If you haven't played this game yet, PLEASE read what I have to say here. If you, like me, are one that likes to enter games with as little knowledge of them as possible (apart from the vibe), then you ABSOLUTELY MUSTN'T read any "spoiler-free" review, watch any video about it, or even search for images online.

I will give some spoiler-free reasons to play this game after this, but let me back up my argument (which I guess comes off as very extreme). There is a certain element in this game that most people include in their reviews that is an incredibly huge spoiler that of course feels natural to talk about in the review, but it can ruin the expectations of someone who starts the game. I hate setting the expectations too high for anything either, but I'll say that I was very lucky to not have heard of this certain something before, and that allowed me to experience the most baffling moment in any piece of media ever. So, if you are like me and you like the vibe of this game, play it without reading more reviews, or anything really!

So, now that I'm done with this, I'll list a few spoiler-free elements of one of my favorite games of all time, in no specific order:
- Great difficulty
- The combat system is very nice and fast :)
- Cool art
- The english voice acting is impecable, easily the best one of any videogame I've ever played
- It has my favorite vidya OST as well
- The characters are cool and work very well with the story
- I actually have found the story to be a very enjoyable one, despite what some people say about it

💞

Probably one of the most unremarkable SMT games in the franchise, with the safest approach taken to one of the most radically unique franchises within the JRPG space. The title languishes in flat, samey combat within overlong dungeons, wrapped around a completely by the numbers budget JRPG story.

Principally, one of main reasons I get into this franchise is the satisfying progression loop of acquiring stronger demons. Most games lets you do this via demon negotiation, and subsequently fusing demons you obtain. However, Soul Hackers 2 finds a way to make that feel worse too, since recruitment is now wrested from player control and given to randomly appearing nodes, of which a random demon emerges which is two layers of RNG just to obtain the demon you want, which is absurd. On top of that, the game ends around the level 60-70 mark so you never get to experience the ceiling of demons in a normal playthrough which is pretty absurd to me. It makes the progression feel stunted, and I find myself pretty attached to certain demons because of gameplay history so it's disappointing that I just didn't get to use them here.

The story is the most painful part here, because its not even bad enough to get like AVGN mad at, because it's just the most stereotypical JRPG plot you can think of in this regard without anything else to hold it up. Character storylines come and go in a flash and it's hard to care about anything outside of just a tenuous attachment to character personalities, of which yeah Saizo and Milady are pretty cool characters but their storylines amount to nothing. The main plot just glides by then switches gears right as the ending is about ready to float on through and before you know it the game is over, nothing interesting to say, no food for thought, probably the most vapid thematics in an SMT game since like, TMS#FE but even that game had something to say about the entertainment industry.

This game really just coasts along on franchise recognition, good aesthetics, the baseline good gameplay as expected from an Atlus JRPG, but with none of the flavour, the substance, or anything that'll make this game worth talking about even years from now, and it really makes me sad because I've been opining for years about how Atlus had regressed in making SMT spin-offs, only to be met with this, I think I'd be happier with just the Persona and mainline SMTs.