I'm a huge fan of the Soul Hackers subseries so when I heard they announced a second one I was really excited. What made me iffy on this game from the beginning (when the first trailer was showed) was how literal they were taking the "Soul Hacking."

In sh1, you weren't the one soul hacking or belonged to a group hacking souls, but the events throughout the game can be described by the title. There was nuance to the title in relation to the plot, and that's what I like about it.

Still after playing through the game and seeing how different it is from the original it will always perplex me why they chose to call the game "Soul Hackers 2." One's first thought would be that is was an Atlus/Sega marketing decision to prop up a budget title by connecting it to a pre-existing title (even if the original was very obscure). However it seems like the team that made the game was really committed to this game being a "sequel" to the original, so it may have been planned to call it Soul Hackers 2 from the get-go. If the game had a different title it wouldn't have helped it be a better game, but the reception would have gone from one of universal "What?" to at least mild/cautious optimism.

Make no mistake: With it's effective neutering of any challenge in combat and repetitive dungeons SH2's main selling points being the story and characters is more of an unfortunate realization than a saving grace