Persona 3 Reload devs knew making "lots and lots of changes" to Tartarus was a "top priority"

Persona 3 Reload devs incorporated fan feedback in altering Tartarus, and knew it was a "top priority to change."

As part of our Persona 3 Reload preview, GamesRadar+ recently spoke to game director Takuya Yamaguchi about changes for the remake. Yamaguchi pointed to the grand overarching dungeon of Tartarus as an area that's seen the most change between the original release in 2006 and Persona 3 Reload in 2024.

"There's lots of fan feedback and lots of user feedback on how to change it, and we took a lot of that into consideration," Yamaguchi said. "We knew that this was a top priority to change. We wanted to make it more interesting and, like always, exciting when you're exploring it."

Anyone who's played Persona 3, or its FES and Portable re-releases, will know Tartarus is inseparable from the story of the RPG. This actually proved to be a tough point for Persona 3 Reload's developers - how do you change something that's so fundamentally linked to the story of the actual game?

"We couldn't really make any major changes to that without disrupting the kind of flow of the game itself," Yamaguchi said. "So instead we made lots and lots of small tweaks. And this kind of accumulation of small tweaks is what allowed us to really improve the experience here."

These "tweaks" are aimed at modernizing Persona 3, rather than completely overhauling the game itself. The developers actually looked to Persona 5 Royal for inspiration in how to update the 2006 RPG for both a brand new and returning audience, and you can read more about that in our full preview.

Persona 3 Reload launches next month on February 2 across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox platforms, and is a day one Xbox Game Pass launch title.

You can also read our new games 2024 guide for a look over all the other games arriving in the coming weeks and beyond.