Persona 2 Innocent Sin is an extremely polarizing game for me since what I liked and disliked about P1 applies twofold here.
In terms of plot, well, P2s story is about a lot of things. It's about accepting one's flaws and past mistakes while realizing they're not what define you. It's about growing up and the importance of holding onto your dreams and ideals as you venture into the adult world, full of jaded and burned out grown ups. It's about the struggles of living up to paternal expectations. It's about all these things and more and it's frankly impossible for me to do the story justice, however, I will say that this game's narrative impacted and connected with me on a level that very few pieces of media ever have.
The cast is also fantastic. On first meeting, they may seem quite simple but everyone has their own arc and as you journey through the game and learn more about their past, they really end up standing out as some of the best written characters in the series. I also really like their quirks, like Maya's terrible driving or Michel's narcissism. These quirks lead to really enjoyable moments of levity and it made me that much more attached to the cast.
Even the NPCs here are surprisingly good. What they say is often funny and if it's not, it fleshes out the story or hints at future events. This is the only RPG I've played in which I went out of my way to read as much optional dialogue as possible.
Then there's the OST. P2 ditches the otherworldly vibe that P1s OST had in favour of a much more somber and melancholic score and it works beautifully. It's very rare for a soundtrack to get a big emotional reaction out of me but P2 managed to do that on multiple occasions, even with the map theme of all things.
As for gameplay, it does improve on a lot of issues I had with P1. The grid system is completely gone. The dungeons are shorter. You can now see how close you are to ranking up a Persona. You can also check what skills a Persona will learn before summoning it so you don't run the risk of devoting time into ranking up a Persona that ends up learning really weak abilities. EXP is now shared equally among party members so no one falls behind. All these changes are welcome, but the game is too easy and doesn't add enough to make the gameplay more interesting than it was in P1, so what you're left with is what feels like an extremely dumbed-down version of its predecessor. Because of it, I ended up auto-battling my way through basically the whole game, including most bosses and the further I went into the game, the less interested I became. The fact that the gameplay is so insanely easy and boring here completely killed my motivation for experimenting with different Personas and doing sidequests since it all feels unnecessary. In a way, I think I prefer P1s gameplay since while that game was frustrating and its areas dragged on and on, atleast I had to engage with it and think about what I was doing which I didn't need to here.
One big part of P2s gameplay is Rumours that you can pay money to spread around and make them come true. Spreading rumours is how you acquire stronger weapons and fight optional bosses which is cool but I think this concept could've been expanded more. Rumours also don't really work in terms of story for me. That's because there's no real limit on what rumour can come true and yet the cast never seems to take advantage of them so it ends up feeling like one big plot hole.
In my P1 review I said a great narrative can't justify terrible gameplay. However, P2 does such a great job with other aspects such as the OST and the cast that I can just barely say that the positives outshine the negatives here. Even with how monotonous it often felt, I can tell this is a game that will be on my mind for weeks to come and overall, I did enjoy it.
In terms of plot, well, P2s story is about a lot of things. It's about accepting one's flaws and past mistakes while realizing they're not what define you. It's about growing up and the importance of holding onto your dreams and ideals as you venture into the adult world, full of jaded and burned out grown ups. It's about the struggles of living up to paternal expectations. It's about all these things and more and it's frankly impossible for me to do the story justice, however, I will say that this game's narrative impacted and connected with me on a level that very few pieces of media ever have.
The cast is also fantastic. On first meeting, they may seem quite simple but everyone has their own arc and as you journey through the game and learn more about their past, they really end up standing out as some of the best written characters in the series. I also really like their quirks, like Maya's terrible driving or Michel's narcissism. These quirks lead to really enjoyable moments of levity and it made me that much more attached to the cast.
Even the NPCs here are surprisingly good. What they say is often funny and if it's not, it fleshes out the story or hints at future events. This is the only RPG I've played in which I went out of my way to read as much optional dialogue as possible.
Then there's the OST. P2 ditches the otherworldly vibe that P1s OST had in favour of a much more somber and melancholic score and it works beautifully. It's very rare for a soundtrack to get a big emotional reaction out of me but P2 managed to do that on multiple occasions, even with the map theme of all things.
As for gameplay, it does improve on a lot of issues I had with P1. The grid system is completely gone. The dungeons are shorter. You can now see how close you are to ranking up a Persona. You can also check what skills a Persona will learn before summoning it so you don't run the risk of devoting time into ranking up a Persona that ends up learning really weak abilities. EXP is now shared equally among party members so no one falls behind. All these changes are welcome, but the game is too easy and doesn't add enough to make the gameplay more interesting than it was in P1, so what you're left with is what feels like an extremely dumbed-down version of its predecessor. Because of it, I ended up auto-battling my way through basically the whole game, including most bosses and the further I went into the game, the less interested I became. The fact that the gameplay is so insanely easy and boring here completely killed my motivation for experimenting with different Personas and doing sidequests since it all feels unnecessary. In a way, I think I prefer P1s gameplay since while that game was frustrating and its areas dragged on and on, atleast I had to engage with it and think about what I was doing which I didn't need to here.
One big part of P2s gameplay is Rumours that you can pay money to spread around and make them come true. Spreading rumours is how you acquire stronger weapons and fight optional bosses which is cool but I think this concept could've been expanded more. Rumours also don't really work in terms of story for me. That's because there's no real limit on what rumour can come true and yet the cast never seems to take advantage of them so it ends up feeling like one big plot hole.
In my P1 review I said a great narrative can't justify terrible gameplay. However, P2 does such a great job with other aspects such as the OST and the cast that I can just barely say that the positives outshine the negatives here. Even with how monotonous it often felt, I can tell this is a game that will be on my mind for weeks to come and overall, I did enjoy it.