Beaten: Oct 5 2021
Time: 43 Hours
Platform: Xbox Series X via Retroarch in dev mode/PS Vita
I loved Persona 2 Innocent Sin when I played it last year. It's a masterful game, full of well realized characters and the strongest characters in the whole series, BAR NONE. Plus, it's got maybe the most imaginitive plot out of any jrpg I've ever played? Rumors become reality, and it just escalates so damn well from there, not only taking that idea to it's extreme, but also exploring it so well along the way. The only real flaw I felt with it was the battle system, which was a bit on the slow side, but for such a short game I didn't think it was a huge issue.
Eternal Punishment, the second half of Persona 2, is about as perfect a companion piece I've ever seen. It stands on its own as a full experience, and if you've played the first game, it feels like there's mountains of references and thematic callbacks buried under each line of code. I'm not sure why it took me a whole year to finally play it, but oh man am I glad I did!
Most mechanics from the first game are included here. The rumor system is expanded upon, and although it isn't as central to the plot in this game, it's just as if not more fully explored here. Sometimes you're just spreading rumors like "yeah this shop sells weapons I guess", but sometimes you're unlocking new dungeons, moving restaurants halfway across the city, or inspiring fashion designers on accident. Every time you spread a rumor, going and checking if it worked still feels like a rush, like "did it actually happen? does this surf shop owner now smuggle for the mafia?" and it's just addictingggggg.
Demon conversations also work the way they did in the first game, and it's just as fun of a system here. It's got all the complexity of the early smt games, but with so much more repeatability and variety of outcomes. You're trying to induce emotional responses in the demons, and if you get them to feel strongly enough they'll react, but what they react to and how you get them to feel happy or interested or scared is monstrously varied.
Moving on to the main portion of the game, you'll be spending your time with the game in around 20 dungeons, almost all of which are immaculate and fun as hell to navigate! They're less tedious than old school smt dungeons, but also incorporate some puzzle elements in there. Honestly the best comparison for dungeon design is Nocturne, but where that game tends to theme itself after an eerie sense of emptiness and otherworldliness, the dungeons here are, for the most part, very grounded, real placess. You go through a high school, a gym, a museum, and it's all just full of flavor.
The battle system is the real star of the show here though. At it's core it's a pretty standard turn based battle system, albeit with like 16 different attack types, but the way it's impelemented pushes you to focus on auto-battle. In fact, auto-battle is the default battle mode, and while you're in auto mode, the order that your characters take their turns kind of.. shifts. If a character's got a high agility, they can have another turn without waiting all the way through every other turn. What comes out of this is a very flexible system that feels like it flows much quicker than most turn based systems, and as you get your attack patterns designed well, one where you can just watch if you want, or speed through if you don't.
It's a huge improvement on the first game, which is interesting because the version of the first game I played was the remaster for the PSP??? And the original game supposedly plays much more like this game???? What a weird change to make.
Anyways, this is a game you really should experience yourself, particularly if you like the kinda heady anime from the late 90s/early 2000s, because this feels almost exactly like those. Particularly Serial Experiments Lain felt a lot like this. I don't really have an explanation as to why besides "depression and weird" though haha.
So yeah, play this game, but play the first one first. Goodnight :)
Time: 43 Hours
Platform: Xbox Series X via Retroarch in dev mode/PS Vita
I loved Persona 2 Innocent Sin when I played it last year. It's a masterful game, full of well realized characters and the strongest characters in the whole series, BAR NONE. Plus, it's got maybe the most imaginitive plot out of any jrpg I've ever played? Rumors become reality, and it just escalates so damn well from there, not only taking that idea to it's extreme, but also exploring it so well along the way. The only real flaw I felt with it was the battle system, which was a bit on the slow side, but for such a short game I didn't think it was a huge issue.
Eternal Punishment, the second half of Persona 2, is about as perfect a companion piece I've ever seen. It stands on its own as a full experience, and if you've played the first game, it feels like there's mountains of references and thematic callbacks buried under each line of code. I'm not sure why it took me a whole year to finally play it, but oh man am I glad I did!
Most mechanics from the first game are included here. The rumor system is expanded upon, and although it isn't as central to the plot in this game, it's just as if not more fully explored here. Sometimes you're just spreading rumors like "yeah this shop sells weapons I guess", but sometimes you're unlocking new dungeons, moving restaurants halfway across the city, or inspiring fashion designers on accident. Every time you spread a rumor, going and checking if it worked still feels like a rush, like "did it actually happen? does this surf shop owner now smuggle for the mafia?" and it's just addictingggggg.
Demon conversations also work the way they did in the first game, and it's just as fun of a system here. It's got all the complexity of the early smt games, but with so much more repeatability and variety of outcomes. You're trying to induce emotional responses in the demons, and if you get them to feel strongly enough they'll react, but what they react to and how you get them to feel happy or interested or scared is monstrously varied.
Moving on to the main portion of the game, you'll be spending your time with the game in around 20 dungeons, almost all of which are immaculate and fun as hell to navigate! They're less tedious than old school smt dungeons, but also incorporate some puzzle elements in there. Honestly the best comparison for dungeon design is Nocturne, but where that game tends to theme itself after an eerie sense of emptiness and otherworldliness, the dungeons here are, for the most part, very grounded, real placess. You go through a high school, a gym, a museum, and it's all just full of flavor.
The battle system is the real star of the show here though. At it's core it's a pretty standard turn based battle system, albeit with like 16 different attack types, but the way it's impelemented pushes you to focus on auto-battle. In fact, auto-battle is the default battle mode, and while you're in auto mode, the order that your characters take their turns kind of.. shifts. If a character's got a high agility, they can have another turn without waiting all the way through every other turn. What comes out of this is a very flexible system that feels like it flows much quicker than most turn based systems, and as you get your attack patterns designed well, one where you can just watch if you want, or speed through if you don't.
It's a huge improvement on the first game, which is interesting because the version of the first game I played was the remaster for the PSP??? And the original game supposedly plays much more like this game???? What a weird change to make.
Anyways, this is a game you really should experience yourself, particularly if you like the kinda heady anime from the late 90s/early 2000s, because this feels almost exactly like those. Particularly Serial Experiments Lain felt a lot like this. I don't really have an explanation as to why besides "depression and weird" though haha.
So yeah, play this game, but play the first one first. Goodnight :)