I'm tired...
Once again, a game with the potential to become a new classic, the game that could bridge the gap between SMT and Persona, but it failed on both.
Soul Hackers 2, to paraphrase another review I read, is a game with many amazing ingredients, but it doesn't taste like anything at all. It's like Mystery Food X from P4, perhaps the only thing it borrowed correctly from Persona.
Before I start ranting about the story, or lack thereof, let's talk about gameplay. It's actually good! Again, I hope that Atlus continues to not gameover when the protagonist dies. The combat in this game is the most basic of basics, it works, but it misses a lot from an SMT experience, and yeah, it's dead easy too. I played on hard and didn't have a single "oh shit" moment because weaknesses in this game are basically a buff in damage in you. I didn't feel threatened by being targeted by a weak at all. Weaknesses on the enemies, however, are strong and very encouraged. Sabbath is amazing, seeing the demons we love so much making a bloodbath.
Talking about demons, it was a terrible decision to make a main human party. In all the other Atlus games I remember playing, with the exception of Persona and Digital Devil Saga, your party is made up of your demons. In this game, they just lend their skills to the party member they are assigned to, and I don't think I like that. It misses the feeling of collecting demons, when they are just a 3D model you see when fusing, and never more, because you will skip 99.99% of the Sabbath animations where they were supposed to appear.
The story dungeons are very boring, adding nothing more than, again, an obstacle to continue the story, not a fun progression to the game. Soul Matrix is the worst dungeon design Atlus ever made. 15 floors of emptiness where you don't even need to use it to grind, but you will lose powerful skills if you don't, and worse of all, the true ending is locked behind it in NG+.
Let's touch on some minor things like art style and OST quickly. All the budget of this game went to the opening song and the character designs (except for Arrow). The shops are pretty and stylish. Ringo's design continues the trend of amazing protagonist designs we got from previous games. The only good OST in this game (which isn't hard since it only has like 10 OSTs) is the opening, and it's probably one of my favorites of all the games from Atlus I've played. It can really deceive you into thinking the game is good.
Now the big S: the Story. OH MY FREAKING GOD WHAT WERE THEY THINKING??? They throw a lot of things at you with little to no correlation, and in the end, we were supposed to fight against what? A war of generations we only heard about 15 minutes ago in an undubbed cutscene? Characters we don't care about because they just appeared and died? The only good characters in this game are Saizo and Ash, and not because of good writing, but because they had writing. All others are so shallow that they're completely blank. Don't get me wrong, the main party is okay, their interactions are cool, but there's nothing more than a "hangout event." Arrow was clearly made to be the protagonist, but people wanted a female protagonist, so let's make Ringo and write whatever for him. People wanted an adult cast, so let's make a post-sex scene and have them drink beer every other cutscene because that's adult, right? The game tries to cater to different audience preferences, but ends up being superficial and lacking in substance.
"Less is more" applies strongly to Soul Hackers 2, which was clearly made with minimal effort and great ambition. Despite borrowing the name of a long-forgotten classic from the 90s, the game lacks the soul that its name suggests.
Once again, a game with the potential to become a new classic, the game that could bridge the gap between SMT and Persona, but it failed on both.
Soul Hackers 2, to paraphrase another review I read, is a game with many amazing ingredients, but it doesn't taste like anything at all. It's like Mystery Food X from P4, perhaps the only thing it borrowed correctly from Persona.
Before I start ranting about the story, or lack thereof, let's talk about gameplay. It's actually good! Again, I hope that Atlus continues to not gameover when the protagonist dies. The combat in this game is the most basic of basics, it works, but it misses a lot from an SMT experience, and yeah, it's dead easy too. I played on hard and didn't have a single "oh shit" moment because weaknesses in this game are basically a buff in damage in you. I didn't feel threatened by being targeted by a weak at all. Weaknesses on the enemies, however, are strong and very encouraged. Sabbath is amazing, seeing the demons we love so much making a bloodbath.
Talking about demons, it was a terrible decision to make a main human party. In all the other Atlus games I remember playing, with the exception of Persona and Digital Devil Saga, your party is made up of your demons. In this game, they just lend their skills to the party member they are assigned to, and I don't think I like that. It misses the feeling of collecting demons, when they are just a 3D model you see when fusing, and never more, because you will skip 99.99% of the Sabbath animations where they were supposed to appear.
The story dungeons are very boring, adding nothing more than, again, an obstacle to continue the story, not a fun progression to the game. Soul Matrix is the worst dungeon design Atlus ever made. 15 floors of emptiness where you don't even need to use it to grind, but you will lose powerful skills if you don't, and worse of all, the true ending is locked behind it in NG+.
Let's touch on some minor things like art style and OST quickly. All the budget of this game went to the opening song and the character designs (except for Arrow). The shops are pretty and stylish. Ringo's design continues the trend of amazing protagonist designs we got from previous games. The only good OST in this game (which isn't hard since it only has like 10 OSTs) is the opening, and it's probably one of my favorites of all the games from Atlus I've played. It can really deceive you into thinking the game is good.
Now the big S: the Story. OH MY FREAKING GOD WHAT WERE THEY THINKING??? They throw a lot of things at you with little to no correlation, and in the end, we were supposed to fight against what? A war of generations we only heard about 15 minutes ago in an undubbed cutscene? Characters we don't care about because they just appeared and died? The only good characters in this game are Saizo and Ash, and not because of good writing, but because they had writing. All others are so shallow that they're completely blank. Don't get me wrong, the main party is okay, their interactions are cool, but there's nothing more than a "hangout event." Arrow was clearly made to be the protagonist, but people wanted a female protagonist, so let's make Ringo and write whatever for him. People wanted an adult cast, so let's make a post-sex scene and have them drink beer every other cutscene because that's adult, right? The game tries to cater to different audience preferences, but ends up being superficial and lacking in substance.
"Less is more" applies strongly to Soul Hackers 2, which was clearly made with minimal effort and great ambition. Despite borrowing the name of a long-forgotten classic from the 90s, the game lacks the soul that its name suggests.