Persona 3 Reload, the from-the-ground-up remake of Atlus’ beloved PlayStation 2 role-playing game, is coming out on February 2. But while the 2006 classic is getting a modern retouching very soon, it won’t include everything added to the original in the updated Persona 3 Portable and Persona 3 FES editions, the former of which is on Game Pass right now for Xbox and PC. So if you want to play one of the best additions to the base game, you still have a chance before Persona 3 Portable leaves Game Pass on January 14.
Persona 3 Portable includes a female protagonist option, something the series has unfortunately not repeated since. Playing the high-school-social-sim-dungeon-crawler as a girl opens up new relationships, music, storylines, and other cool tweaks that make it a markedly different experience than the male main character’s story. Unfortunately, Persona 3 Reload won’t include this option when it launches next month, much to the chagrin of longtime fans. So if you were planning on waiting until Persona 3 Reload to experience this game, just be aware that you’ll miss out on seeing the Persona 3 story from this perspective. But if you’re a Game Pass subscriber, you still have time to add Persona 3 Portable to your library and start playing the female hero route. Whether or not you can finish it in 11 days is a separate question.
Reload omitting the feMC route sucks, but the remake also doesn’t include the post-game epilogue called The Answer, which was added in the 2012 updated edition of P3 called Persona 3 FES. The epilogue is divisive among fans, but it did provide some clarity on the original game’s ending, and allowed the player to control Aigis, the shadow-hunting cyborg who joins the party in the main game. As of this writing, the epilogue is only playable on PS2 and PS3 via the PlayStation Network.
In other Persona news, Persona 5 Tactica, a tactics spin-off starring the Phantom Thieves, launched in November. For more on that, check out Kotaku’s review.
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