It turns out that Persona 3 Reload, a remake of the original game released earlier this year, will be getting its much-requested DLC “The Answer” after all. As part of today’s Xbox Partner Preview, Atlus announced that the DLC, called “Episode Aigis,” is releasing in September as part of Persona 3 Reload’s expansion pass, which, to be completely honest, is really annoying.
Persona 3 has the unfortunate distinction in the series of having a confounding number of different versions, all with entirely unique content. Persona 3 first launched in 2006 for the PS2 and eventually received a PSP port called Persona 3 Portable, which transformed most of the game’s overworld into static screens not unlike a visual novel and featured the ability to play the main character as a female. Persona 3 also got an expansion down the line called “The Answer,” which added an epilogue to the events of the game. “The Answer,” or “Episode Aigis” as it was known in Japan, came bundled in a re-release of the game called Persona 3 FES in 2007.
Many fans hoped that an eventual remake of the game would not only look better but would feature all of the content released for Persona 3’s many ports and releases in one handy place. Persona 3 Reload is sort of accomplishing that in the most backwards and greedy manner possible.
When Persona 3 Reload was announced at Summer Games Fest last year, folks were disappointed at the noticeable exclusion of Portable’s female protagonist and the epilogue from FES. They were so upset that when Reload came out, modders immediately took it upon themselves to “fix” the game by adding some of those features back. The developers repeatedly stated that their intention from the start was to remake the original title rather than the subsequent releases with additional content. Which we now know isn’t true, since “The Answer” is now being released at the tail-end of an expansion pass that Atlus expects players to buy into.
Atlus has never been particularly great about expansions and DLCs, but this egregious move might be its worst yet. Persona 4 was resold at full price as Persona 4 Golden—which also featured a brand-new epilogue—in 2012 on the PS Vita before eventually making its way to modern consoles and PC at a much lower cost in the last few years. Persona 5 Royal was also released a number of years after the original game, once again at full price, and with no pathway for players who owned the original Persona 5 to upgrade their game and spare some bucks on a full new retail game. Persona 3 Reload should have featured “The Answer” to begin with, especially if it was always going to be part of the game, making Atlus’s move to sell a nearly 20-year old expansion an abjectly gross one.
The expansion pass in question costs $34.99 (alternatively, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members get it for free) and will take the game through the end of 2024, but “The Answer” is the only meaningful story content coming to Persona 3 Reload as part of its third wave of DLC. The first wave, releasing in a few days on March 12, has two background music sets—one for Persona 4 Golden and another for Persona 5 Royal. The second wave releasing in May will have costumes themed after the residents of the Velvet Room and another background music set inspired by the setting.
Suffice to say, Atlus is coming through on their promise, but in the shittiest way they possibly could.