While I do find this game to be a bit overhated, Soul Hackers 2 is just okay and it never goes above that besides being pretty good in a very few moments.
To start off, the cast here is amazing. Ringo is such a great main protagonist and the rest of the supporting characters (Saizo, Milady, and Arrow) are written pretty well with cool character moments within the story and between each other in conversations at the bar or over meals at the hideout. It feels good to have an adult group to move through the world here as it provides a nice change in perspective after being inundated with a cast of high schoolers for much of the other games to a ridiculous degree. Hoping this ain't the last time I see them, but I wouldn't be surprised given the reception of this entry.
The atmosphere in the cities and Aion were great and oozed with cool nightlife techno-futurism in the midst of ongoing capitalist corruption and waring violence with the incoming "apocalypse". While I did wish the cities were more open and has things to do in them besides get and progress sidequest objective and go back to dungeons, they were still solid. The music adds a lot of personality too and the music alone in this game was excellent.
With that said, this game got some issues and the gameplay/dungeon design is one of the most glaring. SH2 plays similarly to other SMT games and it does well in that department while adding its own twist with the Sabbath system to encourage and reward striking weaknesses. It still feels a little more forgiving than the regular system in other shin megami tensei games such as with the sabbath not breaking or decreasing if you mess up on striking elemental attacks to the wrong demon like it acted similarly to the mainline games. The demons themselves aren't too punishing either in the game and honestly gravitated towards being more annoying to where I avoided most battles unless I needed to level up to make a more powerful demon. Battling is still solid though but there isn't a huge ton of strategy here which was a little disappointing.
I'm not sure why they did this but demons act as RNG companions in this game while in the dungeons and I lowkey hated that. No more getting demons through negotiating with them in hilarious fashion during battles, but you just have to hope that the right one is found by your own demon and that your level is high enough to even get it. Items are also based around RNG rather than solely being placed or spawned in certain sectors or levels, which made upgrading a slight pain. These decisions are honestly very bizarre considering that they weren't really any problems with the approach all other SMT games use, so I'm guessing this is a weird one-off that is vastly inferior to how it is usually done.
I haven't spoke about the dungeons yet either lol. They were pretty boring, and some were even awful. The final dungeon was far and away the best of the group with an actual unique theme and connection to the game's whole vibe. All of the other main story ones were so forgettable. The Soul Matrix levels were as well, but became absolutely atrocious in floors 3 and 4 of each character's sector because of the aforementioned teleport design that wasted my time more than anything and made me want to pull my hair out without using a guide. This shit wasn't fun in SMT 3 and it still ain't fun here either.
The story was pretty decent and kept me intrigued for most of the runtime. The pacing felt off though since it felt like not much was happening or suddenly a lot was happening all at once. The final chapter "twist" felt really bizarre as the change happened so abruptly and felt like it was missing at least two or three more chapters of development for it to even click. Final battle was great and climatic, but it really did feel like the writers were scrambling to create some sort of big finale to revolve around the games' themes and ultimately wrap them up very nicely.
It's really weird how this game has the exact opposite problems that I took with SMT 3 and 5 where I found the central story/conflict and all the characters to be very flat while the gameplay and dungeon design pulled a lot of weight by being just amazing. Soul Hackers 2 has a great cast and the story exists, but aspects of the gameplay and level design are so watered down or frustrating. Atlus lowkey sabotaged this game by not letting have some more time to cook because it could have been a great game to hold off until whenever next SMT entries come out. Giving this 4 stars feels a little contentious.
To start off, the cast here is amazing. Ringo is such a great main protagonist and the rest of the supporting characters (Saizo, Milady, and Arrow) are written pretty well with cool character moments within the story and between each other in conversations at the bar or over meals at the hideout. It feels good to have an adult group to move through the world here as it provides a nice change in perspective after being inundated with a cast of high schoolers for much of the other games to a ridiculous degree. Hoping this ain't the last time I see them, but I wouldn't be surprised given the reception of this entry.
The atmosphere in the cities and Aion were great and oozed with cool nightlife techno-futurism in the midst of ongoing capitalist corruption and waring violence with the incoming "apocalypse". While I did wish the cities were more open and has things to do in them besides get and progress sidequest objective and go back to dungeons, they were still solid. The music adds a lot of personality too and the music alone in this game was excellent.
With that said, this game got some issues and the gameplay/dungeon design is one of the most glaring. SH2 plays similarly to other SMT games and it does well in that department while adding its own twist with the Sabbath system to encourage and reward striking weaknesses. It still feels a little more forgiving than the regular system in other shin megami tensei games such as with the sabbath not breaking or decreasing if you mess up on striking elemental attacks to the wrong demon like it acted similarly to the mainline games. The demons themselves aren't too punishing either in the game and honestly gravitated towards being more annoying to where I avoided most battles unless I needed to level up to make a more powerful demon. Battling is still solid though but there isn't a huge ton of strategy here which was a little disappointing.
I'm not sure why they did this but demons act as RNG companions in this game while in the dungeons and I lowkey hated that. No more getting demons through negotiating with them in hilarious fashion during battles, but you just have to hope that the right one is found by your own demon and that your level is high enough to even get it. Items are also based around RNG rather than solely being placed or spawned in certain sectors or levels, which made upgrading a slight pain. These decisions are honestly very bizarre considering that they weren't really any problems with the approach all other SMT games use, so I'm guessing this is a weird one-off that is vastly inferior to how it is usually done.
I haven't spoke about the dungeons yet either lol. They were pretty boring, and some were even awful. The final dungeon was far and away the best of the group with an actual unique theme and connection to the game's whole vibe. All of the other main story ones were so forgettable. The Soul Matrix levels were as well, but became absolutely atrocious in floors 3 and 4 of each character's sector because of the aforementioned teleport design that wasted my time more than anything and made me want to pull my hair out without using a guide. This shit wasn't fun in SMT 3 and it still ain't fun here either.
The story was pretty decent and kept me intrigued for most of the runtime. The pacing felt off though since it felt like not much was happening or suddenly a lot was happening all at once. The final chapter "twist" felt really bizarre as the change happened so abruptly and felt like it was missing at least two or three more chapters of development for it to even click. Final battle was great and climatic, but it really did feel like the writers were scrambling to create some sort of big finale to revolve around the games' themes and ultimately wrap them up very nicely.
It's really weird how this game has the exact opposite problems that I took with SMT 3 and 5 where I found the central story/conflict and all the characters to be very flat while the gameplay and dungeon design pulled a lot of weight by being just amazing. Soul Hackers 2 has a great cast and the story exists, but aspects of the gameplay and level design are so watered down or frustrating. Atlus lowkey sabotaged this game by not letting have some more time to cook because it could have been a great game to hold off until whenever next SMT entries come out. Giving this 4 stars feels a little contentious.