Earlier this year, I finally completed my first proper Persona game. For one reason or another, I have played five to ten hours in most of the main games and stopped playing. I don’t know why I never finished one until this year. Maybe I knew the long task ahead, and it scared me off, but whatever the reason, I finally made the time to enjoy one, and if I say so myself, it may have been the best one I played.
If you are wondering which Persona I am speaking of, it is Persona 3 Reload, which is a remake of Persona 3 from the PS2 and not the PSP version released a year or two earlier. I loved it so much that I finished it in a month, which is rare for me when it comes to an RPG these days. So you can imagine my excitement when I heard the game was getting an expansion pass with new story content. Being very excited would be an understatement, as I really enjoyed the story. There was one problem with this new story content: it was light on story and big on grinding.
I know what you are thinking, but the combat in Persona 3 Reload was fun, and I would agree with you. However, it was divided between other stuff, and you didn’t have to just grind the Tartarus. The Aegis DLC is just that, except this new dungeon is called something else. Now imagine doing another 100-plus floors of the Tartarus with nothing else in between, and that’s the Aegis DLC in a nutshell. That’s unfair, but unless you really love the grind in your RPGs, this is nothing but 20+ hours of grinding, less if you play on peaceful and try to dodge everything and everyone and just do the unavoidable fights.
Either way, it pales in comparison to the amazing main game. What makes it worse is that there may be 20 minutes worth of new story content taking place after the main game if you take out all the grinding that you have to do before the short story segments. 
What makes this DLC worse is the environment, which seems to be the same three recycled endlessly. I felt like it got to the point where I kept seeing the same environments the further I progressed. If the locations were a tad different from the main game, this may have been easier to accept, but it is just recycled from the main game and if you played the game as I did, then you may have had a big grind of floors at the end of the game because you didn’t think you needed to do them all for the story and did other things at night.
Combat, Grind, Combat
You have probably gathered this by now, but Persona 3 Aegis DLC has only one thing to do and that is to fight. Sure, there are opportunities to talk to your teammates, but besides a few sentences, I didn’t find the need to talk to them. I don’t know if the chats develop to more than a few sentences, but there was no incentive or reason to find out, as the DLC only makes going through the floors seem like the only thing to do.
The velvet room is also back, allowing you to fuse Personas, which is made better by the fact that your compendium transfers from the main game, meaning you can still build up your collection if you didn’t collect all of them; the downside is that those higher-level Personas can’t be used until you reach that level again as your characters drop to about level 30 or so and all skills have to be learned again, which is very annoying if you ask me.
Because I hate grinding in games, I decided to play on peaceful and run through all the levels. Which mostly worked wonders until I got to a boss, and the fights lasted forever because I was leveled. At this point, I had two choices: keep playing on peaceful difficulty and have long boss fights, or actually try and level up.
I chose the first option because, at this point, I was over fighting the same fight and exploring the same levels over and over again. Yes, it did mean the boss fights would last longer, but it did mean less grinding in a sense, not by much, as I still have to run through all those floors, of which there are over 100.
Conclusion
In the end, if you were a Persona 3 Reload fan of everything but the combat and grinding you are going to hate the Aegis DLC as it is combat-centric. On the other hand, RPG fans who love the grind are in for a treat as this DLC is all grind and can take up to 20-plus hours of grinding. I didn’t love this DLC, and that is coming from someone who enjoyed their time with Persona 3 Reload.
Honestly if you just want the story, maybe see if someone has compiled all the cutscenes for you to enjoy as a two-hour movie or less, I don’t think there was much story in the end. The only other thing this DLC has going for it is that it is available with a Game Pass subscription, but even then, I debated multiple times whether I wanted to finish it and spaced it out so much.
Persona 3 Aegis DLC is available now to purchase on PC, PS5, and Xbox; it is also available with a Game Pass subscription on PC or Xbox.
