Soul Hackers 2

Of all the video games I've played, this is one of them.

[h3]《靈魂駭客 2》：酷炫、游刃有餘，但被嚴重低估！[/h3] 《靈魂駭客 2》的故事發生在遙遠的未來，一名名為 Aion 的人工智慧預見了世界末日的降臨。為阻止災難發生，Aion 創造了名為林檎與菲格的兩台機器人，並賦予他們守護兩名人類（一朗與艾羅）的使命。若這兩名關鍵人物死亡，將觸發世界終結。 機器人們找到了他們應當守護的人類，但兩人早已身亡。為阻止他們的死亡觸發世界末日事件，機器人決定發動靈魂駭入，將靈魂強行留在軀體中延續生命。此時你得知了能夠召喚重塑世界神祇的五個契約，而故事的反派自然也為了私慾想將這些契約搶到手。旅途中，你會結識更多隊友，並逐漸了解他們的故事。儘管我希望某些角色能有更深入的刻畫，但所有角色都令人難忘，視覺形象一致，且感覺是為這個世界量身打造，而非千篇一律的典型角色。 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3649207575 角色設計很完美，線條簡潔現代且風格鮮明，又不會太浮誇。其中主角林檎尤其出色，生動的動畫表現與鮮明的視覺特質，完美融入遊戲的賽博神秘氛圍。 回合制戰鬥流暢且節奏得當，融合了熟悉的《真·女神轉生》機制與更簡潔易上手的架構。安息日系統為戰鬥增添令人滿足的節奏感，鼓勵玩家透過巧妙配置隊伍與節奏掌控取勝，而非純粹比數值。地下城設計直截了當，讓玩家能專注於戰鬥與劇情推進。 效能表現同樣出色。我在 Intel Arc A770（16 GB）上遊玩，遊戲運行流暢無礙，幀率穩定不卡頓，載入迅速且完全沒有技術問題。畫面始終清晰銳利且流暢。 若您鍾情於視覺風格鮮明的 JRPG、精緻的回合制戰鬥，以及現代版《真·女神轉生》的氛圍，這款作品絕對值得推薦。 Translation = This is a JRPG with brains and attitude, Soul Hackers 2 is an easy buy. It delivers an interesting cyber-occult story, beautiful character design, and turn based combat that respects your time without dumbing things down. It does not have bloated systems and endless filler. I am mostly playing this with an Intel Arc A770 16gb. It just looks cool, plays smoothly, and lets its atmosphere and gameplay do the talking. Criminally underrated, refreshingly focused, and far better than its reputation suggests.

First, I need to say that I found the game decent, however, the main reason for rating it "not recommended" is precisely because not everyone will be able to finish this game. I managed to because I'm familiar with Atlus and have played several of their games, and I always find their game-building interesting, but I definitely can't recommend this game to just anyone. Positives: Overall, I loved the story, I loved all the characters, their personalities, their depth and diversity. This game has one of the best casts I've ever seen. The protagonist... I don't even have words, simply the BEST protagonist I've ever seen Atlus develop. I absolutely loved Ringo. I wish there were more games with this type of protagonist, with charisma, humor, engagement, determination... in short, I could talk a lot about Ringo; for me, she carries the game on her shoulders. Furthermore, I liked the game's different theme, the music, the vibe, the hangouts... I liked how the story progressed, and the plot twists were very good. In short, the entire game's plot, visuals, music, and backstories were the central reason why I finished this game and got the true ending. ===================================================================================================================== Negatives: Disclaimer - First, I need to state that not everything I mention here actually bothers me, however, these are problems that clearly exist and need to be mentioned. Starting from the basics, the dungeons are awful, all irritating, some less irritating than others, but there's no defending it. The dungeons in this game are the worst I've ever seen, extremely complex, long, a profound waste of time, repetitive, with an absurd number of enemies appearing and chasing you, and it gets much worse the further you progress in the game. In general, the dungeons in the real world are just mediocre, also boring and irritating, but NOTHING compares to SOUL MATRIX. At the beginning, everything seems calm and without problems, but man... after a short time this crap becomes HELL. I'm not exaggerating. As I said, I've finished many ATLUS games, Metaphor/Shin Megamis/Personas... but this game surpassed them all. The SOUL MATRIX dungeons in these games from 3rd to 4th phase are absurdly irritating, complex, it's impossible not to get angry. I almost gave up on this game because of that. I had to research guides to complete the MILADY 4th , which is THE MOST ♥♥♥♥ IN THIS ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ GAME, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥! WHO THE HELL MAKE THIS ♥♥♥♥, I WANNA PUNCH THIS ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ IN THE FACE! Sorry...but yeah its very frustating But, getting back to it... generally, Arrow's soul matrices are the easiest, then Saizo's are medium difficulty, and lastly, Milady's are the most insanely difficult. Honestly, that's the main reason I don't recommend this game, but there are other points that aren't good. The maps are always the same, they never change, and after 30 hours, it gets very repetitive and boring. The enemies keep appearing, and visibly get MUCH worse over time, where if you stand still for a few seconds, 7 enemies will run after you. Unfortunately, I have to say... I didn't like the ending. The antagonist's motivation was awful, and the conclusion was garbage. But okay... it doesn't bother me too much, although I think the entire plot progression of the game is excellent. I thought the DLC was okay, nothing special. I understand those who were annoyed and didn't like it, but I bought it on sale, so okay... This isn't really a problem, but I think it's good to mention it. The game is quite difficult; compared to other Atlus games, this one is unforgiving, but it's manageable. ================================================================================================================ I think that's it overall. I didn't find the combat as bad as many people mentioned; in fact, I thought it was one of the best. I liked the elemental system and how it was used. The summons are quite strong, and the upgrades and builds are very good. I found it simple and practical. This game has things that are far worse than mediocre combat, which I've already mentioned. Conclusion: I'm sad because this series didn't get more chances. There are literally only two games, and one of them is from 1997, meaning there hasn't been consistent, solid improvement and evolution of this franchise. Unlike Shin Megami or Persona, which have MANY games, each one much better than the last with clear evolutions in their mechanics. This is my take on why this game has so many irritating and flawed elements; there haven't been any more games to test and evaluate the public. If a miracle happens and Atlus gives this franchise a second chance with a Soul Hacker 3, I'm sure it would be absurdly better in every way. But as I said... the chance is almost zero. For now...unfortunately, this is the best we have...a lot of potential, but several poorly implemented aspects. This is the shortest Atlus game I've ever played, so everything goes by very quickly. In fact, it's possible to finish MUCH faster than it seems; 70% of the game is grinding, side quests, building, collecting, etc. But that's okay...it doesn't bother me. Overall, I'm really sad to have to say all this. I expected much more, BUT I LIKED THE GAME. Just to remind you, my review is more of a warning to other people. The experience I had with this game was unique. I really liked the characters, and it's very sad that I won't see characters like that again anytime soon. Because most Atlus protagonists are totally without personality, without their own motivation, all to create a false illusion where the "player" is the supposed protagonist, but I think that's a mistake, precisely because the protagonist ends up totally without personality. ============================================================================================================================= But that's it, if you've read this far, congratulations! If even after all this you still want to play this game, go for it! I guarantee that despite everything, it will be really fun, at least some things haha ps: I would really be happy if Atlus made a Soul Hackers 3, I think this franchise was treated unfairly, and deserves more, it has SO MUCH potential.

This is a spoiler free review. Normally i would recommend any Shin Megami Tensei game, but this one was a letdown. Overall i was hyped for this game, but unfortunately i was dissapointed with a boring / rather short game But firstly to the good points: - no random fights, meaning u can see and slash the enemies to avoid tedious fights - while fusing demons u can select the skills u wanna keep (even the ones the demon would have baseline) - intersting characters (to a decree) now to the bad points: - dungeons are really really repetetive and nothing really interesting / unique in the dungeons, which makes the progress / exploration really annoying and boring, as everything looks the same / feels the same - story is nothing special and actually really easy to guess what happens next - sidequests are basicly just running in the same 6 dungeons and getting something or killing something - well lets not talk about the DLC Sidequest as that is terrible as well So overall i definitely can not recommend Soul Hackers 2. If u want to try a Shin Megami Tensei game, go an buy SMT Nocturne or the Persona series. In these u will have your fun. Hopefully SMT V Vengenace will be better, but who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Soul Hackers 1 is a game that originally released on the SEGA Saturn and is still to this day one of my favorite Atlus titles. Any type of sequel would struggle to live up to my expectations and while I feel this game failed them I actually quite like a lot of what Soul Hackers 2 does on its own. Realistically it is more of a sequel to Tokyo Mirage Sessions on Wii U and Nintendo Switch -- Considering that was this teams previous game that makes a lot of sense! Viewed as a sequel to that Soul Hackers 2 is a very solid followup actually and improves most of what that game suffered from. In a refreshing twist for Atlus the entire cast is made up of adults. That in itself is nice, but unlike most Atlus RPGs the main character here has quite a lot of personality. Ringo is an extremely confident, clever and funny lead. Much of the cast is enjoyable and fun with fairly satisfying arcs too, but Ringo completely steals the show for me. I am hopeful she shows up in other games in the future whether they be cameos or otherwise as she is by far my favorite Atlus protagonist. Mechanically the game is solid although not as punishing as you might expect from a classic Atlus style RPG. Every party member has unique stats, quirks and priorities, but can be fully customized with any demon in the game. This means that every player can have a very different experience depending on what they want to focus on and it makes any grinding you may want to do feel pretty interesting as you can greatly change up how each session plays. The Sabbath system where you stock up critical hits and weaknesses to unleash one giant extra attack at the end of your turn comes off as a bit basic initially but in the last half of the game it can come together in an addicting and satisfying way. What is not great however is that demon negotiation is handled in a very static way and does not even occur during battles. Very disappointing and hopefully something Atlus never repeats. The biggest issue with Soul Hackers 2 is extremely apparent and unfortunate. It feels as if a massive chunk of the budget was removed halfway through development. Just about every aspect of the game suffers because of this and the dungeons are the worst offender. Almost every single dungeon design is reused at least once and the mostly optional Soul Matrix dungeon is especially bad as it genuinely feels and looks randomly generated despite that not being the case while also being the vast majority of what you will see if you intend to complete everything. I still came away enjoying the way they were structured, but the boring aesthetics and very limited amount of music tracks used in them are simply impossible to ignore. The soundtrack is fantastic for the most part, but again from what I presume is due to budgetary concerns the majority of locations in the game are extremely simplified so you will almost never hear the tracks in full. The entire city is segmented off in tiny chunks with no camera movement and feel almost incomplete with how quickly you enter and exit them. Shops and the like come off more akin to something you would see in a visual novel too so you do not spend much time in them either. These are not really problems and it can be argued that their simple nature means you get back into the actual dungeon crawling more often, but I think it does a great disservice to the work the artists and composers made as much of the world has wonderful art direction and you will probably spend most of your time in a dungeon that looks like the PlayStation 2 boot screen with a music track you have heard for hours already. Unfortunate also is that some of the best songs made for Soul Hackers 2 simply were only found in the expensive physical collectors edition music CD that was only available for consoles. This is just bizarre as there are some really excellent remixes from the first Soul Hackers that could have helped make this game feel more connected to the original. Despite being a modern title on Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 I came away with the impression that I played something more akin to an original PSP or Nintendo 3DS RPG. It feels a bit out of place in the modern era as a full priced release, but I personally had a great time. If you are looking to play Soul Hackers 2 as someone new to the type of RPGs Atlus makes I would personally suggest most of their other games on Steam ahead of this especially considering many of them are on sale for a lower price. Though, it should be known that this game is a great deal shorter than the Persona series if you are worried of the length of those particular games.

The good: it had lots of atmosphere, a few choice quotes and story moments, and some of the music was pretty good too. It scratched the Shin Megami Tensei itch when i had it. But holy carpal tunnel. The game is drastically overpriced: It has an AAA price tag, yet you will spend ungodly hours and hours looking at a handful of repeating textures and listening to one or two dungeon songs over and over, with no real variety until you get to the last areas of the game. I cannot recommend it based on the high price. Maybe on sale (Also ignore my hour count--pretty sure I left the game running and forgot about it--though I did finish it).

　シリーズ前作をやっていない為純粋に1ゲームとしての評価。 シナリオが酷すぎる、できることならネタバレとか一切無視して羅列してやりたい。 とても浅い人物描写ににとても浅い恋愛描写、雑な設定にその設定をさらにちゃぶ台返し（どんでん返しではない） いきなりでてきていきなり死ぬ、いきなりでてきていきなり戦う、いきなり〇〇して〇〇… それらの理由づけも漫画1ページ分ぐらいの情報量しかない。 シナリオは全体的にうっすいが、そのなかでもうっすい恋愛要素多め、正気か？ 　マトリクスというダンジョンが本当に…本当にストレスしかない、しかも最奥へ進むためにはシステム的に一周目では不可。 　ゲーム内の設定もまともに考えるのは無駄、以下鍵括弧はゲーム内の実際の台詞である。 「いよいよ何でもありじゃねーか」「決めつけていたのは私たちでしょ」 「ここに来て新情報のオンパレードで苦笑いしかでねーよ」 プレイヤーからしたら苦笑すら出ずにただ絶句するのみである。 　褒める点はキャラクターデザインと戦闘システムのサバトが格好いいことぐらい（すぐにスキップするようになるが） 主人公のリンゴは癖が強いのでかなり好みがわかれると思う、自分は好きというかそれだけがプレイを続けるためのエネルギー源だった。悪魔全書のコンプには二周必須だが自分はとてもじゃないが二周目をやる気にはなれなかった。