I really don't understand the weird ass combat change where you have to go through 3 fucking menus to input a set of moves. It's implying that this game is less strategy focused and more spammy, but the challenge of the game would tell you otherwise. The game itself is not an insane challenge, but there were bosses where I would have to change my moves every other turn, which is annoying when you need to go through these menus to do so. I really enjoyed the characters of IS, and was insanely disappointed with how they played almost no role in this game. The new main team is very good, and I think everyone was very well written besides Maya getting an obvious downgrade because this game really totally needed a silent protagonist. The story, while good, was kind of just IS again but adding the memory loss aspect to it and swapping the characters.

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.

Pretty cool story that's sadly attached to a low-grade PS1 JRPG. To be honest, after a few hours I was just not vibing with the gameplay and decided I wasn't losing anything by just watching the story on YouTube. A beat Innocent Sin 2 years ago and mostly trudged through that with speed up and grinding. Now, I realize it isn't worth it to act like I'm engaging with the game when I'm not. That aside, the story's neat, it's the most explicit the series has gone into Sci-fi. Back when this came out, I'm sure the mechanics were experimental and conceptually cool, but comparing them to RPGs of today (and even to a degree, some of its contemporaries) it kinda sucks. P2 is amazingly deserving of a remake.

"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.