Soul Hackers 2

If you told me in 2022  we would be getting sequels to two of my favorite cult classic games that nobody asked for but me I wouldn't have believed you. But sure enough, Soul Hackers 2 and Gungrave G.O.R.E. released in the same year. Two flawed games that most people will probably forget about, but I will hold near and dear to my heart in spite of their flaws. Soul Hackers 2 is such a weird game, even I, a huge fan of the original game am very puzzled by the fact that this game exists at all and exists in the state that it does. For context, the Shin Megami Tensei series of JRPGs has been going on since their first adaptation from the novels in the very early 90s. The Devil Summoner games were a spin-off of the mainline SMT games and Soul Hackers was one of the entries in that series. So Soul Hackers 2 is a sequel to a spin-off OF a spin-off and was released 25 years after the game it draws it's namesake from and 10 years after the 3DS port of it, which was the way that most people in the west got to play it as the original PS1 and Sega Saturn versions were never localized (like most SMT games from the 90s). 


I saw a small handful of people playing this game when it was new and saw a few articles saying it sold poorly in japan. I wouldn't be surprised if this game unpopular with old school SMT fans as well as modern Persona fans. It has a lot of old school design elements combined with the character relationship system similar to Persona. So the SMT fans will be upset that it's too modern and doesn't have anything to to with it's predecessor and the Persona fans will be unhappy that it's too short and doesn't go far enough into the Persona design space. Theres also the small but vocal percentage of Persona 5 fans that have convinced themselves it's the only game that ever needs to exist and all other games will be unfairly compared to it. So what did I think of it? I enjoyed it a lot and I would much sooner rather replay this 25-30 hour game than Persona 5's 80-120 run time. The story takes place decades into the future in a sort of Cyberpunk setting. Any of the characters from the original game would have been long dead by now so it's a story that exists in isolation, not directly tied to any other storyline or setting in SMT. I enjoy the more compact story with fewer characters and locations to keep track of. The plot itself is very straightforward with the conflict between The Phantom Society and Yatagarasu over "The Covenants", if all of which fall into the wrong hands could bring about armageddon. The combat is much closer to modern Persona than to old SMT, the demons you recruit don't become entire party members they just become loadouts of moves you can equip to your party members and they level up separately from your party members just like in Persona. In the original Soul Hackers you had a 6 person team of 2 human characters and 4 recruitable demons. This time around it's just 4 human characters. The combat being traditional turn based and having lots of visual style and presentation I enjoyed quite a lot. The only minor complaint I have with the gameplay is how in an attempt to make this game feel more old school SMT, it has a lot of long, kinda boring dungeons. The only dungeon that is visual interesting is the very final one. The rest have very boring visuals. That wouldn't be so much of a problem if it wasn't for the existence of the "Soul Matrix" a dungeon that you can visit any time throughout the game who's progress is tied to your relationships with your party members. How close of a bond you have with them determines how deep into the dungeon you can go, and how deep you go allows you to learn more about their past. I like the character development this provides, but it just results in the majority of the gameplay in this game being a lot of redundant dungeon crawling in some very boring environments. There's no exploring distant and beautiful lands or going on a journey. Which is also sort of par for the course with some of the SMT games where they are confined to a single city location as their setting. 


By far and a mile the best thing about this game is the characters. They are well written, have very visually pleasing designs, have witty dialogue and have a LOT of development over the game's run time. They start off as reluctantly helping each other with a lot of animosity and distrust towards each other but over the course of the story you they grow closer together as they realize they have a lot more in common with each other than they realized. These are adult characters with trauma, baggage, failed relationships and regrets. All of them have a really bleak outlook on the world that can be a hard pill to swallow, some of their mentality can be really heavy to deal with in terms of subject matter with this game's story. Ringo has given each of them a second chance at life and most of them feel from time to time that they don't deserve it. There is a degree of nihilism and hopelessness present with the main members of the cast but also the society as a whole that the game takes place in. Ringo, Ironically, while being an AI construct essentially, adds some much needed light and relief from all the doom and gloom. In spite of her being human for a very short time she is able to (through the actions of you the play) help wrangle in these depressed characters and help them find the motivation to overcome their nihilism and existential dread. The game having a small cast of characters works really well for this. Outside of the main party every single other character you meet has some kind of established relationship with someone in our main cast. There are no insignificant characters (unless you count random NPCs or shopkeepers which also have cool designs) The drama when you have to confront a boss fight that is a character with a deep personal connection to one of your party members hits really hard. Almost every boss in the game is someone who you don't actually want to fight given the choice. My only real gripe with the story is the setting itself is not very fleshed out. I'm sure there is more lore or explanations I could read somewhere but I still don't quite understand what Aion IS or how it works or who made it. My other gripe is with pacing. I've played this game gradually since release and it was always kind of hard to tell how far along I was in the story. The revelation of who Iron Mask was segwaying into the final act of the game felt a bit abrupt but I feel like that is also a consequence of the game taking place in one isolated city location as opposed to a large sprawling adventure like a Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest style journey. 


Overall I enjoyed the game a lot. I highly recommend it to any JRPG fan as long as you can get anything and everything you know about Persona out of your head. The next SMT game I plan to finish is Strange Journey Redux on 3DS which has been a lot of fun so far. 

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