I prefer innocent sin but still a pretty smt game
This review contains spoilers
Innocents sin story gave me mental damage
Eternal punishments gameplay gave me mental damage
IS is braindead easy but EP isn't and it really shows the cracks in p2s gameplay when you actually have to try, its not the hardest rpg ever or anything if you have patience for the old school style grind kind of similar to p1, then you get a pretty solid game with, decent themes about adults who are still figuring themselves out.
It is kind of nice to show that stuff doesn't magically go away when you reach adulthood, as well as tatsuya being a mopey kind of nerd who was the one who couldn't let go it recon textualizes how he acts in Innocent sin and the fact hes still a teenager who doesn't know how to ask for help as opposed to the adults who also don't know how but know better.
Maya is very expressive but I really wish she could talk and have banter like she did in innocent sin especially with her roommate ulala who has a better relationship with baofu than she does with maya because baofu and her can talk to eachother and grow a relationship, baofu also has a great relationship with katsuya because their good cop bad cop approach is entertaining and they learn.
I feel the p1 fanservice is a bit heavy handed in this game and personally was handled better in innocent sin.
I guess I prefer IS but only because of a few things including gameplay, I want to say the party dynamic as a whole in IS is better since you have 4 characters who talk to each other while EP you have Ulala, Baofu and katsuya their interactions are insanely good and hit me when I didn't expect them but because the additional p1 party member is more for plot and as stated maya is silent and tatsuya really only gets connections during the end, it really is just 3 characters.
not a bad game though if you can handle the grind you'll love it
Eternal punishments gameplay gave me mental damage
IS is braindead easy but EP isn't and it really shows the cracks in p2s gameplay when you actually have to try, its not the hardest rpg ever or anything if you have patience for the old school style grind kind of similar to p1, then you get a pretty solid game with, decent themes about adults who are still figuring themselves out.
It is kind of nice to show that stuff doesn't magically go away when you reach adulthood, as well as tatsuya being a mopey kind of nerd who was the one who couldn't let go it recon textualizes how he acts in Innocent sin and the fact hes still a teenager who doesn't know how to ask for help as opposed to the adults who also don't know how but know better.
Maya is very expressive but I really wish she could talk and have banter like she did in innocent sin especially with her roommate ulala who has a better relationship with baofu than she does with maya because baofu and her can talk to eachother and grow a relationship, baofu also has a great relationship with katsuya because their good cop bad cop approach is entertaining and they learn.
I feel the p1 fanservice is a bit heavy handed in this game and personally was handled better in innocent sin.
I guess I prefer IS but only because of a few things including gameplay, I want to say the party dynamic as a whole in IS is better since you have 4 characters who talk to each other while EP you have Ulala, Baofu and katsuya their interactions are insanely good and hit me when I didn't expect them but because the additional p1 party member is more for plot and as stated maya is silent and tatsuya really only gets connections during the end, it really is just 3 characters.
not a bad game though if you can handle the grind you'll love it
Eh
I've never wanted to kill myself more than when playing this game.
This review contains spoilers
I was legitimately surprised what a large leap this was over Innocent Sin. That's not to say that EP fixes every issue but it feels like a much more complete product overall.
The combat feels way more involved and interesting without becoming too easy either. It felt like I was actually meant to plan out each turn and not just autobattle everything to death which was a nice change of pace, and made SP management way less of a nuisance and fusion spells way more fun to use. It compensates by making battles more difficult, which is a welcome change and there are plenty of ways it throws a wrench into your setup. I won't go as far as to call it perfect, because I still ended up estoma-ing through some dungeons, but it's probably the best way to maximize this system. The dungeon layouts are probably the area that's seen the least improvement, probably the weakest aspect of the P2 duology as a whole. The less random traps is nice but the sprawling layouts didn't really do much more for me.
I would be lying though if I said the story isn't where this game is at it's best. The cast is absolutely fantastic and made me actively want to talk to them in every location, I'm honestly surprised so many people seem to like IS' cast better. There's a really strong overarching theme with how each of them struggles with adulthood, from past regrets to uncertainty about the future, and the new drive they each get at the end feels really satisfying. I really enjoyed the spin on Tatsuya's character as well, Innocent Sin really helped to put you in his shoes and EP delivers on that. It does a really good job of showing the pain he's been through, and his struggle with leaving behind his friends feels powerful after having a whole game to see those bonds. There were real stakes at play and they were delivered on excellently by the ending, I appreciate how it has real consequences for Tatsuya even if it is tragic. Also worth mentioning how amazing the last FMV is too, while Maya doesn't have the character she had in IS due to being the protagonist I think it was a great way to show how she's learned from others to not let the past torment her.
(Side note but I don't have much to say about the Persona 1 stuff since I haven't played it yet, though I knew enough for it to be enjoyable enough)
This game was a much different tone and feel than the other Persona games I've played, but I appreciate it a lot for that. I'm not sure whether they'll make something like this again, and that speaks to how unique it feels, like it was on the border between old and new Persona and Atlus as a whole. EP really brings out the best of what IS does well, while making a lot of it's own improvements and bringing a really strong story and cast to the table as well.
The combat feels way more involved and interesting without becoming too easy either. It felt like I was actually meant to plan out each turn and not just autobattle everything to death which was a nice change of pace, and made SP management way less of a nuisance and fusion spells way more fun to use. It compensates by making battles more difficult, which is a welcome change and there are plenty of ways it throws a wrench into your setup. I won't go as far as to call it perfect, because I still ended up estoma-ing through some dungeons, but it's probably the best way to maximize this system. The dungeon layouts are probably the area that's seen the least improvement, probably the weakest aspect of the P2 duology as a whole. The less random traps is nice but the sprawling layouts didn't really do much more for me.
I would be lying though if I said the story isn't where this game is at it's best. The cast is absolutely fantastic and made me actively want to talk to them in every location, I'm honestly surprised so many people seem to like IS' cast better. There's a really strong overarching theme with how each of them struggles with adulthood, from past regrets to uncertainty about the future, and the new drive they each get at the end feels really satisfying. I really enjoyed the spin on Tatsuya's character as well, Innocent Sin really helped to put you in his shoes and EP delivers on that. It does a really good job of showing the pain he's been through, and his struggle with leaving behind his friends feels powerful after having a whole game to see those bonds. There were real stakes at play and they were delivered on excellently by the ending, I appreciate how it has real consequences for Tatsuya even if it is tragic. Also worth mentioning how amazing the last FMV is too, while Maya doesn't have the character she had in IS due to being the protagonist I think it was a great way to show how she's learned from others to not let the past torment her.
(Side note but I don't have much to say about the Persona 1 stuff since I haven't played it yet, though I knew enough for it to be enjoyable enough)
This game was a much different tone and feel than the other Persona games I've played, but I appreciate it a lot for that. I'm not sure whether they'll make something like this again, and that speaks to how unique it feels, like it was on the border between old and new Persona and Atlus as a whole. EP really brings out the best of what IS does well, while making a lot of it's own improvements and bringing a really strong story and cast to the table as well.
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
Ana de Armas
Je suis un grand fan de persona je les aime tous alors ça va être la même review pour tous (sauf le 5 et le 1) : histoire incroyable, ost incroyable, histoire incroyable, bref tout est incroyable la dedans
The gameplay is rough, but the characters and story are good, even if they aren’t quite as good as Innocent Sin’s. Tatsuya Suou is one of the characters of all time.
did not hit me as hard as innocent sin and maya being a silent protagonist is unforgivable to me, but i respect what it did with tatsuya and i think the tatsuya episode and the ending sequence are very good. it really ties up innocent sin narratively, although of course it leaves me to wonder what they meant by this.
the best persona game and best jrpg narrative in my opinion.
Gosto um pouquinho menos que o Innocent Sin (acho que a história não conseguiu atingir o que queria com o IS e a gameplay ficou mais difícil, mas também mais chata...); agora, não deixa de ser um jogo legal. Se já jogou o IS, pode ir direto pra esse, que é um bom fim pra trilogia do Oldsona!!
It is a good game that hangs too much on its counterpart to develop something original. Still interesting, but feels like IS all over again
This is easily the best Persona game. It's story is a follow up to Innocent Sin, and while it arguably doesn't hit the highs of storyline that game did, it just feels very good in a way. It has a cast of entirely adults, something I really wish Persona would try again today, but most importantly is that they're ALL likable characters. In Persona 3, 4, and 5, there's always at least one character that makes me think "I hate you, please stop talking" every time they open their mouth. Both games in the Persona 2 duology have none of those.
The gameplay is the thing people cite as an issue in this game, and I couldn't disagree more. It's gameplay is the peak of the franchise, with some small issues I admit are pain points. I think a lot of people misunderstand the combat as being standard fare of turn-based RPGs where you click a single move every turn. In reality, this game is based on actions repeating, until you interrupt the action to change commands on your characters. For example, on the Joker boss battles, when Old Maid is cast, it's best to put your entire party on Defend. Then interrupt the action after each character and see if they were changed to "Attack", and that's how you determine who got hit with the Joker.
Speaking of this game's bosses, they're incredibly strong and really stimulate your brain. Some of them may feel out of your reach the first attempt or two, but 99.9999% of the time, you absolutely have the tools to be able to do it without having to grind at all. For instance, there's a late game boss that restores about 800 HP per turn. You might think this sounds obnoxious, but you can use Fusion attacks to stack up enough damage to out-damage the heal.
There are some pain points in the game for sure. The biggest one to me is the summon system to obtain new Personas. Like Innocent Sin, you have to negotiate cards out of demons to be able to summon Personas. Making a pact with a demon gives you "Free" cards that you can have converted to any Arcana card you want (except Fool). This system can become quite the grind, however Eternal Punishment has a significant way of cutting this down. Innocent Sin's biggest issue with negotiation was the sheer number of options you had. Every character had four actions they could perform individually, and then you also have a unique action for each combination of characters. If you weren't sure what to do based on a demon's personality, this made things VERY hard to trial and error. Eternal Punishment fixes this by streamlining negotiation. Every character individually only has one action, and combinations of course have their unique interaction. Some of these combinations may end up just deferring it to one character and being the same result, and some may change over the course of the game. The trick was often to make a pact or two in the dungeon you're on, and then every time you see that demon, negotiate cards out of it so you get the "Free" cards too. The "Free" cards become your lifeline for getting new Personas.
The ending of the game is beautiful, the result of you playing two entire games to get to this point and the payoff is quite satisfying.
This version of the game is solid and very playable today, however I understand why you might have some issues with the UI and speed of the game. Some of these issues are solved by the PSP version of the game, which has a fan translation patch available on the Internet.
The gameplay is the thing people cite as an issue in this game, and I couldn't disagree more. It's gameplay is the peak of the franchise, with some small issues I admit are pain points. I think a lot of people misunderstand the combat as being standard fare of turn-based RPGs where you click a single move every turn. In reality, this game is based on actions repeating, until you interrupt the action to change commands on your characters. For example, on the Joker boss battles, when Old Maid is cast, it's best to put your entire party on Defend. Then interrupt the action after each character and see if they were changed to "Attack", and that's how you determine who got hit with the Joker.
Speaking of this game's bosses, they're incredibly strong and really stimulate your brain. Some of them may feel out of your reach the first attempt or two, but 99.9999% of the time, you absolutely have the tools to be able to do it without having to grind at all. For instance, there's a late game boss that restores about 800 HP per turn. You might think this sounds obnoxious, but you can use Fusion attacks to stack up enough damage to out-damage the heal.
There are some pain points in the game for sure. The biggest one to me is the summon system to obtain new Personas. Like Innocent Sin, you have to negotiate cards out of demons to be able to summon Personas. Making a pact with a demon gives you "Free" cards that you can have converted to any Arcana card you want (except Fool). This system can become quite the grind, however Eternal Punishment has a significant way of cutting this down. Innocent Sin's biggest issue with negotiation was the sheer number of options you had. Every character had four actions they could perform individually, and then you also have a unique action for each combination of characters. If you weren't sure what to do based on a demon's personality, this made things VERY hard to trial and error. Eternal Punishment fixes this by streamlining negotiation. Every character individually only has one action, and combinations of course have their unique interaction. Some of these combinations may end up just deferring it to one character and being the same result, and some may change over the course of the game. The trick was often to make a pact or two in the dungeon you're on, and then every time you see that demon, negotiate cards out of it so you get the "Free" cards too. The "Free" cards become your lifeline for getting new Personas.
The ending of the game is beautiful, the result of you playing two entire games to get to this point and the payoff is quite satisfying.
This version of the game is solid and very playable today, however I understand why you might have some issues with the UI and speed of the game. Some of these issues are solved by the PSP version of the game, which has a fan translation patch available on the Internet.
The game I want to see remade the most out of all the older Personas. The gameplay is improved from Innocent Sin and the plot never ceases to amaze me.
no se por que pega tan duro este juego
IT TOOK FOREVER BUT I BEAT IT
AND IT WAS SO WORTH IT.
The journey to me beating this game was over a year long. I definitely enjoyed the gameplay and story more than Innocent Sin, especially Tatsuya just being so interesting here.
AND IT WAS SO WORTH IT.
The journey to me beating this game was over a year long. I definitely enjoyed the gameplay and story more than Innocent Sin, especially Tatsuya just being so interesting here.
the better persona 2
tatsuya ng+ (the most hype moment of the game is him opening a door). i could tell u everything about this game but ima keep it simple: if youre not a fan of the words: peak fiction, goat, raw, fire? click off the video
No tan bueno como IS pero sigo pensando que hace parte de la "finest hour" de la franquicia
masterpiece
Hel-loaf of bread!
I need maya
Why am I supposed to feel bad for an entitled millennial whining about how it’s hard to be an adult? Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, dumbass
maya best persona character :>
Amazing game
El mejor Persona pero ahora con adultos
nunca pensei que essa prr ia ser boa, mas me supreendeu
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.
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.
one of the most interesting stories in the persona franchise. It ends up connecting the persona 2 dualogy extremely well, and is worth a play through (even if it is quite old).
also baofu is cool smile
also baofu is cool smile