Persona 3 Reload is a careless remake of an incredibly delicate game that was not handled with the attention to detail and cautious touch that was needed to preserve its identity, thematic intent & tone. All of its DNA is supplanted with something purpose-made to be more palatable and take less thought or analysis to digest, and the game is far worse for it.

-The visual identity and core art direction of Persona 3: FES has been destroyed. There are no decisions in the artwork or rendering of the original Persona 3 that aren't intentional, and zero of those intentional choices are honoured or even really understood by the Reload staff. The tone set by the desaturated palette in the overworld and relatively flat, plain UI is supplanted with blown out colours and overanimated menus that only serve to half-way convert a game with its own identity into a different product that appeals to the market gathered by Persona 5. Neutral, drab lighting that communicated a sterile and uninviting angle on the setting is instead replaced with Anime-Unreal’s iconic flat coloured haze in every room and worldspace. Even characters’ body language communicated by their character art is lost as waist-up portraits illustrated from lots of different interesting or sometimes unflattering angles are swapped for neck-up mugshots. Cutscenes like the opening and ending have added dialogue and animation cues to let you know what to think and interpret out of everything happening on screen, and things that used to be cel animated are now very poorly replicated with in-engine animations, including stock scripting animations. ZERO of the original game’s tone is communicated anymore, and the foundation that tone was built on is replaced with something deeply incongruent for the sake of looking flashier and attention-grabbing like Persona’s previous entry. I really cannot stress enough - if there is anything else that you take from what you are reading, please understand that they have completely destroyed the visual identity of Persona 3 and replaced it with a blown-out parody of a game that once had a deeply subtle presentation.

-Every track from the original Persona 3 soundtrack has been destroyed. The mixing on each song is terrible, with nearly every track plagued by multiple competing lead instruments, terrible channel layers like excessive reverb or flange, and vocals sung by a vocalist who respectfully does not really lend herself to the vocal melodies of the songs she has to re-record. She cannot perform to the bar of vocal technique that Yumi Kawamura can. However, the original tracks made for Reload are great, and she shines on them. She will do an excellent job on Persona 6 and I can’t wait to hear her in the future when she can perform on tracks built around her presence. “Colour Your Night” and “It’s Going Down Now” have been the highlight of my playthrough.
-The voice direction is bad. A few core cast members have decent recasts that bring a lot to the performance, like Junpei. But most, like Akihiko struggle heavily, especially in scenes relying on strong emotion that were played more down to earth in FES. Akihiko’s original VA cameos as an adult in Reload - when they are in a scene together, Akihiko sounds older. Koromaru is a HUMAN making DOG noises. WHAT?? Many lines feel like they went with the first take. I recognize that hiring back the entire high-profile Persona 3: FES cast (Elizabeth, my wife, has retained her voice actor) would be unrealistic. However, Atlus’ continued preference for cheap, un-unionized voice actors clearly shows in their products. The Reload dub is mostly sub-par.

-The character writing in Reload is worse than the original in every area where the script deviates. Takaya is written to be a knuckle dragging moron in the additional Strega content. Characters that previously had interests & hobbies are somewhat flanderized to be predominantly “about” those interests as they’re converted to quirky anime traits instead of understated passions. This happens BADLY in Persona Q & Q2. It isn’t as bad in Reload, but it's similar and noticeable. The characters are a lot more immediately comfortable with eachother, more akin to 4-5, than they were in 3. Yukari especially took a huge hit in this regard by the rewrites - she’s far less aggressive and standoffish toward you, which was a very realistic and compelling angle to her character that is lost. The important part is that nobody leaves Reload better or as good as they were in FES/Portable, which means the writers failed, and the game is littered with these granular but cumulative failures.

-The gameplay of Persona 3 is destroyed. More specifically, Persona 3 established a unique identity within its gameplay that has been slowly chipped away into something else, both by subsequent Persona games (acceptable) and by additional releases of Persona 3 (not acceptable). There IS provided value in Portable’s player party control, despite this being at odds with the VERY thematically relevant Tactics decision made by FES. There is value in this more approachable option being available to gamers because it does not EXCESSIVELY compromise the gameplay identity of the game. It comes at the cost of thematic identity in a version of the game that is otherwise faithful to those concepts, so it ‘gets a pass.’ What is not OK is the degree to which Reload has rebalanced Persona 3 into a game that provides zero adversity whatsoever. Bosses do not punish you or take time to figure out, they’re balanced now around being easily surpassed with zero preperation. The game gives you bundles of high-value freebie items. There’s added mechanics like theurgy and Persona 5’s baton pass that are effectively free - they’re powerful options that greatly increase your damage per turn and they didn’t counterbalance the game around them. Fusion spells are STILL items. There are even provisions in place to, NO JOKE, ASSIST YOU in assuring every Social Link is completed before the game is over. Cannot make an example of “missing the point” harder than that. As with most modern games, the default difficulty’s INTENT is to provide zero adversity. You cannot choose to have little challenge, some real challenge, and lots of challenge anymore. You can choose zero adversity, zero adversity II, and a “hard” mode that is typically about half of what you would expect from a challenging game (or just flat number-tweaking, which is a disaster and true of Reload like most modern SMT releases).

Some comments focused on the opening/ending with spoilers marked to give better case-by-case examples of the subtlety being lost:
-Yukari in the opening - The original scene builds suspense by showing you something shocking you immediately want to see the conclusion of but dragging you away from it with interspersed cuts. But all of this is lost with Bladerunner-tier re-editing of the original scene script with zero cuts and a VOICEOVER??
-Adding a walking section where Makoto interacts with different effects of the Dark Hour is insane. A lot of ambiguity is applied to the way Makoto is ‘perceiving’ the Dark Hour in the original game and this is complemented by his dialogue responses to being asked about it. Not only does this change remove that ambiguity, it supplants it with something very concretely stupid; Makoto walking up to the coffins and asking “Is this a coffin…?”
-Ambiguity of Pharos’ existence is also IMMEDIATELY dispelled by his Alice in Wonderland schtick in a way that again removes the fantastic (literary term, not compliment) angle of the original game’s opening.
-ending spoiler adding a shot of SEES reaction to Aigis on the roof is so thoughtless and horrible. What were they thinking man
Edit: I made a mistake in wording here - SEES is shown in FES. I dislike that that shot was moved before credits and their reactions detailed/voiced. My mistake!

TL;DR play FES

Elizabeth my beloved, (FC) Throw > OMC > 66 > 214AB > 236236C > 66 > 5B > 2AB > 236CD [4] > OMB > 5BB > jc > j5B > jA > jC > 2B > j5B > 5B > 5C > 214A > jC (Awakening)