How to get a happy ending in Persona 3 Reload

Obtaining the good end in Person 3 Reload requires making the right choice in the game’s only branching story path.

You can select one of the two endings to the game New Year’s Eve, which will drastically change how the rest of the game plays out. Fortunately, the game gives you ample warning of this choice and presents it to you weeks in advance.

In this Person 3 Reload guide, we’ll break down the choices for the decision. We will tell you too how to get to the happy ending Person 3 Reloadand summarize what happens regardless of whether you get the good ending or the bad ending.

(Spoiler warning: This post contains major spoilers for the end of Person 3 Reload. If you want to stay as spoiler-free as possible, bookmark this guide and return to it once the leader wakes up on the morning of 12/31 in-game. In the meantime, check out our guides for classroom responses and social link requirements.)

Should you kill or spare Ryoji in P3R?

Image: Atlus/Sega via Polygon

During the opening days of December you will learn that the mysterious transfer student, Ryōji, is not only Pharos from earlier in the game, but also Death himself. He explains that if you kill him on December 31, the entire party will lose their memories and can live a normal life. That is until Nyx, the game’s real villain, essentially ends the world. He begs you to kill him and not try to defeat Nyx, because they are unbeatable.

Kill Ryoji activates the bad ending for Person 3 Reloadwhile sparingly he gives you the good end.

How to get a happy ending in P3R: Spare Ryoji

Image: Atlus/Sega via Polygon

When you and Ryoji go to your room on December 31, say you spare him. He then turns into a Persona and begs you to end him again. Reject his request a second time and you set the real, good ending in motion. You wake up in January with a few more days of winter vacation and a new quest: climb to the top of Tartarus and defeat Nyx before the end of January. If you continue that search, you will end up there Nyx.

If you defeat Nyx you get the canonical ending of Person 3 Reloadthe one who the Episode Aigis DLC – a remake of Person 3‘S The answer expansion – will continue from launch in September 2024.

How to get the bad ending in P3R: Kill Ryoji

So if sparing Ryoji gets you a happy ending, what happens if you do what he wants and kill him? If you want to see the ending for yourself, you can make a second save on December 30 and reload once you get back to the main menu. Or you can just do it look at the bad ending video above Duck360Gaming on Youtube.

When you tell Ryoji you’re killing him, you get up, summon Persona, and the screen fades. Then the game jumps ahead several months, all the way to March 4, 2010. You, Junpei, and Yukari meet outside of school and make comments about a girl – Aigis – who is staring at you from a distance. The party doesn’t remember her and everyone continues to act like normal high school students for once.

At the meeting marking the end of the school year on March 5, the group sits in the school auditorium and listens to a speech by Mitsuru. She gives a sad speech – which shows how important her relationship with the SEES crew was – before leaving the stage. After a short conversation on the chairs, Junpei and Yukari talk about Aigis again and then decide to drag you along to karaoke.

And that’s it. They’re just some normal high school students who are unaware that the world is about to end, just like everyone else. The credits roll and yours Person 3 Reload career comes to a bittersweet, if unsatisfying, conclusion.