I really like this second entry in the Persona series. It unfortunately sticks to the massive grind present in the first game, but the narrative here makes up for most of that tedium for me.
The spritework here is as good as in the first one, though I think the character portraits are much better. Personas and monsters all look cool and the top-down city maps you spend most of the game traversing are much more memorable and interesting this time around. Dungeons in Innocent Sin are pretty repetitive, unfortunately, though the switch to an isometric camera for them makes things better to look at most of the time, at least.
Combat is straightforward turn-based with an emphasis on enemy weaknesses and strengths that Persona games are known for. You can assign personas to give your characters different stats, properties, and spells. In practice I didn't care too much about the personas themselves, I really just used whatever was the highest level I could summon with a good affinity for each character and one that had media (group heal).
The system for gaining new personas is much better than in the first game, with general types of monsters giving you cards when you converse with them that can be used to summon any persona of that type within your level range. This streamlines things and gave me things to work towards -- one of the major problems with persona crafting in P1. There is still a lot of grind necessary, with conversations being effectively random (or easily looked up online), drawn out, and boring.
Combat itself is very straightforward. Attacks and spells with a spell combo system that is a bit too annoying to use and hard to wrangle, so I didn't use it much.
This game is very easy. Most attacks (by your party and the enemies) don't do a ton of damage, so battles tend to be drawn out. The combat menu is strangely overwrought as well, with a ton of confirmations and redundant selections you need to make. Things last much longer than they should.
In general, there is just too much game here, unfortunately. Enemies have too much health, combat is too slow, dungeons are too long, and there are quite a few extraneous events that don't really add much to the narrative or gameplay. This is the major problem with this game and it does severely hurt it.
The narrative is what brought it back up for me, however.
The story Innocent Sin is telling is extremely wacky at times, but very compelling. There is a focus on discovering one's internal self, aligning effectively with the persona based gameplay and a late-game twist (reminiscent of Final Fantasy VIII) is compelling and brings the subtitle into focus in a way that I found to be a cool payoff.
On top of that there is a thread of internal desires and rumors becoming real, which leads to the wackiness... you fight Hitler and his mecha army on an alien ship raised out of the city through the power of Crystal Skulls. It is supremely strange and probably goes a bit too far, but does make sense in context with the rest of the game and the conclusion. I sort of appreciate that Atlus is just willing to get wild with it.
Like the original Persona, you have a static party throughout the game, though you don't get to pick who they are. This group of protagonists are all connected and the game does a great job of creating a realistic crew that grows closer as they learn more about each other, what is going on in the city, and their pasts. Each of these characters are more realized than your average Final Fantasy character and you definitely care more about them all by the end.
I love that Yukki, MVP from Persona shows up as a party member and all the other P1 party members and some side characters have appearances as well. It is a cool way to ground the game in this world and I liked seeing where these people ended up ten years later.
Innocent Sin has a really cool setup for Eternal Punishment as well, so I am interested to play through that one and see how things turn out.
Persona 2: Innocent Sin definitely takes some patience to trudge through its more tedious parts. I like the combat well enough though, and the narrative and overall unique experience definitely made it worth my time. Check it out if you like Persona and you shouldn't be disappointed!
The spritework here is as good as in the first one, though I think the character portraits are much better. Personas and monsters all look cool and the top-down city maps you spend most of the game traversing are much more memorable and interesting this time around. Dungeons in Innocent Sin are pretty repetitive, unfortunately, though the switch to an isometric camera for them makes things better to look at most of the time, at least.
Combat is straightforward turn-based with an emphasis on enemy weaknesses and strengths that Persona games are known for. You can assign personas to give your characters different stats, properties, and spells. In practice I didn't care too much about the personas themselves, I really just used whatever was the highest level I could summon with a good affinity for each character and one that had media (group heal).
The system for gaining new personas is much better than in the first game, with general types of monsters giving you cards when you converse with them that can be used to summon any persona of that type within your level range. This streamlines things and gave me things to work towards -- one of the major problems with persona crafting in P1. There is still a lot of grind necessary, with conversations being effectively random (or easily looked up online), drawn out, and boring.
Combat itself is very straightforward. Attacks and spells with a spell combo system that is a bit too annoying to use and hard to wrangle, so I didn't use it much.
This game is very easy. Most attacks (by your party and the enemies) don't do a ton of damage, so battles tend to be drawn out. The combat menu is strangely overwrought as well, with a ton of confirmations and redundant selections you need to make. Things last much longer than they should.
In general, there is just too much game here, unfortunately. Enemies have too much health, combat is too slow, dungeons are too long, and there are quite a few extraneous events that don't really add much to the narrative or gameplay. This is the major problem with this game and it does severely hurt it.
The narrative is what brought it back up for me, however.
The story Innocent Sin is telling is extremely wacky at times, but very compelling. There is a focus on discovering one's internal self, aligning effectively with the persona based gameplay and a late-game twist (reminiscent of Final Fantasy VIII) is compelling and brings the subtitle into focus in a way that I found to be a cool payoff.
On top of that there is a thread of internal desires and rumors becoming real, which leads to the wackiness... you fight Hitler and his mecha army on an alien ship raised out of the city through the power of Crystal Skulls. It is supremely strange and probably goes a bit too far, but does make sense in context with the rest of the game and the conclusion. I sort of appreciate that Atlus is just willing to get wild with it.
Like the original Persona, you have a static party throughout the game, though you don't get to pick who they are. This group of protagonists are all connected and the game does a great job of creating a realistic crew that grows closer as they learn more about each other, what is going on in the city, and their pasts. Each of these characters are more realized than your average Final Fantasy character and you definitely care more about them all by the end.
I love that Yukki, MVP from Persona shows up as a party member and all the other P1 party members and some side characters have appearances as well. It is a cool way to ground the game in this world and I liked seeing where these people ended up ten years later.
Innocent Sin has a really cool setup for Eternal Punishment as well, so I am interested to play through that one and see how things turn out.
Persona 2: Innocent Sin definitely takes some patience to trudge through its more tedious parts. I like the combat well enough though, and the narrative and overall unique experience definitely made it worth my time. Check it out if you like Persona and you shouldn't be disappointed!