Persona 3 Reload: Every Block Of Tartarus, Ranked

Summary

• Replaces individual dungeons found in later games with climbing the tower of Tartarus for a year-long challenge.
• Thebel serves as the tutorial with exhaustive menus and explanations, making it a necessary but less exciting part of the game.
• Blocks like Yabbashah introduce new functions like Great Clocks to progress in the game, but can be difficult to navigate.

Persona 3 Reload does away with the individual dungeons emblematic of the series in later entries – you won’t be hopping from Palace to Palace in search of corrupt leaders or falling into the TV to save your friends, but rather, you’ll spend an entire calendar year climbing to the very top of the tower of Tartarus.

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Erupting from Gekkoukan High during the Dark Hour, it’s up to you and the SEES team to climb all 264 floors to reach the top before the final day of the game, but as you climb, not every block of Tartarus was created equal.

6 Thebel

Block One: The Tutorial Territory

Click here for our complete Thebel overview guide.

Persona is a series that likes to languish in its first few hours to help you get the hang of everything new or improved in that entry, but those first hours are rarely ever the best part of the game. You’re spending a lot of time learning the lay of the land, and you’re stopped several times along the way for someone to interject and show you what’s what.

Thebel is that level for Persona 3 Reload, as it was for the previous iterations of the game, and though Thebel has markedly improved since the P3P days, it’s still very clearly the tutorial. Mitsuru stops you every now and again to explain something new, the battles come with scores of menus to click through, and all of it is a bit exhaustive if this isn’t your first Persona rodeo.

5 Adamah

Block Six: The Grinding Grounds

Click here for our complete Adamah overview guide.

You’ll have spent the entire game working toward unlocking the Adamah block of Tartarus, as it’s the sixth and final one – and you need to push through it to be able to access the final level on the Promised Day so you can fight Nyx. There’s plenty here to do, with good loot to find to help you prepare for your epic final battle, and scores of Gatekeepers to help level you up quickly.

Outside that, though, there wasn’t much to Adamah. It has the honor of being the final, and the aesthetic vibe of the block portrays its heavenly vibe pretty well, but by the time you’ve reached Adamah, you’ve made choices to help you move into the final act of the game – unless you need to grind for some last-minute levels, Adamah is kind of just the technicality in the way of the end.

4 Yabbashah

Block Three: The Mechanical Maze

Click here for our complete Yabbashah overview guide.

This is the first of the two-part blocks in our list, meaning we spent a pretty good chunk of time in Yabbashah before putting it in fourth. You’ll unlock a number of cool new things in the Yabbashah block of Tartarus – it’s the first time you’ll find the Great Clocks that are capable of helping you immediately jump levels for any given teammate, and you’ll also encounter the first of your Monad Passages here as well.

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For as neat as both those new and improved functions are for Persona 3 Reload, though, Yabbashah itself can be a bit difficult to navigate. So much of your map is consumed by dead space on either side of hallways, but you may want to use the mini-map to navigate either way, since false turns and dead ends are everywhere here. It’s easy to get lost in Yabbashah, and now that the game is in full swing, we don’t want to dawdle.​​​​​​​

3 ​​​​​​​Harabah

Block Five: The Prismatic Prison

Click here for our complete Harabah overview guide.

Hopefully colors and patterns aren’t a distraction to you, because you’ll find them both in droves here in the Harabah block of Tartarus. Though the block has always been the most colorful of the bunch, which feels almost mocking given when you unlock it, something about the fully 3D environment in Persona 3 Reload makes it more of a headache than before.

Again without much going on in the way of story – this is where you’ll spend December – there’s not much to look forward to in Harabah other than the push further up the tower of Tartarus. Given the pacing of the story when you’re there, it feels like a colorful limbo before you push on into the next and final block. The headache is gave us on the way up was just a bonus.

2 ​​​​​​​Tziah

Block Four: The Gilded Goodbyes

Click here for our complete Tziah overview guide.

Tziah is another striking block but for a completely different reason than we mentioned above – instead of blazing colors and swirling patterns, Tziah is made almost entirely of gold. The floor, the walls, even the waterfalls in the walls, all of it is made entirely of gold. It can make exploring the block interesting, especially when you’re searching for the treasure hands here, but you’ll experience the heaviest parts of the story in Tziah.

It's the last time you’ll ever have new teammates to add into the roster and try out, with both Ken Amada and Shinjiro Aragaki joining SEES as your group pushes into the block, and they make a pretty good team. We won’t spoil anything, but smart teammate choices as you decide who to level in Tziah can be tough – the newest toys aren’t always going to last the longest.

1 Arqa

Block Two: The New Nightmare

Click here for our complete Arqa overview guide.

Maybe it seems a little odd to put the second block of Tartarus – the first complete block, with a second half – in the first spot on our list, but Arqa nails everything it sets out to do. The first time you enter after defeating Priestess and feeling like you’re getting the hang of things, you’ll be treated to spooky purple ambiance, twisting halls, and giant faces in the walls.

Not only is Arqa where so much changes for your SEES team setup, with Fuuka taking over communication and navigation so Mitsuru can join Akihiko with your team up on the battle front, but it’s the first time the game lets you loose from the tutorial, and did it ever pick a spooky place to do it. Arqa nails its haunting vibes and leaves you feeling like you’re being watched even after you left.

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