In its nearly three-decade history, the Persona series has marked itself out as one of the most important JRPG franchises in a genre already filled with iconic names. But while more recent games might take the spotlight, it's arguably Persona 3 that has the most crucial legacy - which is why the upcoming remake Persona 3 Reload is a game any RPG fan should have on their radar.
Persona 3's place in the series can make it difficult for the game to stand out. Released in 2006, it took the series to new heights, and in whole new directions. But since then, it's been eclipsed by its successors - Persona 4 and Persona 5 capitalized on the success of their predecessor, with definitive versions and sin-offs helping cement their status as some of the greatest JRPGs ever made. But would they ever have reached their levels of fame without Persona 3?
To answer that question, we have to step back in time to the days of Persona 3, a game that reinvented an already decade-old series. The Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad (S.E.E.S.) aren't simple predecessors to Persona 4's Investigation Squad or Persona 5's Phantom Thieves, they paved the way for those teams and the way the characters within them would interact.
That was thanks to Social Links, a system that Persona 3 pioneered. By building bonds between characters out of combat, you'd be able to gain more power when their Personas formed during a fight, putting an emphasis on the slice of life elements of these games. That system was pioneered by Persona 3, not just within the series, but within the genre as a whole - Persona 4 and 5 might owe a lot to the Social Links system, but so do myriad other games. This is a game that doesn't just shape Persona history, but gaming history as a whole.
Subsequent Persona games might have learned from how Persona 3 plays, but they also learned from how it looks. This is a series that oozes style, from its visuals to its soundtrack, and much of that started with Persona 3 and its iconic Burn My Dread intro. In fact, much of the visual style of the rest of the series would start with this game, as Persona 3 moved away from the more traditional, now-retro style of previous games, into the more dynamic perspectives that the modern games still use today.
Of course, Persona 3 might have proved to be the bridge between the old and the new, but while it paved the way for 4 and 5, it was never ashamed to hark back to its own predecessors. This is a game that comes closest to the more somber tone of the Shin Megami Tensei games that were the precursor to the entire Persona series. It's not afraid to ask difficult questions, and to force its cast to grapple with tough themes, with a grounded tone that's sometimes lacking from the more recent games.
There's no denying that Persona 4 and 5 have claimed the lion's share of the spotlight, but the imminent release of Persona 3 Reload offers the perfect excuse to check this piece of genre history out, whether you're a returning fan or you're coming to the game for the first time. Remade with modern graphics and quality-of-life features, and featuring new scenes, character interactions, and voiceover, Persona 3 Reload and its expansion-packed Digital Premium Edition offer the definitive way to play a game that not only shaped the blockbuster successes of the games that followed in its immediate wake, but that left its mark on an entire genre, and maybe even an entire industry.
