persona 3 reload is about life and death. everyone under the sun has written a story playing around those themes, so it’s hard to stand out when that theme is your game’s one real focus.

persona 3, though, spends much of its runtime talking less about death in specific and more about those who’re left behind. how one grieves, how to take someone’s death in stride, how to live your life to the fullest while you still can.

every social link is spent focusing on that one, central theme. yuko finds what she wants to do in her life, yukari rekindles with her mother years after her father’s death, mitsuru carves her own path away from the one destined for her. each link gives you another opportunity to see a new facet of how these characters strive to improve their life and live it to the fullest.

the villains aren’t trying to take over the world for selfish reasons, they’re trying to rid the world of any will to live because their own has been ripped away from them. each character in your ragtag group has lost someone, lost a mother or a father or a friend, and they come together and help each other find their own purpose.

persona 3 is fantastic. it has its problems (mostly in its gameplay, tartarus specifically), but it executes a story that makes “the power of friendship” feel like a legitimate plot theme. its characters face death head on, and though they may be scared of their foe, they try their hardest to push forward. it’s a really well executed, well paced narrative that creates a unique plot out of rather overdone themes.