Soul hackers 2 is certainly an Atlus game that doesn't know whether it wants to be a shin megami tensei game or a persona game. So it tries to balance out between both but ends up doing a worst job in terms of trying to please both aspects of fans. I understand that Atlus was attempting to make this the 3rd pillar of their games, considering that they have persona and SMT but considering that they seem to have put less effort here makes it seem like they don't trust this 3rd pillar all that much.

I'm going to break down the good parts and bad parts about soul hackers 2. Believe me there are more bads than there are goods.

The Good:

• Interesting story that makes you want to feel invested in it personally I really liked it.
•Another aspect that I really enjoyed was the characters of Ringo, Lady, Arrow, Saizo, Figue, and Raven.
• Some music tracks are really great.
• Good music in certain parts of the game.
•The Dungeon designs themselves are pretty good in terms of everything BUT the soul matrix
•Raven being an amazingly tragic characters.

•Nana being an interesting character in her lacking DLC

•Shiva and Parvati being a great difficult boss fight in the DLC.

The bad:
• The gameplay aspect of battle is too easy in the sense that previous SMT and Persona games still gave you that edge of difficulty, however here it felt too easy.

• Story Felt Short- while I enjoyed the stories the story felt padded because of things like the Soul Matrix and side quests, but apart from that, the story is wayyy too short.

• The characters are introduced way too early in the game, I understand that they want to get things going and make players feel like things are urgent, but the way the characters meet is way to coincidental that it feels rushed.
• The lack of dungeon music, instead playing this awful repetitive music that appears in ALL dungeons except the last and the soul matrix.

• The Soul Matrix: If you ever despised mementos from persona 5, I feel like you're about to owe it an apology as the soul matrix is one of you worst designed dungeons in all of Atlus history. The soul matrix itself starts off very interesting looking in terms of the visual design of it, however as soon as you're able to explore the soul matrix for each individual member of the party, you realize that Atlus literally just reused the same exact textures and models because they were too lazy to change up the areas for each of the members. What I mean by this is for example: The soul matrix main lobby or I guess the entrance is entrance is pretty much cubes that are textured in blue and everything else is textured in blue, now you would think that when you enter for example arrows soul matrix his wold matrix his would not look completely different but at the very least be a different color. Atlus didn't have bother to actually do that. So the 3 different soul matrixes look all exactly the same in terms of visuals, while having a different layout in each level with tedious puzzles included. This doesn't help the fact that the soul matrix has one of the worst dungeon musics of all time, which is this peaceful piano music that doesn't fit at all with the vibe of the dungeon, and while you could say that it fits the entrance of the dungeons, it doesn't fit with with each of the respective members personal Soul Matrix. The fact that they didn't bother to actually make custom tracks for each dungeon shows how lazy Atlus were in this case. The biggest problem with the soul matrix is you will never be able to complete it on your 1st play through.

• This leads to this point, being the worst aspect of the game is essentially a worst version of Is social links/confidants called the Soul Ranks. The soul ranks are Essentially how much you get along with you the members of your party, but in no way does this really affect the story or gameplay if anything all this is is just to unlock more things in the soulmatrix. However I will say that the important thing is you get to learn more about your party members and their pasts and also future, but it's very tedious to have to go and obtain more points for their soul ranks, just to explore more of the generic annoying Soul Matrix. It doesn't help that the game will not give you the proper amount of sole points in order to obtain the maximum amount in order to actually gain access to the final level of each of the members soul matrixes.

• Side missions - Side missions or requests depending on how you want to call it, are essentially go get this item or go to feed this enemy and then come back.. These are some of the most repetitive side missions that if anything I can't remember a single one that was really that good. The soul matrix missions are the same 3 repetitive missions for each of the different members members dungeons. Pretty much they amount to kill this many enemies, collect this many items, and finally defeat the strong enemy with limitations.

• New game plus not bringing over your soul rank... yes I am serious. You can work as hard as you can obtaining all hang out events points, all side request points, as well as all answers from the main story and you will still not have enough for all 3 final levels of the soul matrixes for each of the members. Because the game requires a total of 200 to access the final level in terms of the gates, in the game during your 1st play through you will only be able to get a 100 for each of the members, you have to play a second play through but the kicker is that while they will Give you your soul points back, they'll only give it to you while progressing through the game again and also this means that you have to replay all the side missions again just to get those stupid soul points.

• New Game Plus locks you out of 3 different trophies: Because you're never going to be able to complete the soul ranks on your 1st play through, this pretty much means that You are locked out of completing the compendium, you are unable to fulfill the last hangout meeting with your friends, and you can't obtain the completion of the 5th level of one of the members soul matrixes.

• No Skip button except when the game feels like it wants to skip in New Game Plus: I personally like the story of soul hackers 2, but considering that I want to just get the final trophies and be done with it, this is something that aggravates me is when after you play your 1st play through there is no button to just skip everything and just immediately continue playing, that's not to say that I'm a speed runner anything. However because I'm trying to essentially hurry up the game in order to get what it requires for the last trophy is, it makes it really tedious and annoying to have to watch dialog now there is a fast forward button but it seriously isn't quick enough, the fact that they didn't care to add a skip button for every scene after your 1st play through is absolutely dumb this is absolutely dumb founding.

• Lack luster final boss, every other persona and SMT game have a final boss that is always grandiose, and while the final boss in this game does have 2 phases, the 2nd phase certainly feels like there was supposed to be a 3rd phase to the boss that got cut. For a bit of context, the game opens up with like this giant eye with hands coming in to destroy the world based off of Ringo saying the future. However we never actually fight never actually fight that thing in what apparently looks like it's true form and while someone might say that the character, who is the character who you fight in the final boss fuses with that thing, it would have been better to just fight that giant God or destruction creature instead of what we got which essentially is The worm from dead space but dead space but has the texture of stars if that's the best way I can describe it.

• Figue is not a party member, She should have been. Saying goes for characters like Ash, Kaburagi, and Raven. The games certainly feels like they were going to add more party members but instead stuck it out with the main four, with Figue there controlling the owl Mimi.

•The owl Mimi - Essentially the game features a Navigator that is unhelpful and annoying as sin, who just alert you to EVERY SINGLE enemy who appears and disappears or chase is after you. When this happens, Mimi will always repeat the same voice lines that get absolutely annoying to hear that you might as well just play the game on mute. You'll most likely play the dungeons on mute since, number 1 you don't want to listen to the background music of the dungeon as it's the same exact music every time, and 2 you have that stupid robot owl saying the same lines alerting you to enemies.

• The puzzles absolutely feel like they were designed by someone who worked on the original soul hackers in the 1990s, meaning that it's essentially a trial-and-error of getting the puzzles correct which are absolutely annoying and were made to pad out the game, I'm not asking for simpler puzzles but I'm asking for puzzles that make you think not make you try again over and over just because somebody's memory isn't as good at remembering where a stupid teleporter transport will transport you. The Red teleporters in the soul matrix especially are the worst in absolutely any game absolutely any game I've ever seen where essentially you go through this red teleporter and I'll take you anywhere. Now there is absolutely a pattern of which portal it will take you to what but attempting to remember that is absolutely asinine. The final dungeon has this stupid water flow puzzle that is just tedious.

• Negotiations are non existent in this game, and even if you can say they exist; essentially what they did was instead of being able to negotiate in battle you can only negotiate with your demons who happen to find a demon roaming around in the area. Essentially you talk to your own demon who you currently own, he/she/it says " I found a demon that wants to join and help us but you need to listen to it's demands in order friend to join us " And all you have to do is to have 1 of 3 things either:
1. Give it health
2. Give it magic points
3. Give it an item that you happen to have on you.

*NOTE: Another aspect as well is you have to have a high level in order for it to join you but regardless of that it's very bare bones and worse than the negotiation tactics in previous shin megami tensei and persona games.

• Having to find items using your demons, what this means is that in every dungeon you send out your demons and they'll appear throughout the dungeon and essentially give you items or let you meet new demon's, but occasionally they'll have this icon that is sort of like a nuclear symbol which essentially tells you that they found an important item, now this could either be story related or a hangout event item that you can use to later get more soul points. However the only indication that they got the item is that icon which ruins absolutely the atmosphere of the game essentially showing you any item throughout the game, which feel non existent unless your demon gets it.

• The expensive and lack luster story dlc.
The last one DLC starts off interesting, but plays no big part in the actual story of soulhackers too, it feels like attacked on important mission that might have been in the base game but because it was too interesting they took it out and put it as DLC which is just annoying as hell costing 9.99. It adds a new dungeon that essentially is somehow even worse designed than the soul matrix which essentially looks similar to what I can describe as devil summoner Raidou's temple or whatever. And every floor looks exactly the same I repeat it looks EXACTLY THE SAME.

All in all soul hackers 2 is a sequel that doesn't feel like a sequel, The only thing that makes it feel like a sequel is literally having the previous protagonist in the game as a demon aka Nemissa (as DLC ONLY). The game has a great story with great characters stuck in a game that has lazy dungeon designs, lackluster music in important areas like dungeons, tedious is all hell puzzles, unmemorable side missions (except maybe the DLC missions), with expensive DLC's.

Would I want to see another soul hackers game made in the future, to see more of the universe?

Yes I would but if Atlus wants this to be their 3rd pillar they absolutely have to make it have more effort than 2 did, this game had so much potential but you knew something fell off because of how little they cared to market it. I do not recommend playing it because you need a lot of patience.

I am only giving it a 3.5 out of 5 stars because of how much I like the characters and the story as well as their backstory and the hangout events, but I'm saying this now if you want to know the story either read the Wikipedia article or just watch a YouTube video that only has the dialogue and cutscenes scenes and maybe the final boss scene cause those are the only things that are worth seeing in this game.
I do not recommend you actually play it if you're a fan of Persona or SMT. The story is really good, but please just watch a YouTube video with the cut scenes.


I really hope Atlus doesn't give up on this series, but they have to do better if they're going to make a 3rd game in the future.

Thank you for reading have a good day or night depending on if you read all of this.