Persona 3 FES was a formative gaming experience for me, and I absolutely loved the treatment Atlus gave it in the recent Persona 3 Reload. The remake did an exemplary job preserving the core experience of the original while refreshing it with a slick coat of paint that provided a new sheen for its outdated presentation and more frustrating or obtuse mechanics. My fond memories felt respected and my modern sensibilities appeased. A winning result.
Yet something was missing. Something with more nebulous and negative memories surrounding that first Persona 3 playthrough. That something was The Answer, a proto-DLC epilogue that was absent from the original Persona 3 but added into the FES re-release. I never finished The Answer. I was already burnt out on the base game when I gave it a shot. And once I realized it was a grueling 30ish-hour combat-heavy grindfest with sparse story content, I dropped it with the intention of maybe returning when I felt up for the premise. I never did. But when Atlus announced that they’d be revisiting The Answer as part of the expansion pass for Persona 3 Reload—now with the much less evocative name Episode Aigis—I was ready to learn what The Answer really is.
The Question facing Episode Aigis is: does it change or add enough to make this controversial epilogue to the base game feel like an essential part of the overall experience? While “essential” might be too strong a word, Episode Aigis is a good excuse to spend more time with the excellent cast and polished combat system of Persona 3 Reload. However, casual Persona enjoyers should beware. If the primary appeal of this series for you lies in Social Links and school-life simulation, this expansion does not cater to you. Episode Aigis is for the dungeon crawlers. Anyone who enjoys the mainline Shin Megami Tensei games as much as their more extroverted spinoff series will have plenty to sink their teeth into here.
The Question
Episode Aigis picks up right after the ending of the base game. The decision to continue strips that ending of some of its impactful mystique, but it’s forgivable when done in the service of more gameplay, character development, and a thoughtful attempt to expand on the game’s overall themes. The SEES members are not in a positive frame of mind here. They may have conquered the apocalyptic threat of the Shadows but have come out of that experience just as lost as when they were thrust into that world-saving role, with some new traumatic baggage to go along with it. No character is feeling that more than the Persona-wielding android Aigis, our new protagonist, as she grief-fully wrestles with a lack of purpose and is ready to resign the sense of humanity she had developed towards the end of The Journey (the official name of the base game).
With everyone packing up their belongings in Iwatodai Dorm and ready to move on from their shared journey, a new Aigis-like android comes seemingly out of nowhere, causing havoc. Aigis sees one of her companions being harmed and is suddenly overcome with a need to protect them. A battle ensues in both a beautiful, newly animated cutscene and a playable combat encounter. The android relents when noticing her similarity to Aigis and allows herself to be beaten. Meet Metis: a new, stand-offish, powerful party member who can’t stop referring to Aigis as her “sister.” For some reason, all the exits from the dorm are now sealed. Everyone is confused about the whole affair, but one thing is clear. The Answer lies in the Abyss of Time, a large dungeon spawned underneath the dorm that the crew has no choice but to battle a new collective of Shadows through.
The Abyss of Time is divided into regions through a series of doors. The doors are also metaphoric, as reaching the end of each region reveals a short but seemingly important memory of one of the SEES members before they joined the squad. It’s often moving to see a character react to witnessing a moment from their past and unpack it with the rest of the team. The implied expectation after saving the world is that the cast would be free to move forward into a life of regimented normalcy, and it’s refreshing to see Episode Aigis’ story question the ease of that happy ending given the individual hangups and collective trauma left unresolved at the end of The Journey.
The Equation
Story aside, descending The Abyss of Time feels a lot like ascending Tartarus. The regions don’t have a distinct visual aesthetic; instead, they are divided into sections based on Tartarus’ zones. Don’t expect many new sights to see, or abilities to use for that matter. The team’s time off between facing the final boss of the base game and the start of Episode Aigis means they’ve let themselves fall back to Level 25. While this retreading of character progression and environments is baked into the premise, it unfortunately feels repetitive when measured against more modern standards of RPG expansions.
Thankfully, playing as Aigis does make for some minor, yet neat, differences. With her gun arm, Aigis can ambush enemies from afar. Sprinting before attacking produces a satisfying animation where she sprays bullets in a horizontal line before her. She also comes with some Theurgies (the glamorous limit breaks introduced in Reload) that differ from her original kit and weren’t available to the previous PC. Metis is also a fun inclusion as a powerful physical attacker with magic flexibility, useful support skills, and her own Orgia Mode install.
One of the major additions to the dungeon crawling is the inclusion of Monad Doors. They work differently than in the P3R base game, where their placements were sparse and they contained a series of unique, challenging encounters. This time, the Monad Doors appear more frequently, but you’ll always face the same “strong monsters” from their respective section of The Abyss. The interesting twist is that each floor with a Monad Door actually presents three doors offering a series of escalated challenges and greater rewards. So, depending on the door you enter, you’ll either face one, two, or three consecutive strong monster encounters without any break between them. You’ll have to choose wisely, weighing the strength of your party’s equipment and current SP.
Once you enter one of the doors (or if you leave the floor without entering any), you’ll be locked out of the remaining ones. It’s in your best interest not to pass up any of these opportunities, as the rewards include powerful equipment to prepare your party for the region’s bosses, materials to craft even higher quality equipment, and rare consumables. I encountered about five Monad Door floors per region. While the first two I entered always led to some engaging, nail-biting battles, the lack of encounter diversity made later ones start to feel rote. By the tail end of each region, I felt bored by executing the same strategies in these long fights, but also a sense of obligation to keep earning their rewards.
Despite all the fun I had with Episode Aigis, repetition is a stain on its premise. Not just repetition within the expansion, but from the base game. You’ll see the same monster designs and the same level layouts. The same Personas and the same abilities. I wish it at least started the characters off at a higher level so that by the end I was using the top-level Personas I never got to in the base game nor here. I appreciate the additions meant to infuse more flavor into the experience—such as occasional Link Episode hangouts between Aigis and her companions as they bond through objects found in the Abyss—but the expansion would have needed more of this variety to elevate itself to the level of essential DLC.
The Answer
Considering the combat-heavy nature of Episode Aigis, finding a difficulty sweet spot is an essential part of enjoying the experience for what it is. The original The Answer was truly hardcore (annoyingly so) in this regard, offering only one difficulty level which necessitated caution to prevent significant loss of progress, and grinding to reduce its probability.
Episode Aigis comes with all the generous bells and whistles of Persona 3 Reload. Die to a boss? Go ahead and retry the fight—free of charge. Want to maintain the bonuses you’ve picked up in a run? Spend some Twilight Fragments to recharge your party’s SP and keep going. Want to save just in case you do something stupid or something stupid kills you? Don’t worry: there’s teleporters between the dungeon and safe zone every three or so floors. Getting frustrated at any point? Just lower that difficulty.
At the risk of sounding like a Gamer, I dare say this slew of QoL features threatens to trivialize the tension central to a good dungeon-crawling experience. This was far less of a concern in the base Persona 3 Reload, as the balance in the gameplay loop between socializing and demon hunting made the desired difficulty of the latter truly in the eyes of the beholder. But starting Episode Aigis on Normal felt like a mindless waste of time coming from the base game.
Switching to Hard felt ideal for the first half, but as my party members gained more powerful features, the friction I wanted again disappeared—at least until a clunky difficulty spike at the end. Any SMT veterans looking for a significant challenge might even consider jumping straight into Heartless (the new name for Merciless). You can’t go back if you select it at the start and it removes the option for instant boss battle retries. In doing so, it provides a more traditional dungeon crawl that requires thoughtful mastery of the game’s systems, a constant consideration of risk/reward, and, yes, some good old-fashioned grinding.
I bother to comment on this because, ultimately, without the consistent engagement of strategic turn-based combat, Episode Aigis‘ progression can feel like a dull retread. The new Aigis-themed menu, animated cutscenes, and new additions to the soundtrack are all nice touches but not selling points. The story intelligently explores themes of grief and maturity while offering some valuable insights into its characters but is told too piecemeal to justify a playthrough alone. With that said, if you’re simply itching for more of Persona 3 Reload’s dungeon crawling or closure for its cast, there is a compelling 30 hours to enjoy behind this expansion’s flawed construction. For anyone curious enough, The Answer awaits.
