Among Persona fans, there are those who proclaim Persona 2 as the pinnacle of the series, and you know what? I totally get them now.

After having played both P1 and the first part of the P2 duology, I can't help but appreciate the differences between the old games and P3 to 5. Honestly, I'm glad P1 and 2 are not all like P3 to 5 because I don't think I'd have enjoyed them as much.

P2's gameplay is a major step up from its predecessor. It's pretty much the standard JRPG experience, and it can be a bit tedious at times, but just like in P1, it was worth trudging through. That being said, the encounter rate is still shit. It's not as torturous as in P1, but it's still annoying.

But let's talk about what really shines here—the story and characters. Man, the plot is just so darn intriguing and good. It's got its dark, heavy moments, but then it throws in these bursts of humor and wackiness that really keep things lively. And I think they did a pretty good job at balancing the humor and seriousness, which enriches the overall experience and leaves a lasting impression. The cast is also great. Each member of the main cast is carefully designed, with their interactions filled with chemistry and undergoing significant development as the journey unfolds. I really enjoyed my time with them. However, after P1, the soundtrack here takes a noticeable dive. While there are a few standout tracks, the overall soundtrack is kinda forgettable, which is a shame.

P2 Innocent Sin might have some outdated and average gameplay, but it's got one of the best stories and characters Atlus has ever cooked up for a Persona game. Finishing it has only got me more hyped for Eternal Punishment, especially because I get to see more of Maya and meet even more grown-up characters, who are the main cast this time around. An adult cast in Persona? Yeah, it's really old-school, huh?

"Dreams... Ideals... People are frequently willing to risk their lives for them. Then is it better if they don't dream...?"

A temática de boatos, que vem da crença japonesa chamada de "Kotodama" [言霊], é trabalhada textualmente causando dicotomia entre o autodescobrimento e aceitação dos personagens, característico da saga, e entre o vilão, Joker, cujo espalha mentiras para mudar a realidade, a rejeitando. Sua progressão e escolhas são interessantes, indo de simples desejos a teorias da conspiração e absurdos, envolvendo nazistas, maias, alienígenas, além das simbologias para mitologias, como grega, romana e até mesmo para o meio H.P. Lovecraft. Além disso, a mecânica é mesclada a gameplay de uma maneira criativa, espalhando rumores por si mesmo decidindo os itens e valores dos mesmos nas lojas. Seu maior destaque é sua narrativa junto à exploração de seus personagens, na psique humana e no autodescobrimento, todos acompanhados de bons conflitos e subtextos dentro da temática. Apesar de seu início lento (necessário para uma progressão não forçada de escala), ele é carregado pelo carisma da interação do grupo, com o narcisismo do Eikichi, as paixões e bobeiras da Ginko, e principalmente a Maya, com seu humor despreocupado e seu otimismo quase "tóxico". Todos resultam em uma interação divertida, além de trabalharem amadurecimento para cada um dos personagens. Grande destaque para o Joker, não só com grande expressão visual, baseado em uma tradição de assaltantes mascarados, mas também a aparência de palhaço enfatiza suas ações de roubar sonhos, além do significado de sua flor, uma Íris, que significa vingança. A história entrega devidas conclusões a seus personagens, com suas revelações e plots, se tornando ainda mais denso e instigante em suas discussões sobre sonhos, ideais, vida e vontades.

Seu maior defeito é sua gameplay, a principal característica da série Megaten é a exploração de suas mecânicas para se aproveitar das fraquezas do inimigo, onde nesse jogo é inútil pois seu balanceamento é inexistente, grande parte dos inimigos tiram 1 de HP, e caso você explore das mecânicas básicas, você destrói o jogo, como buffs/debuffs, já que eles não castam Dekaja e nem revidam tais. As lutas se tornam batalhas de paciência, já que não há desafio, seus personagens só morrerão se o inimigo castar uma skill de HK death/light, de resto, será uma luta longa contra um inimigo "esponja de HP". Para não julgar como um completo absurdo, dá para tirar certas estratégias organizando a ordem dos ataques, e low level dá para forçar um desafio em certas lutas. Apesar de eu gostar do sistema de Demon Talking, pois as interações são divertidas e caracterizam muito dos personagens, com uma variedade boa de comunicações, eu não acho convidativo, já que não só não é necessário diversidade de personas, como também é robusto demais na quantidade de variações, além de envolver RNG em uma mecânica 80/20 de reações, e se tornar repetitivo em não muito tempo. Uma grande critica pública ao primeiro jogo era a câmera first person em dungeons, assim a mudando nesse jogo, uma melhoria pois não só ajuda no enjoyment da exploração, mas também na expressividade dos personagens, com todos na tela se movimentando e se expressando continuamente sobre os acontecimentos, as vezes até sobre o que outro esta falando na mesma situação, novamente caracterizando na interação.

Seu lado artístico continua um destaque, como sempre vindo do Kazuma Kaneko... a quantidade de variação de cenários e seus tamanhos para as dungeons é impressionante para a época de PS1, e eu acho os sprites muito expressivos. Os personas principais são bem bonitos, além de carregarem muito significado, é interessante a transição de mitologia romana a grega em seus nomes, e suas escolhas especificas, como Apollo e Artemis, deuses do sol e da lua, fazendo jus a relação do Tatsuya com a Maya, ou também o Eros, da Ginko, sendo o deus grego do amor (e ela o arcana Lovers), e todo seu subtexto de querer amar seu pai e se adequar as suas vontades, mas ser impedida por si mesma. Seu lado sonoro, mesmo sem o Shoji Meguro, continua impressionante, com boas composições, além de ser o primeiro jogo com voice acting, mesmo que extremamente limitado.

Eu já antecipava que seria datado mecanicamente, o que fez que minha frustração fosse menor e eu pudesse aproveitar melhor suas qualidades, que são enormes para seu lado narrativo e de sua exploração de seus personagens, além do lado criativo de sua temática e suas explorações malucas para mitologias e conspirações, se consolidando como um dos melhores em seu meio.

Persona 2: Innocent Sin is a really difficult game to try and review, because on one hand, the gameplay and combat is an absolute chore, the battle system is legitimately unfun and is guaranteed to turn some people away from the game... yet on the other hand the story of P2:IS is absolutely beautiful and heartbreaking, but I don't think it could be fully enjoyed if you just watched a lets play on Youtube. Plenty of people believe Persona 3 sets the template Persona games follow to this day, but I can see the foundations laid here, excluding Social Links and hitting weaknesses for knockdowns, Persona 2: Innocent Sin is the real template that Persona 3 expanded upon by leveraging the power upgrade of the Playstation 2 to really solidify the beloved formula we know now.

tl;dr, Persona 2: Innocent Sin is a foundational game for the franchise, and I strongly recommend playing for yourself with speed up to get through the awful battles and encounter rates to really enjoy this heartwarming and heartbreaking story about what friendship means, how fragile the human memory is, and overcoming trauma.

I think this game is severely overrated. People may think it's forgotten but I hear so many people talk about how it's secretly the best Persona game and it's so dark and this and that so I had high expectations. What I found was the worst combat in any game I've ever played, a just decent soundtrack (in a series known for it's genuinely masterful sound work), and a story that seemed a bit nonsensical. The characters were pretty well written overall but I really didn't appreciate the kind of humor they went for, things like Lisa calling Eikichi "Undie boss" and the exaggerated loony toons esque animations for the character sprites, it really undercuts a lot of the potential connect I could've had with them. The game has a few really good moments but the amount of horrid gameplay and boring unfunny cutscenes and dialogues I had to go through almost didn't make it worth it. One thing that this game does very well are those 2D cutscenes, I think they're genuinely beautiful and usually are saved for very important and emotional scenes which only add to it. I wish I liked this game more but I don't think it really comes across as all it was trying to be. I'm hoping Eternal Punishment is worth it.

aint nothing innocent about it

yah very different experience if you have only played modern persona but still worth it especially as an entry point for these older smt games because this is probably the easiest one

(note I logged this way back when I opened this account just changing this since they differentiate now the PS1 and PSP versions)

Persona 2 has a lot of potential, but I ultimately found it VERY sluggish and boring.

This is a very different Persona than what I'm used to. I knew it was different from 3, 4 and 5, but I didn't know that it would be such a completely distinct experience.

The atmosphere is here at least and the game excels in it! Innocent Sin still gives off that chill Persona energy, with a high school story that starts off silly and ends up getting darker and darker, while not losing its cozy vibes. And that's actually the best thing of the entire game.

The story starts off very slow, introducing the setting and characters. It all develops very well, turning into a very mature tale filled with twists and mysteries up until the very final scene. All characters and villains are great, with simple but interesting backstories and fun/engaging personalities. I loved how it all progressed and that's what keeps me curious to play Eternal Punishment.

Demons/Characters designs and soundtrack also diserve to be mentioned on the positive side. Design is not as good as future games would be, but they're still charming enough. Especially main Personas and their evolutions. As for the soundtrack, it's good, a few tracks stand out, but it's not as special as Persona 4's, for example.

But I can't lie to you, I did not like this game very much. I didn't hate it, of course, but if it wasn't for story and characters, few things would get me to play Eternal Punishment or even Persona 1.

The dungeon crawling aspects from Innocent Sin are awful. Dungeons are exceedingly long, battles are slow, side quests are very unrewarding, dungeon designs are bad, negotiations are unintuitive and the RNG is insanely off. I just hated this part of the game. It feels so different from games like Persona 3 or SMT Nocturne. And being different isn't the bad thing, the bad thing is that it's not engaging at all!

There is no press turn battle system and while that would be ok if they had some other solution, it's not. Instead, you get the cards system, which is absolutely tedious. Collecting cards and having to manage them on the Velvet Room (which you'll hardly ever be in one) feels like a chore. Weaknesses are meaningless, negotiations make even less sense and it's all just helplessly slow. Even the fusion system is absent.

In fact, Innocent Sin felt a little too laid-back. The only battles I liked were boss fights, because they actually felt a bit more tactical and challenging. For the rest, I just couldn't care less. I'm REALLY glad it's not grindy and sort of chill, but they couldn't find a good balance, it seems. Takes a long time to level up and it simply does not compel you to battle much. Besides, the way dungeons are built just fuck up the story's nicely paced moments.

I do not recommend Persona 2, unless you have played the other games. I know there's a lot of people out there praising it, but I just found it tedious.

The story is great and I will play Eternal Punishment to find out what will happen with the cast, but other than that, it all feels like an unnecessary time-consuming adventure.

Neat!

I started P2 in September and instantly started riding high on the sheer Vibes. While Persona 1 struggled with its character relationships and nuances, Persona 2 absolutely excels. The opening minutes quickly establish your protagonist Tatsuya, the troubled punk at odds with the systems around him and how to function in daily life. Seven Sisters High is an odd school, as students fawn over their incredible principal as some sort of deity. His words are law, and people who exist outside the established authority are outsiders at best and threats at worst. Instantly, the game’s theme is established. The Accepted Truth is the Forever Truth among the population, no matter how ludicrous or unfair it may be. The power of rumors aids authority, as people avoid the unknown in favor of their safe, existing systems.

The other cast fill out the usual archetypes, but with compelling grounds. Lisa/Ginko is the overly attached crush, but that relationship is inherently built on a complicated framework. Lisa wants attention, but she doesn’t want it attached to her status as a foreigner. She’s yearning for something profound and sincere, but her teenage brain can only interpret it through base pleasures and drives. Tatsuya is nice and seemingly daring, so he’s a vessel for those wants. Reaching a real understanding of her needs requires her to evolve her understanding of the world and herself. She learns about herself when she learns about others. It's an excellent dynamic.

Eikichi/Michel often falls into the typical Dumb Bro role. Ryuji, Yosuke, Junpei, all taking their cues from him. Unlike the more traditionally attractive characters, the game isn’t all that interested in examining Eikichi’s abusive home. One character facing a specter of their complicated parental relationship is a serious, heart-wrenching affair. Eikichi encountering his stern, violent father is a joke. A laugh track at Eikichi’s expense, no big deal. It's an odd distinction and it's one that sticks out against the story’s heavy hitting scenes.

The other characters engage in their own personal soaps, with my returning beloved Yukino having evolved into a photography career after her school punk days. It's a great evolution of the character, and one that feels a little underserved. The first game never really engaged with Yukino’s punk life as anything more than a backstory, and it's a shame that the game doesn’t engage with how Yukino’s anti-authority streak likely influenced her current career choice. Maya, the protag of Eternal Punishment, is cool and considerate, while struggling with her own fragmented memories and resentments of traumas long past.


In October, I caught covid. Almost instantly, my motivation cratered as I struggled to progress much farther.

Stepping away from the game made it difficult to retain a lot of the facts and I ultimately just had to repeat what I did with Persona 1 and finally just watch the ending on youtube.

Which is a particular shame when this game absolutely whips when I’m playing it.

The biggest hurdle is the grind. The dungeons aren’t as purposeful as later entries, extending out game time with increasingly obtuse and unnecessary delays in plot advancement. The persona mechanic was certainly more freeing when any character can take on nearly any persona. But the game begins to expect certain survival tricks. If you aren’t picking from a very specific stock of persona with certain immunities, you’re essentially fucked at the end game. Grinding is your second best bet, followed by making the exact right choices at the exact right points in the game. Allowing yourself to miss a single missable upgrade can make any attempt at the final dungeons into a miserable slog with no clear route to success.

I guess the main thing I've learned is that writing only gets you so far with video games. If the mechanics are frustrating, people are only going to forgive so much in favorite of excellent storytelling. But if the mechanics are smooth and rewarding, people will forgive many more storytelling flaws. I'm not above admitting that about myself. I can accept the dark reflection, the shadow self. This is what Persona is all about.

Pretty neat that you can kill Hitler though.

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!

Re-writing for PSP version that just got added onto the website.

One of my favorite social commentaries on various topic related to trauma, misinformation, and self worth of the early 2000s in a video game. I wish future Persona games delved into more topics rather than a single message like the future Persona games. Supported by a great cast, Persona 2 has my favorite characters in a RPG. All loveable and relatable with constant character developments. It's biggest flaw is it's gameplay. the P2 duology has one of the most different combat systems I've played with a different take on what was done during it's time on the PS1 with how you can stop mid turn to re-set your attacks. Yet, the PSP port of the game is way.. way.. WAY, and I'm really trying not to be hyperbolic, too easy. Probably the one of the easiest games of all time. It's a glaring flaw that hinders revisits to the game, though it's not the worst flaw a game can inherit, just one that makes it too smooth of a ride. Even with this glaring flaw, there's nothing here that I would consider even remotely close to bad other than the contact system, that's just a crapchute, it didn't hinder my battle performance significantly since either way, I was adequately prepared for every battle, but I was just guessing the entire game hoping to be right. The music is also extremely memorable and great to me, not my favorite in the Persona series, but I really enjoy it. Overall the complete package is a very unique experience, hindered by it's difficulty, gameplay choices, and intentional plot holes that are there for the sequel to expand upon. I really love this game for it's messaging the most, all of these characters have so much impact for me that's reinvigorated by Eternal Punishment.

Innocent Sin is the continuation of the Persona anthology series, and a lot went into the mix while making it. Mainly ramping it up in gameplay and story, but it mainly succeeds on having a really loveable cast of main characters that are greatly expanded upon and are given so much development in so little, coupled with the story and narrative around them being actually batshit insane (in the positive sense), Persona 2 is simply not afraid to do whatever the hell it wants to do and its one of those games that would definitely get shafted in a localization nowadays just because they would most likely not let a lot of it slide.
It has a lot of "edgy" rocker spunk to it that is highly missing in the Hashino games going forward, but for a game that I abstained to play for the longest time (because I wanted to play the first one beforehand) even if the first quarter of the game was rather slow, it was a very neat surprise to see the direction it was going and how much more complex things get in the latter part of it. I just love how this group of seemingly strangers get put into some very dire and chaotic situations off the bat, to be in a death or life situation a lot of the times really makes them way closer together than most Persona parties in the series.
I also particularly like how you get a lot of mileage if you've played the first Persona before this, even more if you've played Shin Megami Tensei if... or Devil Summoner (somehow) making this trilogy really feel the most connected despite its anthology nature.

Then sadly there's the gameplay department. It still comes from the first Persona game so it's a buncha auto and fast forwarding and later on hope you don't get one shot and die instantly, lucky for everyone the PSP version of it is so easy you can beat with the Personas you get at the start, middle point and the endgame, so save for a few fusions you won't really need to bother with it which is great because fusions SUCK here with the stackable tarot card system, it's so grindy and annoying for no real reason and I have no clue why they changed it from the one they had before. They also kept random encounters which in general is a shitty concept, especially since despite having a grid map you don't really move in a grid in the dungeons so you can take one wrong step and trigger a fight. At least dungeon crawling and most exploration is not a hallway simulator and you can actually move around in 3D environments and see the characters interact in a comic way since the 2D character sprites got an upgrade and are now way more emotive so it gives way for more slapstick humor that goes well with the mentioned already ensemble cast.

I often don't point out the soundtrack in games I play but this one deserves it, just like Megami Ibunroku Persona in the PSX this game also has very extensive and very immersive sound for the most part besides some real great tunes in the dungeons or places you can visit in the overworld, it's also got a double OST but thankfully the rerelease version didn't completely changed up the vibe but made it a little bit more techno which is alright.

I'm pretty happy I finally got around to play this considering everyone in the Persona fandom liked it so much, and yeah I agree, it's better than most modern Persona games and I wish they could revisit these characters in some capacity in the future since they're so good. Hell, I'd even take a Dancing game if that's all we can get.

I'll get this out of the way first. The characters and story are AMAZING, the best in the persona series. I love everyone, Eikichi is my number 1 Persona character, and the plot is crazy as fuck and i loved every second of it.

But that's were my praise ends, as a videogame it's one of the most boring games i've ever finished.

I LIKED the gameplay in P1, i have fun playing the snes mainline games. It's not because it's an old rpg that bores me since i usually like that stuff.

It's main flaw is that the game is braindead easy, it basically plays itself. Negotiations are weird as fuck and the way you get new personas SUCKS, you have to farm some stupid cards to get them or something, i'm not sure because luckly the game is so easy you never need new personas.

The gameplay itself is just a standard rpg, it's the difficulty that ruins everything. It's super boring, borderline torture. I haven't been this bored since DMC2.

What makes it worse is that P1 had a lot of cool ideas and ambitions for its gameplay, wich P2 should have polished. Instead we got the most generic rpg ever.

I feel so burned out i haven't played EP yet.

As good as the chars and plot are, i can't recommend playing this. I would normally never suggest this but just watch a playthrough instead.

A bit of a mixed bag as I didn't care much for how slow the battles felt and the method of acquiring new Personas was quite tedious; however, the narrative was fantastic with outstandingly written characters. The ending in particular was such an incredible cliffhanger that left me very excited to dip into Eternal Punishment at some point. As an aside, I had heard about how ridiculous some of the plot events within this game were prior to starting it but really didn't expect it to escalate quite as much as it did. Also, I don't hear this mentioned much when people talk about this game, but it's sometimes just pretty hilarious? I was quite surprised by how much humor there is in this game and honestly it contrasts quite well with the grim tone that's often present.

I've read a lot that the story is great but the gameplay drags the experience down.

I think that the gameplay varies from ok to great. It's just that people aren't acostumbed to random encounters anymore, and even then there are ways make it more bearable. Also the combat has more depth than any of the subsequent games. The story, in the other hand is... fine. The premise is quite good but the game don't spend enough time developing its plot and characters to earn the feelings that it tries to convey in the end.

Overall is a very good experience. People should be less afraid of playing old games with ""outdated"" mechanics.