As I’ve done for P5 and P4, I wanted to make a post about the different party members in the recent P3 remake: Persona 3 Reload. This post contains the builds I had on each teammate at the end of my first playthrough. These builds can of course be changed however you want, if there are some skills I got rid of, that you’d rather keep.
In the following video, I went over each character, what they do and my thoughts on them as party members (check out the rest of my YouTube too btw). While it does contain a tier list format, it was very much intended as just a way to discuss each character, rather than their specific placements.
In the video, I probably did overrate/underrate some of the party members. I rated Yukari pretty highly simply because I found her to be the most convenient/comfortable Healer to use, but Ken has a lot of things going for him, so they can be fairly interchangeable. Just use whoever you prefer, and they can even be played in the same team, if you prefer a safer set-up. If you have a lot of healing items, you could also opt to not run either.
I rated Junpei a bit lower just because his consistency in landing crits felt a bit lackluster for me until later stages of the game when you have his Characteristics unlocked + an Apt Pupil accessory or weapon. But he’s still solid throughout, and late game has some of the highest damage output for a teammate. If I was making this list again, I’d probably move Koromaru up a tier, his combination of coverage moves, AoE Charge, Revolution, and (eventually) Masukukaja/Debilitate are way too good. The dog is OP.
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Yukari
Yukari is your standard Healer: she heals, removes ailments, lowers enemy agility, and heals even more. The main draw for Yukari are her characteristics, which reduce her SP costs for healing by 50-75%. This lets you have basically infinite healing for Tartarus runs and boss fights. Do you need that much healing? Probably no, but it’s still nice to have sometimes. Yukari’s 2nd Theurgy is a full team Concentrate (2.3x Damage in Reload), allowing her to support the team even more. Magic isn’t as strong as Phys in P3R, but I’m not gonna complain about that type of support skill on a healer.
Diarahan on this build could be swapped out, as Yukari’s characteristic makes full team healing so cheap as it is. But there’s not really any good move to replace it with (I’m never using Wind Break or ailments tbh). So I was fine keeping it here.
Junpei
Junpei is your Critical Hit specialist in P3R, with his Theurgy charging faster after landing a crit and his characteristic increasing his Critical Rate & Damage. Junpei can benefit quite a bit from gear, so getting the Omega Drive accessory (available as a reward for saving the missing person in Tartarus Floor 177) or his Ultimate Weapon (Masakado’s Katana in the Antique Store) would be pretty good for him, providing Apt Pupil (2x Crit Rate). Another great mid-game accessory for Junpei are the Slash Bracers (Slash Boost) from the Antique Store.
I didn’t keep Junpei’s Strike attack on this build (Gigantic Fist), as late game the damage on it isn’t impressive and I have MC/Akihiko/Aigis for Strike.
Akihiko
Akihiko can be one of the most misunderstood characters in P3R, simply because the wording on his Theurgy condition is awful. In-game it states, “After strengthening himself, his fighting spirit rises”. This makes it seem like you have to use Aki to buff himself, but how it actually works is: whenever Aki’s turn begins, if he has any type of buff on him, his Theurgy charges faster. Any teamwide buff works for this, making Akihiko have one of the fastest charging Theurgies.
His final characteristic Buff Amp doesn’t specify it’s value either, but it actually gives a 1.3x Boost to any type of buff. This means that when Akihiko has an Attack Buff, instead of the normal 1.4x Damage, he’ll do ~1.82x Damage.
All this means Akihiko will be one of the highest damaging party members you have, and he works with either Phys or Magic. His support options of Atk Down/Agi Up aren’t the best out of the team, so he’s definitely not a must pick character, but he’s very solid.
The Double Ziggurat weapon (Strike Amp) and Strike Bracers accessory (Strike Boost) help his physical damage a lot. Don’t use Evil Gloves (his “Ultimate Weapon”) on Akihiko, if MC has a Persona with Auto-Mataru/Maraku/Masuku, that weapon does literally nothing. I did keep both the Single Target and AoE Electric skills on Akihiko, but one of them could be replaced with Shock Boost.
Mitsuru
Mitsuru is your main Magic damage dealer throughout the game. Because of how skewed Reload is in favor of Phys, Akihiko/Junpei/Aigis will generally out-damage her, but she has some other things going for her. The support skill of Rakunda/Marakunda lowering enemy defense is super nice to have, being a reliable way to increase your whole team’s damage by 40% in any situation.
Her characteristic increases the Critical Rate of the whole party on enemies inflicted with an ailment. If you use the “Assassin Website Note” (from Club Escapade in September) on the dorm PC, you can acquire the ability to put Distress on enemies automatically when you ambush them. This lets you have a decent crit rate boost in almost every random encounter. Ailments are pretty much never useful for bosses, so that aspect of Mitsuru’s kit definitely takes a hit in those situations.
For Mitsuru to do max damage late game, you’d want to have the Kokuseki Senjin weapon (Magic Ability) and Varna Bracers accessory (Ice Amp) from the Antique Store. On this build, I did remove Neuro Slash as it doesn’t do much damage. I kept Ice Break as many late game enemies block Ice, but it could be replaced with Freeze Boost.
Aigis
Aigis is your go-to buffer and Pierce damage dealer in the game. She also gets Resist Phys, Enduring Soul, Insta-Heal and the highest base Endurance stat for any party member, making her very tanky. Aigis’ best armor has a Null Ailments passive, which is why I didn’t keep Insta-Heal on this build. Aigis is pretty straightforward, using Phys attacks charge her Theurgy, her characteristic increases the damage of said Phys attacks, and you have Atk/Def buffs available to use.
Koromaru
Koromaru is simply one of the best party members in the game. As soon as you get him, Koro is able to use 2 Theurgies, with the 2nd one, Power Howling, being a full party Charge. This is, in my opinion, the strongest support move in the game, as Phys is so good in Reload, and it lets any party member do 2.3x more damage with their next Phys attack.
He gets coverage options in Fire, Dark, Slash, Almighty, and you can even get a weapon in the mid-game (Hazakura in the Antique Store) that turns his basic attack to Wind affinity, letting him hit 4 weaknesses. Revolution boosts your whole team’s crit rate. Masukukaja and Debilitate come pretty far in, but they add a lot to Koro’s support skill set. Last thing to note about Koro is, Getsu-ei is a lot stronger than Tempest Slash when you are close to a Full Moon. And since pretty much every relevant fight happens on a Full Moon day, it’s a lot better to keep. Also, it has higher crit rate (15% vs 8% base chance).
Ken
Ken is your second Healer, and he does get a number of different moves in his kit. He gets Electric, Light and Pierce coverage moves, so he’s able to hit more weaknesses than most party members. I didn’t keep Vile Assault on this build, but you can still get Pierce knockdowns with Ken’s basic attack. Most of the time, I’d use MC/Aigis/Junpei for Pierce so I opted to keep more of Ken’s support skills. I didn’t keep Samarecarm either, as revive items are fairly accessible, so the skill slot felt better used on other stuff.
Ken has screens for Tetrakarn and Makarkarn, and his 2nd Theurgy takes this one step further, fully healing and reviving all teammates, as well as providing 1 layer of each screen for everyone. This is a great Theurgy, and if you keep Ken below 50% SP, he can get it back pretty quickly. I didn’t value this Theurgy as much as other people might, because I rarely felt like I needed this much defense in the game, but I can see why others might value it a ton.
You can see my video above for more thoughts on Ken, but he’s definitely a great Healer/Support, and what skills you keep on him are very much up to personal preference. One skill I didn’t talk about in the video was Dekaja. Dekaja is a good move, letting you remove any buffs enemies have. But, for most of my playthrough, I played by using debuffs very often, so when enemies buffed themselves, it would only put them at neutral. And Dekaja doesn’t do anything if they’re neutral. So again, it was something I didn’t actually get much use out of, but depending on how you play/who you use, it could offer more value.
If you got this far, thanks for reading! I’ll definitely be making more videos/posts for Persona 3 Reload, so be sure to check out my YouTube and some other posts I have linked here. Cheers.
