The best persona game, period. Its themes of struggling to integrate with society as an adult speak much more clearly to me then the stories of later entries in the series.
on top of that, there's some of the most challenging and rewarding gameplay in the franchise. everyone in persona 2 can use every persona, so having the right set up of personas is critical to success in boss fights, which will more than likely fuck your shit up if unprepared. The translation is wonky at points, as most of the spell names are very literally translated, but compared to revelations: persona its night and day, as there's no censorship or Americanization here. all in all this is one of my favourite JRPGs of all time and a contender for one of my favourite games period.

The Persona series is no stranger to follow-up games that further explore the story, setting, and characters of each numbered sequel. Among them, Persona 2: Eternal Punishment is unique. It's not a rhythm game, it's not a fighting game, it's not an action-RPG, but rather a full proper sequel that effectively qualifies as the second half of a duology, carrying on Innocent Sin's mechanics and themes in a way that feels like a natural progression. Two halves of a whole.

Eternal Punishment is even further differentiated by how it shifts the narrative focus away from teenagers for the first and only time in the franchise, instead putting the player in control of a group of adults with decidedly adult problems. Maya (former party member turned silent protagonist) works a full-time job writing for a fashion magazine, her roommate Ulala was conned out of a substantial amount of money by her boyfriend, Baofu is a professional extortionist, and even returning characters from Persona 1 are now adults who have far more weight placed upon their shoulders. What is normally portrayed as a sort of out-group in the Persona series - often times antagonistic or simply incapable of appreciating what teenagers go through - is instead represented in a different light. Maybe adults are disconnected from the troubles of youth, but likewise, teens don't know how difficult being an adult can be.

"Is it hard being an adult? No, nevermind... Forget about it..."

"What about you?"

"....."


"It's the same. Nothing feels good. The pain just keeps growing..."

I mean, a key plot point is that "society" is literally Jokerfying people. I'd love for another Persona game to feature a cast of 20-to-30-somethings who are too busy getting wasted to form Social Links. Ain't nobody is making friends after 30. Unfortunately, even if Atlus did this, I'm sure they'd find some way to put you on the other end of the high schooler-dating-adult dynamic. Would that be more creepy? Ah, I'd rather not think about it.

Overall, I enjoyed the cast dynamic better than the first game, and I found it resulted in some really fun dialog options when attempting to negotiate with demons. The rumor system also feels more robust, though still not quite as in-depth as I'd like to be. There's so much potential there, but I can see why they weren't able to live to it at the time. At least it's better here than it was in Innocent Sin, and t's definitely worth fussing with enough that you're able to unlock the secret Nekomata hiding in the detective agency's bathroom. The battle system is pretty much unaltered, so you'll probably get the same mileage out of it, though I did find Eternal Punishment to be more challenging overall, which is appropriate if you treat this as the second half of a single game as I did. Going from Innocent Sin straight to this feels good, and that's probably the best way to approach Eternal Punishment, especially considering the plot won't really make a whole lot of sense without the context of the last game. I can't imagine jumping into this back in the year 2000 with no way to appreciate the story of Innocent Sin, there's so much here that is set up prior to the start of the game, and cameos by Innocent Sin's party members would just feel hollow without all the emotional baggage of the first game.

If you have the time and the wherewithal to dig up the Innocent Sin English patch (I'll be damned if I can find it now...) and are willing to grab a PSX ISO for Eternal Punishment, and you have an interest in PlayStation era Shin Megami Tensei games, then I'd strongly suggest seeking both parts of Persona 2 out and playing them as a pair. Of course, it would be way easier if Atlus would just port these to modern consoles, but given their track record, they'd find some way to fuck that up.

I like to tell people that Persona 1 is a Shin Megami Tensei game, Persona 2 is a Final Fantasy Game, and Persona 3 is a Persona game. Eternal Punishment complicates this little mantra significantly, because it is WAY more of a Shin Megami Tensei game in its design than Innocent Sin is.

When I say that, I mean it has more Matadors. A "Matador", for the record, is when Atlus stops the player with a mandatory boss who is clearly meant to be defeated in one particular way which will almost certainly require grinding. The bosses can be defeated without employing the one, clear solution, yes, but doing so is a miserable experience, and often one that leans heavily on RNG.

I hate Matadors. They are probably my least favorite thing about the entire wider SMT franchise. This, I realize, is far from universal. Many lovers of SMT are drawn to it specifically because of these puzzle bosses challenging them to rifle through their drawer until they find a suitable key. I however despise being sent away to spend potentially several hours sourcing new party members, and several more in trial and error if I don't open up the wikis and charts. I hate being told to "go get the thing." I want to be able to figure out a solution with what I have, but in Eternal Punishment and often elsewhere in SMT, "what I have" is barely capable of inflicting any damage at all.

Over the course of Eternal Punishment, on the PSP's Normal mode, despite dutifully playing out all of my prescribed random encounters on my way through every dungeon, I had to grind intensely at four separate points in the story. When I say "had to" I do not mean that I had to do this to match up to the hilariously inflated level ranges that online guides always provide. I remained ten or more levels under every boss's level and every guide's recommendation for the entire run. I had to grind like that just to keep up with being UNDERLEVELED. In order to fuse the personas that could give me the puzzle boss gimmick keys I needed and actually be useful with them, I often needed to slam out a full ten levels. I can and do hold this EXP curve against Eternal Punishment. This is a Persona 1 level of keep-up grinding that is on display by the end of the game. I'm sure that the veterans who knew about the double experience fortune... thing that you can do from the start and who spent time hunting down every rare encounter and who tracked down all the sidequests experienced a lot less of this, but even if that remedies the situation, having such things be necessary to finish a playthrough isn't great either.

To rub more salt in the grinding wound, players need EXP, yes, but they also need cards, and they cannot get those two things at the same time. The negotiation card grind is a completely parallel activity that cannot be done simultaneously with actually killing things for EXP. This means that pretty much every time there's a grind to be done, there are actually two grinds to be done... and that's if you don't have to fish for material cards from rare encounters.

If I did not have access to a great auto-battle system, the ability to turn off battle animations, and an emulator's fast-forward function, I imagine that I would not have finished Eternal Punishment, and that would have been a massive shame, because its story is at least as good as Innocent Sin's and it's better paced. It walks a wonderfully fine line between reusing old environments and inventing new ones, and I'm so glad that I played it. I just can't see myself wanting to do it again.

I actually lowered the entry bar on my silly little "five-star club" in order to let Innocent Sin into it. It got away with it because while some of its systems were definitely rough, they could mostly be ignored, and the PS1 version kept things engaging enough when those questionable systems WERE being ignored that the ultimate experience was still fantastic. I certainly enjoyed my time with Eternal Punishment, but not without some very significant things repeatedly getting in the way. Even still, I recognize that a lot of my grievances are tied to my preference for difficulty being delivered IN battles, rather than scavenger hunting outside them. There exists a legion of players who love the latter, and I'm not about to argue with them.

I admire Eternal Punishment's commitment to the systems that Innocent Sin so overlooked, but I have to admit, I had a better time when they were largely being ignored.

I honestly have a lot less to say about Eternal Punishment as I did with Innocent Sin. I found the game to be enjoyable, but definitely did start to grow dull toward the middle to end sections, and it didn't pick up much in the conclusion for me.

I think much of this has to do with a lot of the story being retreading of Innocent Sin, with a lot of the structure being entirely beat for beat recreations of events in Innocent Sin. There was nothing offensive, but very few standout moments that had me feeling satisfied. I'd say that the major problem I had was the emotional throughline felt weak to me, as it was largely pushed toward Tatsuya who is not present through most of the game and story until the very end. While it didn't have anything as offensively bad or gross as the nazis, or the wasted potential of the Masked Circle in the first game... It also just felt lacking. Such as finding the fortune telling to be weaker than the wish granting and shadow men scenario in Innocent Sin. Again, just an alright and passable story that didn't grip me as much as I would have liked.

As far as the main cast: While I did enjoy Katsuya and Baofu and their bickering, I didn't really feel much for Ulala or Maya, who was weakened greatly with her voice being taken away. Maya still served as a better protagonist that Tatsuya in my opinion, but making her silent was a large mistake. As a result, with it largely being the four characters through most of the story, I felt their chemistry could have been stronger. With Maya silent, there was no fun banter with Ulala with her, and instead the best banter Ulala gets is with Baofu. Katsuya and Baofu have their moments with their morals ending up on opposite sides given one is a detective and one is a vigilante, but there also wasn't much with Baofu and Maya. Katsuya's crush on Maya was cute however. Tatsuya himself felt like he was written into being too gloomy, and while it makes sense in this scenario and with the themes of maturing and adulthood, it does take away other aspects of his character from the past game with him making goofy sounds to demons. I had gone with Nanjo route for story, and Nanjo largely was just the same as he was in P1, but I felt he had less chemistry with the EP cast than Yukino did with Maya in IS. As a result, it often feels like there are 3 1/2 party members for the full game, with Ulala, Katsuya, Baofu, and silent protagonist Maya. I would have liked the party to have a stronger connection, which probably would have helped with Maya no longer being silent, and Tatsuya opening up more in the end game.

The gameplay was largely the same, with a bit more difficulty put onto boss fights so they weren't as braindead as they were in Innocent Sin. I found the game to be a good blend of difficulty for the limited combat system, only finding some aspects to be more annoying and not well thought out. Such as the Old Maid skill being something that bosses could spam rather than having a cooldown or trigger to activate, and that some enemies had skills that could completely drain your wallet. In that sense, they just felt more mean-spirited than difficult. Beyond that, my thoughts from Innocent Sin's gameplay is largely the same. It was serviceable, was an improvement to problems in P1, still miss the grid system, but still doesn't reward exploiting weaknesses as much as SMT games, or future Persona games. Leading to using your favorite spell over and over again generally being the best strategy.

Overall, Eternal Punishment is mostly a lot more of Innocent Sin, but without the offensive parts of it. It has a decent story, a decent cast of characters, and decent gameplay for the time it came out in. Though, I think it does lack the strong emotional core and the highlights of Innocent Sin that I liked about it. In this sense, Eternal Punishment was fun, but nothing standout to me. Compared to Innocent Sin's constant highlights and low points, Eternal Punishment was just a steady ride from beginning to end. 3.5/5

"There are good things even when you become an adult... Just a few..."

"This is... the burden of sin"

might be a bit more personal of a review at the start than i intended but oh well! also dragged on new-persona a bit more than i wanted but i'm keeping it in because i find it important to my thoughts on the game

i think i played eternal punishment at the perfect time in my life. i'm a largely aimless adult who thought they knew what they wanted out of life but is currently just in a state of trying to find something that makes sense, something to hold onto and give me a direction. at the same time, i'm only 20 years old at the time of playing the game and writing this, and more than an aimless and confused adult, i'm a scared kid who doesn't know and isn't ready for what being an adult entails. because of this, i've never really related more to a cast of characters in a game more than the cast of eternal punishment.

if you know anything about persona it's probably persona 4 and 5, which uh. you can see my reviews on those games to find out how i feel about them. their casts are of teenagers whose biggest problems never seemed to be anything that i could relate to, other than futaba who is autistic and has trauma, but even then there's this thin layer of tropiness on every character so you can't even relate to them past a superficial level of recognizing a small bit of yourself in them for the sake of doing the bare minimum to be hip and relatable teenagers.
in p2ep however, you have a group that amounts to a directionless adult, an adult who is questioning his direction, an adult who lost his way, and an adult who is too absorbed in the direction she took to really go any other way (she is the weakest example of the theme). later on, you also get (in my playthrough at least, there are two persona 1 party members you can choose between later on and i chose nanjo) an adult who found his way and has an experience that strengthens his resolve, and a teenager who is deeply afraid of being alone, and is scared of what becoming an adult is going to mean for him.

the party in eternal punishment are all handled so well and the way they interact with each other feels just as real as the friends in innocent sin. its a palpable feeling where these characters are in their lives and careers and how happy they are with it and i love it, it made me feel like maybe there is a way for me to claw my way out of the uncertainty of early adulthood, a way for me to... Change My Way.

sorry

aside from the characters, the narrative is also a great continuation of innocent sin and the original persona (but mostly innocent sin). you get really nice conclusions and additions to the characters from the first game sprinkled throughout, and seeing as it is a sequel to innocent sin, a lot of content that is greatly benefited by having played that game first. whereas innocent sin ends in a sorrowful and hopeless note for these kids who didn't do anything to deserve it, eternal punishment highlights that hopelessness at first, but ultimately shows it all through a lens of hope. i won't spoil much but these characters get mostly happy endings and they get to move on with their lives and find a place and direction they can be happy with, and after playing 2 games i would hope i at least get to feel a little nice about what happens in the end.

gameplay wise, eternal punishments psp port is a lot better than the psp port of innocent sin. a lot of minor quality of life features make the battle system a lot more fun to mess with and it isn't so awful that you're going to be begging for a visual novel adaptation. it's honestly one of the more fun turn based systems in a jrpg i've played even if near the end i started to get a little bored, at least of the random encounters and some reoccurring bosses. the dungeon crawling is also a lot better in this one aside from a certain dungeon near the end of the game. it's hardly ever aimless and frustrating like i felt innocent sin could be.

overall, eternal punishment is an amazing game and a perfect finale to innocent sin, and it's a shame that persona just never was this good or real again. maybe with a new director to the series we could see a return to this style of storytelling and presentation in the series, but with how popular the newest games are and how prominent the dating sim elements are, i don't see that happening sadly. it's not all bad though, because these old games, or in the case of the original and the psp port of innocent sin, the stories, hold up incredibly well and far surpass their younger peers. i implore anyone who feels like they can't get into modern persona or just anyone who wants a good jrpg to sink a few weeks into to play this duology, i promise you won't be disappointed.

Oh where to start with this title. I'll keep it short like usual. Persona 2 Eternal Punishment is a game that I really adored a lot about such as the music, art direction, and gripping narrative. By the end, I grew very attached to all of the characters in my party. However, the game has one gargantuan issue that holds it back which is the gameplay. While not exactly bad by any means, Persona 2's combat is grindy and frustrating.

Ultimately, am I giving Persona 2 Eternal Punishment a lot of slack for poor gameplay? Yes. But that just goes to show how high quality every other aspect of it is.

It's okay to feel guilt, regret, or to yearn for something long since lost. It's normal for traumatic experiences to affect you as a person, or to feel that your actions mean that something is entirely your responsibility.

But you don't have to bear the burden alone. There'll always be someone who cares, or wants to help, and things will eventually get better.

In these turbulent times, the Persona 2 duology provide some powerful, meaningful messages that are more important to abide by now than they possibly ever have been. So, let's be positive, everyone.

my new favorite persona game with the best characters, best story, and best ending. i was a mess by the credit roll

combat is such a huge improvement over the previous games. extremely challenging and rewarding at the same time. its so satisfying to see one of your fusion moves fuck up an entire squad of 5 enemies but random encounters can just as well kill you and squad wipe you if you're not careful. not to mention it is soooo much faster. literal game changer. only thing weird is that the attack order changes every time but the menus are so fast you get used to it.

i didnt mention this in the last review but i dont really like the whole thing of choosing every party member's persona -- having 5 party members each with their own affinities with certain tarots and adding considering fusion spells (which you will NEED to take into account) is kind of too much for me.

the characters are incredible and realistic. katsuya is in contention for being my favorite persona character but the whole main cast is amazing. i pray that one day persona is able to have another cast of adult party members because it makes for a much darker and different game than the other personas.

i dont really know what else to say other than play this game. its peak

this game is 100 times better than innocent sin and innocent sin is already perfect in my eyes. this game perfect expands upon the lore and themes in persona 2 innocent sin, and translates them into more mature adult characters. where as in p2is the party is split 3/2 teens/adults, this games cast is all adults, all at different points in their lives, all having made mistakes. this game shows the adult perspective of the themes presented in p2is and how adults deal with their pasts and their idea of how to do so. however, one this is clear and that amongst all their differing ideas and values, that people are able to change who they are and are not bound to one incident in their lives. without spoiling, the final cutscene to this game not only perfectly juxtaposes the first games final cutscene, but it also perfectly encapsulates persona 2 as a whole.

once again, this games soundtrack is fucking phenominal, as is shares tracks with p2is. graphically, the persona 2 duology are my favourite looking games and how all video games should, actually. the gameplay in this game is far more challenging in this game, and is so smooth, it makes random encounters almost redundant, as they can be over incredibly quickly if you know what youre doing. the biggest upside to these games being the oldsona games is that it doesnt have the wild card mechanic of neosona, so team building is able to be far more indepth than available in those games (Not a bad thing for 3,4,5 as they are built with wild card in mind, its just nice being able to create an entire team build)

yeah, persona 2 is special :)

Beaten: Oct 5 2021
Time: 43 Hours
Platform: Xbox Series X via Retroarch in dev mode/PS Vita

I loved Persona 2 Innocent Sin when I played it last year. It's a masterful game, full of well realized characters and the strongest characters in the whole series, BAR NONE. Plus, it's got maybe the most imaginitive plot out of any jrpg I've ever played? Rumors become reality, and it just escalates so damn well from there, not only taking that idea to it's extreme, but also exploring it so well along the way. The only real flaw I felt with it was the battle system, which was a bit on the slow side, but for such a short game I didn't think it was a huge issue.

Eternal Punishment, the second half of Persona 2, is about as perfect a companion piece I've ever seen. It stands on its own as a full experience, and if you've played the first game, it feels like there's mountains of references and thematic callbacks buried under each line of code. I'm not sure why it took me a whole year to finally play it, but oh man am I glad I did!

Most mechanics from the first game are included here. The rumor system is expanded upon, and although it isn't as central to the plot in this game, it's just as if not more fully explored here. Sometimes you're just spreading rumors like "yeah this shop sells weapons I guess", but sometimes you're unlocking new dungeons, moving restaurants halfway across the city, or inspiring fashion designers on accident. Every time you spread a rumor, going and checking if it worked still feels like a rush, like "did it actually happen? does this surf shop owner now smuggle for the mafia?" and it's just addictingggggg.

Demon conversations also work the way they did in the first game, and it's just as fun of a system here. It's got all the complexity of the early smt games, but with so much more repeatability and variety of outcomes. You're trying to induce emotional responses in the demons, and if you get them to feel strongly enough they'll react, but what they react to and how you get them to feel happy or interested or scared is monstrously varied.

Moving on to the main portion of the game, you'll be spending your time with the game in around 20 dungeons, almost all of which are immaculate and fun as hell to navigate! They're less tedious than old school smt dungeons, but also incorporate some puzzle elements in there. Honestly the best comparison for dungeon design is Nocturne, but where that game tends to theme itself after an eerie sense of emptiness and otherworldliness, the dungeons here are, for the most part, very grounded, real placess. You go through a high school, a gym, a museum, and it's all just full of flavor.

The battle system is the real star of the show here though. At it's core it's a pretty standard turn based battle system, albeit with like 16 different attack types, but the way it's impelemented pushes you to focus on auto-battle. In fact, auto-battle is the default battle mode, and while you're in auto mode, the order that your characters take their turns kind of.. shifts. If a character's got a high agility, they can have another turn without waiting all the way through every other turn. What comes out of this is a very flexible system that feels like it flows much quicker than most turn based systems, and as you get your attack patterns designed well, one where you can just watch if you want, or speed through if you don't.

It's a huge improvement on the first game, which is interesting because the version of the first game I played was the remaster for the PSP??? And the original game supposedly plays much more like this game???? What a weird change to make.

Anyways, this is a game you really should experience yourself, particularly if you like the kinda heady anime from the late 90s/early 2000s, because this feels almost exactly like those. Particularly Serial Experiments Lain felt a lot like this. I don't really have an explanation as to why besides "depression and weird" though haha.

So yeah, play this game, but play the first one first. Goodnight :)

This game is home to amazing sprite work with beautiful settings, although its combat feels rather dated in the way that the moves happen in a sequence and not as you input them which hasnt left a good impression in me both in this game and its predecessor (innocent sin). What stands out about this game is its phenomenal story, Persona 2 is a masterclass of storytelling in the persona franchise, not only from the perspective of the characters own stories and relationship developments, but in how well paced it all is, in terms of Persona stories, theres this and then theres everything else