This game is fantastic. It fixes basically every issue I had with its predecessor.
Now not every single location in the overworld is filled with encounters, they actually let you rest with encounter free areas. You can walk through the town of Tsukudo-cho without being harassed by demons every 5 steps. Speaking of, Raidou's movement speed is practically doubled both in battle and out. He can travel at a reasonable pace and actually do some respectable moves in battle. The gun is way faster and so actually a worthwhile option, and he even now has a dodge roll move so he no longer feels like a sack of bricks on a trolley. The magnetite system has been completely revamped and is actually a factor in battles now.
Like its predecessor it still has an incredibly strong style and amazing 10/10 meguro ost.
The only thing I'd say is that I prefer the plot of the first game, but 2's is by no means bad and in the end thats just personal preference.
Its a shame that this is a niche game within an already niche series. I think more people need to experience this one, its seriously fantastic.

One million times better than the first game, being able to summon more demons, faster and more fluid combat, more movement options, less dumb AI (Still kinda dumb tho), a vast demon collection, better cast of characters and plot, however, it can get a little tiresome to get lost and don't know what to do to progress the game, also getting ambushed in this game feels TERRIBLE and i seethed with rage everytime i dropped locusts because of it. I would never call this game amazing or anything, mostly for the lack of memorable boss fights and i still would take press turn over this game's combat anyday of the week, but it's the only solid entry of the Raidou duology.

I don't know how it's possible, but this game took everything they did in the first one and threw it out the window. The combat was changed; there were some improvements, but basically demons became very useless, and they added special powers depending on the weapon, which hardly changes anything in combat. The story of the game was just horrible this time around; there were several new characters with no charisma at all, and even the characters that had charisma in the first one had much less shine in this one. The main villain of the plot is interesting at first until he becomes unbearable too. The final chapter this time also gave the game a boost, but the ending was a mess. You can perfectly understand why they never made a Raidou 3 after this.

got this one on a whim when it came through a store i worked at, and it quickly became one of my favorites. i would sit and play for hours just grinding to expand the compendium. game looks great, pre rendered backgrounds reign supreme in style. honestly i think the city and town areas were more memorable than the dungeons. some tracks shine while others are pretty standard loops, but nothing that i ever found grating. story and characters are entertaining throughout. while building crazy demon comps is not entirely needed to beat this (aside from a few battles) i enjoyed messing around to see what i could build. definitely one of my highest recommended smt games

Man MAN this game. I started my journey back in 2023, almost finished it, and then my PS3 suddenly stopped turning on. After some pondering, I decided to set it aside for a while since I didn´t had enough money to hand it to someone for it to be fixed. 8 months passed. And then LOW AND BEHOLD THE MACHINE FIXED ITSELF LMFAO?????

45 HOURS IN AND I HAD TO LEARN THE CONTROLS ALL OVER AGAIN, BUT I FINALLY FINISH IT LOL
The last dungeon was TORTURE I will hear that god damn trumpet of death on my nightmares. WHEN I CATCH YOU WHITE RIDER!!!! WHEN I CATCH YOU!!!

Besides that, this game is mountains and bounds better than the first one. The music is great (Shoji Meguro the goat), I loved Narumi and Tae even more. The themes of responsibility and the balancing between what you want to do and your duties is quite well discussed, proxy of SMT to handle these deep topics, all tho the game does have its fun moments.

Everything I said about the first game is enhanced here. Combat is a lot more engaging and really fun, there's weapon types that change the way your moves work. Demons are significantly more integral to combat now that you can summon two into battle, and the music.. my god the music is blissfully beautiful, made me love the atmosphere of this game even more. I don't think it overshadows the original with all of these improvements too, there's merit in playing both. There are some flaws with the story, same with the first, in this game's case there's some padding and moments that drag a little bit but they were over before I could realistically really hate those moments. Great game overall.