Persona is one of the most stylish video game series around, which means it’s a pleasure just to watch the games in action whether in one of its lushly animated cutscenes or during its in-game combat and dialogue. Persona 3 was no exception and its imminent remake Persona 3 Reload seems only to be pushing it into the modern era.
As proof, Atlus have released the opening movie for Reload – that is, the two-minute intro sequence that’ll play at the start of the game.
If it’s not obvious, this isn’t a straight remake of the Personal 3 Portable opening, which you can watch on YouTube here. For one, the mournful J-Rock of the original has been replaced by a poppier original song called Full Moon Full Life.
Much to my surprise, the handguns the cast all point at their temples in the original are still front and centre, only now they all pull the trigger in the intro. I always assume Atlus will downplay those in the marketing – but within the fiction of the game, they’re not really handguns but “Evokers”, and serve as the method by which the characters summon their Persona.
In any case, I love the new intro, because I love both anime intros and this particular genre of J-Pop or Japanese Jazztronica or whatever you’d call it.
A few years back I decided to buy a secondhand PS Vita and a copy of Persona 3 Portable, which was, at the time, the only way to play the best version of Atlus’s classic JRPG. The Vita didn’t work and I had to send it back, and so then I just owned a copy of Persona 3 Portable I couldn’t play on anything for two years.
Eventually I took a second swing and bought another secondhand Vita, a working one this time. And still didn’t play Persona 3 Portable. I can blame that on the Vita being a cursed, unpleasant device to use, but probably I was just busy given I didn’t play it when it released on Steam last year, either.
But now, now is the time when I give it a proper go. Or rather February 2nd, as that’s Persona 3 Reload’s release date.
