Everytime someone boots up this game somewhere, I burst out of my coma in a cold jealous sweat knowing I'm wasting precious time that could be spent playing it myself. The start of a pretty good duology, psp version of innocent sin is alright, the ui is certainly improved upon but it lacks the dungeon feel of the ps1 ver, you get over it by the time you get out of seven sisters tho. Yet again goated cast and story, the whole rumour gimick is very intriguing and dudeee when paired with eternal punishment this is one of my alltime favourite games in the history of forever. Superior when it comes to the eng dubs as well, keith silverstein should've been brought back in eternal punishment..

A splendid story accompanied by lackluster gameplay.

Atlus truly outdid themselves with the story and it is my personal favourite in the Persona series. This game would be an easy 5 for me if the gameplay wasn't as awful, boring, and tedious. The dungeons weren't super lengthy (thank God), but the overall fighting system is tedious and is outdated by modern standards, but that's natural as the PSP port was just a remaster with some fixes, not a total remake of the PSX version.

Overall, this game is a great experience for those looking for a compelling story with a funny and well-written cast

this is such a step up from p1 its crazy. maya rules. I liked how they narrowed down the broader themes of self-discovery in p1 and focused on each party member's relationship with their parents and how it formed their sense of self.

the combat is still holding it back, these games are easier than p5 even. But its a bit of a blessing in disguise cause the encounter rate is so high if you weren't able to auto battle through the entire game and actually had to make decisions and stuff during fights it would be like 3 times as long lmao.

also why no yuka ayase cameo they brought like everyone else back

In the past half decade, I started my journey with the Persona series, and now I am making my final stop with the Persona 2 duology. I have had a strenuous relationship with the four games that preceded this, with opinions on games ranging from “fantastic!” to “that was kind of bad..”, and now I wondered what my feelings would be for this one. Luckily for me, it fell firmly on the former rather than latter- and I have been enamored and absorbed into this title deeply. It is not without some issues, but where it shines it does so so radiantly that I just simply fell in love.

The elephant in the room here is the moment-to-moment gameplay- which its distasteful fan commentary was virtually the only thing I knew going in. Now, was the gameplay of Persona 2 Innocent Sin bad? To that I say, “not really I guess”- however I can’t dance around its glaring flaws. This game plays very.. plain- and I like plain! Selecting actions and watching them play out has never ceased to be entertaining for me. That being said, I think three major things hold it back from true excellence.

Firstly, This game has an insane encounter rate. I personally love random encounters in JRPGs, but they really crank it up here. Doing anything in a dungeon will undoubtedly have you lining up to kill some demons a few times. It is made worse by…

Secondly, This game needs a redbull or something because goodness it is sluggish! Menu selections in a battle feel like you’re choosing them through molasses, the battle animations are incredibly repetitive (press start to use the skip feature !!!), and getting in and out of every battle has a little load screen to accompany it- and that was with the extra data install you can do to trim loads. If you truly lack patience, it might be worth busting out your fancy emulator fast-forward toggle. And finally you start to question the point at all because…

Finally, This game is easy. Like, you have to try extensively to fail here. I don’t want to sound hyperbolic here but I can’t think of a more accurate descriptor than “brainless” here. You can very easily beat this entire game using exclusively the story-granted Personas. I used the Velvet Room maybe two or three times to see what it was like, but never even used my new companions because it didn’t matter. I also did a minimal amount of side content (mostly due to it being kind of obtuse to even find) and never found an ultimate weapon or armor for anyone. I still could beat nearly every encounter with a nice and balanced magic-spamming autobattle. Dump your stats into magic and just go crazy- it’ll work just fine. This is the first JRPG where I didn’t get a game over even a single time. I like easy fine enough, but when it is this easy, sluggish, and prominent it can get a little tiring. However, I still don’t think it is “bad”, just kind of boring and repetitive- but there is some satisfaction to it all watching everyone level up more and just steamroll everything. It doesn’t ruin the experience at all, to me atleast.

For every gameplay misstep, however, it is made up for tenfold by the storytelling served to you here, because damn this game absolutely fascinated me from start to end. Right from the very beginning it sets up such a compelling mystery and intrigue that you truly want to unravel, and it never slows down with dull moments or loses any appeal. Persona nowadays tries to act “adult” but feverishly lacks the nuance needed more times than not, in my opinion. This game also introduces some very heavy and mature themes, but I never found it disingenuous or distasteful when presented here since it is very carefully crafted to be nuanced and treated with care- while still never losing the charm and levity of the colorful cast. Every second of it was engaging, thought provoking on occasion, and legitimately moving when it needed to be. This game has all sorts of anime craziness for sure, but it uses the surrealism to paint a very contrasting image to the down to earth and realistic atmosphere and narrative it delivers- and I think both sides of the coin are strengthened because of it.

What really punctuates this story, though, is the characters it tells it with, and I think this is easily the best cast of characters this series has ever had. Every single one of them is not only likable, not only really unique, but also consistently develops throughout the story with some outstanding writing and characterization. This is a game about a group of ordinary people overcoming their past trauma by internalizing it and facing their fears with newfound courage, supportive friends, and also maybe some occult powers- and I think conceptually and in execution it is beautiful. This game doesn't hide critical character development behind optional social links, it doesn’t force in a dating sim mechanic or double its runtime by splicing in slice of life shenanigans, it just tells a story and it does it wonderfully.

Innocent Sin kind of snuck up on me. I didn’t know what to expect from it, but this level of praise and love was not quite on my bingo card. I am simply enamored by this game, and I think it is a very special experience. I will be playing Eternal Punishment soon, even though I was so satisfied by this game I don’t quite feel I “need” a continuation- but I can’t turn it down either. I hope that this game gets a modern rerelease along with P1 and EP so more people can experience and love these games like I have. Until then, my conclusion simply states that this game rules.

Final thoughts I couldn't really segway into this review naturally:

- Maya is easily the best character in the series and every aspect of her personality, dialogue, and actions made her both incredibly silly and also heartwarming with a genuine love for her friends. I found her to be the heart of the cast and really laid the foundation for why this story and cast is so good.
- The cast including someone not Japanese, someone from another school, an adult, and an experienced persona user makes this an incredibly diverse and unique cast compared to anything else and I thought it was really refreshing and cool.
- More Philemon. I love Philemon.
- More Satomi Tadashi Pharmacy (it is a crime it stopped being used after P2)
- Out of all the Persona games this has the best antagonist(s) which I’m not mentioning here since I don’t want to spoil anything, but if you know you know
- Not having traditional demon fusing was a little jarring coming from someone so thoroughly invested in Megaten, but I came to appreciate it fast due to it being different and new- even if barely necessary.
- The rumor system didn’t get as much use as something as cool as it should, but when it was an option I loved seeing how it would impact the world.
- The music is great but unfortunately to me lacks a lot of the impact and atmosphere from something like P1 and I was a little disappointed just having that subconscious comparison (but still love it anyways)
- This game still rules

This is not a review of the full game, I just want to talk about the DLC. Thanks to the work of Eiowlta, DarTisD, Sayucchi, Polyglot Sammy, Gabriulio and Apollo, the DLC content for Innocent Sin is finally available in English.

This DLC consists of small stories or "movies" that you can play at the Climax Theater. There are 9 in total, but the most important ones, at least for me, are the ones called Dark Shadow 1, 2 and 3. These were written by Tadashi Satomi, the original writer for Persona 1 and the Persona 2 duology. These stories were meant to connect the events of Persona 1 with Persona 2, and setting a little bit of lore for the Tatsuya scenario in the psp version of Eternal Punishment.

We get to see how the events of Persona 1 affected the lives of the main characters in that game, and how both routes, the SEBEC one and the Snow Queen, actually happen at the same time, which I think is pretty cool. I'm a little sad that Mark and Yuka did not appeared, but at least they were mentioned.

Another interesting bit is that the main characters of Persona 1, still know how to unlock the power of Persona in other people, which is a nice call back. Finally we learn that Philemon has the power to send people back in time.

That's about it, very short but with a lot of cool details. I'm so glad that we are finally able to play this. The translations community is awesome.

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.

Tried to play it a few times as a kid but the encounter rate filtered me, so I watched a play through of it on youtube recently because I didn't feel like playing it. The story was pretty solid, I'm very glad I know that there's a second game because otherwise I'd feel kind of weird about it. On its own I'd dock points for the ending probably lol... that said, I don't wanna give it a 4/5 or a 3.5, maybe something in between?

I like it. I think I would've been obsessed with this game if I managed to beat it as a kid, it's pretty cool. I felt like it started coming into its own more mainly near the end? Though I didn't like how some characters were totally handled and was let down by that. Otherwise, it had a fun gimmick and I like the main cast, I think it's really cute the way they come to care for each other a lot. I like how expressive the character's portraits and movement sprites are, and Eikichi and Yukino were my favorites, though I also liked Maya.

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.