Right away, I am docking 1 whole star based entirely on Atlus lying about not intending to release The Answer. Also the fact this is 30 dollar DLC when it was in the base disc of FES. You win that round, FES purists. (Like base Reload, I played on Hard. I did not fight Joker.) Your enjoyment of this DLC hinges on 1 major question: do you REALLY like the combat system of Persona 3 Reload? If so, then you will get a lot of enjoyment of this, as combat is the central focus with story being given to you in pieces until they flood you with it at the last 2 hours. If you don't, you're gonna have a bad time. From this point on, when I say "The Answer," I am referring to Episode Aigis as well as they're primarily the same in all aspects. Combat and the exploration of the Abyss of Time is the central focus here. There are events when you acquire certain items to obtain traits you also had on characters in the main story, but beyond that this is a DLC light on story until the end. That's not to say the story parts we do get are bad. No, when the story takes center stage, it's good, it's just all the fighting and running around you need to do to get there that could slowly whittle away at whether or not you want to keep pushing on. For the people who played Persona 3 more for the life sim stuff and less the combat system, I'm going to use a point touted by people in the past. If you really, really don't want to go through 100+ more floors of a dungeon like Tartarus, I would advise just watching the cutscenes on YouTube. The constant encounters can honestly feel like a slog, especially for those who weren't big on RPGs in the first place. Outside of that, Ken got the glowup of the century. No longer locked to being unusable for about half the game, he can actually be used from the start. In exchange, however, Yukari was nerfed to oblivion. Ken gets Mediarama very early on. Yukari doesn't get it until around Level 50 or so, and since Metis gets Garula and Garudyne, you don't need Yukari much anymore. Ken's second Therugy, once you eventually get it, is amazing. Koro also saw a bit of a nerf since Power Howling, is second Therugy, isn't given to you at the start and his decent Slash skills that scaled based on moon phase are gone. Ken at least gets Myriad Arrows later down the road if you don't want/need to use magic. Like base Reload, with the right setups, you can very easily turn the lategame into "phys nuke simulator" with Seigfried and I eventually added Masakado to the mix. The equipment with random benefits behind Monad Doors was also a nice addition to make the phys nuking even better, since I got Auto-Charge accessories for Metis and Junpei, who turned into wrecking balls of death against anything that didn't block or repel phys. As someone who doesn't hate Reload's combat, I will admit, the overload of fighting did slowly start to ware me down a bit in terms of motivation to finish. I only died once in my whole playthrough because Junpei crit me with his Therugy, and otherwise had little trouble pushing through encounters. While the story is worth it for closure of Persona 3's story, it really depends on the person deciding to push their way through this one when the amount of story content is so light until the end. Even so, in a way, I am glad I was finally able to experience The Answer in some form. I know the purists suddenly love The Answer because of their hatred for Reload as whole and therefore hate Episode Aigis, but those people treat Nocturne like a 11/10 game and act like anything else is the worst game ever made. Anyway, hopefully this is the last time I talk about the purists. (Also I rounded up my final playtime to about 29 hours since Erebus + cutscenes probably took 30+ minutes).