https://www.powerpyx.com/persona-3-reload-100-walkthrough/

that's the only one I've found. more will probably come out in the coming weeks

Play the game without a guide. P3R has only been in the wild for a week. No one will have a guide yet. You’re better off just playing the game and enjoying it naturally. Otherwise you’ll probably be waiting at least 2-3 more weeks for a verifiably good guide.

I mean considering the game still hasn't passed its release date I doubt it

All depends on if you're trying to get all the achievements. Also, if you're going to play blind, at least look up a guide that explains the personas. The registration process and combinations screwed me my first run to the point where I just started over. Other than that, my only recommendation would be to do the Dark Hour runs all in one night. Gives you extra time to do the other activities.

Just go in blind. Youre not expected to perfect it your very first time

My only advice? Try to reach the highest floor you can before each full moon. Youll figure out what that means.

Also having a persona in your party that matches the person youre hanging out with gives bonus points. Like having a magician with kenji

I suggest going in blind like me. Admittedly I looked up a guide halfway through but only took like two advices from it and did a decent run in my opinion.

(STOP READING IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE ADVICE OR TINY SPOILERS FOR GAMEPLAY)

1, try to do all the floors in dark hour in one night so you can spend the other nights raising your social stats. There’s vending machines around the world with SP sodas to help refill and one of your party members heals you and there’s bunch of HP items in tower. 2, always go for money until you reach like a million yen.

3, register your personas at every opportunity and try to fuse as many personas as you can. I doubt you’ll be dumb like me and actually read but just in case here’s a warning. You can accidentally register your personas to a weaker version

Go in blind and have fun

Fusing personas into weapons can be quite beneficial near the beginning of the game for Auto-Tarukaja etc. Also some social links are kinda obscure or you have to go out of your way to begin them so I'd look up how to begin links you haven't started yet so you have more things to do during your free time.

this may be considered "cheating", so I don't know if you're willing to do this, but if you want to just straight up avoid the annoyances that the AI may present some times (mitsuru spamming marin karin, yukari spamming dia-based skills instead of media-based skills), there's a gecko code that allows you to control your party members (and also greys out the "Persona" option when you're not controlling MC).

If you're playing on original hardware (a PS2 or PS3) I honestly don't entirely know how gecko codes work, though I think they may require either a cheating device (such as a gameshark or something) or homebrew.

If you're playing on a PS2 emulator, this is hilariously easy, just put it into the "cheats" folder in your PCSX2 documents folder and then hit "enable cheats" in the menu.

Scan every enemy, set tactics memory in settings and use them.

Make sure to max out the Emperor SL to get Odin.

• People will try to convince to use only Akihiko,Aigis and Ken (may vary) but don't be afraid to use others, because in Persona games (3,4, and 5 at least) you get more experience when you use underleved teamates and if you only use the same characters you will eventually be overleveled and the game will give you less experience and besides you will encounter bosses in which your favorite team won't be as good as the team you may have ignored and since you ignored them they'll either die for not having enough hp or won't help much do to their low sp, this is why people say P3 is grindy, it isn't yu are just catching up
• Items that restore sp or hp (if not both) should be saved for when you really need them, in the long run it will be a life saver
• Don't forget that tactics exist, don't just set your team to act freely it may work in the begining (barely) but it will screw you over when P3 says "ok time to stop holding your hand". People tend to ignore this and blames the AI for their own bad leadership
• On days when you are tired you can go to the nurse to get free courage points once per day (go everyday after tartarus)
• You can see the order in which every combatant will act (R1) so plan your and your teamates moves by imagining what the oponent might do, unlike other Persona games you don't have direct control of everyone, you have to plan out the fight in your head give orders accordingly since you are the combat leader/strategist.
• The only thing you should honestly grind in P3 is money, find those chests and get as many yen as you can
• go to the arcade on nights when you don't go to Tartarus, it is expensive but it is the fastest way to increase social stats, trust me its worth it.
• When you get the message something is about to happen to "insert skill here" say no unless you don't need that skill, most of the time you will be dissapointed by what you get
• You can date all the girls but be careful of jelausy, first some context when you don't hang out with a Social link for 60 days their link will reverse, you can unreverse it by finding them and talking to them or by strenghtening your bond at the shrine. Ok now every time you hang out with a dateable girl ALL other girls that the game tells you might get jelous if you go out with another girl will get -15 day added to that 60 day counter, get that counter to 0 and your link will be reversed, what I do is get a girl to the point she would get jelous (let's call her G1) and then hang out with G2( girl 2/ some other girl), then G3 and then G1 again and continue the cycle... once you max her out she will no longer get jelous so G2 becomes G1 in the cycle and G3 becomes G2 and get another gir to become G3 and keep going (oh by the way you can still hang out with your bros as long as you hang out with one G(1,2 or 3 depending on the cycle) every 10 days (actualy its 13 but go with one G at least every 5 days because of days when the story will forbid you from going out/weekends/holidays/vacation/having bad memory XD). Basically as long as you keep your girls satisfied you can keep your harem.

The following is me "fixing"/adressing problems people tell me about the AI

Mitsuru uses Marin Karin way too much

• don't set her to act freely

The party members are "wasting" too much sp knocking down foes 1 by 1

• scan the enemy and set the one with the ma(multi) spell to full assault (the more enemy's with the same weakness will increase the chance of casting the multi-spell
• by the way they use the single spell to ensure they don't miss since single-spells have 99 accuracy and multi-spells have 95 accuracy, I know its not much better but to AI it is more so thats good

I set Yukari/Ken to heal/support and she isn't spamming multi-healing spells

• she/he won't unless more than 1 person NEEDS the healing
• she/he will prioratize (sinlge-heal) the one with least hp, specially if he/she is close to dying and everyone else above 70% hp
• best chance to get the multi-heal spell starts when everyone is at 65% HP or lower

How can I get Ken/ Yukari to revive my teamates?

• the uncouncious teammate will be brought back if the other teammantes are above 75% HP

feel free to ask anything I love this game and talking/typing about it :)

The phys/mag disparity in this game is so funny. It would actually be pretty balanced normally, but phys evolution is so much better than magic evolution for MC, and multi-hit skills have insanely inflated damage values...which both Kanji and Chie get, on top of the obvious Hassou Tobi

They even decided to give the dedicated mage a unique magic skill but STILL made it weaker than Brave Blade like what's up with that LOL

At least it's not P3R levels of difference

Level up Shinji as much as possible. He’ll be your game changer in end game

PSA P3 Reload is on Game Pass, alongside a lot of similar games like Expedition 33. 

This isn’t pokemon, in that you’re encouraged to gain new personas that are stronger, or fuse 2 or more in the velvet room to get stronger ones.

You absolutely need different personas because each carries different abilities that you’ll need to use to exploit the various shadows’ weaknesses. A well-rounded team is best.

Yes, you need to build up your stats, as the unlock later social links that affect your ability to fuse certain personas or make normal ones stronger.

I used Yoshitsune maxed out so I could focus on getting all of the Social Links I couldn’t get during my first run through

Personally I used the first playthrough for the gameplay and challenge and during the second one I just kinda steamrolled to focus on the story, you can do whatever tho :D

it's a single player game why would anyone frown at you for playing how you want

People do both.

I re-grind but put focus on personas that I didn't use before.

depending how good/invested a team/units you have.
you can do secret and hard in 1 run.
just focus on the "free" team and make sure they are strong enough to clear the stage with perfect.

*TLDR: for most of story/campaign just level your 5 best units (usually your UR units + gq + red gundam + what else you can use).. at about level 85++ most mecha can handle hard + secret, just make sure you have 1 -2 support for certain hard bosses.

Another tip for three staring hard stages: don't bother bringing a series team unless they're actually good. If you just have a random pile of under leveled R and SR units for the series, they're probably just going to die and drag your score down without helping.

Items and personas are very unbalanced. Those two things don't have much of a cooldown. You're pretty much almost immortal if you can pause the game before your party is wiped out. Maybe when you summon a persona the battle is still going but in slow motion? The game already does that sometimes when you switch personas. But the movement is very tiny and not enough to balance it.

As for items the game lets you buy so many healing items. I know this was done to make it possible to beat without a dedicated healer. But you can pause anytime and remove any damage you just took. Rescue Pill becomes the same as Balm of Life when you maxed out "Metaverse Media" in the Bond section. So the only way to die is if you run out of items, or one attack killed all four of your characters.

Merciless is so easy if you’re level 99 or have personas that are max stats and level 99. I got 100% achievements done yesterday. I feel it’s worth the risk and challenge. My go to tip would be to use Alice, Lucifer with lullaby and SP drain/Ailment boost ability, Thor, Yoshitsune, Mara, Forneus, Metatron and Dark Frost. So nah I wouldn’t want it rebalanced.

I started Merciless yesterday and honestly, just playing Ryuji and X > Charge Y spam keeps the enemies stunlocked, or spamming Y as Morgana against Wind weak enemies. I think you have a point, it's either ridiculous easy, or extremely hard. The party really does decide if they ever want to dodge attacks or not..

I think having enemies with dynamic weaknesses or susceptibilities would go a long way. Even having two different sets would make things more interesting.

Also, increased sp costs, or maybe no sp items, would add a lot.

I would honestly advise not playing 3 Atlus games in a row. Not because they're bad, but because they're all very long games and you're liable to get burnt out.

Metaphor's more distinct from the other two of course, but it's still a similar game all things considered.

If you want advice for P3R, though, focus on all the school SLs first since you have less time to do those.

Without saying anything else, the final boss of P3R can take a long time. A very long time. Even on lower difficulties, it can take an hour or more. (And on Hard and above, it turns into a marathon.) That's not including everything you do before you fight it, and after you fight it and the ending stuff.

Just something to keep in mind, especially since you have a kid.

Talk to everyone at the dorm every evening. Encourage Junpei when it gives you the dialogue option (late game it will have an effect, but just encourage him all throughout the game too, why not!)

The optional hangouts with friends will trigger again if you want to do something else on the day they first ask you to do it. So don't feel bad turning friends down when they ask to hang, you can do it again later and not miss anything.

Don't stress about finishing every social link, pick the ones you like. But I would suggest prioritising school social links whenever they are available, as you can't do them during school holidays. The "fat guy" school friend will be available outside of school time, however!

Take a break between Atlus ga-

Ah! You already did that. You've done the most important prep work, in that case.

Other than that, regularly check your character's phone. Not just to help figure out what to do, but also because some of the texts from your teammates can be genuinely funny and offer some insight on their character. (...Mitsuru.) Also regularly chat up people whenever they show up at the dorm. Jump on the group study projects when you can, because they bump your Academics and give you some great character skits. Choose your July 7th party wisely, and according to what you think would be the funniest. Prioritize whatever characters you like best, both with party members and social links. Odds are they'll reward your efforts. (My Mitsuru and Akihiko were both boss slayers towards the end of the game. The Goodest Boy also did quite well, and Yukari managed excellent support.)

Also, be ready for a slight tone shift. P5 is overall a joyful game with some flashes of dark and melancholy. P3 emphasizes the melancholy a bit more, though it doesn't take itself too seriously.