Out of the Persona 2 duology I've always heard more praise for Eternal Punishment, but after how much I loved Innocent Sin it honestly kinda fell short of my expectations. The difficulty is definitely a bit higher compared to Innocent Sin (both the PSX and PSP versions) which is neither inherently positive or negative for me, but I did find myself growing increasingly frustrated towards the last 10 or so hours due to that portion of the game being more densely packed with maze-like and annoying to navigate dungeons as well as two especially grindy boss battles. While I really like the party members on an individual level and they personally resonate with me a lot more, collectively they lack the chemistry that Innocent Sin's party had. Maya unfortunately becomes a lot less interesting as a silent protagonist, but in exchange Tatsuya is no longer silent and shines more, and I think Eternal Punishment definitely cemented my fondness of him. Nanjo and Elly aren't as well integrated into the story as Yukki previously was in Innocent Sin. Their routes feel tacked on and the game dedicates an unnecessarily large chunk of the overall playtime to following up storylines from Persona 1 that not everyone going into Persona 2 will necessarily have played. To add insult to injury depending on whose route you pick there's a 50% chance you will be locked out of proceeding with Tatsuya's additional scenario like I was, which I certainly didn't appreciate.