Somehow one of the most important work of the entire mainline series of SMT, in the same line as SMT III. Despite to being the first of its kind, it has the most interesting conclusions and treatment of the basic alignment system. So why is it rated lower than all other ones ?
CAUSE THIS GAME IS DOGSHIT. I did not think it was possible for a sequel to be more tedious than SMTI, yet here we are, and as usual, the fact that it's so old held it back massively to portray the scenes properly to leave an impact. A remake would make it one of Atlus's best work, and another timeless classic.
CAUSE THIS GAME IS DOGSHIT. I did not think it was possible for a sequel to be more tedious than SMTI, yet here we are, and as usual, the fact that it's so old held it back massively to portray the scenes properly to leave an impact. A remake would make it one of Atlus's best work, and another timeless classic.
SMT2 is atypical from most JRPGs in more ways than you would expect. Eschewing a traditional adventure with towns along the way is nothing necessarily new, but the way SMT2 focuses on such a sprawling but interconnected region feels pretty forward thinking. There's obvious inspiration from Western RPGs, but it also evokes Dark Souls or FF12 with its commitment to an immersive world.
There's no doubt that the world itself is incredibly interesting and creative in a lot of ways, much more so than SMT1. From the unique flavor text to the striking aesthetics of each area, Kaneko's creativity really bleeds through constantly. It makes for probably the best aspect of the exploration.
However the exploration itself often ends up as a tedious and extremely frustrating task. I mentioned Dark Souls as an example of an immersive world that SMT2 reminds me of, but Dark Souls both commits to making you move from place to place on foot and has interesting gameplay. SMT2's gameplay is, well, terrible. It's pretty much brainless levels of easy for most of the game but with a ridiculous amount of encounters. I sort of knew this would be the case going in, but even if I was able to get past the combat itself the overall design feels made to waste time to insane degrees. Most of the games runtime is made up of fetch quests which drag you around every corner of the map. I understand wanting you to explore the map, but so much of the game being inane backtracking for little gameplay or story reward gets extremely frustrating.
Unfortunately, this detracts a lot from the story a lot of the time for me as well. This is by far the aspect of the game I've seen praised the most, and I think there is good reason for this. Not only does it have a much more interesting setting than SMT1, it also has a much more interesting alignment system that feels less wishy-washy about what it's trying to say. But the structure hurts it greatly still, as the story is only interesting until it suddenly isn't again. For every long expository dialogue scene there's another 10 hours of wandering around doing random tasks afterwards with little story impact. Aleph is a cool idea for a protagonist, with a really neat twist, but it's also undermined by the fact that there's little to no interactions that build up to the twist or follow up on it. For every interesting plot point I know it will be followed by "Find the 8 Idols of shitfuck to unlock the gate" I got the Law ending and it was interesting and neat but also felt detached from the rest of the game as well, mostly functioning off a cool aesthetic. I think the story had a big chance to make up for the rest of the game for me but I came away from it with little attachment.
I might be giving SMT2 a more positive score than how it actually felt to play but I can see the appeal to such a unique game. There's a really striking creative voice behind a lot of it that even SMT1 didn't really have. I just wish it could have all come together for me to be able to see it as a masterpiece at all.
There's no doubt that the world itself is incredibly interesting and creative in a lot of ways, much more so than SMT1. From the unique flavor text to the striking aesthetics of each area, Kaneko's creativity really bleeds through constantly. It makes for probably the best aspect of the exploration.
However the exploration itself often ends up as a tedious and extremely frustrating task. I mentioned Dark Souls as an example of an immersive world that SMT2 reminds me of, but Dark Souls both commits to making you move from place to place on foot and has interesting gameplay. SMT2's gameplay is, well, terrible. It's pretty much brainless levels of easy for most of the game but with a ridiculous amount of encounters. I sort of knew this would be the case going in, but even if I was able to get past the combat itself the overall design feels made to waste time to insane degrees. Most of the games runtime is made up of fetch quests which drag you around every corner of the map. I understand wanting you to explore the map, but so much of the game being inane backtracking for little gameplay or story reward gets extremely frustrating.
Unfortunately, this detracts a lot from the story a lot of the time for me as well. This is by far the aspect of the game I've seen praised the most, and I think there is good reason for this. Not only does it have a much more interesting setting than SMT1, it also has a much more interesting alignment system that feels less wishy-washy about what it's trying to say. But the structure hurts it greatly still, as the story is only interesting until it suddenly isn't again. For every long expository dialogue scene there's another 10 hours of wandering around doing random tasks afterwards with little story impact. Aleph is a cool idea for a protagonist, with a really neat twist, but it's also undermined by the fact that there's little to no interactions that build up to the twist or follow up on it. For every interesting plot point I know it will be followed by "Find the 8 Idols of shitfuck to unlock the gate" I got the Law ending and it was interesting and neat but also felt detached from the rest of the game as well, mostly functioning off a cool aesthetic. I think the story had a big chance to make up for the rest of the game for me but I came away from it with little attachment.
I might be giving SMT2 a more positive score than how it actually felt to play but I can see the appeal to such a unique game. There's a really striking creative voice behind a lot of it that even SMT1 didn't really have. I just wish it could have all come together for me to be able to see it as a masterpiece at all.