THE PLOT:
In the city of Sumaru, rumors are becoming reality. When high school students Tatsuya, Lisa, and Eikichi are targeted by the Joker, a mysterious being who grants wishes, they team up to uncover his identity. They are joined by Maya, a young journalist, and her assistant Yukino, who experienced a similar brush with the supernatural a few years previously.
They soon discover that a cult known as The Masked Circle is working with Joker, using crystal skulls to gather energy to bring rumors to life - even the most outlandish and apocalyptic of rumors. As Tatsuya and his friends follow Joker's trail to the caverns beneath a shrine, they find themselves coming face to face not only with the dark powers of the present, but also with the forgotten secrets of their own past - and the "sin" Joker condemns them for!
CHARACTERS:
Of the three Persona games made for the original Playstation, Persona 2: Innocent Sin has by far the best fleshed out and most likable main characters. Eikichi is the would-be rocker with a shady reputation, but he uses that reputation to protect the weaker students at his school and to keep bullies in check. The outwardly confident Lisa is actually insecure, her Anglo ancestry having left her a perpetual outsider in the only society she's ever known. Maya's relentless positivity has a vaguely manic edge to it. Even the player character, Tatsuya, gets reasonable characterization, with it clear that he's a loner largely by choice and that he's troubled by pieces of a past he can't quite remember. Their interactions are often funny and charming, and I became very attached to them even when the plot occasionally lost me. Never mind how impressive the character work is for a retro game - These characters stand up well against many in modern games!
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| Tatsuya and friend battle demons - when they aren't chatting with them... |
GAMEPLAY:
Gameplay is similar to the first Persona. Story and characterization is advanced in shops, rooms, and houses in which you, as Tatsuya, are able to talk with both your party members and any NPCs that might be in the area. Navigation has been greatly improved, with a city map allowing you to navigate easily to the desired setting. Generally, it's worth visiting each available place between dungeons, as story advancement leads to new dialogue options.
The bulk of the gameplay is, once again, dungeon crawling and leveling up through random encounters. The dungeon crawling is no longer first person, however. You now are above and behind Tatsuya as you guide him through dungeons, which makes it easier to keep track of where you are. Combat is again a mix of random encounters and demon negotiation, though negotiations have been streamlined.
Difficulty is generally lower than the first game, with relatively few difficulty spikes. I'd almost argue that a lot of the combat is too easy; save for boss fights, you can just about turn the auto-battle on and walk away during random encounters. On the plus side, deliberate grinding is largely unnecessary - You'll level up enough moving through the dungeons to your destinations that you should have no problem holding your own against the enemy bosses.
THOUGHTS:
Persona 2: Innocent Sin features many improvements over the original game. The most instantly obvious is the visual. This game just plain looks a lot better. There is more detail in every setting your characters visit, and even the dungeons are more varied. It's clearly an archive game - But it's a visually appealing one, showing evidence of more time, care, and skill being put into its production.
I've already mentioned the strength of the characters. The main characters all feel like fully-formed human beings, ones that the player will come to like and enjoy spending time with. The plot's setup is intriguing, as the characters' repressed memories gradually surface during their pursuit of Joker. I quite liked the first Persona; but by the midpoint of this game, I was ready to declare it an improvement over its predecessor in every respect.
Then the second half happened.
I'll be fair. Even as the story gets very outlandish, it remains justified by the plot. There's some infamy in this game's use of Hitler as a boss enemy in the later stages of the game. It's ludicrous - But it just about makes sense in the context of the villains' plan to bring rumors to life. Even so, it can't help but feel like a descent into "B" movie silliness. It doesn't help matters that while the first half of the game, centering on Joker, is well-paced with steady and gradual revelations, the second half feels a bit aimless and attenuated, only finding its way again in the final stretch.
In short: Innocent Sin's story had me... and then lost me. Though it did regain my attention with a well-judged final dungeon and a genuinely surprising resolution, one that leads effectively into the next game while also working adequately as an ending in its own right.
The PSP version, which is the only version available in the West, has an added "Theater" mode, allowing players to play through three Visual Novel-style stories featuring the characters. None of these tie to the main story, so they are best regarded as ephemera. Still, it's a fun addition - Particularly since the characters are so appealing that it's genuinely nice to be able to spend more time with them.
Overall, I find myself awarding Innocent Sin the exact same score I gave to the first game. The improvements, both to graphics and to characterization, are undeniable. But the story lost me in the second half, and the strength of the ending still wasn't quite enough for me to rate it higher.
Overall Rating: 6/10.
Gameplay is similar to the first Persona. Story and characterization is advanced in shops, rooms, and houses in which you, as Tatsuya, are able to talk with both your party members and any NPCs that might be in the area. Navigation has been greatly improved, with a city map allowing you to navigate easily to the desired setting. Generally, it's worth visiting each available place between dungeons, as story advancement leads to new dialogue options.
The bulk of the gameplay is, once again, dungeon crawling and leveling up through random encounters. The dungeon crawling is no longer first person, however. You now are above and behind Tatsuya as you guide him through dungeons, which makes it easier to keep track of where you are. Combat is again a mix of random encounters and demon negotiation, though negotiations have been streamlined.
Difficulty is generally lower than the first game, with relatively few difficulty spikes. I'd almost argue that a lot of the combat is too easy; save for boss fights, you can just about turn the auto-battle on and walk away during random encounters. On the plus side, deliberate grinding is largely unnecessary - You'll level up enough moving through the dungeons to your destinations that you should have no problem holding your own against the enemy bosses.
 |
| Believe it or not, this sort of makes sense in context. |
THOUGHTS:
Persona 2: Innocent Sin features many improvements over the original game. The most instantly obvious is the visual. This game just plain looks a lot better. There is more detail in every setting your characters visit, and even the dungeons are more varied. It's clearly an archive game - But it's a visually appealing one, showing evidence of more time, care, and skill being put into its production.
I've already mentioned the strength of the characters. The main characters all feel like fully-formed human beings, ones that the player will come to like and enjoy spending time with. The plot's setup is intriguing, as the characters' repressed memories gradually surface during their pursuit of Joker. I quite liked the first Persona; but by the midpoint of this game, I was ready to declare it an improvement over its predecessor in every respect.
Then the second half happened.
I'll be fair. Even as the story gets very outlandish, it remains justified by the plot. There's some infamy in this game's use of Hitler as a boss enemy in the later stages of the game. It's ludicrous - But it just about makes sense in the context of the villains' plan to bring rumors to life. Even so, it can't help but feel like a descent into "B" movie silliness. It doesn't help matters that while the first half of the game, centering on Joker, is well-paced with steady and gradual revelations, the second half feels a bit aimless and attenuated, only finding its way again in the final stretch.
In short: Innocent Sin's story had me... and then lost me. Though it did regain my attention with a well-judged final dungeon and a genuinely surprising resolution, one that leads effectively into the next game while also working adequately as an ending in its own right.
The PSP version, which is the only version available in the West, has an added "Theater" mode, allowing players to play through three Visual Novel-style stories featuring the characters. None of these tie to the main story, so they are best regarded as ephemera. Still, it's a fun addition - Particularly since the characters are so appealing that it's genuinely nice to be able to spend more time with them.
Overall, I find myself awarding Innocent Sin the exact same score I gave to the first game. The improvements, both to graphics and to characterization, are undeniable. But the story lost me in the second half, and the strength of the ending still wasn't quite enough for me to rate it higher.
Overall Rating: 6/10.
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