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  1. Games
  2. JRPGs
  3. Persona 3 Reload

JRPG speedrunner destroys Persona 3 Reload's hardest difficulty in under 10 hours in one of the most impressive displays of button mashing I've ever seen

News
By Catherine Lewis published 22 March 2024

You can usually expect a normal run to be over 60 hours long

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Persona 3 Reload
(Image credit: Atlus)
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Persona 3 Reload is far from what you'd consider to be a short game. Much like the majority of the Persona series, players can expect to spend hours of their time plugging away through the lengthy story, interacting with characters, and engaging in side-content. 

Although HowLongToBeat estimates that your average run of Persona 3 Reload will probably take roughly 61 hours to complete, you can expect it to go on for much longer than that depending on how many extra things you do along the way. That's why it's so fascinating to see runs go in the exact opposite direction, as one speedrunner has now managed to complete the entire game, true ending and all, in under 10 hours. 

The feat was pulled off by YouTube creator FurryWulfz, who completed the lengthy RPG in nine hours, 51 minutes, and 53 seconds, to be exact. She also did the whole thing on the Merciless difficulty setting – the hardest of the bunch, which isn't for the faint of heart even when you're not racing against the clock. Not only did she avoid using skips to jump further ahead into the game, but no powerful DLC Personas were used to defeat enemies faster, and as it wasn't a New Game Plus run, the speedrunner didn't have any previously-acquired items to work with. 

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Beating the Merciless bosses so quickly is impressive enough as is, but arguably the main challenge of a Persona 3 Reload speedrun is the sheer amount of text that you need to flick through. Although FurryWulfz made good use of the game's fast-forward option to speed through most of it, she was still very much on the ball when it came to rapidly mashing through all the dialogue options to ensure that no precious time was wasted. She's clarified that she wasn't using a turbo button to do this for her, either. 

It's a really interesting run overall – you'd be forgiven for guessing that it might involve skipping all of the optional content like relationship-building and gardening, but that's not the case, or at least not all of the time. During the run, FurryWulfz manages to max out her social link rank with track team manager Yuko, frequents the arcade in Paulownia Mall to boost the stats of her Personas, and spends plenty of time working part-time jobs for more money and Social Stats.

At the time of writing FurryWulfz is the world-record holder of this speedrun category, having managed to cut over an hour off her previous record, which was almost 11 hours long. We'll just have to wait and see if anyone else is brave enough to take on the challenge.

Be sure to take a look at our list of the top 25 best RPGs to find more great games to play.

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CATEGORIES
Xbox Series X PS5 PC Gaming Platforms Xbox PlayStation
Catherine Lewis
Catherine Lewis
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Deputy News Editor

I'm GamesRadar+'s Deputy News Editor, working alongside the rest of the news team to deliver cool gaming stories that we love. After spending more hours than I can count filling The University of Sheffield's student newspaper with Pokemon and indie game content, and picking up a degree in Journalism Studies, I started my career at GAMINGbible where I worked as a journalist for over a year and a half. I then became TechRadar Gaming's news writer, where I sourced stories and wrote about all sorts of intriguing topics. In my spare time, you're sure to find me on my Nintendo Switch or PS5 playing through story-driven RPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona 5 Royal, nuzlocking old Pokemon games, or going for a Victory Royale in Fortnite.

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