Persona 3 Reload - Episode Aigis: The Answer Reviews
The Persona 3 Reload DLC, Episode Aigis: The Answer, may be tedious to play at times, but in its faithful recreation are important lessons about the toughest parts of our lives, told through the lens of the series' best characters.
If you loved the story of Persona 3 Reload and you’re hungry for a little more time with the members of SEES, the Episode Aigis - The Answer - DLC is more than worth it, providing about 30 hours of additional gameplay that shakes up the formula you perfected back in February. The characters feel like faithful progressions of themselves, and as long as you can forgive Metis prattling on about doing anything for her sister, I can’t recommend the DLC enough. I never got to play it back in the PlayStation 2 days, coming into the series far later with Persona 5, but with P3 fast becoming my favorite since then, I feel like it’s the most natural conclusion we could have asked for to the bittersweet story of Persona 3 Reload.
Structurally, The Answer is an often frustrating epilogue that shaves off some of the best parts of Persona games. Thankfully, Reload’s quality-of-life updates make the grind more tolerable and the remake adds enough small social elements like reading books and watching movies with your friends that it doesn’t feel like it’s all business. But as a meditation on grief, it feels like a kindness afforded to characters who once had to rile in the ambiguity of the original ending. It would have been easy for Persona 3 to end on a nihilistic note, showing the entire group fall apart without their leader and denying all the lessons they learned. But grief never really goes away. We just learn to help each other live with it a little more each day.
Persona 3 Reload's Episode Aigis - The Answer DLC may be lacking some social elements, but it's hard to deny more great Persona combat.
The Answer gets a facelift with the same coat of paint that Persona 3 received, but retains all the shortcomings that made it the most divisive extra content in the series.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
A painful but necessary final reflection, in a DLC expressly aimed at fans.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Persona 3 Reload: Episode Aigis retains the same commitment to bringing the original game to a new generation, but unfortunately ends up remaking the same mistakes that make this epilogue such a divisive experience for players across the board. There are some memorable character moments here for players looking to spend that little bit of extra time with the team, but I finished this DLC questioning if it was truly worth the tedium of the dungeon-crawling, even if the combat is fun and the production values are still off the charts. While Atlus' dedication to bringing the old game to a new audience is commendable, I think this epilogue deserved a little bit more of a rework than it got.
Episode Aigis is one for the super fans. Its worthwhile story beats are rare and buried beneath a lot of all-too-familiar dungeon crawling, and it's undeniably expensive in terms of asking price. At best, it's an intriguing but flawed epilogue; at worst, it's a completely unnecessary addition to a fantastic game.
The production is a moving continuum full of synergies, as well as absolute beauty. Episode Aigis, exactly as it had done in the FES version, is the worthy, moving and touching conclusion of the third chapter of the franchise, which represented a great return and a fundamental experience to better understand the depth of Persona 3 Reload.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Episode Aigis is a necessary product to complete this remake of one of the cornerstones of JRPG history.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Persona 3: Reload is one of the best games of the year. If Episode Aigis had been part of the package we saw in early 2024, many of the problems with the DLC would not been so heavy, but since it is sold separately, it is very easy to see the problems that the epilogue presents us, even with all the good that we find here.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
This revamp of The Answer improves the original experience, but that experience still mostly revolves around hours of dungeon crawling.
While the new epilogue is certainly better balanced than the original, it still has a lot of the same pitfalls. The cutbacks break through just enough to bring the DLC experience down. Persona 3 Reload's Episode Aigis DLC is good but not great. They say "it's about the journey" and that certainly rings true whether you're in 2008 or 2024.
Persona 3 Reload Episode Aigis was an interesting way to continue the story and bookend some “loose ends,” but whether it resonates with you will depend on how much you’re willing to grind to get “The Answer.”
Episode Aigis is nearly a 1:1 remake of the Answer, completing the Persona 3 experience, but one that comes at an exorbitant cost to the fans.
There's no reason not to complete Episode Aigis with how much ATLUS has made this post-game episode easier to complete than ever before. Getting to the end of Episode Aigis and seeing Persona 3 Reload's characters' ending in a somber, yet bittersweet, fashion is a perfect way to step away from the glory that is Persona 3 Reload that has made 2024 a fantastic year for Persona fans. It bears repeating: Episode Aigis is a JRPG post-game done right; it's so right that it's worth returning to Persona 3 Reload if only to see the ending.
Episode Aigis is a decent DLC for a splendid game like Persona 3, to put it in the shortest possible way. It is absolutely not at the level of the base title, because it chooses to completely eliminate the social and life sim dynamics that have contributed to making the Persona franchise unique to focus everything on dungeon crawling, but with procedurally generated levels and several enemies that are simple reskins of those of the main campaign.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Persona 3 Reload – Episode Aigis: The Answer is the perfect epilogue to one of the best games of the year. The DLC offers an exceptional narrative about loss, grief, and moving on that wraps up the character cycle nicely, as well as bringing more of the combat and exploration that make the game so special.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Episode Aigis: The Answer respects the original content, which some will like and others don't, but it also fixes some of the original aspects that people didn't like about the DLC, like the lack of the compendium and having no control over your party, making it the best way to experience this epilogue.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
To look back on how The Answer not only expands on the story Reload, but also pushes its messages further, the best way to describe it is that it shows the ugly side of life itself. You’re going to lose people, and you’re going to process it differently from others. All the while you’re going to be forced to go through more of the dull, and repetitive parts of your life that you grow numb to. But through it all, you will always reflect on what got you started and what keeps you going. The final shot of the story is closing the dorm door and leaving, ending a series of memories and moving on. You don’t want it to end, and you can never experience it all again for the first time no matter how much you wish you could.