How to get the good ending in Persona 3 Reload

Getting the good ending in Persona 3 Reload requires making the right choice in the game’s sole branching narrative path.

You’re able to select one of the game’s two endings on New Year’s Eve, which will drastically change how the rest of the game plays out. Thankfully, the game does give you plenty of warning about this choice, presenting it to you weeks in advance.

In this Persona 3 Reload guide, we’ll break down the choices for the decision. We’ll also tell you how to get the good ending in Persona 3 Reload, and summarize what happens whether you get the good ending or the bad ending.

[Spoiler Warning: This post contains major spoilers for the endings of Persona 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 answers and social link requirements.]

Graphic: Polygon | Source images: Atlus/Sega

Should you kill or spare Ryoji in P3R?

Image: Atlus/Sega via Polygon

In the opening days of December, you learn that the mysterious transfer student, Ryoji, is not only Pharos from earlier in the game, but also Death itself. He explains that if you kill him on Dec. 31, the entire party will lose their memories and be able to live a normal life. That is until Nyx, the game’s real villain, essentially ends the world. He implores you to kill him and not try to defeat Nyx, as they’re unbeatable.

Killing Ryoji activates the bad ending for Persona 3 Reload, while sparing him gives you the good ending.

How to get the good ending in P3R: Spare Ryoji

Image: Atlus/Sega via Polygon

When you and Ryoji go up to your room on Dec. 31, say you’ll spare him. He’ll then transform into a Persona and beg you to end him once again. Deny his request a second time and you’ll set the real, good ending in motion. You’ll wake up in January with a few more days left of winter vacation and a new quest: climb to the top of Tartarus and defeat Nyx before the end of January. Following through on that quest will lead you to Nyx

Defeating Nyx will give you the canonical ending to Persona 3 Reload, the one that the Episode Aigis DLC — a remake of Persona 3’s The Answer expansion — will continue from when it launches September 2024.

How to get the bad ending in P3R: Kill Ryoji

So if sparing Ryoji gives you the good ending, what happens if you do what he wants and kill him? If you’d like to see the ending for yourself, you can make a second save on Dec. 30th and reload once you get back to the main menu. Or you can just watch the bad ending video above from Duck360Gaming on YouTube.

If you tell Ryoji you’ll kill him, you stand up, evoke your Persona, and the screen fades. The game then skips forward several months, all the way to March 4th, 2010. You, Junpei, and Yukari meet up outside of school, and make comments about a girl — Aigis — staring at you from a distance. The party doesn’t remember her and everyone just goes about their day like normal high schoolers for once.

At the assembly that marks the end of the school year on March 5, the group sits in the school auditorium and listens to a speech from Mitsuru. She gives a sad speech — showing how important her relation with the SEES crew was — before walking off stage. After a brief chat in the seats, Junpei and Yukari talk about Aigis again and then decide to drag you to karaoke.

And that’s it. It’s just some normal high school students who are blissfully unaware that the world is about to end, just like everyone else. The credits roll and your Persona 3 Reload career comes to a bittersweet — albeit unsatisfying — conclusion.