It's okay to feel guilt, regret, or to yearn for something long since lost. It's normal for traumatic experiences to affect you as a person, or to feel that your actions mean that something is entirely your responsibility.

But you don't have to bear the burden alone. There'll always be someone who cares, or wants to help, and things will eventually get better.

In these turbulent times, the Persona 2 duology provide some powerful, meaningful messages that are more important to abide by now than they possibly ever have been. So, let's be positive, everyone.

I really don't understand the weird ass combat change where you have to go through 3 fucking menus to input a set of moves. It's implying that this game is less strategy focused and more spammy, but the challenge of the game would tell you otherwise. The game itself is not an insane challenge, but there were bosses where I would have to change my moves every other turn, which is annoying when you need to go through these menus to do so. I really enjoyed the characters of IS, and was insanely disappointed with how they played almost no role in this game. The new main team is very good, and I think everyone was very well written besides Maya getting an obvious downgrade because this game really totally needed a silent protagonist. The story, while good, was kind of just IS again but adding the memory loss aspect to it and swapping the characters.

Eternal Punishment is far from a perfect game, but it is a very special one to me. Although I still don't enjoy some of its core mechanics, such as the fusion and combat systems, I've come to appreciate every other aspect of it as I've gotten older. Its main cast is easily the most likeable in the series, its neo-noir-ish mood is still unmatched, the soundtrack is awesome, and its themes resonate with me now more than ever. Being an adult sucks, dealing with trauma is difficult, and learning to love and forgive yourself can be tough, but there's always a bright side to everything. In a way, Eternal Punishment did teach me to think positive. With the recent release of the English patch for the PSP remake I really do hope more people finally decide to give this game a genuine shot. It deserves to be recognized as not only one of Atlus's finest, but also as one of the greatest PS1 games.

"There are good things even when you become an adult... Just a few..."

"This is... the burden of sin"

might be a bit more personal of a review at the start than i intended but oh well! also dragged on new-persona a bit more than i wanted but i'm keeping it in because i find it important to my thoughts on the game

i think i played eternal punishment at the perfect time in my life. i'm a largely aimless adult who thought they knew what they wanted out of life but is currently just in a state of trying to find something that makes sense, something to hold onto and give me a direction. at the same time, i'm only 20 years old at the time of playing the game and writing this, and more than an aimless and confused adult, i'm a scared kid who doesn't know and isn't ready for what being an adult entails. because of this, i've never really related more to a cast of characters in a game more than the cast of eternal punishment.

if you know anything about persona it's probably persona 4 and 5, which uh. you can see my reviews on those games to find out how i feel about them. their casts are of teenagers whose biggest problems never seemed to be anything that i could relate to, other than futaba who is autistic and has trauma, but even then there's this thin layer of tropiness on every character so you can't even relate to them past a superficial level of recognizing a small bit of yourself in them for the sake of doing the bare minimum to be hip and relatable teenagers.
in p2ep however, you have a group that amounts to a directionless adult, an adult who is questioning his direction, an adult who lost his way, and an adult who is too absorbed in the direction she took to really go any other way (she is the weakest example of the theme). later on, you also get (in my playthrough at least, there are two persona 1 party members you can choose between later on and i chose nanjo) an adult who found his way and has an experience that strengthens his resolve, and a teenager who is deeply afraid of being alone, and is scared of what becoming an adult is going to mean for him.

the party in eternal punishment are all handled so well and the way they interact with each other feels just as real as the friends in innocent sin. its a palpable feeling where these characters are in their lives and careers and how happy they are with it and i love it, it made me feel like maybe there is a way for me to claw my way out of the uncertainty of early adulthood, a way for me to... Change My Way.

sorry

aside from the characters, the narrative is also a great continuation of innocent sin and the original persona (but mostly innocent sin). you get really nice conclusions and additions to the characters from the first game sprinkled throughout, and seeing as it is a sequel to innocent sin, a lot of content that is greatly benefited by having played that game first. whereas innocent sin ends in a sorrowful and hopeless note for these kids who didn't do anything to deserve it, eternal punishment highlights that hopelessness at first, but ultimately shows it all through a lens of hope. i won't spoil much but these characters get mostly happy endings and they get to move on with their lives and find a place and direction they can be happy with, and after playing 2 games i would hope i at least get to feel a little nice about what happens in the end.

gameplay wise, eternal punishments psp port is a lot better than the psp port of innocent sin. a lot of minor quality of life features make the battle system a lot more fun to mess with and it isn't so awful that you're going to be begging for a visual novel adaptation. it's honestly one of the more fun turn based systems in a jrpg i've played even if near the end i started to get a little bored, at least of the random encounters and some reoccurring bosses. the dungeon crawling is also a lot better in this one aside from a certain dungeon near the end of the game. it's hardly ever aimless and frustrating like i felt innocent sin could be.

overall, eternal punishment is an amazing game and a perfect finale to innocent sin, and it's a shame that persona just never was this good or real again. maybe with a new director to the series we could see a return to this style of storytelling and presentation in the series, but with how popular the newest games are and how prominent the dating sim elements are, i don't see that happening sadly. it's not all bad though, because these old games, or in the case of the original and the psp port of innocent sin, the stories, hold up incredibly well and far surpass their younger peers. i implore anyone who feels like they can't get into modern persona or just anyone who wants a good jrpg to sink a few weeks into to play this duology, i promise you won't be disappointed.

this game is 100 times better than innocent sin and innocent sin is already perfect in my eyes. this game perfect expands upon the lore and themes in persona 2 innocent sin, and translates them into more mature adult characters. where as in p2is the party is split 3/2 teens/adults, this games cast is all adults, all at different points in their lives, all having made mistakes. this game shows the adult perspective of the themes presented in p2is and how adults deal with their pasts and their idea of how to do so. however, one this is clear and that amongst all their differing ideas and values, that people are able to change who they are and are not bound to one incident in their lives. without spoiling, the final cutscene to this game not only perfectly juxtaposes the first games final cutscene, but it also perfectly encapsulates persona 2 as a whole.

once again, this games soundtrack is fucking phenominal, as is shares tracks with p2is. graphically, the persona 2 duology are my favourite looking games and how all video games should, actually. the gameplay in this game is far more challenging in this game, and is so smooth, it makes random encounters almost redundant, as they can be over incredibly quickly if you know what youre doing. the biggest upside to these games being the oldsona games is that it doesnt have the wild card mechanic of neosona, so team building is able to be far more indepth than available in those games (Not a bad thing for 3,4,5 as they are built with wild card in mind, its just nice being able to create an entire team build)

yeah, persona 2 is special :)

This is better than xenobalde 3 and One of my favorite RPGs of all time, my favorite cast out of any Persona game even over Innocent Sin and definitely over Xenoblade 3. The cast being comprised of mostly adults makes for a really interesting dynamic nothing else in the series really has, the plot is great but I don't think it'd be as great without them. Most people would say they dislike the gameplay but in this game specifically I found it very fun (sokmething I can't say about the horribly lame designed battle system in xenoblade 3) and challenging although the game is full of PS1 jank and it's definitely not for everyone, you'd probably be better off playing with a guide and one of the dungeons in the game pisses me off really bad even though I like the gameplay.

Beaten: Oct 5 2021
Time: 43 Hours
Platform: Xbox Series X via Retroarch in dev mode/PS Vita

I loved Persona 2 Innocent Sin when I played it last year. It's a masterful game, full of well realized characters and the strongest characters in the whole series, BAR NONE. Plus, it's got maybe the most imaginitive plot out of any jrpg I've ever played? Rumors become reality, and it just escalates so damn well from there, not only taking that idea to it's extreme, but also exploring it so well along the way. The only real flaw I felt with it was the battle system, which was a bit on the slow side, but for such a short game I didn't think it was a huge issue.

Eternal Punishment, the second half of Persona 2, is about as perfect a companion piece I've ever seen. It stands on its own as a full experience, and if you've played the first game, it feels like there's mountains of references and thematic callbacks buried under each line of code. I'm not sure why it took me a whole year to finally play it, but oh man am I glad I did!

Most mechanics from the first game are included here. The rumor system is expanded upon, and although it isn't as central to the plot in this game, it's just as if not more fully explored here. Sometimes you're just spreading rumors like "yeah this shop sells weapons I guess", but sometimes you're unlocking new dungeons, moving restaurants halfway across the city, or inspiring fashion designers on accident. Every time you spread a rumor, going and checking if it worked still feels like a rush, like "did it actually happen? does this surf shop owner now smuggle for the mafia?" and it's just addictingggggg.

Demon conversations also work the way they did in the first game, and it's just as fun of a system here. It's got all the complexity of the early smt games, but with so much more repeatability and variety of outcomes. You're trying to induce emotional responses in the demons, and if you get them to feel strongly enough they'll react, but what they react to and how you get them to feel happy or interested or scared is monstrously varied.

Moving on to the main portion of the game, you'll be spending your time with the game in around 20 dungeons, almost all of which are immaculate and fun as hell to navigate! They're less tedious than old school smt dungeons, but also incorporate some puzzle elements in there. Honestly the best comparison for dungeon design is Nocturne, but where that game tends to theme itself after an eerie sense of emptiness and otherworldliness, the dungeons here are, for the most part, very grounded, real placess. You go through a high school, a gym, a museum, and it's all just full of flavor.

The battle system is the real star of the show here though. At it's core it's a pretty standard turn based battle system, albeit with like 16 different attack types, but the way it's impelemented pushes you to focus on auto-battle. In fact, auto-battle is the default battle mode, and while you're in auto mode, the order that your characters take their turns kind of.. shifts. If a character's got a high agility, they can have another turn without waiting all the way through every other turn. What comes out of this is a very flexible system that feels like it flows much quicker than most turn based systems, and as you get your attack patterns designed well, one where you can just watch if you want, or speed through if you don't.

It's a huge improvement on the first game, which is interesting because the version of the first game I played was the remaster for the PSP??? And the original game supposedly plays much more like this game???? What a weird change to make.

Anyways, this is a game you really should experience yourself, particularly if you like the kinda heady anime from the late 90s/early 2000s, because this feels almost exactly like those. Particularly Serial Experiments Lain felt a lot like this. I don't really have an explanation as to why besides "depression and weird" though haha.

So yeah, play this game, but play the first one first. Goodnight :)