Another game that's PEAK PSX aesthetic, with a mixture of the comfortable, soothing music.
The low-poly environments and super expressive sprite work.
The very silly interactions between the characters and the wonderful dynamics they have.
And the wonderfully written story!

The only issue I have with the game is how incredibly slow the battles are, and how way too easy the game is. Though both of those things do admittedly add to it's comfy atmosphere, it's a real joy!

I want to preface this by saying that I play my games without using Google or any emulator cheats (fast forward / save states / actual cheats) because I feel that by using them, I’m disregarding the game’s design. From my understanding, people use them either because they have limited time to play games or they’re simply impatient and don’t want to deal with archaic design. To both ends, if you truly care about a game and are enjoying your time with it, why rush through it and ignore the pacing of the game? That’s not to say you can’t enjoy a game while fast forwarding and the like, for some it might help them enjoy it more… for me however, it ruins my enjoyment of the product.

I emphasize the above because the contacting system is abhorrent and easily the worst part of this game. I think it worked fine enough in the first game even if it was easily abusable and barebones, but this is just needlessly grindy for absolutely no reason. How it works is each character has 4 unique contact options that you can use to talk to a demon, given that you have 5 characters throughout the game, it easily becomes overwhelming. Depending on the personality of the demon and contact you chose, you will elicit an angry, happy, eager, or scared reaction. The goal is to make them eager so that you can get their arcana’s spell cards, though if you make them happy before doing so, you will get free cards that can be converted into any arcana card type in the velvet room. You can only have 3 happy demons at any given time as the would-be “buff” stays constant throughout the game, unless you make them angry, which is very easy to do. On random occasions, including at the very start of a battle, a demon will start talking to you, except during these sequences you pretty much have to guess what the correct answer is because they ask you questions like “if you were an animal what would you be human dog demon” and on my life I picked every single possible option for multiple demons, and they were all fucking wrong so i think it’s bugged or something. While that’s annoying, I found the fusing system to be fun, assuming I had enough cards to make what I wanted to make. I like the emphasis on spell cards, but I would be lying if I said I preferred this over the modern fusion systems, even though the game is hardly balanced around them.

On the topic of balancing, it’s all over the place. I played the PS1 version which is harder than the PSP remaster according to everyone, and for a good portion of the game all I was doing was getting into random encounters, even boss fights, and just auto battling. To extend on that, the combat system is centered around auto battling. You set your characters moves and press start battle. You can stop the auto battle whenever you want and check the turn order of your party members so you can plan your attacks accordingly, but outside of the final boss I pretty much turned my brain off the entire time, save for a select few instances. I don’t like this system because more than any RPG I’ve ever played, I get little to no reward or satisfaction mainly because I’m not pressing buttons as often. While some might see that fact as a good thing, I see it as mundane and boring. I make it sound bad, but in reality it barely affected me and it’s not like the difficulty is completely nonexistent, it’s there I just found it incredibly easy and manipulable is all. That final boss is some bullshit though. Game goes from being easy for about 15 hours to being extremely tedious and hard for no reason? Boring as hell

THE RUMORS SUCK. The system is there to remind you that the story involves rumors, and it fucking sucks. I don’t like talking to rumor mongerors with the clunky ass text boxes that plague the entire game and just don’t skip properly just to hear that Bimble Fuck Joe is selling his Sweaty Ass Shirt for 3 yen cheaper. Same people who defend this shit are the people who say Drakengard is a masterpiece because the gameplay sucks on purpose or whatever. I’m heavily overblowing it and this was hardly an issue because i did it twice throughout the entire game but it just made me realize how much i hated the textboxes in this game. Going back to that demon happiness shit for a second, if you have 3 contracts (3 happy demons) then the demon you’re currently trying to contact will ask you to replace one of the contracts so that they can be added, and for some god awful reason the developers thought it would be funny to have the dialogue option to appear at the least opportune time so that almost every single time I press the A button to progress the dialogue, the options appear and I annul the wrong contract. Every. Fucking. Time. Even when i'm careful I still somehow fuck it up. Yes, I know, skill issues and many such cases. Shit was made to make me fall asleep im not even going to lie spread a rumor to make my bed more comfortable. Booking the luxury suite at the Innocent Inn™ if it doesn't become a reality (joke donated by @Zotol)

Now that I aired my grievances, I liked the characters! I think they’re easily some of the best and most realistic ones in the series. I loathe how the modern persona games have these uninteresting and almost repetitive characters that for the life of me I just can’t give a single fuck about half the time, and for the first time I actually found myself caring about the issues and problems these characters are facing. They may not be as realized or fleshed out in this game as I would have liked them to be, but they were nonetheless impactful, more so than half of the slop the modern games shoved down my throat and I’m sure they will be even more amazing in the sequel. There's more I could go into and I made the game sound a lot worse than it actually is but the reality is that I'm mincing my words in fear of spoiling people, so it might sound like I'm not complimenting the game enough. The reality is that it does have good qualities but I also don't feel like I'm at a position where I can collect my thoughts and judge the game's story based without having played the sequel, so I won't. It's pretty good though, if not paced strangely at times. It's also incredibly hard to take this game seriously when iykyk is the villain. I'm serious if you don't know shit about this game go play it right now and prepare to have the craziest whiplash ever

I'm not going to lie though that PSP version is probably better because the god awful fan translation for this game gave characters different during different points in the story and I could never tell who was who.. Aside from that, the music was alright. Just alright. Few stand out tracks but I’m not foaming out of the mouth for anything. The PSP soundtrack sounded better from what I heard, and I’m probably going to play the PSP version of Eternal Punishment after my exams.

If you played the PSP versions of Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment, WITHOUT SPOILING, what does the save transfer do? Is it important or can I just play EP on PSP without it

A game where I definitely feel compelled to gloss over some of the flaws because I really appreciate what it's trying to do.

The combat isn't necessarily bad, but it is definitely mediocre at best. Even playing the harder PSX version of the game it just felt more like going through the motions than anything requiring a ton of thought or strategy. Spam fusion spells, maybe keep a healer going and hope to burn things down as fast as you can. It's a shame that when there is difficulty it comes off as more frustrating than anything, with an overreliance on status inflictions from a lot of the later bosses.

The contact system is something I do enjoy quite a bit though, it works particularly well with how charming all of the cast is even if it gets a bit repetitive as the game goes on. It's a fun way to incentivize not having to fight some battles but still getting something out of them. I do think it could have been more clear early on though that this is how you should be using it, mainly to recover SP if you need to.

All that being said, the story is definitely where this game gets the most praise and for good reason. I really enjoy how much emphasis there is on the dangers of rumors and misinformation, while the plot starts out slow I think it was worth it so we can see how these elements really start to snowball over the course of the game. I particularly like how it not only showed the lies told to others but also the lies that people tell to themselves, either to deny a trait they have or to forget the past. The way the central characters exemplify this and tie it all back to the central mystery is really satisfying as well.

The ending does feel a bit rushed though, they don't really do a great job of making the actual supernatural mechanics super clear or interesting. I definitely think this is something they did a lot better in the later games, at least in terms of making this stuff more accessible/palatable. I haven't played Eternal Punishment yet though either.

In general, Innocent Sin still feels a bit like a series figuring out what it wants to be in many ways, crossing a lot of older SMT type stuff with more new and unique elements. Yet it still stands on its own as well with such a strong cast and story, and it's easy to see how it really sticks with people who play it.

"People only know about themselves through how others perceive them... The existennce of our ego originates in others, we compare ourselves to others, and we are conscious of how our image is perceived when we are among others... That's when we really start to be created, i think that means for every person we meet, we have yet another 'self' formed out of their perceptions"


"However small they may be, reach out your arms and hold on to your dreams. Then, even in the darkest times, the stars will shine above you, making you the master of your own destiny"

Note: Played the PSP port. Also, spoilers in the story section.

I've heard Persona 2: Innocent Sin praised as one of Atlus' absolute best games for quite a while, and a few weeks ago, interested in getting back into the SMT franchise, I finally decided I should give it a try. Bottom line is, I see where its fans are coming from, but I can't really say I felt the same way about it.

What is most commonly brought up as Innocent Sin's biggest flaw is the combat, and with that comes an asterisk- the PS1 version is apparently a bit better in this regard, but by the time I found that out, I was deep enough into the PSP port to not want to switch over. As far as the version I did play... yeah, kinda? Mechanically it works, it's just simple and slow as shit. I think I didn't suffer as much as you would on a PSP cause I just held fast forward on every fight (including the final boss- oops), but I can't say that makes it less bad, it just makes it less annoying. On the positive side of things I think this is my favorite demon conversation system in the entire series? I know it's from Persona 1 but there's a proper amount of strategy (well, of trial and error, but close enough) in it without sacrificing personality, not to mention there's a fuckton of unique dialogue you can get. I like the card system for fusing Personas but with the combat being what it is it doesn't really come together as necessary, especially with a lot of high tier Personas actually having pretty mediocre skillsets.

On the flip side, Persona 2's greatest strength is definitely its main cast- each of them is incredibly endearing and they play off each other amazingly in both comedic and serious scenes. Tatsuya, the MC, is inevitably the weakest link due to Atlus' obsession with silent protagonists, but even then there's some neat stuff to dig into rather than a complete blank slate. Eikichi, the "bro" character, has a good amount of depth to him and is actually pretty funny, though he does run into the issue of sometimes being treated as a joke when he shouldn't by the rest of the cast- Lisa Silverman is maybe the most interesting character in the cast, "openly has a crush on the MC and their entire relationship is built around neither knowing what to do about it" is bizarre but simultaneously relatable, and she's overall usually very neat. Maya is probably my least favorite of the proper characters but I appreciate this utter force of positivity that she is in every circumstance, that can very easily be done wrong but it never comes off as irritating in her case. Finally there's Yukino, apparently a returning character from Persona 1- she's really fucking cool, though with every other character sharing a really deep bond you slowly unravel through the game, she feels a bit out of place in that regard. Still there's a really genuine sense of friendship in the cast's scenes together, and I think that when Persona 2 works, it's usually because of them.

When it doesn't work, is in its greater themes and grander scope storytelling- first off capping off the game with an ultimate climax of "is humanity bad or good? beat the shit out of god to find out" is such a fucking trite cliche in JRPGs that I couldn't believe this otherwise pretty original plot was heading in that direction. I'm oversimplifying, there's more to it, I think the overarching villain is a good one, though his actual actions are pretty poorly explained in the game proper (am loathe to admit it but just looking shit up on the wiki helped a lot) and I appreciate the themes of fatherhood and trying to find a purpose tied into it but I dunno, it never clicked. I think the reason why it didn't, and the biggest writing issue with P2, is that it just goes too fast in its second half. Suddenly Hitler and his magic mecha army are attacking the town and we find out who Joker is and we fight him and we find out what the link between the characters is and a bunch of characters have arcs and we learn that like 30 different conspiracy theories are true and we find out that- it's a lot of stuff and none of it has the time to sink in, especially with so many concepts being thrown at you that you're not sure if they matter of you're supposed to understand them. I can see that the things being done here are good, but they, just don't have any emotional impact. Me being stupid might also play a role, though- I missed a few connections that enhance my opinion of the story a lot, and I don't know if it's because IS doesn't highlight them properly or if it's because I just missed them. So I dunno, not the biggest fan I suppose. Definitely interested in Eternal Punishment though.

I forgot to make a review lol...

Okay, Persona 2 is the best persona? No. It has the best story? Yes? Probably? The ending is pretty good and overall i liked both story and of course the characters were amazing.

The game itself is a very good step foward from the disastrous gameplay from P1, still has some issues for me like i dont like how burocratic the combat is, and the game is without doubt the easiest turn based i ever played. The first half i only used the initial personas and after that their ultimates. Both doing the same amount of damage.

Now to finish Eternal Punishment and complete the persona series for good.

Aqui persona estava começando a criar forma, a ter sua identidade, por mais que quase tudo que faça a fama da franquia tenha surgido no 3.
Eu tinha altas expectativas para esse jogo, e a parte dos personagens e história realmente não decepciona nem um pouco. Tatsuya é o protagonista mais interessante da franquia com certeza.
Maaaaas, esse jogo tem muitos, mas MUITOS problemas. Ele é chato, repetitivo, e muitas vezes parece ir para lugar nenhum. Toda dungeon é igual, com os mesmos corredores lineares e talvez a pior exploração que ja vi em um RPG na minha vida, somada com essa putaria de encontro aleatório. Você passa uma quantidade exaustiva e totalmente desnecessária de tempo nesse loop maçante de exploração ruim e dungeon cagada. Foi um dos poucos jogos que eu demorei MUITO pra progredir, mas não porque tava difícil (o jogo é até bem fácil), mas porque eu simplesmente não tinha saco pra aguentar o loop tedioso de horas e horas.
O combate também não é nada de mais, e falta um pouco de personalidade.

Em Resumo, é muito bom que esse jogo exista, porque foi o segundo passo para a franquia que eu tanto amo.
Mas como jogo ele é bem fraquinho

of the two p2 games I was surprised how I prefer this one which I know is not really a hot take or anything, it was more of a surprise on my end considering how much of how this game handles certain subject matter terribly.

the game is really good until you get to the Nazis and it just falls off the interesting antagonists get replaced, there's a really dumb character arc for one of your party members and there is uncomfortable nazi sympathy implications with certain characters and its just awful. but the ending is really good and bittersweet and Id argue stands on its own.

I guess I perfer this one to taste as well I think the combat system is whatever but it is so piss easy that I found myself comfortable in the braindead loop I was going through.

Good game imo but people don't talk about the story issues it has enough.

Persona 2 is one those works you consume and desperately want someone else to try it because you just need to talk about it, but unfortunately, you can't recommend this to everyone, the gameplay manages to be worse than P1 or even SNES era SMT, the beggining is slow, the combat is slow, the encounter rate is absurd, and to top it off, the game is unbalanced, but after some hours of eating up the shit you think the game is, you are suddenly envolved in the deepest most interesting story you've ever seen in your life, in that moment, Persona 2 brainwashes you to stop caring about the shit he's putting you through gameplay wise, you just wanna see how the story develops, what will be the next crazy shit Atlus wrote for this game, and that's when you realize that you're at the end of this borderline unplayable game, and even worse, you're fucking loving it, i feel bad for people who feel like the story, characters or atmosphere don't make up for the gameplay, because when you're vibing with the game, it's the best thing you ever played.

URGENT: For the love of god, play the PS1 original, not the PSP version. I have deleted the log that I originally posted here and am re-posting this now in hopes of getting eyes on this and counterbalancing any misunderstanding that it may have propagated. As it turns out, the entire crux of my disappointment with Innocent Sin is the PSP version's doing.

On PSP, REGARDLESS of difficulty selection, Innocent Sin's gameplay is a desert one must cross to reach the oases of its wonderful story. On PS1, Innocent Sin's battles are NOT exclusively a waste of your time! It's NOT a small difference! It turns out that the auto-battle system used to NOT SUCK, and there used to be some modicum of ACTUAL TENSION in some of the fights!!! I honestly feel cheated by having the PSP version taint my first experience! The PS1 version is as good as the PSP version of Eternal Punishment, maybe even better!

It's not a simple matter of being "too easy." The PSP version of Innocent Sin traps you in a position where the encounter rate is disruptively high and then presents you with two options for achieving the forgone conclusion of your victory in any of these encounters:

Option 1: Navigate the menus for each character every turn and tell them each to do the obviously optimal thing every turn with no interesting variations because the only thing enemies can do in their own defense is annoy you but they have too much health to courteously die in a timely fashion,

or Option 2: Press Triangle and sit patiently while the game resolves the encounter on its own in the slowest, most painful way possible, including all of the bosses, with pretty much complete, unquestionable safety.

On the PS1, the game is DESIGNED around a WAY better auto-battle system, and things can actually hurt you, so you have to pay attention! Even if the fights aren't much more interesting on PS1, they fly by so much faster that it's hard to complain about them. It's still by no means difficult, but it at least provides Final Fantasy levels of combat engagement now! In fact, the game clicks into place in almost the exact same ways that a PS1 Final Fantasy game does, as a breezy trip through a meticulously told and thematically resonant story, with gameplay that doesn't turn any heads, but doesn't get in the way of a good time either.

It feels at least slightly insane to bump Innocent Sin from the lowly score it had all the way up to this, but everything wrong with it is in its gameplay mechanics, and on PS1 almost everything I held against the PSP version is a non-issue. It still doesn't sit right with me that the easiest path through the game means never even setting foot in the Velvet Room, and having to grind out demon negotiations if you choose to use it sucks, but compared to my previous problems of constant, meaningless, tedious encounters, that's practically nothing.

Am I willing to give it the full-on five star treatment? Not quite. The design is still too shaky for that. Aside from the Velvet Room thing, money and SP still grow on trees in a way that makes dungeoneering and shopping even less interesting than it is in, say, Final Fantasy VII, and something like materia is enough to blow this implementation of the Velvet Room out of the water.

The question is, will Eternal Punishment bring enough tension back into the battles to overpower those other flaws and win my full marks?

EDIT... again:
The balance is fine. I'm nearing the end of my replay on PS1 now, and I've totally come around on the battle system and its balance. The gap between PS1 Innocent Sin and PSP Eternal Punishment is small, and there's no need for Eternal Punishment to "fix" it. I have however decided that yeah, I do have to dock a bit for pacing reasons. The beginning of the game absolutely knocks it out of the park, but the middle drags. It really does start wearing you down when Lisa's spotlight arc plays out across three of the blander dungeons with only brief glimpses of story in between them. The mundane setting plays a hand in this, because while it may be interesting to see a game turn an exercise gym into a dungeon, it ends up being the fifth or sixth "normal building" dungeon the player has navigated in a row. On top of this... like, the air raid shelter just sorta sucks, dude. Not letting you save before you fight King Leo after you just did a whole dungeon and a bunch of cutscenes? Also sucks. I think there are enough low points here to hold this back from really trading blows with something like Final Fantasy VII or even IX. I guess this really IS an alternate universe Final Fantasy VIII...

Edit AGAIN:
So at the end of this journey, of my many initial criticisms, the following still stand:
-The third or so of the game after the first two hours drags.
-Minor setpiece groaning about King Leo and Air Raid shelter.
-Negotiation sucks and isn't fun to grind so Velvet Room rots.
-For MOST of the game SP is a non-factor (not endgame).

That's... not a long list, and the impact of everything on it isn't really much bigger than say, the overbloated animations and trance system failures of FFIX, another game that I've recently decided I can't deny a spot in the five-star club. The honest truth is that Innocent Sin is so cosmically far ahead of its time in terms of writing that it should take a lot more than that petty list of grievances to lower its standing.

si Persona 3-5 fueran buenos juegos y tuvieran una historia realmente madura en vez de un drama pretencioso. el videojuego:

si no hubiera sido por todo lo referente al gameplay que se siente arcaico y una estúpida dificultad la cual puedes terminar matando a Hittler en hard con la opción de autocombate, le hubiera puesto un 4.5. la historia, los personajes el OST fueron cosas sobresalientas y que ha sido la razon por la cual se ha convertido en mi Persona favorito. ojala Atlus se deje de estupideces y reconozca que Persona no empezó con el 3 y a largo plazo hagan un remake del Inocent Sin usando como base al futuro P6.

por cierto Sabías que en alemania hacen cosas buenas?

It doesn't have the soundtracks...
It doesn't have the style...
It doesn't have the gameplay...

but it has the best storytelling, fr. If they make a proper remake of this someday, it could become the best Persona.

No special protagonist because yes, no repetitive pacing; story's just linear and follow its plot elegantly. Good character development and solid cast of characters that features good interactions.

The plot and characters were so good I suffered through probably one of the most unpleasant turn based combat systems I have ever played for wayyyy longer than I ever expected. I play almost exclusively turn-based RPGs combat-wise and am a sick bastard who will and has grinded for fun across almost all the RPGs I've ever played...but IDK, the menus in this game felt so slow from even the first level at Tatsuya's school I began to dread random encounters because of how much time it would take to even run away. That plus the long dungeons meant I did NOT have fun playing this. Still four stars though; the story and cast were just that compelling IMO.

Fans say that the story is really good, but I dunno it didn’t really do anything for me. And the gameplay was kinda agonizing, so all the game really had to offer me was vibes, I guess.

I did like the overall aesthetic, it had some cool songs (the Kuzunoha Detective Agency theme being a prime example), the character portraits by Kazuma Kaneko are distinct and memorable, and I liked some of the cast members. I did like the themes and ideas the game employs with dreams and allat, but I don’t think it explored them too well.

I found Yuuki, Eikichi, and Jun to be kinda lame. I feel like Jun wasn’t given enough time in the party to be characterized, I found Eikichi and his mannerisms annoying, and Yuuki was boring.

The plot was really boring with the first half just going around schools, beating up a high school principal, and fighting a boring terrorist organization with the main antagonist, the Joker, being rly unthreatening with his design. And then you gotta collect crystal skulls and then kill Hitler and you get the story through flashbacks. Like the game tries to be all serious but I’m out here fighting the Joker and Hitler. I wish it had gone either further into that silliness or into seriousness.

Like none of the dungeons, except maybe the final one, were memorable. The story just has characters coming to terms with their past actions and current selves and that’s alright and all but there’s so much blegh in between that I did not find it worthwhile. Like I might have liked the game more if it were condensed into 20 or so hours, I don’t think the story is worth a 30-40 hour investment (maybe Earthbound just set my expectations too high for JRPGs).

It was pretty cool that they play Gymnopédie No. 1 in the Velvet Room after a while. Love that song. It also made me like Personas 3 and 4 less by including a gay option. Shit came out in 1999 and they let you be gay. The new personers have not got any excuse!