in function and form over the original Persona 3, having been expanded in size in addition to depicting more intricacies about the surrounding environment, and now placing markers on important locations that need to be visited for story purposes, much like Persona 5 map. The ability for the protagonist to run through areas has also been added.
New gameplay additions to the social simulation and role-playing portions of the game were introduced in Reload. The Iwatodai Dorm where the main party resides outside classes has been expanded upon with multiple activities to perform beyond the original game. The protagonist is now able to strike individual conversations with every dorm resident, cook food with resuscitative abilities in the dorm's kitchen, garden and tend plants on the dorm's roof by feeding them nutrients periodically, rent out films to watch using a DVD player, as well as borrow and read books provided to the dorm by the school. As with the corresponding in-house activities in Persona 4 and Persona 5, performing these tasks strengthen each of the protagonist's Social Stats which can be used to later pursue specific interactions with Social Links. For example, reading books increase the protagonist's Academics for school, while gardening yields the reward of the protagonist being able to learn new Tactics in battle. Furthermore, the protagonist can partake in each of the aforementioned activities alongside another party member, which grants them additional buffs for combat scenarios.
While attending Gekkoukan High School, the in-class questions from the subject teachers have been redone from scratch, with none being repurposed from the original game. Exploration both around Tatsumi Port Island and within Tartarus is now done from a third-person perspective with the camera now being positioned directly behind the protagonist, and now enables free camera control for the player to get better views of their surroundings. The overworld map is now fully rendered in 3D, and has an additional button prompt for displaying information on the protagonist's current location, or other areas they can visit. Expanding on Persona 3 Portable fast travel function, the player is also able to immediately fast-travel to any specific location within the highlighted area directly from the map itself as opposed to within the location. Reload removes the ability for the player to completely break Social Links with supporting characters as was possible in both Persona 3 and Persona 4 (2008), although the player is still able to reverse them through choosing the protagonist's dismissive responses to interactions. A new social element was introduced, that exists separately from Social Links. It is meant to contextualize supporting characters who weren't as prominent in previous iterations of Persona 3, through the inclusion of side-story arcs that will deepen the protagonist's relationship with them, which will also extend to the male party members due to the lack of dedicated Social Link stories for them.
The structure and progression within Tartarus has not been altered from the original game whatsoever, but has been expanded with more environmental variety to encourage exploration, and sports unique visual effects accomplished by the game's use of Unreal Engine 4, such as improved lighting. The fatigue mechanic has been completely removed to reflect subsequent entries, making it so that the party is unable to tire during exploration, thus no longer affecting their battle performance. Each floor within Tartarus also houses breakable objects in the form of fire effigies that can be swung at to obtain hidden treasure and items. The player is unable to contact the Navigator (between Mitsuru Kirijo and later Fuuka Yamagishi) in Tartarus to change the dungeon's background music like in the original game, nor is the player able to direct the party to split up and find hidden Treasures and Shadows scattered on the current floor. The party is also able to either walk or fully sprint when traversing the dungeon, but doing the latter also increases the chance that Shadows patrolling the current floor are alerted to the party's presence.During battle, both the ability to take direct control over party members as in Portable, as well as enabling the CPU to dictate their behavior as in the original game and FES, are available. The battle user interface has been completely overhauled to take functional and stylistic inspiration from Persona 5, with the commands "Persona", "Item", "Guard" and "Attack" each corresponding to different buttons in a similar fashion. In addition to the returning "Analyze", "Tactics", "Target" and "Rush" commands from prior iterations of Persona 3, a "Survey" and "Assist" function have also been added. Persona 3 Reload implements an improved variation of the "Baton Pass" skill from Persona 5 in the form of the "Shift" ability mapped to the left trigger. "Shift" enables the current active party member to pass their turn onto another character after successfully landing a hit on a Shadow enemy that knocks them Down, allowing the next party member to potentially knock other enemies Down if they are in certain formations. When all enemies on the battle screen are knocked Down as with the original game, the party is given the option to initiate an "All-Out Attack" that involves all active members performing a joint assault on any remaining enemies for significant damage. Depending on who in the party starts the command, the character has a personalized outro and unique animation in a similar vein to the finisher screens in Persona 5. Additional Personas for the party are still obtained primarily through the post-battle minigame Shuffle Time, but Reload instead allows the player to manually choose what specific card they want out of the randomized selection as opposed to blindly selecting one after they are shuffled, similar to Persona 4 Golden version of the minigame.
Plot
Development
Atlus had begun development of a remake of Persona 3 by 2019. The large majority of P-Studio's staff working on Persona 5 Royal (2019) at this time were shifted over to Reload, with the studio's chief director Kazuhisa Wada exclaiming that developing Persona 3 Reload was hugely important for Atlus due to the original game's influence on the rest of the Persona series, as well as the unique challenges presented with both remaking an existing title, and developing a game on a third-party game engine, as the game is powered by Unreal Engine 4 as opposed to the proprietary engine Atlus previously used for games such as Royal and Catherine: Full Body (2019). The Reload naming was conceived as a result of the developers wanting to use another moniker with the letter "R" to convey its status as a definitive edition of Persona 3 as Persona 5 Royal was to Persona 5, feeling as if simply calling it "Persona 3 Remake" was not fitting for the naming conventions of the series. The Reload name was also used to reflect the pistol-like Evokers used by the party to summon their Personas during battle.
Following the game's official reveal, Atlus shared several additional details about Reload. P-Studio chief director Kazuhisa Wada and game producer Ryota Niitsuma clarified their intentions of producing a completely faithful recreation of the original Persona 3 experience, including implementing multiple "new scenes and events" beyond the retained narrative. However, the pair confirmed that as a result of remaining solely faithful to the game as it was originally released, none of the story content integrated into either Persona 3 FES or Persona 3 Portable would be remade for Reload, such as the epilogue chapter "The Answer" or the second female protagonist and her associated content. Wada clarified following this interview however, that other story and gameplay elements first added to the main story scenario in FES would still feature in the game.