5/5 ★ – BARBELiTH's review of Persona 3 Reload : Episode Aigis -The Answer-.

This review contains NO spoilers. I had never played The Answer before, I had played Persona 3 Portable, which notably had cut that expansion. But I had heard about if from friends, enough to want to play it, to which my friends told me to "please don't." After I loved Persona 3 Reload as much as I did, there were the rumors that The Answer would be coming as an expansion, and as soon as it was confirmed, I was told I should play this remake instead of the original, to prevent me from pulling my hair out with FES's gameplay and uncontrollable party members. That is to say, this review won't be comparing this to the original expansion from Persona 3 FES, and instead talking about it from the perspective of a new player. And this new player loved it. This expansion is more gameplay focused in its runtime than story, but that isn't to say the story content is sub-par, far from it. Many of the story beats in The Answer I would say rival if not surpass some of the heights of the base game, and will stay etched into my mind for the rest of time. Most of the time you are playing this expansion will be gameplay though, and I am glad to say that this is probably the most fun I have had in a Persona dungeon. Episode Aigis is most comparable to a roguelike in its gameplay, with there being no social links or day life system in this expansion. Instead, the team will explore a new dungeon, which introduces new and much loved additions to an already great revamp of the Tartarus gameplay loop. In addition to new aspects in the dungeon regard, the loot system has also been redone, with a new focus on gear build making that shakes up your basic "pick which gear has the best stats" in favor of a more build based approach that I can't get enough of. This was an experience that greatly enhanced my enjoyment of the base game, and acts as a perfect epilogue/coda piece to the themes and gameplay that Reload had won me over with. In essence, while the base game deals with the concept of death and its forms, The Answer/Episode Aigis does the same with grief, in ways that will stay with me just as much as the base game moved me to tears. This, in my eyes, is the best kind of expansion to a game, one that has its own messages and gameplay loops that build off of the main one in new and exciting ways, while standing on its own as an invaluable piece of a greater whole that now feels incomplete without it.