Eternal Punishment exhibits a sublimely mature, dense, and compelling narrative that pairs flawlessly with it's cast of incredibly well-fleshed out characters that each carry their own near-insurmountable amount of baggage. The chemistry between these characters was engrossing and grounded in a way that very few works in this medium have achieved (at least in my experience) and I found myself completely absorbed as a result. In terms of gameplay, just about everything I enjoyed in Innocent Sin has been escalated and improved upon, while nearly all of the issues I had (primarily the speed of combat and the lack of difficulty) have been addressed and finely tuned with the only notable outlier being that I still find the demon negotiation and method of acquiring personas a bit too cumbersome and tedious. That being said, the only real letdown for me was Maya's transition to a silent protagonist as her uplifting sincerity in Innocent Sin was consistently a highlight of that experience. I can appreciate that the torch was passed to Tatsuya so he could become more thoroughly defined as a character this time around (which is certainly the case) but I couldn't help but yearn for a world in which these two fantastic characters can have genuine conversations with one another, even if it would require me to take more of a backseat as a player in the process.

Eternal Punishment exhibits a sublimely mature, dense, and compelling narrative that pairs flawlessly with it's cast of incredibly well-fleshed out characters that each carry their own near-insurmountable amount of baggage. The chemistry between these characters was engrossing and grounded in a way that very few works in this medium have achieved (at least in my experience) and I found myself completely absorbed as a result. In terms of gameplay, just about everything I enjoyed in Innocent Sin has been escalated and improved upon, while nearly all of the issues I had (primarily the speed of combat and the lack of difficulty) have been addressed and finely tuned with the only notable outlier being that I still find the demon negotiation and method of acquiring personas a bit too cumbersome and tedious. That being said, the only real letdown for me was Maya's transition to a silent protagonist as her uplifting sincerity in Innocent Sin was consistently a highlight of that experience. I can appreciate that the torch was passed to Tatsuya so he could become more thoroughly defined as a character this time around (which is certainly the case) but I couldn't help but yearn for a world in which these two fantastic characters can have genuine conversations with one another, even if it would require me to take more of a backseat as a player in the process.