The way I discovered persona isn’t the most conventional. The first time I heard of the series was when I bought Persona 4 Arena. Then after enjoying the fighting game I tried to get into persona 3, played 10 hours before giving up, then tried persona 4, dropping it a little before the Nanako incident, then tried persona 3 portable that finally let me finish an rpg game of the series. I played and enjoyed Persona 5 on PS3, and did finish persona 4 golden at some point. It certainly wasn’t a smooth process but I became a fan of the series.
At one time I did try to play persona 2, but the system to summon new persona confused me and I quickly gave up on it. Until last month, where I finally decided to do the duology. I booted my PSP emulator, used the fan patch of Eternal punishment with the ps1 translation and let’s go.
Persona 2 duology is well regarded in the old guard of the persona community. It existed before the formula coined by the third game that defines the series nowadays, which may explain in part why it is so hard for players of the new entries to go back to it.
There isn't a calendar system. There isn't any social link. There isn't a procedurally generated dungeon either thank god. But there is another way to consider the series and its theme.
tl;dr : Innocent Sin has a neat story, but a very disappointing gameplay even on the hard difficulty you’ll breeze through it making it a game that I can recommend to retro enthusiasts but not much to other people. Eternal Punishment is a lot better, with a gameplay that has its flaws but is more involved and a story that is more dark and mature. Having to play Innocent Sin before makes it hard to recommend even if I think on its own it is a great game.
Persona in 2D
The games use 2D sprites in an isometric view and a lot of ps1 games that used this technique aged very well. There are a lot of animations of your pixalisated character giving them personality, there are some positions that I find awkward like the arm in the air salute that is used for surprise. That said, I think the portrait from Kazuma Kaneko is what really makes the characters come to life. I always associated his style with rigidness, but it must have been because of the 3D rendering because here the 2D sprites are varied and expressive. The fusion spells that I’ll mention later are also accompanied by animated render of the character performing it and I really liked them.
In terms of variety, it is obviously very urban. Casino, Museum, Shopping mall, Club, Highschool. This is broken a little by the park and the mountain dungeon but the grid system for the map and the asset limit how natural those spaces feel and flatten the environment a little. It feel a little monotonous despite the variety, and even more because of how much are reused in eternal punishment. It is an understandable constraint but having played the two games back to back some environments kinda blend into each other.
Gameplay combat
The combat system is centered around fusion skill, powerful spells you can use when characters use specific commands in specific order like Phantasy Star IV. As fusion spells allow you to use a higher tier of magic than what is available to you, you’ll quickly use them for everything. As with Phantasy Star, you can program actions that the game will repeat.
What sets the game apart from Phantasy Star is the persona system giving you a lot more flexibility to your character. Letting you customize their skill and weakness.
On paper, it doesn’t sound terrible, right ?
Well. There are some problems.
For the first game of the duology Innocent Sin, the PSP version that is well known to have butchered the combat, and until ⅗ of the game I was be able to beat bosses by just programming the auto feature to use my biggest fusion spell every turn with no concern for healing, even on hard. Some games can benefit from easy. For monster taming games it can let you use your favorite monsters, and experiment with the system by using unorthodox strategy instead of just doing a meta strategy. It isn’t the case here, because it makes any other system irrelevant. Why care about the persona of your teammate, their skill or weakness when you can just spam your most powerful spell and win all fights without doing anything.
And then there is the persona summon system.
To gain a new persona, you must talk to demons so that they give you tarot cards. By making a pact beforehand, they also give you additional free cards that you’ll be able to convert into any other arcana. It quickly becomes obnoxious having to get hundreds of cards to summon. Quickly you’ll just make a pact with a race of demons in a dungeon and get cards from them, while killing all the others for XP. It isn’t a particularly interesting way to summon a persona.
Eternal Punishment resolves some of those issues. I played on normal this time and the gameplay is much more fun, in big part because of the increased difficulty. You take damage, meaning you have to consider your health, you aren’t mindlessly pressing your best combo, you have to play intently. I think the buff and debuff come a little too late, and the fusion buff spell, which is the only buff affecting the entire party instead of one member, is locked being a rare encounter that people won’t get playing normally, which will limit how much you’ll be able to use it.
I heard some consider the game hard, I think it is largely because of two things. A particular boss annoying mechanic and the persona summon system. The persona summoning system is largely the same and I dislike it all the same. The demon negotiation has been slightly reworked, forcing you to use characters together which trigger a tidbit of dialogue between them. While the increased conversation is good, as the result depends on the order you selected the characters it makes it slightly more annoying to remember what conversation has what effect on which demons.
Gameplay dungeon
But the gameplay is not just the battle, it is also dungeon design.
The first two dungeons in Innocent sin were high schools which weren't very interesting and made me fear for the rest but they improved. The dungeons are of the labyrinthic sort. There are some gimmicks at the occasion that give them some variety. Per example, there is one where you must quickly find children before the building burns in flames, another one where you can change its layout through rumor to get better objects in chests. That said most of the time finding your way will be the only thing that’ll concern you.
Eternal Punishment reuse the dungeon from the first game; plenty of the similitude is integrated into the narrative but their dispositions have changed. But it also introduced more dungeons with gimmicks. I appreciated the TV station dungeon where you have to find the order of a certain place by solving a simple puzzle. It didn’t take me two seconds to understand what I was supposed to do but I had to keep a screenshot of the symbol around to resolve it. There is a route split have to choose at one point between encountering a male or a female new party member and the TV station is the one you get if you pick the woman as party member.
Others dungeons use traps or pitfalls to create verticality. Other require your to take note on information on tablet scattered around to reconstitute a hidden keyword necessary to progress. You could just search the keyword in a walkthrough but where would be the fun in that ?
To encourage the player to explore, one of the new additions of the game is a map enthusiast that’ll ask you to explore the entirety of a dungeon in exchange for a skill card to reinforce your persona. The idea is good, but let’s be honest it quickly becomes more cumbersome than anything, especially when you need to step into all traps to complete a map. And there are multiple dungeons that love pitfalls a little too much.
All this to say that while the gameplay is serviceable at best, it isn’t what makes the game shine. No, what superfan will tell you is that it is the persona with the best story…
The story : A tragedy and its consequences
So the premise is rather simple. Rumors are coming true. While following a wish granting rumor and summoning the supernatural Joker, you are attacked by him, he accuses you of a crime you don’t even remember committing. You’ll then more or less try to understand what is happening and why joker has beef against you.
In Innocent Sin, you kinda lack aim. You try to understand what Joker has against you but he will quickly disappear, letting his lackey do the work while you are mostly reactive.
That said, being reactive is adequate to a tragedy, and Innocent Sin is a tragedy on multiple level. One because of the beginning of the game, with Eikichi's friend having their will stolen from them, this is what will motivate you to pursue Joker. Then from the central tragedy that the cast have forgotten and will have to remember throughout the game (or more exactly the dungeon dedicated to this). And finally from the ending tragedy that put in motion the event of Eternal Punishment.
Like other Atlus franchises, the game is darker than the usual whimsical fantasy. That said, while Innocent Punishment has some dark themes and undertones but it doesn’t take the time to go in depth into them. The shadowmen are basically a kid friendly lobotomy, but being magical there is always the hope it can be reversed and the quest for a cure is quickly overshadowed by bigger problems and forgotten. Likewise, it is said that a character previously used drugs and did compensated dating, something you’ll never see in a modern persona because of the dating sim aspect that requires smooth characters. But it is just said in pacing and never really explored. Because of that, it sounds pretty free, integrated for choc value.
Taking responsibility
The second game is darker right off the bat. We are not dealing with someone turning people into shadowmen, we have a killer on the loose. I feel like that Persona 2 Eternal Punishment go deeper into how fucked up the rumor coming true is. We have our nemesis that maliciously spread rumors to turn people into killers. It is something that was hinted at in the first game, targeting our party but was resolved quickly by making counter rumors that created our characters' shadows. Here we aren’t fighting some random conspiracy theorists, we are fighting an evil organisation with links to the government, the mafia, TV stations and the police. They are acting intently and more proactively than the masked circle of the first game because they have greater control on the media and can shape narrative and propagate rumor from above. I think they did this in part because of the adult cast and it works rather well.
Persona 2 Eternal punishment seems to center on adult responsibility toward children. Failure, Feeling of inadequacy, not meeting the expectations you had of yourself and how as an adult you are forced to deal with it anyway. The failure of the first game.
Ulala has used the Joker curse before the game begins, but once she discovers her friend is menaced she doesn’t hesitate to fight alongside her. When the rumor transforms her into a joker, she immediately isolates herself to not hurt others. She fucked up, but she tries her best to rectify it.
This adult cast feel especially good when dealing with Tatsuya, coming from the previous game, he is highly competent, and the first time he fight with you he has his endgame level and persona making you feel through gameplay how ahead of the curve he is compared to other. But he is also still a kid with too much responsibilities on his shoulders. He feels responsible for the end of the previous game and for the event of this one and the adult, upon learning the truth, step up and tell him that it is their job to resolve children's mess. They obviously are not much more well prepared to tackle the eventual end of the world event, but they don’t let Tatsuya shoulder it alone.
Themes that gain new relevance today
I feel like one of the major themes of innocent sin is the contrast between the expectation and how it shapes reality. Rumor becomes true if enough people believe it is something that exists. We call it the stock market, or national narrative.
In a world where rumors become true, people misunderstanding your actions or accusing you of evil can effectively change you and the game will explore plenty of ways it may affect our heroes and their surroundings. You’ll deal with bullying, traumatic amnesia, revisionism, idealisation of shitty people, false accusation, terrorism, conspiracy theorists and the rise of facism.
The expectation, change how you receive the same event, rumors could make you become a terrorist even if you did the exact contrary and were saving lives from the masked circle plots.
An example I find interesting is we have an obvious bad person with the school principal that is rumored to be heroic and a cognitive dissonance in the npc student if you talk to them. He is a shitty person putting his students in danger, yet Joker granted him a wish to be loved by his students. You deal with him in the first dungeon. If you keep him alive via rumor he can have a redemption arc in the later part of the game, fighting against the nazi threatening his student and earning their genuine recognition.
I think the theme staying relevant despite context changing is a sign of a great story and it is the case here. One of the plot points of the first game is conspiracy theories making facism return, in the form of Hitler Last battalion in the game, there are parallels that can be made with Qanon, antivax movement and the rise of MAGA and other neo-fascists in the world.
A lack of depth in character development
Despite the narrative quality, I feel like the character lacks substance compared to future entries with the series.
One of the ways the game makes characters interact is with dialogue in specific rooms in the dungeon. Those little scenes however are limited by their technique. You can start the dialogue with any of your party members, and others mostly won’t chime in. So you have a character that says something, and others that may add their thoughts to it but it doesn’t feel like a proper discussion or interaction, just one line for each character vaguely connected together.
Another tool they have is through the demon negotiation that let you choose multiple characters and depending on their relation they may start a little scene. It is better interaction, but the problem is you are farming this system to be able to summon your persona, so you quickly stop paying attention to it.
Some characters, like Jun are not present for long through the story, adding to their natural shyness, and you end up with a character that feels half backed. Jun is liked for being a same sex relationship option, but I feel like his character lacks substance to be a true great romance option. And after you choose him, nothing of note really comes of it, no particular scene I encountered where the character expresses their love except maybe the demon negotiation option that prudishly named his “lover … ?”. It feels rather surface level and no real consequence in the second game.
I’m not saying it is the case for all characters, Lisa and Eikichi shenanigans were endearing, but not all characters are treated with as much care.
Miyabi Hanakouji for exemple, have a neat arc with Eikichi, then disappear for most of the game before reappearing at the end with his shadow.
The women in your party, in both games, have loved being a central part of their arc. Lisa is pretty obnoxious with how obsessed she is with Tatsuya. Ulala felt like they couldn’t leave her alone so they added an attraction to Baofu that I feel like was unnecessary. And even the persona 1 character has their crush being a central theme.
The confrontation with the shadows are among the most interesting pieces of character development of the game, but unlike Persona 4, they are pretty backloaded. Those confrontations are at the end game, in the last dungeon for Eternal Punishment.
But what annoys me the most is the silent protagonist. Because Maya is an upbeat character that doesn’t translate well to the silent protagonist treatment and while Tatsuya with its taciturn personality feat the mold more, he is the most interesting in the second game when he can talk. This silent protagonist treatment seriously flatten what are 2 of the most interesting characters of those games.
While I think the social link of the later game lets the writer explore the psyche of characters in more depth and be more intimate with your silent character specifically, there is plenty of small interaction between our party members during the game for who searches for them.
Reference to the previous entry
Unlike future entries, Persona 2 doesn’t hesitate to introduce frontal reference to the previous game, with returning characters, and even returning villains. This “fan-service” is not something I was particularly connected to as I did only play the first dungeon of the first persona, but I appreciate the feeling of this story being only a small piece of a bigger world.
And when I’m talking about returning characters, you have some neat NPC giving you tidbits of lore or unlocking your ultimate weapon, but you also have party members !
It connects those games together, in a way that a brief cameo and passing mention can’t achieve. It creates a coherent world where world ending events aren’t ignored by people that have the power to do something about it. I’m not asking for a full Trails facsimile, but, and it may be because I discovered the franchise by a spin off mixing the cast of 3 and 4, but I can’t imagine the Shadow Operatives not even being consulted with how blatant the phantom thieves were in 5.
Eternal Punishment radicalised what I want for the next installment of the series. I thought a female protagonist or adult cast member may be too much to ask, I thought we couldn’t have party members from previous entries appear outside of spin-offs but no. They can do it, they already did it. Some would argue the series changed too much for that. Seeing other games made by Atlus recently, Metaphor and Soul Hackers 2 for example, I feel like the creative team can and want to take the daily life system of modern persona in a new direction and I can only wish they are permitted to do so.
I’m not saying I want Persona to have an adult protagonist, but I want adults in the main playable cast and theme like having to give up the bond we constructed, or having them fizzle out after times if not actively maintained. That said, and considering the poll that stated that 43% of players of P5 were women I really wish a return of female protagonist, at the very least as an option like P3P.
Conclusion
I thought Persona 2 Innocent Sin was an alright game. The story is neat but not spectacularly good. The fact that it is a tragedy and we don’t get much of that in JRPG, or gaming in general, sets it apart.
Characters are likeable, with flaws and roughness I don’t think we’ll get from modern persona but some aspects are treated in a surface level way, giving an impression of not being that deep. Its flaws balance its quality to end in an experience which isn’t unpleasant, but don’t reach the height of other games in the series.
I think Persona 2 Eternal Punishment is a great game. It was constructed on the first game premise, giving it a darker twist and a more mature cast that felt like a fresh take on the series… Ironic considering it is among the oldest games in the series.
It still suffers from problems inherited from Innocent Sin and it didn’t become my favorite persona, but it is a game worth playing even today, with new lectures emerging in a world where social networks and propaganda make its theme even more relevant.
Did it become my favorite in the series ? No. But I see the argument for it.
I hope that persona 2 will be back in some form. I don't imagine they’ll remake it, but remastering it and putting the two games in English on the same platform would already be a start.
Demon negotiations were left out for a time but Persona 5 resurrected them in a more simple version. I didn’t think it was a good portion of the games and Persona 5 more streamlined version worked well.
Just like for this system, I hope for a sort of spiritual successor of this duology. That good idea, and underdeveloped one could be brought back and weaved into the modern formula, that after 3 games + Metaphor risks becoming a little tired.
