Soul Hackers 2

Feels like a chore to play this one. It's also pretty half-baked for the price they are asking.

If you are coming from the mainline SMT series or Persona and bought this without reading up on it first, prepare for whiplash. You could be disappointed by how heavily simplified the game mechanics are in almost every aspect — basic sabbath battles and auto-joining demons, shallow party connections and flat dungeon crawling. Then there is the aesthetic. You are supposed to be playing as underground secret agents, but the party is dressed like they are heading to some cosplay festival. Everything feels overly teenage and cringy, completely missing the hardboiled mark of the original games. The one massive exception is Ringo. She has fantastic design and personality, and genuinely saves the script. But Ringo alone isn't enough to carry the entire game. In the end, this game has become my "sleep pill" and a low-friction guilty pleasure to play before bed. Even though, I can't recommend it.

I'm begging you @Atlus_West, please make a #SoulHackers 3. I own 108 copies of #SoulHackers2 now. Is that not enough? I would rather be spending my money on a new Soul Hackers game.

Let me put this first: Soul Hackers 2 is not a /spectacular/ game. It's no Persona 5, it's no Shin Megami Tensei 3 Nocturne, it's not even Digital Devil Saga. When you come at this game, it's best to come at it entirely on its own merit, without the staggering expectations of other games in the SMT series. Not even because it's a BAD game with those in mind, but because it just doesn't live up to those others, but that doesn't mean it's a bad game. Soul Hackers 2 is an enjoyable experience if you're not approaching it with the sky-high expectations people seem to come at SMT games with. Gameplay: Combat is simple but solid, albeit somewhat restrictive. The Very Hard DLC mode is dumb, it's just Hard but no items in combat, which is super arbitrary and seems more like something you'd find in a self-imposed challenge run than an actual difficulty setting. Demon builds can be extremely restrictive, especially in the early game, due to the super limited skill slots, and you don't get much more, not to mention switching out demons in battle can be troublesome. Still, it's not the biggest deal to go into a fight with a variety of skills, see what the boss can do and test what it's weak to, then reload, adjust your team, and try again. This is helped by the fact that you can save any time, anywhere, even in the midst of a dungeon. This does make it "easier" in the sense that you won't be losing nearly an hour of progress if you screw up, but you can definitely still get suddenly pummeled in random encounters on Hard. Dungeons: Dungeons feel sort of samey for most of the game, but as strange as it sounds, I don't think this is a huge problem. The different types of settings are distinct enough from one another that not /everything/ feels the same. For me, it actually contributed both to the themes of the story and to the reveal of the final dungeon, which definitely wouldn't hit the same otherwise. It could be better, but I think it's fine for what it is. That said, I do have one MASSIVE complaint, and it's probably my biggest complaint of the entire game: The Floor 4s of the Soul Matrix. AKA one-way teleporter dungeons that will get you lost and going in circles if you're not careful or don't have a great memory. Do yourself a favor and look up a map for these, because they are probably the single worst instance of the 'Atlus teleporter dungeon' trope in ANY of their games, not just SMT. I got through 95% of these floors without a map, but it was an utterly miserable experience and I definitely will be using a map for my completion playthrough. Also, yea, the navigators CAN get a little annoying, hard to deny that. I do wish there was a way to turn them off. Story, Characters, and Worldbuilding: The story is probably the best aspect of the game, in my opinion. The world and characters probably aren't going to blow you away, but they don't need to. They're good, solid characters, and you'll likely find at least one person in the party whose narrative you're engaged in. There's a fair bit of good humor in the banter, and the game got me actively rooting for the canonical romance between one of the party members and an NPC, which isn't something most games can say. There are two endings to the game, something I wouldn't have known from the game itself, as there's little hint of that besides, perhaps, the Steam achievements. You need two playthroughs to complete the game anyway, so if you care about that, it's probably easiest to just get the 'bad/normal' ending first and the 'true/good' ending second. As of writing, I've only gotten the bad ending myself. All in all, Soul Hackers 2 is a good game. It's got a good story, good gameplay, good aesthetics, and is overall just /good/. If you go into it without the staggering expectations of SMT, you'll probably have a good time. I'd say it's best to wait for a sale, to be fair; I started multiple playthroughs, which is why my playtime is where it is at the time of writing, but the first playthrough to actually make it all the way through the game was still only 27 hours long. Granted, that is on Easy, and doesn't account for any game overs, but I did do almost all of the first four floors of the soul matrix and nearly all of the available sidequests, so it's not like I shotgunned the story or anything. It's just not a particularly long game, so it's arguable whether it's worth full price. Still, if you're interested, I think it's a good buy, and I'm looking forward to my second playthrough (this time on Hard) to get completion.

combat is great. if you want a good RPG that's main focus is combat, this is the game to play

40 / 100

I tried to like this as I loved the visual style, it just ended up feeling like a soulless chore to me and I had to drop it after 14 hours. Can't recommend.

Atlus is the king of making JRPGS actually fun and especially love it when they try to branch out from just SMT and Persona. Would love to see a sequel to Strange Journey or even a remaster but only time will tell. Characters are quirky and lovable but feel pretty indifferent about the combat. Definitely worth a try if you already like ATLUS games.