10 Oct, 2011
Name: Persona 2: Innocent Sin PSP
Platforms: PSP
Developer: Atlus
Publisher: Atlus
Tagline: We waiting 10+ years in the US for this?
Family Friendly: With talk of demons, some language and combat using guns and bladed instruments, it does speak to an audience that is older than 14.
There is something about the Shin Megami Tensei Persona series that have grabbed me, and I am at a loss as to explain why. I am not a big JRPG title, and I abhor the grinding of experience that comes with a JRPG title. And yet, with all of that in mind, I love playing Persona titles. I have played Persona, Persona 3: FES and Persona 4 and enjoyed them from beginning to end. Of course from reading that last sentence, you can see that there is a hole in my Persona gaming history as I have never played Persona 2: Innocent Sin. It was the only Persona title that did not see a release outside of Japan, and after playing it, I can understand why. Sure Persona 2: Innocent Sin on the PSP has some identity of what the Persona series is about, it becomes far too repetitive and boring long before you find the end of the journey. I want to like Persona 2, but it seemed to block my enjoyment at every turn.
Persona 2 Innocent Sin starts off with a pretty good premise with you as Tatsuya Suou, a high school student with a mysterious past. Tatsuya meets up with his friends and some enemies that end up teaming up to fight rumors that are starting to become true, and these rumors are turning normal kids into mindless zombie husks, free of any of the dreams that drive them to succeed in life. As you move forward, you start to learn more about a mysterious enemy known as The Joker and confronting his minions as you strive to save Seven Sisters School and the city of Sumaru City.
While all of this sounds interesting enough, Persona 2 doesn’t do much with the premise, as the plot slowly unwinds into a mess of who is bad, who isn’t and I just started to not care. This was kind of a sad point for this Persona title, because I have normally found the stories to be the most compelling point of the series. It is not that it is bad, but it just seems too disjointed at any point to make a lot of sense of the whole picture.
Persona 2 was the first game in the series to move from the standard first person perspective to an isometric view, and it makes navigation and enjoying the character art a lot more pleasing on the eyes. The areas that you visit are interesting and the layouts of each location are varied enough that you never feel like you are retreading through the same maps over and over.
Combat is where Persona 2 starts to shine, as you start off with the basic of attacks and persona powers, but as you work through the game, you start to unlock better powers to defeat the stronger enemies that you encounter. Combat is very fluid, and I like the diversity that each character has over time. You only have control over your own character when it comes to leveling up specific skills, but I appreciated the lack of micro-managing all of my team members. You can also converse with demons during each round of the battle, and with the right questions and responses, you can sometimes avoid battles, and possibly gain rewards from these conversations. While nice in theory, the questions and responses are very limited, and after about 10 different conversations, I started noticing the same three to five responses and questions popping up. I grew more irritated when I was asked if video games were cool for the twentieth time.
There are several nice touches that come with this special edition of Persona 2 on the PSP, including a new, remixed edition of the soundtrack. You get the option of using the original soundtrack or the new remixed edition. It also allows for the loading of cut scene and other data onto the PSP, resulting in almost instantaneous load times. I also liked the ability to save the game anywhere and not having to find some obscure save point.
The funny thing about Persona 2 is that you can see a lot of the framework that was being developed for the next title in the series. The move to a new view, solid music tracks and a much improved combat system make the title stand out and were improved with further releases. I could not come away with why the game was never released here in all these years, as I could not find anything objectionable in the content of the game. I have to assume it has something to do with rights or publishing issues.
I will say that hardcore Persona fans that never imported this title for their original PS One, should probably pick this up as there is enough here to warrant the purchase, with the soundtrack CD and enough lineage from the first title to keep players interested. But if you are on the outside, looking for a first step into the Persona series, skip this one and go for the much heralded Persona 3 title on PSP. The story is more grounded, characters better fleshed out and the combat system is at its peak. Persona 2 will entertain for a bit, but slowly you will just tire of the experience and walk away bored.
The Good:
- Combat is solid
- The Persona Series is finally complete outside of Japan
The Bad:
- Story is convoluted and uninteresting
- Contacting Demons consistently repeats dialog
- Game loses steam after five or six hours
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