Soul Hackers 2 is held back from true greatness by insufficient budget and a somewhat uneven story, but at its core is a stylish, fun, and addictive sci-fi/fantasy JRPG. I can see the potential for a Soul Hackers series to one day reach the heights of Persona, its Shin Megami Tensei spinoff cousin, but that potential is not quite reached here. Still, it's an approachable and enjoyable time that I can recommend if you're willing to be patient through its rockier sections.

Like the first Soul Hackers, this game is first and foremost a dungeon crawler, so it's unfortunate that it has a serious issue with dungeon variety. Gameplay time is almost entirely spent in the same few dark, cramped, bland environments. The big final dungeon alone has multiple visual themes that are better than anything that came before, so I'm not sure what happened with the rest. Annoyingly, a much-needed extra dungeon is locked behind Day 1 DLC—gross.

This is all particularly a shame seeing how vibrant the futuristic overworld city is, and how underutilized that style is relative to these less interesting dungeon areas. I think the game could range anywhere from 20-60 hours in length based on difficulty and how much side content you do; if you're like me, you'll probably get sick of the repetitive-feeling side stuff long before you're through with it and stay between 20-40.

Your party of demons scatters throughout those dungeons and provides you healing, items, and opportunities to recruit more demons that they find. I like how this makes demons mean more outside combat. In the first Soul Hackers, demon recruitment and usage were a lot more chaotic and unpredictable, which I liked a lot. Here it has been made "user-friendly" and palatable in a way that feels good to engage with, but does rob the game of something that makes Shin Megami Tensei unique and memorable. Otherwise, the loop of leveling up demons, maxing them out and getting some reward, then fusing them into other demons is really fun here. It makes building a balanced, optimized team an engaging ongoing process.

Combat starts out a bit iffy, but once you finally get a full party and a wider variety of abilities and mechanics, it comes into its own. The game's signature mechanic is the "Sabbath" attack. Hitting weaknesses and activating certain other abilities increases a damage multiplier, which at the end of each turn unleashes a big neutral hit to all enemies. This feeds heavily into a broader problem I have with the combat and the game as a whole, where its pace is bogged down by too many repetitive animations and voice lines, but it does bring its own fun strategic element to even basic encounters.

Large portions of the story and character stuff are just "okay" here, not super gripping but not bad. However, I found that the second half of the game was much better in this regard than the first. There are a lot of mysteries, character arcs, and twists to set up early on, and some of that setup can be a bit dull, but I found my patience was rewarded. If you like the early goings of the game, I think you can trust that it only gets better in almost every aspect as it goes on.

Despite the issues, once it finds its rhythm, the core formula of this game just... works. It's fun to play, it's got a nice style (sometimes), a pretty good story, and some enjoyable upgrade systems and demon collection that maintain a constant forward momentum. I think this is a very natural next step into the rest of Shin Megami Tensei for those who've already played Persona 5 or don't have time for it. While I think the original Soul Hackers did several things better, this game does some things better, too. It's nice to see parts of that very retro-feeling game's DNA successfully brought into the current generation.

I think Soul Hackers 2 is one of those flawed games that most people will bounce off of, but is potentially a strong hidden gem for the right person.

Good:

• Unique and intriguing setting. Near-future cyberpunk dystopia of sorts, but with a hidden world of "demons" and "devil summoners." Competing organizations vying for magical entities capable of summoning a god to end the world. And a higher intelligence born within cyberspace that predicts all this, and creates a couple artificial beings to assist the right demon summoners in preventing the catastrophe.
• Limited main cast of characters. It's refreshing to have a four-member party, and it simply stays that way to the end of the game. Allows each of them to feel fleshed out, and to get a full grasp of how they all interact with one another and develop their relationships.
• Non-silent protagonist with a personality. Ringo is a fun and interesting character to play as, and more plucky yet sardonic than you'd expect of an artificial being.
• Adult cast of characters. Extremely refreshing to not be following a bunch of teenagers around. Some topics covered in the game are thus more mature than usual, and the characters feel less driven by "high school anime tropes." In place of Persona-style social link events, you instead go to the local bar and chat with teammates over a drink. It's simple but effective, and helps give the game a unique mood.
• I also liked the character designs in general. Readily distinctive but not too over the top (IMO).

Fine:

• Gameplay. It's your standard Atlus turn-based battling system, the main new gimmick being "sabbaths" wherein attacking enemy weaknesses multiple times creates a "stack" for an increasingly larger final bonus attack at the end of your turn. It's not deep, but it's engaging enough. (And for some people, the relative simplicity may be a boon.)
• Plenty of menus to fiddle around with. As in other Atlus RPGs, you collect demons to fight with, and can fuse them to create new stronger demons. Loads of different abilities to try to give them. Your characters meanwhile can acquire accessories (that boost or un-boost a wide variety of stats), and can upgrade their weapons in dozens of ways with collected items. You can spend all the time in the world with this stuff.
• Music is good enough. Dungeon music (what you hear most) is mostly ambience, so not a lot that's too memorable. My favorite tune was the battle music when fighting bosses.
• Presentation is nice. Not quite Persona 5 level, but still pretty stylish.
• I praised the setting and characters a lot, but sadly I'd say the plot itself is just all right. Nothing about the story stood out to me that much, but there wasn't anything about it I disliked either. It's serviceable, and has its nice moments and a decent surprise or two.

Bad:

• Everyone will tell you the dungeons are boring, and this is true. The shipping yards are dull, the office buildings are dull, the subway lines are dull, and cyberspace is interesting at first but gets really boring after a while (and the optional dungeons of this go on for ages so I didn't bother with most of those). The main exception is the final dungeon of the game, which is varied and really cool-looking. I feel the "boring dungeons" thing is a recurring issue for Atlus RPGs though, if we're being completely honest.
• Exploration of the city (outside of dungeons) is kept to a very bare minimum, with shops all being in visual novel style presentation. Nothing interesting to find unfortunately.
• Side quests aren't anything to write home about. Which is a shame, because they would've been the perfect way to really flesh out this world a lot more. They're mostly just fetch quests and defeat enemies quests.
• In battle, characters just won't shut up. x_x Arguably an issue in many RPGs, but it seemed the chatter was much more prevalent here than usual. Practically every time you select anything in a menu during battle, your character or a teammate has to say something about it. Tone it down next time, Atlus.
• Similarly, when going through dungeons your recon character will let you know every time an enemy appears and every time an enemy is approaching and every time the area is clear of enemies. Do not want!!! At least give me the option to toggle this off.
• Researching this game, I was under the strong impression this was a notably shorter RPG than most. I still took 70-80 hours on it though, and that's without attempting full completion or true ending stuff. It's possible I'm just very slow, but I was really hoping this would be a more succinct adventure. I continue to beg RPG developers to start trimming the fat, or at least include an optional "I'm over thirty and have limited free time and am not asking for a baby easy mode I still would like some challenge I just want to finish this in like 20-30 hours instead of 70-140 hours" mode. Someone come up with a snappier name for that.
• Apparently there's a bonus story arc as DLC. Did it have to be DLC? =/

Soul Hackers 2 was another fun ride through the SMT franchise. Far from being a very memorable experience and it does go on for a bit longer than it should, but I think it managed to do well what it sets out to do.

One thing that is immediately clear in SH2 is how they tried to inject a lot of style over substance. And, hey, don't get me wrong, there's still a lot of gameplay to be had here. Just not the most diverse, because "stylin' it" worked, for the most part. It's probably the least atmospheric and immersive SMT game I've played, but still manages to convey a nice Tokyo-like city in a near-future. They don't show much, but I really liked what is there to see and discover.

That's why, of course, graphics, art style and soundtrack played a great part in my enjoyment of this world. I like the direction they went with its looks, character and demon design is top-notch as usual and the OST is great! Unfortunately, there are not a lot of tracks in the game, but the ones present are pretty cool.

The story could've been better, however and that's what hurts it the most.

It's solid, but gets fairly boring towards the end. Which is a shame given how well it starts and how charming the main characters and villains are. Writing is to blame here. The concept and plot are interesting, but dialogues are ghastly. Conversations are redundant (borderline useless at times), motivations are questionable, characters NEVER shut up even DURING combat and there's a twist near the end that made no sense to me.

This aspect alone could've ruined SH2 for me because it's also quite time consuming (I clocked around 60 hours). Still, its classic SMT gameplay works so well! There's not a lot of praise to be said about the press turn system that I already haven't before, so I'll just say that this is one of the most accessible ways to get into it. Even more so than SMT V. Especially due to the Sabbaths, which were a fun strategic addition. It's also fairly forgiving, while challenging. Bullshit moments are still the, just, well... I got used to it by this point.

Two things I wish I could change from this game, however, were the Axis and Requests. Requests are ok, but they get stale due to lack of variety and lukewarm rewards. Axis dungeons are just obnoxious. It starts off pretty cool, as it looks and sounds very ominous, can be a bit challenging and you find out more about the main characters. But BY GOD, DID IT NEED TO HAVE 5 FLOORS OF THE SAME FUCKING THING? Wasted potential, I guess.

And I think that's it for Soul Hackers 2. Honestly, there's not a lot more to it. It's another fun SMT spin. Just not a remarkable one. But I feel like it's a good entry point to the franchise, even though it doesn't pack the best it has to offer.